The Rational Social Will aims to build up a social order which shall do justice to the fundamental impulses and desires of man, a social and rational creature. The stones which it must build into its edifice are human beings. If the human beings are mere lumps of soft clay, incapable of holding their shape or of bearing any weight, the walls cannot rise. And a human being may be satisfactory in one respect, and far from satisfactory in another. No one of us is wholly ignorant of the qualities desirable in our building-material. Custom, law and public opinion are there to indicate what qualities have, in fact, proved, on the whole, not detrimental. Our intuitions help us in forming a judgment. Rational reflection is of service.

But one thing is very evident. Nowhere is it made clearer than in the study of the virtues and vices, that the moralist cannot consider the phenomena, with which he occupies himself, in a state of isolation.

Is courage a virtue? Is, then, the man who is willing to take the risk of breaking a bank, or holding up a stage-coach, in so far virtuous? Is perseverance a virtue? Is, then, the woman, who holds out to the bitter end in her desire to have the last word, in so far virtuous? Is justice a virtue? Then why not be virtuous in demanding the pound of flesh, if it is the law—as it once was?

Certain qualities of character have been recognized as, on the whole, and generally, serviceable to the social will. But a man is not a quality of character, and qualities of character are sometimes gathered into strange bundles. It is of men that the state is composed; of thinking, feeling men. We cannot isolate qualities of character, and assess their value in their isolation.

150. CONSCIENCE.—We are all forced to recognize that conscience has its dual aspect. It is characterized by feeling; and the feeling is seldom blind, or, at least, wholly blind; conscience implies a judgment that something is right or wrong.

(1) The feeling is, to be sure, very often in the foreground. Those who say, "My conscience tells me that this is wrong," often mean little more than, "I feel that it is wrong."

But the word "feeling" is an ambiguous one. It is used to cover all sorts of intuitive judgments as well as mere emotions. The man who takes the time to reflect upon his feeling of the rightness or wrongness of an action can often discover some, perhaps rather vague, reason for his feeling proper.

(2) In other words, he may come upon an intuitive judgment. And the thoughtful man who talks about his conscience is rarely satisfied with a blind intuition; he wants to be sure he is right, and he thinks the whole matter over.

(3) The feeling and the judgment are not necessarily in accord. The feeling may lag behind an enlightened judgment. On the other hand, the feeling of repugnance to acting in certain ways may be a justifiable protest against a bit of intellectual sophistry.

(4) So much ought to be admitted by everyone who holds that conscience may be blunted or may be enlightened. Consciences vary indefinitely. Some we set down as hopelessly below the average; others we reverence as refined and enlightened. The social worker makes it his aim to "awaken" conscience, to cultivate it, to bring it up to a high standard. No practical moralist regards the conscience of the individual as something which must simply be left to itself and treated as sacred, no matter what its character.

(5) The above sufficiently explains some of the puzzles which confront the man who reverences conscience and yet studies the consciences of his fellow-men. He finds that the individual conscience is not an infallible guide-post pointing to right action; that it is not a perfect time- keeper, in complete accord with the watches of other men.

"It's a turrible thing to have killed the wrong man," said the conscience-stricken illicit distiller in his mountain fastness. "I never seen good come o' goodness yet; him as strikes first is my fancy," said the dying pirate in "Treasure Island." Augustine, passing over much worse offences, exhausts himself in agonies of remorse over a boyish prank. [Footnote: See chapter xx, Sec 78.] Seneca draws up a list of the most horrifying crimes, and decides that ingratitude exceeds them all in enormity. [Footnote: On Benefits, i, 10.]

(6) It appears to be quite evident that consciences ought to be standardized, and that the standard should be made a high one. The true standard is the one set by the Rational Social Will. It is as much a duty to have a good conscience as it is to obey the conscience one has.



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE ETHICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL

151. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM?—Men collected into groups and organized in various ways we call states, and we treat a state as a unit. We look upon it as having rights and as owing duties both to individuals and to other states. There are individuals whom we are apt to regard as representatives of the state; as instruments, rather than as men— executive officers, legislators, official interpreters of its laws, whether good or bad. For states and their representatives we often have especial moral standards, differing more or less from those by which we judge human beings merely as human beings. It is with the morality of the latter that I am here concerned.

To be sure, all human beings are to be found in states, or in that rudimentary social something which foreshadows the state. To talk of the morality of the isolated individual is nonsense. Morality is the expression of the social will; and if we think of even Robinson Crusoe as a good man, it means that we apply to him social standards. Had he not been moralized, he would have killed and eaten Friday, when the latter made his appearance.

We must, then, take the individual as we find him in the state, but it is convenient to consider his morality separately from the ethics of the state, its institutions and its instruments.

152. THE VIRTUES OF THE INDIVIDUAL.—What moral traits have we a right to look for in the individual man? What sort of a man is it his duty to be?

Evidently, men's duties must vary somewhat according to the type of the society to which they belong, and to their definite place in that society. Still, certain general desirable traits of character unavoidably suggest themselves. To attempt a complete list seems futile, but the most salient have been dwelt upon by the moralists of many schools, and for centuries past.

Does it not appear self-evident that a man should be law-abiding, honest, industrious, truthful, and capable of unselfishness? Should he not have a regard for his health and efficiency? Should he not aim to develop his capacities, and in so far to diminish the dead mass of ignorance and bad taste which weighs down society?

Of marital fidelity, with all that that implies—personal purity, the good of one's children, a fine sense of loyalty—it is scarcely necessary to speak. No man, betrothed or married, can be sure that he will not meet tomorrow some woman whom the unprejudiced would judge to be more attractive than the one to whom he has bound himself. Shall he remain unprejudiced—a floating mine, ready to explode at any accidental contact? Away with him! He has, in the eyes of the scientific moralist, "too much ego in his cosmos." Those babble of "affinities" who know little, and care less, about the long and arduous ascent up which mankind has toiled, in the effort to attain to civilization.

And what shall we say of such things as religious duties, of cheerfulness, of good manners, of personal cleanliness? Of religious duties I shall speak elsewhere. [Footnote: Chapter xxxvi.] As to cheerfulness and good manners, it is only necessary to reflect upon the baleful influence exercised upon the young—who have here my entire sympathy—by a bilious and depressing piety, or by those who are rudely and superciliously moral.

Cleanliness deserves some special attention, on account of the fact that it has perplexed even thoughtful scholars to discover why society has come to regard it as a duty at all. [Footnote: The chapter on cleanliness by Epictetus is a homily, and not a philosophic argument. See, Discourses, Book IV, chapter xi.] That, if society does regard cleanliness as important, it should be the duty of the individual to keep himself and his house clean presents no problem. He has no right to make himself gratuitously offensive, and gratuitously offensive he will be, if he is a dirty fellow. But why does anyone object to his being a dirty fellow? The prejudice in favor of cleanliness does not appear to be universal—witness the Eskimo and various other peoples.

We have learned that the social will has its foundation in the fundamental impulses and instincts of man. An admirable scholar has suggested that the ultimate root of the regard for cleanliness which more or less characterizes civilized societies may be traced to some such primitive and inexplicable impulse to cleanliness as we observe, for example, in the cat. [Footnote: WESTERMARCK, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, chapter xxxix.] It must be admitted that it is far more marked in the cat than in the human being. A kitten is much more fastidious than is a baby, and a grown cat would tolerate no powder or rouge.

But, assuming that such an instinct exists, even in weak measure, it might easily develop with the development of society. And, as man is a rational being, capable of discovering a connection between cleanliness and hygiene, the duty of cleanliness would acquire a new authority. Dirt becomes no longer merely distasteful; it is recognized as a danger.

153. CONVENTIONAL MORALITY.—There are virtues—taking the traits of character indicated by the names broadly and loosely, and making allowance for all sorts of variations within wide limits—which appear to be recognized as such very generally. Bishop Butler regarded justice, veracity and regard to common good as valued in all societies. Certainly they have served as expressions of the social will in many societies, ancient and modern, primitive and highly civilized.

