A Handbook of Ethical Theory Part 23

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

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 inst.i.tutions 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 ma.s.s 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 x.x.xvi.] 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 x.x.xix.] 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, a.s.suming 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 cla.s.s, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 x.x.xIV

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 const.i.tution 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 citizens.h.i.+p. Their "citizens.h.i.+p" was enjoyed by a strictly limited cla.s.s.] 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 lat.i.tude 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 surpa.s.s those of all others." [Footnote: _The History of Herodotus_, Book III, chapter x.x.xviii, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 lx.x.xi.]

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 ill.u.s.tration, 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.