We have seen that the forms under which they appear are not independent of the degree and kind of the development of the society we may happen to be contemplating. [Footnote: See chapter ii.] And we have realized that man is born into a world of ready-made duties which are literally forced upon his attention. He finds himself a member of a family, somebody's neighbor, a resident in a town or village, allotted to a social class, an employer or an employee, a citizen of a state. Justice, veracity and a regard for common good appear to have their value in all these relations; but the manner of their interpretation is not independent of the relations, and the relations with their appropriate demands are relatively independent of the individual will. One cannot ignore these demands and fall back, independently, upon metaphysical theory. Aristotle's claim that a man cannot be unjust to his own child, because the child is a part of himself, and a man cannot be unjust to himself, [Footnote: Ethics, Book V, chapter vi, Sec 7.] excites our curiosity. It does not elicit our approval.

It is because the vast majority of our duties are so unequivocally thrust upon us that I have been able to touch so lightly, in the last section, upon the duties of the individual. Why dilate upon what everybody knows? Is it not enough to set him thinking about it?

And, in helping him to think, the reference to the virtue of cleanliness has its value. Cleanliness is prized by those who know little of hygiene. If a society cannot be happy without cleanliness, for whatever reason, is it not the duty of the individual to be clean? But how clean should he be?

There are virtues—I use the word here broadly to cover approved habits— which seem to have a very direct reference to chronology and geography. They are conventional virtues; they suit a given society, and satisfy its actual social will. A Vermont housekeeper in an igloo would be an intolerable nuisance. Imagine an unbroken succession of New England house-cleanings with the inhabitants of the house sitting in despair in the snow outside.

Those who live north of the Alps are sometimes criticized for dipping Zwieback into their tea. Those who live south of the Alps eat macaroni in ways revolting to other nations. A very pretty Frenchwoman, devouring snails after the approved fashion of the locality, has driven me out of an excellent restaurant. And the world opens its eyes in wonder when it sees the well-bred Anglo-Saxon dispose of his asparagus.

There is a little-recognized virtue called toleration. St. Ambrose was a wise man when he advised St. Augustine to do, when in Rome, as the Romans do. Of course, he did not mean this to apply to robbery or to murder. He was giving an involuntary recognition to the doctrine that there are conventional virtues, worthy of our notice, as well as virtues of heavier caliber and wider range.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ETHICS OF THE STATE

154. THE AIM OF THE STATE.—He who has resolved to devote but a single chapter to the Ethics of the State must deliberately sacrifice nine- tenths, at least, of the material—some of it very good material, and some of it most curious and interesting—which has heaped itself together on his hands in the course of his reading and thinking. I have resolved to write only the one chapter. The State is the background of the individual, the scaffold which supports his moral life. Without it, he may be a being; but he is scarcely recognizable as a human being. It has made the individual what he is, and it is the medium in which he can give expression to the nature which he now possesses.

Plato maintains that the object of the constitution of the state is the happiness of the whole, not of any part. [Footnote: Republic, II. It must be borne in mind that both Plato and Aristotle had the Greek prejudice touching citizenship. Their "citizenship" was enjoyed by a strictly limited class.] Aristotle, in his "Politics," maintains that it is the aim of the state to enable men to live well. Sidgwick defines politics as "the theory of what ought to be (in human affairs) as far as this depends on the common action of societies of men." [Footnote: The Methods of Ethics, chapter ii.] We may agree with all three, and yet leave ourselves much latitude in determining the nature of the organization of, and the limits properly to be set to the activities of, the State as such. Shall the State only strive to repress grave disorders? or shall it take a paternal interest in its citizens, making them virtuous and happy in spite of themselves?

155. ITS ORIGIN AND AUTHORITY.—In Parts III to VI we have seen how and upon what basis the State has grown up. It is an organism, something that lives and grows. It is not a machine, deliberately put together at a definite time by some man or some group of men. The "social contract" fanatic may have read history, but he has not understood it. Of psychology he has no comprehension at all.

Herodotus, at some of whose stories we smile, was a wiser man. He writes: "It appears certain to me, by a great variety of proofs, that Cambyses was raving mad; he would not else have set himself to make a mock of holy rites and long-established usages. For, if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others." [Footnote: The History of Herodotus, Book III, chapter xxxviii, translated by GEORGE RAWLINSON, London, 1910.]

This may be something of an over-statement, for men in one state have shown themselves to be, within limits, capable of learning from men in another. But only within limits. Those things which give a state stability—and without stability we are tossed upon the waves of mere anarchy—have their roots in the remote past. Strip a man of his past, and he is little better than an idiot; strip men within the State of their corporate institutions and ideals, of their loyalties and emotional leanings, and we have on our hands a mob of savages, something much below the tribe proper, knit into unity of purpose by custom and tribal law.

The State has its origin in man as a creature desiring and willing, and at the same time endowed with reason. Its authority is the authority of reason. Not reason in the abstract, with no ground to stand upon, and no material for its exercise; but reason as incorporate in institutions and social usages; reason which takes cognizance of the nature of man, and recognizes what man has already succeeded in doing.

Where shall we look for a limit to the authority of the State? Surely, only in the Reason which makes it possible for the State to be. The State must not defeat its own object.

156. FORMS OF ORGANIZATION.—The special science of politics enters in detail into the forms of organization of the State. The ethical philosopher must content himself with certain general reflections. Everyone knows that States have been organized in divers ways; and that their citizens, under much the same form of political organization, have been here happy and contented, and there in a state of ferment. The form of government counts for something; but its suitability to the population governed, and the degree of enlightenment and discipline characteristic of the population, count for much more. It is not every shoe that fits every foot, and there are feet that are little at home in shoes of any description.

Monarchies of many sorts, aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies, even communisms, have been tried; and all, save the last, have managed to hold their own with some degree of success.

It is easy to bring objections against each form of government, just as it is easy to say something specious in its favor.

Are the eldest sons of a few families peculiarly fitted by nature to be governors of the State? Look at history, and wake up to common sense. Of the divine right of kings I shall not speak, for the adherents of the doctrine are in our day relegated to museums of antiquities. And have the members of aristocracies been carefully bred with a view to their intellectual and moral superiority, as we breed fine varieties of horses and dogs? Have those who have had their share in oligarchies been peculiarly wise and peculiarly devoted to the common good? The communist makes two fatal mistakes. He shuts his eyes to history, and he overlooks the fact that there is such a thing as human nature.

There remains democracy. Of this, Herodotus, already quoted as a man of sense, has his opinion. He makes a shrewd Persian, in a political crisis, thus address his fellow-conspirators:

"There is nothing so void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what he is about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; but let us choose out from the citizens a certain number of the worthiest, and put the government into their hands." [Footnote: Op. cit. Book III, chapter lxxxi.]

To be sure, we, who belong to a modern, enlightened democracy, would resent being called "a rude unbridled mob," and being likened to the populace of ancient Persia. But those of us who reflect recognize the dangers that lurk in the "psychology of the crowd"; and we are all aware that, after a popular vote, it is quite possible to discover that few, except a handful of office-holders, have gotten anything that they really want. Democracy is not a panacea for all political evils, and there are democracies of many kinds.

Still, when all is said, it seems as though the Rational Social Will, the ultimate arbiter of every moral State, should give its authority to a democratic form of government, rather than to another form. Every individual will has a prima facie claim to recognition.

But the Rational Social Will can never forget that human nature is in process of development, and that each nation, at a given time, is a historical phenomenon. The Rational Social Will is too enlightened to drape an infant in the raiment appropriate to a college graduate. It is only an intemperate enthusiasm that is capable of that.

157. THE LAWS OF THE STATE.—The State allots to individuals, and to the lesser groups of human beings, of which it is composed, rights, and it prescribes to them duties. Upon its activities in this sphere I can touch only by way of illustration, and for the sake of making clear the nature of the functions of the State.

(1) To whom shall the State grant a share in the formulation and execution of its laws? Once, in communities very enlightened, in their own peculiar way, women, children, slaves, mechanics, petty traders, and hired servants were deemed quite unfit to be entrusted with such responsibilities. [Footnote: See ARISTOTLE'S Politics.]

With us, the position of woman has changed. Slavery, in a technical sense, has been abolished. The mechanic and the petty trader are much in evidence at "primaries." Hired servants are by some accused of being tyrants. Children, and defectives who are grossly and palpably defective, we bar from elections, and we also reject some criminals.

The times have changed, and our notions of the right of the individual to an active share in the State have changed with them. The expression of the social will has undergone modification, and I think we can say that it is, on the whole, modification in the right direction.

To be sure, the court of last resort is the Rational Social Will. What is best for the State, and, hence, for those who compose it? What is practicable in the actual condition in which a given state finds itself at a given time? It seems too easy a solution of our problems to seek dogmatic answers to our questionings by having recourse to the "natural light," that ready oracle of the philosopher, Descartes.

(2) There are certain classes of rights which civilized states generally guarantee to their citizens with varying degrees of success. They make it the duty of their citizens to respect these rights in others.

(a) The laws protect life and limb. Much progress has been made in this respect in the last centuries past. I own no coat of mail; and, when I walk abroad, I neither carry a sword nor surround myself with armed retainers.

(b) They protect private property. To be sure, the "promoter" may prey upon my simplicity; and the state itself does not recognize that I have any absolute right to my property, any more than it recognizes that I have an absolute right to my life.

It may send me into the trenches. It may take from me what it will in the form of taxes. It may even forbid me to increase my income by using my property in ways which will make me insupportable to my neighbors. But it will not allow my neighbor, who is stronger than I, to take possession of my house without form of law. It will even allow me to dispose of my property by will, after my death.

I suggest that those, to whom this right appears to be rooted in the very nature of things, and not to be a creation of the State, called into being at the behest of the social will in a certain stage of its development, should read and re-read what Sir Henry Maine has to say about testamentary succession, in his wonderful little book on "Ancient Law." [Footnote: See chapters vi and vii.]

The State has not always treated a man as an individual, directly and personally responsible to the state. It has treated him as a member of a family or some other group; a being endowed, by virtue of his position, with certain rights, and burdened with certain duties. A being who, when he drops out of being, is automatically replaced by someone else who is clothed upon with both his rights and his responsibilities.

Our conceptions have changed. The lesser groups within the State have to some degree lost their cohesion, and the bond between the individual, as such, and the state has been correspondingly strengthened. But many traces of the old conception make themselves apparent. The law compels me to provide for my wife and children; and, if I die intestate, the law by no means assumes that my property is left without a claimant.

Have we been moving in the right direction, as judged by the standard of the Rational Social Will? We think so. But it is well to bear in mind what Herodotus said about the madness of Cambyses, and the prejudice men have in favor of their own customs. No state is a mere aggregate of unrelated individuals. Men are set in families, and the State seems to be composed of groups within groups. How far the State should recognize the will of the individual, as over against the claims of the lesser groups to which he may belong, is a nice question for the Rational Social Will to settle.

(c) The law must regulate marriage and divorce. Matters so vital to the interests of society cannot be left at the mercy of the egoistic whims of the individual. But to what law shall we have recourse? It seems highly irrational to have forty-eight independent authorities upon this subject within the limits of a single nation. And, if we turn the matter over to the churches, we discover that we have committed it to the care of one hundred and eighty, or more, sects. Add to this, that a state of any sort cannot be set upon its feet without some difficulty, while any enterprising man or woman can call a sect into existence any day. There is a new adherent for sectarian eccentricities born every minute. Surely, here is a field for the activities of the Rational Social Will.

(d) To paternalism of some sort the modern State, as law-giver, seems hopelessly pledged. If we ignore this we are simply closing our eyes. The State seems to be justified in educating its citizens, in protecting children and women against exploitation, in protecting the working classes, in stamping out infectious diseases. We are not even allowed to expectorate when and where we will, a privilege enjoyed by the merest savage.

(e) In one respect the paternalism of our own State has lagged behind that of certain others. We do little to secure to a man a decent privacy, or to safeguard his personal dignity. The newspaper reporter is allowed to rage unchecked, to unearth scandals in private families, and to cause great pain by printing the names of individuals.

I have known, in Europe, a man, after a difference of opinion touching the ventilation of a railway carriage, to break a window with his elbow and to apply to his fellow-passenger an offensive epithet. The court made him pay a dollar and a half for breaking the window and six dollars for giving himself the pleasure of being insulting.

Which was the greater offense? Herodotus would expect this question to be answered in accordance with the prejudices of the person giving the answer.

158. THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE STATE.—The State evidently has rights over its citizens, and may enforce these rights through the infliction of punishment. It as evidently has duties. A given state may not be answerable to any actual given power. Our own State is in such a position at the present time—there is no other state strong enough to call it to account.

But this does not free it from duties. No state is anything more than a brute force, except as it incorporates, in some measure, the Rational Social Will. And states that fall far short, as judged by this standard, may overstep their rights and ignore their duties, whether they are dealing with individuals or with other states.

In punishing, the State should punish rationally. [Footnote: See chapter xxxii, Sec 148.] And it should not demand of its subjects what will degrade them as moral beings. "We all recognize," said a pure and candid soul, "that a rightful sovereign may command his subjects to do what is wrong, and that it is then their duty to disobey him." [Footnote: Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, III, vi.]

But how discover what demands are just? It is the whole argument of this volume that no man should venture an opinion upon this subject without having come to some appreciation of what is meant by the Rational Social Will. Man, his instincts, the degree of his intelligence and self- control, the history of the development of human societies, cannot be ignored. It is the weakness of good men, endowed with a high degree of speculative intelligence, to construct Utopias, and to tabulate the "rights of man," or, as Bentham well expressed it, to make lists of "anarchical fallacies." [Footnote: See Works, Bowring's Edition, Volume II.] Thus, some may, with Plato and Aristotle, advocate infanticide. The Greek city-state was a crowded little affair, and in danger of over-population. Some may propose radical measures to increase the population. To France and Argentina, in our day, such an increase appears highly desirable. May any and every method be embraced which seems adapted to avert a given evil or to attain to a desired end? It is instructive to note that Francis Galton, the father of "eugenics," proposed to leave morals out of the question as "involving too many hopeless difficulties." [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Sociology."] But do men live well who leave morals out of the question?

The man who falls back upon intuition alone, in his advocacy of the abolition of capital punishment, may be expected to maintain next that a state, in going to war, should stop short at the point where the lives of its citizens are put in jeopardy. Why kill a good man, when it is wrong to kill a bad one?

It must be admitted that the State and its representatives enjoy some rights and duties not accorded to individuals. The State may condemn men to death or to imprisonment; it may take over property; it may make itself a compulsory arbiter between individuals. On the other hand, its representatives are not always as free as are private persons. The individual, if he is a generous soul, may freely forego some of his advantages and may seek only a fair fight with an opponent. It is doubtful whether the duty the State owes to its citizens permits of chivalry. Certainly strong states do not hesitate to attack weak ones; nor do many hesitate to combine against one, on the score of fair play. And a private man may temper justice with mercy in ways forbidden to a judge.



CHAPTER XXXV

INTERNATIONAL ETHICS

159. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM.—I am almost tempted to avoid the discussion of this thorny subject by simply referring the reader to what has been said already on "The Spread of the Community," and developed in the chapters on "The Rational Social Will" and "The Individual and the Social Will." [Footnote: See Sec 75 and chapters xxi-xxii.]

He who confines himself to generalities avoids many difficulties and can assure himself of the approval of many. Who, condemns justice and humanity in the abstract? Who can wax eloquent in his condemnation of freedom? Who finds the Christian Church on his side, when he advocates rapacity and the oppression of the helpless, without entering into details?

On the other hand, who wishes to view his country with a cold impartiality, and to place its interests exactly on a par with the interests of other lands? Who, save the Chinaman himself, thinks it as important that a Chinaman should have enough to eat as that an American or an Englishman should? Was not the turpitude, that excluded the Chinaman from Australia, traced to the two deadly sins of undue diligence and sobriety? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Australia."] As for freedom, men of certain nations regard it as the highest virtue to be willing to die for it—their own freedom, be it understood,—while they regard the same desire for freedom on the part of their colonists as a moral obliquity to be extirpated, root and branch.

That the historian and the sociologist should find much to say touching the relation of nations to each other and to subject peoples goes without saying. But the cynic may maintain with some plausibility that the moralist's chapter on International Ethics must be as void of content as the traditional chapter on "Snakes in Ireland." In this the cynic is wrong, as usual; but it is instructive to listen to him, if only that we may intelligently refute him.

It is not always easy for an individual to determine just what he owes to his family, to his neighbors, or to his country. Is it surprising that it should be difficult for men to determine just what one country, or what one race, owes to another? This is the subject of international ethics. He who treads upon this ground should walk gingerly, and not feel too sure of himself. But there is no reason why the moralist should not put upon paper such reflections as occur to him. He cannot say anything more devoid of reason than much that is said by others.

The great Grotius, in writing on international law, in the seventeenth century, drew his illustrations chiefly from Greeks and Romans long dead. He had much more recent material ready to hand. But he well knew that he, who would induce another to give him calm and dispassionate attention, must not begin by treading on the toes of his listener. I shall strive to profit by his example. It is best to say only what each man can apply to his neighbor. We are all sensitive in this field.

160. OUR METHOD OF APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT—We have seen (Sec 80) that rational elements are to be found even in the irrational will, if one will look below the surface.

Is it rational for the mother to place before all else the interests of the hairless, toothless and, apparently, mindless little creature that she clasps to her breast? The very existence of society depends upon her having the feeling that prompts her to do it. Is it rational to favor one's neighbor, to be proud of one's native town, which may be a poor sort of a town? Is it rational to be patriotic, even when one's state is not much of a state?

We have seen that the Rational Social Will incorporates itself in societies very gradually, and that it draws into its service lesser groups of many descriptions. He who detaches himself from these lesser groups is not a man. He is the mere outline of a man—the "featherless biped" of the philosopher. It is not of such that a state can be made.

It is the duty of the state to prevent a man from shrinking into being the mere member of some lesser group, but it is not its duty to obliterate what is human in him. And the Rational Social Will must see to it that he does not, on the other hand, forget, in a blind and irrational patriotism, that he is a human being with a capacity for human sympathies—sympathies extending far beyond the limits of any state. Except when they are under the influence of strong passion, I think we may say that men in civilized states, at least, have already shown themselves amenable to the influence of the Rational Social Will in this direction. It must be confessed that that influence has, as yet, been limited.

The approach to the subject of international ethics must lie in the recognition that men are set in families, in neighborhoods, in towns or cities, in states; and are yet human beings with a capacity for respecting and loving those who belong to none of these particular organizations. My advice to the man who wishes to abuse his fellow-man is to do it quickly, and before he is acquainted with him. If he gets to know him well, he will probably find something lovable in him, and he will lose the pleasure of being malicious.

161. SOME PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL ETHICS.—The man who reads history finds, sometimes, things to inspire him; and sometimes, things that are depressing. He sees that the family must expand into the clan, that the clan must come into contact with others, that the state must rise, and that some interrelation of states is an inevitable necessity. He sees that man's increase in insight, in diligence, in enterprise, must make him reach out and trade with his fellow-man.

He sees also conquest, with the subjugation of peoples; he sees trade extended by force, and under the smoke of cannon; he sees a peaceful economic penetration, which ends in protectorates and annexations, in defiance of the will of those who do not want to be either protected or annexed.

What is rational is real, and what is real is rational, said Hegel. [Footnote: The Philosophy of Right, Preface, and see Sec Sec 351 and 347.] He further maintained that civilized nations may treat as barbarians peoples who are behind them in the "essential elements of the state"; and also that, in a given epoch, a given nation is dominant, and "other existing nations are void of right."

Hegel has long been dead, and is turned to dust. He always was as dry as dust, even when he was alive, but he was a great man. But the famous Englishman, Sir Thomas More, wrote more engagingly; and does he not tell us, in his "Utopia," that any nation's holding unused a piece of ground needed for the nourishment of other people is a just cause of war?

Such doctrines should be most comforting to us Americans. They appear to teach us that we are, at present, the chosen people; that the rights of other peoples are as the rights of the Hivites, the Hittites, and all the rest; that we are justified in taking what we please, for who is there to withstand us?

Yet ethical Americans shake their heads over such philosophies, and some of them even speak slightingly of philosophers. This, in spite of the fact that great men seldom talk pure nonsense, except when carried away by excitement, as all men may be, at times. If what they say sounds to us wholly unmeaning, it is probable that we have not fully understood the voice that speaks within them. What can be said in their defense? and what can be said in, at least, partial defence of the actual historical procedure of the nations? They have not been wholly composed of criminals, and they must possess at least the rudiments of a moral sense.

(1) We have seen that the state maintains its right as against those who belong to it by controlling, not by destroying, the lesser groups which exist within the state. Such a control appears to be demanded by the Rational Social Will, but it often frustrates the will of the individual.

(2) We have seen that the spread of the community is inevitable, and that, in the interests of rationality, it is desirable.

(3) We have seen that, even in the family, all the members are not equally free agents. The small boy is not consulted touching the amount of his punishment, nor can he dictate where it shall be laid on. And the state does not give to all the individuals in it equal political rights, nor guarantee to them an equal share of influence. This is desirable, on the whole, in the interests of the whole, but grave abuses may easily come into being.

(4) We have seen that the greater whole guarantees to individuals rights, and assigns to them duties. In so far as it is rational, it cannot do this arbitrarily. To have recourse to metaphysical abstractions is futile. Shall we say, without hedging, that a man has a right to the fruits of his labor, or that first occupation gives a right to the soil? Then, shall the man who is too weak to work be refused a right to the ownership of a coat? Or must the discoverer of a continent prove a real occupancy, by performing the ridiculous task of the abnormal center of the mythical mathematical infinite circle, by being everywhere at the same time?

(5) We have seen that the human community, taking the words in a broad sense, will spread, and already has spread, beyond the limits of several nationalities. It is in the interest of human society that it should do so. It is rational, in the sense of the word everywhere used in this book. But the nations continue to exist, and they often cultivate selfishly national interests. So do families cultivate selfishly family interests. So does the egoist selfishly dig about and fertilize the number One.

(6) It requires little acuteness to see that some communities of men are miserable exponents of the social will. They are deplorably governed. Read Slatin's fascinating book, "Fire and Sword in the Soudan,"—it is better than any novel,—and ask yourself what becomes of the social will or of rationality of any sort under the rule of a Mahdi. Is it not the duty of the nations to combine and to relieve suffering humanity?

(7) There are theorists who maintain that, in the nature of things, the soil belongs to nobody. We find, in the actual state of things, it usually belongs to somebody, unless it is so poor that it is not worth owning at all. But it may belong to somebody who can make little more use of it than an infant can of a gold watch. A handful of Indians, wandering over a great tract of country in which they chase game in the intervals of time during which they chase and scalp one another, may have an immemorial, although unrecorded, title to the land.

Shall they be permitted to keep back settlers from more or less civilized and densely populated countries? Settlers eager to cultivate the land and to make it support many, where before it supported few, and supported those few miserably?

And shall the natural resources of great regions of the earth be permitted to lie fallow merely because the actual inhabitants are too ignorant and too indolent to want to produce anything and to trade? He who finds his happiness in idleness, bananas, and black wives who can be beaten with impunity, has little interest in international traffic, with such blessings as it is supposed to bring.

The world is filling up. The losses due to war and pestilence, said no less an authority than Darwin, are soon made up. There is something terrifying in what the very modern science of geography has to tell us about the rapidity with which the remaining part of the earth's surface, available for the nourishment of man, is being exhausted. What problems will face the Rational Social Will in the none too distant future?

162. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD.—We have seen that something can be said for the philosopher. The Rational Social Will does not appear to give carte blanche to the man who wishes to remain ignorant, idle, cut off from the family of the nations, the possessor of great tracts of land which he will not develop, the cruel oppressor of such as he finds within his power. It tends to deal with him, wherever it finds him, as an enlightened nation treats the idle, the vicious and the irresponsible within its own borders.

Undoubtedly civilization has made some advance in the course of the centuries. When the world is at peace, the stranger is not normally an outlaw. I have sojourned in the cities of many of the nations of Europe and have made excursions into Africa and Asia. Nowhere have I been compelled to ask for the protection of an American consul. It has been recognized that I had rights, although an American. And the ability to sign my name has procured me a supply of money.

Notwithstanding all this, it is depressing to read of the dealings of the nations with each other, and with backward peoples—who have been well defined as peoples who possess gold-mines, but no efficient navy. Is it not generally taken for granted that it is the duty of more powerful and more enlightened nations to take the backward nations in hand, to exploit their resources, and, incidentally, to exploit them?

Not that international law has not counted for something. To be sure Hegel reduced it to the level of "a good intention," [Footnote: The Philosophy of Right, Sec Sec 330-333.] but it has counted for something. Descartes and Spinoza could, with impunity, be heretics in little Holland. Switzerland has for centuries been the refuge of the oppressed. But we cannot forget that our highest authority, Captain Mahan, declared, in 1889, that certain rights of neutrals were "forever secured," [Footnote: The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Boston, 1908, chapter ii, p. 84.] and he has since stood revealed as a false prophet, a mere man making a guess. International law is a capital thing—when it is not put under a strain, and when no nation is too powerful.

The depressing thing is that rapacity and oppression become glorified, when the cloak of patriotism is thrown over their shoulders. I drew my illustrations in the last section from wild Indians and from African savages. But there are nations in all stages of their development. How "backward" must a nation be to give us the right to rule over it by force? No people were more ingenious than the ancient Romans in finding plausible reasons for the wars which it pleased them to wage. This has never been a lost art. Men's enemies are, like the absent, always in the wrong; and those are apt to become enemies, in whose defeat some substantial advantage is to be looked for.

163. THE SOLUTION.—The very title seems a presumption. Who may dogmatize in matters so involved? I make no pretentions to giving a clear vision of "yonder shining light," but I venture to hint at the general direction in which one is to seek the little wicket gate.

The only ethical solution of our problem appears to lie in the frank recognition of the fact that the groups of men, called nations, may be as brutal egoists as are individual persons, and in the earnest attempt to avoid the baleful influence of such egoism.

Man is his brother's keeper. But that does not give him the right to keep his brother in chains, nor to use him for selfish ends. This is as true of nations as it is of individuals, of families, of religious orders, or of unions, whether of employers or of employees.

It is certainly true of nations. It is only as having a place in, and as being an instrument of, the great organism of humanity aimed at by the Rational Social Will, that the individual, the family, the tribe, the nation, have any ethical justification for being at all. Sometimes it is very profitable for the individual, or for some group of human beings, to disallow this obligation to be moral. We treat the individual as a robber; why not admit that there are robber nations?

I feel like reiterating that it is a great thing to be young; to live in that Golden Age in which one still believes what one sees in print, and still is moved by the honeyed words of statesmen. When one is old, and has enjoyed some breadth of culture, one has read the newspapers of many lands, and has met a certain number of statesmen, usually with a start of surprise.

It is borne in upon one—a matter touched upon in the last chapter—that it appears to be generally accepted that the state and its representatives may adopt a peculiar variety of ethics. Certainly statesmen feel justified in doing for their country what they, as gentlemen, would never dream of doing for themselves. They talk of justice, when they would scoff at such justice within the borders of their own states; they talk of humanity, and they have in mind the economic advantage of their own peoples; they speak of protection and Christianization, when they mean economic exploitation or strategic superiority. As for truth, the less said about that subject the better.

I know of only one way in which the determination of a nation to aid in the general realization of the Rational Social Will can be tested. Does it, in dealing with other nations, civilized or backward, propose what is palpably to its own advantage, or is it evidently disinterested? It is thus that we judge a man, when we wish to fix his ethical status; it is thus that the Rational Social Will judges a nation. The language in which the proposals are made is a matter of no moment. It may fairly be called professional slang, and can quickly be acquired, even by men of mediocre intelligence, in any diplomatic circle.

164. THE NECESSITY FOR CAUTION.—Shall a man, then, eschew patriotism, and become a citizen of the world, as though he were a Stoic philosopher? By no means. As well eschew the family or the neighborhood. But let him not, in his patriotism, forget that he is a man. Here, as everywhere, he is called upon to exercise judgment. This is a burden which he can never throw off. He must pay the penalty of being a rational human being. As an instrument of the Rational Social Will the state must be kept up. It is his duty to see that it is done. His cat has an easier task; she may sleep her life away in peace.

We hear much of the brotherhood of man and of artificial barriers. The barriers are not all artificial, and they cannot be swept away with a gesture.

Races and peoples are formed upon the model of their own immemorial past. They have their institutions, their traditions, their loyalties, their standards of living. What is tolerable to one man is wholly intolerable to another. To compel men to live together in intimacy, when centuries of training have made them antipathetic, is sheer cruelty.

Men may be brothers, but there are big brothers and little brothers. I do not refer to physical bulk. I refer to the development of intelligence, to the degree and kind of culture, which has been attained. There are little brothers still at the stage of development at which it is natural for human beings to drool. Shall we have them sit up to the table and serve them with the complete dinner, enlivening it with intellectual conversation?

Between incontinently doing this, and relegating the little brothers to a nursery where they will be treated with cruelty and starved in our interests, some persons seem to think there is no middle course. In their enthusiasm for humanity, they forget that the brotherhood of man may be made as ridiculous as the eight-hour day. Between eight hours of the creative work of a Milton and eight hours of the dawdling done by a lazy housemaid, there is no relation save that both may be measured by a clock.

These enthusiasts forget much. Men are not alike; they do not want to be alike; they do not want to live together in close intimacy, when they have little in common; they reverence different things; as a rule, they would rather be somewhat unhappy after their own fashion, than be happy under compulsion, after the fashion of someone else.

We have, thus, on the one hand, the enthusiasts who would at once sound the trump and announce the millenium, feeding the lion and the sucking calf out of the same dish and on the same meat. We have, on the other, those who are eager to take on their shoulders the white man's burden—to enclose in a coop, as if they were chickens, the greater part of the human race, allaying the discontent of the imprisoned by pointing out to them that, although their freedom of movement is limited, they are growing fat, and that they should show their gratitude by laying eggs.

Surely, there must be some middle course. Patience and caution are virtues. Surely, it is possible to accept the existing organism of society, to love one's country, and yet to strive to respect the freedom of others. It is not easy for a true patriot to do this, but it seems to be what the Rational Social Will demands of him.

The moralist who reads history carefully is not wholly discouraged. He may look forward to some time, in the more or less distant future, when there may be a union of the nations in the interests of all men; when the gross egoism of the hypertrophied patriot may be curbed; when the mellifluous language of the statesman may mean more than did the pious letter which Nero wrote to the Roman Senate, after he had murdered his mother.



CHAPTER XXXVI

ETHICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES

165. SCIENCES THAT CONCERN THE MORALIST.—There are certain sciences that the Moralist must lay under contribution very directly, and yet he seems to be able to make little return to those who cultivate them, at least in their professional capacity.

He must ask aid from the biologist, the psychologist, the anthropologist. They help him to a comprehension of what man is; and, hence, of what it is desirable that man should strive to do. But these men seldom come to the moralist for advice. They appear to be able to work without his help.

There are, however, other sciences in which the moralist feels that he has more of a right to meddle, however independent they may regard themselves.

Take, for example, politics or economics, or the very modern and rudimentary science of eugenics. The man who cultivates political science may know much more than do most moralists about states and their forms of organization; about legislative, executive and judicial functions; about the probable effects of the centralization or decentralization of authority; about what may be expected, in a given case, from a restriction or extension of the franchise; about the creation and maintenance of a military establishment and the building up of an efficient civil service. The economist may be a monster of learning and a master in ingenuity on all problems touching the creation and distribution of wealth.

But the political scientist and the economist, however able, share our common humanity. A man's outlook is more or less apt to be bounded by the limits of the science of his predilection. The several sciences, broader or more specialized, rest, in the minds of most men, upon foundations which are taken for granted. It is too much to expect that every sermon should begin as far back as the Garden of Eden. "Practical" politics and economics do not, as a rule, go so far back.

The transition from practical politics and economics to ethical problems may be made at any time. No man was shrewder than Machiavelli, and the moral sense of mankind has rebelled against him and made him a byword. A state, desirous of maintaining itself, may palpably violate in its institutions, inherited from the past, a social will grown more rational, more conscious of its rights and more articulate. Then the appeal is made to right and justice in other than the traditional forms. It may, in a given instance, be wrong to create wealth; existing forms of its distribution may be iniquitous. The ultimate arbiter in all such matters must be the Ethical Man.

Human society is indefinitely complex. Many specialists must occupy themselves with its problems. A technical question in this field may always be carried over to moral ground. He who undertakes to make this transition without having made a fairly thorough study of ethics appears to be working in the dark. His assumptions have been questioned, or have been abandoned. Who shall furnish him with a new basis for his special science?

Ethics is a basal science. It justifies, or it refuses to justify, those specialists who concern themselves with men in societies. It is a very old science and has interested men vastly. I have spoken above of eugenics as a new science. Only in its modern form is it new. Plato cultivated it intemperately when he wrote his "Republic"—but he saw that his "Republic" would not do, and he wrote his "Laws." He stood condemned by Ethics.

Usually men who occupy themselves seriously, and in a broad way, with man in society, have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some ethical doctrine. But this is often done without due consideration, and without a sufficient knowledge of what has been said by the great thinkers of the past. It is for this reason that I have treated at such length in this volume of the schools of the moralists.

166. ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY.—It should be observed that in developing the Ethics of the Rational Social Will, or the Ethics of Reason—the doctrine advocated in this volume—I have not depended upon a particular philosophy.

I see no reason why a Realist or an Idealist, a Monist or a Dualist, one who holds to an immediate perception of an external world or one who regards our acquaintance with it as a matter of inference, should refuse to go with me so far. Nor do I see any reason why a believer in God, one who bows at the shrine of Mind-Stuff, or one who refuses to commit himself at all upon such matters, should enter a demurrer. The Parallelist and the Interactionist, however widely they differ touching the relation of mind and body, may here fall upon one another's necks and shed tears of brotherly affection.

That it is proper for the philosopher to interest himself in ethics, I have maintained. [Footnote: See chapter vi, Sec 18.] He is supposed to be a critical and reflective man, and to take broad views of human affairs. Such views are needed when one comes to the study of ethics.

I am forced to admit that some philosophers, when they have written on ethical subjects, have said certain things to which the critical moralist cannot readily assent. He who maintains that certain human intuitions— which it may even appear impossible to reconcile with each other—are inexplicably and infallibly authoritative, seems to leave us without so much as the hope of ever attaining to ultimate rationality. [Footnote: See chapter xxiii.]

And there are philosophers who would persuade us that, unless we accept all the religious or theological doctrines which have appeared to them acceptable, we rob man of every incentive for being moral at all. If God is not going to repay him with interest for the pains which he gives himself, does he not play the part of a dupe in being good? We have seen that this was palpably the position of Paley. [Footnote: Chapter xxiv, Sec 96.] If God will not reconcile, ultimately, benevolence and self- interest, proclaimed Reid, man "is reduced to this miserable dilemma, whether it is best to be a fool or a knave." [Footnote: Essays on the Active Powers of Man, Essay III, Part III, chapter viii. It would be absurd to believe that either Paley or Reid lived down to the level of his doctrine. Both were very decent men, and capable of disinterestedness.] Some of the utterances of Kant and of Green seem to point in the same direction, but both have made it abundantly plain that they, personally, and whatever their intellectual perplexities, were moved by something much higher than egoism. [Footnote: See chapters xxiv, Sec 97; xxvi, 3; and xxix.]

I mean to say very little about philosophy in this volume. I wish to keep to ethics, a science old enough and strong enough to stand upon its own feet. But it would be wrong not to underline one or two points in this connection, if only to obviate misunderstanding:

(1) There is nothing wrong in a man's wishing to earn the heaven in which he believes. It is not wrong for him to wish to be happy on earth and in the body. But if the desire for his own happiness, either here or hereafter, is the only motive that can move him, he is not a good man. Prudence may be a virtue, generally speaking; but it is no substitute for benevolence. The man who is only prudent is no fit member of any society of rational beings anywhere.

(2) Men are often better than their words would indicate. Paley talks as if he were a cad; Reid flounders; Kant, noble as are many of his utterances, sometimes gives forth an uncertain sound. Yet no one of these men was personally selfish.

And yet all of these men assumed that morality is endangered unless there is a God to repay men for being good. Why did they insist so strenuously upon this, and incorporate it into their philosophy? We must, I think, go beneath the surface to find the real reason; and when we have discovered it, we cannot regard them in an unfavorable light.

They felt, I believe, that good men ought to be made happy; that this is rational, if anything is. So far, they are quite in accord with the doctrine of the Rational Social Will. And they saw no other way of guaranteeing a complete rationality than in holding to a theistic philosophy.

(3) This means that their real motives were not selfish and personal. This is admirably brought out when we turn to Green. It is too much to expect that many of my readers have read his "Prolegomena to Ethics," which is repetitious, tedious, and rather vague, though it is inspired by a fine spirit and has the great merit of having influenced, directly or indirectly, a number of able writers to produce excellent works on ethics. [Footnote: I need only to refer to the text-books by Muirhead, Mackenzie, Dewey and Fite.]

Green dwells, with infinite repetition, upon the presence in man "of a principle not natural," which is identical in all men, and which, in some way that he does not explain, holds the world of our experiences together, being itself not in time or in space. The disciple of Paley or Reid or Kant will search his pages in vain for any indication that this "principle" performs or can perform any of the functions of the God believed in by the above-mentioned philosophers. Nevertheless, it is the source of an ardent inspiration to Green, who relieves the baldness of the appellation "principle," by calling it, sometimes, "self- consciousness," sometimes, "reason." It does not appear to promise Green anything, so his devotion to it may be regarded as disinterested. However, he owes to it inspiration.

Philosophers find their inspiration in very different directions. The philosopher, as such, sometimes rather objects to the word, "God." [Footnote: See chapter xxvi, Sec 123, note.] But he may feel much as men generally feel toward God, when he contemplates his "Conscious Principle," or his "Idea," or the "Substance" which he conceives as the identity of thought and extension, or, for that matter, "Mind-Stuff" or the "Unknowable." That other men may not see that he has anything in particular to be inspired about, or that he can hope for anything in particular for himself or for other men, does not rob him of his inspiration, and that may affect his life deeply.

It is, hence, not a matter of no importance to ethics what manner of philosophy it pleases a man to elect. One's outlook upon the great world may repress or may stimulate ethical strivings, may narrow or may broaden the ethical horizon. It is something to feel, even rather blindly, that one has a Cause. For myself, I think it is better to have a Cause that seems worth while, even when rather impartially looked at. But, of this, more in the next section.

(4) Whatever one thinks of such matters, it is well to come back to the fact that, nevertheless, ethics stands upon its own feet. Even if Paley, and Reid, and Kant, and Green, and many others, are in the wrong, the doctrine of the Rational Social Will stands sure. It is wrong to be selfish; it is wrong to be untruthful; it is wrong to be unjust. It is wrong for individuals, and it is wrong for nations. The man, or the group of men, that does wrong, is irrational. It stands condemned.

167. ETHICS AND RELIGION.—I regret having to speak, in this book, about religion at all, just as I regret having to refer to the philosophers. But it would be folly to omit all reference to religious duties. They have played quite too important a part in the life of the family, of the tribe, of the state; and that not merely here and there, but everywhere, in societies of all degrees of development, in recent centuries and in times of a hoary antiquity. Those interested in the classics have read the remarkable little book, "The Ancient City," by Fustel de Coulanges. As schoolboys we were brought up on the pious Aeneas. All Christians have some knowledge of the theocratic state of the Hebrews, and we know something of the history of Christian Europe. The anthropologist gives us masses of information touching the religious duties of all sorts and conditions of men.

There are those who rid themselves easily of the problem of religious duties. They simply deny that there are any. And there are those—the classes overlap—who easily shuffle off duties to the family and to the state. They regard it as their function to ignore and to destroy.

(1) I cannot think the matter is so simple. There always have been religious duties generally recognized, as a matter of fact. The boldest and most gifted of thinkers, who have not hesitated to call into being Utopian schemes for an ideal state, such men as Plato and More, have thought that the ideal state must have a religion. And the modern scientist has gravely raised the question whether the state can maintain itself, if all religious beliefs, with their inspirations and their restraints, die out. [Footnote: McDougall, Social Psychology, chapter xiii.]

The moralist, who accepts religious duties, has a difficult task. It is not enough for him to say that men have religious duties "in general," just as it is not enough for him to say that they have political duties "in general." On the other hand it would be the height of presumption for him to endeavor to tell every man what he should do in detail. He does not feel it his duty to tell every man whom he should marry, or for whom he should vote at each election. Still, it does seem as though the moralist ought to do more than tell a man vaguely that he has religious duties.

(2) Why not follow the analogy suggested by duties to the family, the neighborhood, the state?

States have their religions, sometimes unequivocally and unmistakably, and sometimes not so palpably. The religion of a people has, as a rule, its roots far back in the history of that people. Its religion has influenced in many subtle ways its institutions, its emotions, its habits, its whole outlook upon life.

Even where, as with us, state and church have been, in theory, wholly sundered, there has been no question, up to the present, of the disappearance of a religion. The United States has been regarded as a Christian nation, inspired by ideals and addicted to customs only explicable by a Christian past.

The fact that it is so is somewhat obscured to us. For this there are two causes. The first is, that the American, who is a freeman, possesses and exercises a fatal ingenuity in the creation of a multitude of sects out of practically nothing. Still, most of these sects have more in common than some of their adherents suppose. They spring, as a rule, from a Christian root. The second is, that our land has been the goal of the greatest migration ever recorded in human history. Most of those who have come to us have, so far, come from nations in some sense Christian, but they have brought with them very diverse traditions, and some appear to object to traditions altogether.

Nevertheless, I think we may be called a Christian nation, and if we follow the analogy above suggested—that of the relations of men to the state and to lesser organisms within the state—it would appear that it is the duty of an American to recognize himself as a Christian rather than as a Mahometan or a Pagan. If he does recognize this, he will feel himself under certain obligations which are independent of his personal tastes and proclivities.

(3) For one thing, he will recognize that a religion is not a thing to be stripped off and drawn on as one changes a suit of clothes.

A woman may regret that her infant has red hair. She will not, on that account, as a rule, exchange him surreptitiously for another. Men do not commonly repudiate their fathers because they are not rich or are growing old. A good citizen may regret that his country has seen fit to enter into a given war, but he will not, therefore, give aid or comfort to the enemy.

He who is capable of lightly repudiating his religion resembles the man who is capable of discarding his wife, when he sees the first grey hair. Those who do such things are apt to be men who fill their whole field of vision with their rights, and can find no place there for their duties. Nor should it be overlooked that the man, who is capable of lightly discarding his wife, is the man as capable of supplying her place with a worse. Even so, he who easily throws off his religion is usually the man who easily replaces it with some superstition, scientific or merely whimsical, at which other men wonder.

Men lament sometimes over the fact that the task of the foreign missionary is a hard one. Were it really an easy one, there would be no stability in human societies, for there would be no stability in human nature. The man of light credulity is the man who easily takes on new faiths; not the man to whom tradition and loyalty mean something.

(4) It seems to follow, as a corollary, that the religion in which a man has been brought up has the first claim upon him. I accept this without hesitation.

But this does not mean that the claim is in all cases final and valid.

There may be cases in which it seems to be the duty of a man to leave his wife, to disinherit a child, to transfer his allegiance from one state to another. Such cases are recognized as justifiable by men who are thoughtful and disinterested. But the same men also recognize that, were such disruptions of the bonds which unite men in communities the rule and not the exception, it would mean the destruction of the community. Similarly, it may become the duty of a man to transfer his allegiance from one church to another.

Are not religions, rationally compared, of different values? Have there not been religions indisputably on a moral level lower than that of the community which they represent? Undoubtedly.

And there have been governments so bad that the only refuge has seemed to lie in revolution. It should be remembered, however, that revolutions can be resorted to too lightly; and that evolution, where possible, is preferable to revolution, whether in things secular or in things religious. It is always easier to tear down than it is to build up. Nor does anyone, save the anarchist, tear down through wanton love of destruction. Even he is apt to feel called upon to give some sort of a vague excuse for his violence.

It will be observed that I have all along spoken, not merely of religion, but of the Church. I have done this because religion is a social phenomenon. It has its institutions, and cannot live without them.

It cannot be denied that individual philosophers have evolved religious philosophies; it cannot be denied that solitary individuals, as such, have felt religious emotions. How much of this is due to the fact that there have been religions and churches, I do not believe that they themselves have realized.

But, if religion is to be a vital force of any sort in a state, holding up ideals and stimulating the emotion that helps to realize them, it must be incorporated in an institution or in institutions. You cannot remove the rose and keep the perfume. Even the memory of it tends to vanish. A religious man without a church is like a citizen without a state. A citizen without a state is a man who makes the effort to keep step, and to walk in single file, all alone.

(5) Having said so much for Religion and for the Church, it is right that I should refer to some things that may be said on the other side.

It may be claimed that men of science have a tendency to turn away from religion and to grow indifferent to or to deny religious duties. In this there is some truth, although notable exceptions to the rule may be cited.

But I have known many men of learning in two hemispheres, in some cases rather intimately. With the utmost respect for their learning and for their mental ability, I am still bound to say that I have found them quite human. Some of them—among the greatest of them—have been so absorbed in their special fields of investigation, that they have not merely given scant attention to religion and to religious duties, but have done scant justice even to their own family life or to the state. And all have not been equally broad men, capable of seeing clearly the part which religion has played in the life of humanity.

To this I must add that the impartial objectivity with which the scholar is supposed by the layman to view things is something of a chimera. In saying this I criticize no one more severely than I criticize myself. This may be taken as my apology for the utterance. Have we not seen, not many years since, that, in the feeling aroused by an international conflict, some scores of great scholars on the one side found it possible to write and to sign a series of statements diametrically opposed to a series drawn up and signed by some scores of equally famous scholars on the other? Was either group walled in hopelessly by sheer ignorance? It is easy to take lightly matters about which one does not particularly care.

There is another objection brought against religion and the church which seems to be more significant. Is there not a danger that an interest in these may hamper freedom of thought and encourage an undue conservatism?

It should be borne in mind that religion and the church are not the only forces that make for conservatism. Family affection is conservative; the law is conservatism itself, and men feel that it should not be lightly tampered with. How impartial and how ready to introduce innovations should men be in any field? Changes of certain kinds, though they may have no little bearing upon our comfort, do not threaten the existence of either state or church. Could someone devise a scheme by which the periodical visits of the plumber could be avoided, we should all welcome it, and have no fear of the consequences.

Other innovations may bring in their train consequences more momentous. What men deeply care about, they cling to, and the question which confronts us is a very broad one. Does humanity, on the whole, gain or lose by a given degree of conservatism? An increase of knowledge is by no means the only thing that makes for civilization. Men may be highly enlightened, and yet rotten to the very core. How much of the ballast of conservatism and of loyalty to tradition is it well to throw overboard in the interest of accelerated motion? Those who, in our judgment, throw overboard much too much we have taken to deporting.

(6) Here it will very likely be objected: In all this you are advocating sheer Pragmatism! Are we to accept God and look for a life to come, extending the spread of the community after the fashion suggested in Chapter XIX, and broadening the outlook for a future and more perfect rationality, for no better reason than that it is our whim? Shall we believe and join ourselves with other believers, for no better reason than that something happens to tempt our will?

I beg the reader, if he will be just to my thought, to follow me here with close attention.

168. ETHICS AND BELIEF.—Under this heading I must call attention to several points.

(1) I deny that I advocate Pragmatism at all. The views which I advocate are so many thousand years older than Pragmatism, that it seems unjust to them, at this late date, to compel them to take on a new name, and to be carried about in swaddling clothes in the arms of the philosophers, after they have been functioning as adults in human communities from time immemorial.

(a) That abounding genius and most lovable man, William James, realizing, as many lesser men did not realize, that the truth contained in such views was in danger of being lost sight of by many, wrote, with characteristic vivacity and unerring dramatic instinct, the little volume called "Pragmatism." It is with no lack of appreciation of the services he has rendered, that I venture to call attention to the fact that he has, in certain respects, failed to do justice to those views.

(b) Pragmatism has received attention partly on account of the exaggerations of which it has been guilty. These have repelled some men of sober mind. It appears to be maintained that we can play fast and loose with the world, and make it what we will. I have criticized this elsewhere,9 and shall not do so now. I shall only say here that I do not believe that so able a man of science as William James meant all that he said to be taken quite literally. He was gifted with a sense of humor. This, some lack.

(c) Men of genius are apt to be strongly individualistic and impatient of restraints. We have seen that there is such a thing as a public conscience and a private conscience. The latter is only too often a whimsical thing. Pragmatism appears to teach that any individual, as such, has a moral right to adopt any hypothesis live enough to appeal to his individual will. One has only to call to mind the extraordinary assortment of guests collected by Signer Papini in his novel pragmatic "hotel." [Footnote: Ibid.] Can such, by any human ingenuity, be moulded into anything resembling an orderly community?

(d) In a later work, Professor James, realizing that religion and theology are not identical, and strongly desirous of promoting religion, deals severely with theology and the theologians. [Footnote: Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture xviii.]

One truth has been seen, but has not another been treated with some injustice? Is it not inevitable that reflective men, who cherish beliefs, should endeavor to give a more or less clear and reasoned account of them? What degree of success is to be looked for, and what emphasis should be laid upon such attempts, are questions which will probably divide men for a long time to come.

(2) Hence, I do not advocate Pragmatism at all, but I agree with it in so far, at least, as to recognize that belief is a phenomenon which concerns the will. That it is so is a commonplace of psychology; and it was recognized dimly long before the psychologist, as such, came into being.

That it is so is rather readily overlooked where the evidence for certain beliefs is undeniable and overpowering. I seem forced to believe that I am now writing. I do not seem forced in a similar manner to accept a particular metaphysical doctrine or a given system of theological dogma. Intelligent men appear to be able to discuss such matters with each other and to agree to disagree. If they are tolerant, they can do this good- temperedly. It is worth while to keep several points clearly in mind:

(a) Beliefs are not a matter of indifference. Some evidently lead to palpable and speedy disaster. If I elect to believe that I can fly, and leave my window-sill as lightly as does the sparrow I now see there, it is time for my friends to provide me with an attendant.

Other beliefs are not of this character. And that they will lead to ultimate disaster of any sort to myself or to others seems highly disputable.

(b) What may be called scientific evidence may be adduced for different beliefs with varying degrees of cogency. Hegel tries to distinguish between the authority of the state and that of the church by attributing to the former something like infallibility. He maintains that religion "believes," but that the state "knows." [Footnote: The Philosophy of Right, Sec 270.]

We have had abundant reason to see that the state does not know, but believes, and that it is very often mistaken in its beliefs. Nevertheless, it does its best to keep order, to be as rational as it can, and to look a little way ahead. I think it ought to be admitted that it concerns itself with matters more terre-a-terre than does the church; and that it ought not to be taken as a general truth that the state should take its orders from the church. It has to do with matters which, like our daily bread, must be assured, if certain other matters are to be considered at all. In so far Hegel was right. There are those who forget this, and talk as if metaphysical systems and religious beliefs should be forced upon men in spite of themselves, either by sheer force of windpower or with the aid of the police.

To this it may be added that beliefs range from an unshakable and unthinking conviction to that degree of acquiescence which can scarcely be distinguished from mere loyalty. It remains to be proved that the latter may not come under the head of belief, and is something to be condemned. [Footnote: More than thirty years ago, while I was the guest of Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge, England, I asked him how it was that he, the President of the British Society for Psychical Research, had never, in his presidential addresses, expressed a belief in the phenomena investigated. He answered that if the word "belief" were taken broadly enough to express a willingness to look into things, he might be said to believe. No more candid soul ever breathed.]

(c) Beliefs, being phenomena which concern the will, are at the mercy of many influences. Is there any scientific evidence open to the parallelist in psychology which is not also open to the interactionist? Is the conviction that one's country is in the right a mere matter of scientific evidence? Are the enlightened adherents of a given sect wholly ignorant of the tenets and of the arguments of another?

I maintain that tradition and loyalty have their claims. They are not the only claims that can be made, but they are worthy of serious consideration. Man is man, whether he is dealing with things secular or with things religious.

To see that such claims are recognized everywhere we have only to open our eyes. It is absurd to believe that all the adherents of a political party are influenced only by the logical arguments published in the newspapers. A newspaper that lived on logic alone would starve to death. It is ridiculous to believe that all the members of a church are induced to become such only by the arguments of the theologians, many of which arguments the mass of the members are not in a position to comprehend at all.

And learned men are men, too. The philosopher who really kept himself free from all prepossessions would, if he did much serious reading, probably epitomize in his own person a large part of the history of philosophy, falling out of one system and into another, like an acrobat. But he is usually caught young and influenced by some teacher, or he is carried away by some book or by the spirit of the times. As he is not an abnormal creature, he acts like other men, becoming an adherent of a school, or, if he is ambitious, starting one.

(d) We have seen that the individual has duties toward the state. We have also seen that the state has duties toward the individual. The state should not make it practically impossible for him to be a loyal citizen. A somewhat similar duty appears to be incumbent upon the church.

A church that forces upon all of its members, as a condition of membership, intricate and abstract systems of metaphysics; a church that does not teach good-will toward men, but makes walls of separation out of slight differences of opinion; a church that lags behind the moral sense of the community in which it finds itself; a church that starves the religious life; these, and such as these, must expect to lose adherents. It is not that men reject them; it is that they reject men.

Those who read history have no reason to think that men, except here and there and under exceptional circumstances, will cease to regard religious duties as duties. I have not ventured to offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the church. But neither have I ventured to offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the state. In the one case, as in the other, I suggest as guides tradition, intuition and reflective reasoning. I can only counsel good sense and some degree of patience. It may be said: You do not solve the difficulty for the individual. I admit it. Such difficulties every thinking man must meet and solve for himself.

169. THE LAST WORD.—Those persons, whether students, or teachers, who dislike this final chapter, may omit it, without detriment to the rest of the book. The doctrine of the Rational Social Will is not founded upon this chapter. The latter is a mere appendix.

I regret that, in a work in which I have wished to avoid disputation, I have felt compelled to touch upon religious duties at all. But they have played, and still play, so significant a role in the history of mankind, that the omission could scarcely have been made. You are free to take them or leave them; but you are not free to take or leave the Rational Social Will as the Moral Arbiter of the Destinies of Man.



NOTES

1. CHAPTERS I TO III.—The notes in a book of any sort are rarely read, except by a few specialists, and by them not seldom with a view to refuting the author. I shall make the following as brief as I may. But I do wish to give some of my readers—all will not be equally learned—an opportunity to get acquainted with a few books better than this one. This first note is not addressed to the learned, and some will find it superfluous.

I intend to mention here a handful of books which any cultivated man may read with profit, and re-read with profit, if he has already read them. They can be collected gradually at a relatively slight expense, and it is a pleasure to have them in one's library. The list may easily be bettered, and may be indefinitely lengthened. I mention only books for those who are accustomed to do their reading in English.

It is hardly necessary to say that I do not advise all this reading in connection with the first three chapters of this book. But, as those chapters are concerned with the accepted content of morals as recognized by individuals and communities, I have a good excuse for bringing the list in here. Many other good books, not in the list, are referred to later in the volume, in other chapters.

It is very convenient to have within one's reach some such book as Sidgwick's History of Ethics. The only fault to find with Sidgwick is that he has made his book too short, and has not given enough references. But he is admirably fair and sympathetic, as well as clear and interesting.

He, who would dip more deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in the Lives of the Philosophers by that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes Laertius. The translation in Bohn's edition will serve the purpose.

As for the greatest of the Greeks—a keen pleasure, intellectual and aesthetic, awaits the man who turns to Plato's Republic and his Laws. Jowett's great translation is in every public library. And we must read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and his Politics. Here little attention is given to artistic form; but the preternatural acuteness of the man is overpowering. If we would understand some of the reasons which induced Plato and Aristotle to write of the state as they did, we can turn to chapter xiv of Grote's Aristotle.

With certain later classical moralists most of us are more or less familiar. Seneca, in his work On Benefits, gives a good picture of the moral emotions and judgments of an enlightened man of his time. He was a great favorite with Christian writers later. Cicero's work, De Officiis—On Duties—it is best known under the Latin title, is very clear and very clever. It is, in its last half, full of "cases of conscience." I venture to suggest to the teacher of undergraduates who find ethics a dry subject, that he give them a handful of Cicero's "cases" to quarrel over. Doing just this has brought about something resembling civil war in certain classes of my undergraduates. It has done them good, and it has vastly entertained me. But each teacher must follow his own methods. We can none of us dictate.

How many of us have drawn inspiration from the noble reflections contained in the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius and in the Discourses of Epictetus, those great Stoics! The unadorned translations of George Long will serve to introduce us to these.

To get a good idea of how the moral world revealed itself to a Father of the Church in the fifth century, we have only to turn to that most fascinating of autobiographies, the Confessions of St. Augustine. His City of God is too long, though interesting. Augustine's thought influenced the world for centuries. Then we may take a long jump and come down to St. Thomas, the great Scholastic of the thirteenth century. To get acquainted with him, we may turn to the English versions by Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus. Those of us who are smugly satisfied at belonging to the twentieth century must remind ourselves that there were great men in the thirteenth, and that many among our contemporaries are still listening to them. We Protestant teachers of philosophy are sometimes in danger of forgetting this. A strictly fresh century and a strictly fresh egg cannot claim to be precisely on a par.