Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory

G >> George Stuart Fullerton >> A Handbook of Ethical Theory

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CHAPTER XX

THE IMPERFECT SOCIAL WILL

76. THE APPARENT AND THE REAL SOCIAL WILL.--It is important to
distinguish between the apparent and the real social will. We may begin
by pointing out that the question "apparent to whom?" is a pertinent one.

The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety
of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or
profession, the political party, the social class--all these have their
habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count
among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a
sense of moral obligation. Naturally, individuals with different
affiliations will be sensible of the pressure in different ways, and may
differ widely in their conceptions of the obligations actually laid upon
the individual by the will of the greater organism of which he is a part.

But even he who rises above minor distinctions and takes a broad view of
society is forced to recognize that the distinction between the apparent
and the real social will may be a most significant one.

We have found the expression of the social will in custom, law and public
opinion. This is just; but the statement must be accepted with
reservations.

There are instances in which neither the organization of the state, nor
the laws according to which it is governed, can be considered as in any
sense an expression of the social will. An autocracy, established by
force, and ruling without the free consent of the governed, is an
external and overruling power. It may be obeyed, but it is not consented
to. Nor is any body of law or system of government imposed upon a subject
people by an alien and dominant race a fair exponent of the social will
of the people thus governed. Custom and public opinion are at variance
with law. However just and enlightened the government, as judged from the
standpoint of some other race or nation, its control must be felt as
oppressive by those upon whom it is imposed. Traditions felt to be the
most sacred may be violated; moral laws, as understood by those thus
under dictation, may be transgressed by obedience to the law of the land.

Where custom, law and public opinion are more nearly the spontaneous
outcome of the life of a community, they may with more justice be taken
as expressions of the social will of that community as it is at the time.
Yet, even here, we must make reservations.

The organization of a state represents rather the crystallized will of
the past than the free choice of the present. To be sure, it is accepted
in the present; but this is little more than the acquiescence of inertia.
And public opinion may be at variance both with custom and with law long
before it succeeds in modifying either. What is the actual social will of
a community during the interval?

The past may be felt as exercising a certain tyranny over the present.
That the present cannot be cut wholly loose from it is manifest, but how
far should its dependence be accepted? In the past there have been
historical causes for the rise of dictatorships, of oligarchies, of
dominant social classes. The men of a later time inherit such social
institutions, may accept them as desirable, or may feel them as
instruments of tyranny. Shall we say that they represent the actual
social will of the community until such time as they are done away with
by a successful revolution? Or shall we say that they are in harmony with
the apparent social will only, and really stand condemned?

77. THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY.--Our own democratic institutions rest upon
the theory that the social will is to be determined by the majority vote.
To be sure, we seem to find it necessary to limit the application of this
doctrine, and to seek stability of government by fixing, in certain cases
rather arbitrarily, the size of the majority that shall count. [Footnote:
See the Constitution of the United States, Article V.] But the doctrine,
taken generally, does seem in harmony with the test of rationality
developed above. [Footnote: Chapter xvi.] It aims at the satisfaction of
many desires--at what may be termed satisfaction _on the whole_.

Nevertheless, it is possible to question whether the vote of the majority
represents, in a given instance, the actual will of the community.

No one knows better than the practical politician how the votes of the
majority are obtained. No one knows better than he that, in the most
democratic of communities, it is the wills of the few that count. The
organization of a party, clever leadership, the command of the press, the
catching phrases of the popular orator, the street procession, the brass
band, the possession of the ability to cajole and to threaten--these play
no mean role in the outcome, which may be the adoption of a state policy
of which a large proportion of the majority voting may be quite unable to
comprehend the significance. Shall we say, in such a case, that the will
of the majority was for the ultimate end? Or shall we say that the vote
was in pursuance of a multitude of minor ends, many of which had but an
accidental connection with the ultimate end?

78. IGNORANCE AND ERROR AND THE SOCIAL WILL.--The apparent will of the
community appears to be, in large measure, an accidental thing. That is
to say, men will what they would not will were they not hampered by
ignorance and error, and were they not incapable of taking long views of
their own interests.

The decisions of the social will may be the outcome of ignorance and
superstition.

Where it is thought necessary to punish the accidental homicide in order
to appease the ghost of the dead man, which might otherwise become a
cause of harm, the course of justice, if one may call it such, deviates
from what the enlightened man must regard as normal. The belief that sin
is an infection, communicable by heredity or even by contact, must lead
to similar aberrations of primitive justice. Animals, and even material
things, have, and not by peoples the most primitive, been treated as
rational, responsible and amenable to law. This seems to do the brutes
more than justice. On the other hand, the philosophical tenet of the
Cartesians, which denied a mind to the brutes, resulted in no little
cruelty. The treatment of drunkards, and of the mentally defective, has,
at times, been based upon the notion that they are possessed by god or
demon, and, hence, have a right to peculiar consideration, or may be
treated with extreme rigor.

It is worth while to follow up the above reference to the Cartesians by a
reference to St. Augustine. Trains of reasoning based upon theological or
philosophical tenets have more than once given rise to aberrations of the
moral judgment.

The intellectual subtlety of Augustine betrays him into magnifying to
enormous proportions the guilt of the boyish prank of stealing green
pears from the garden of a neighbor, inspired by the agreeable thought of
the irritation which would be caused by the theft. The pears were not
edible, and were thrown to the pigs, which circumstance seduces this
father of the Church into the reflection that the sin must have been
committed for no other end than for the sake of sinning. A greater crime
than this he cannot conceive.

Many years after the event, in writing his Confessions, he expresses in
unmeasured terms his horror of the deed, filling seven chapters
[Footnote: _Confessions_, chapters iv-x.] with his reflections and
lamentations: "Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, upon which thou
hadst mercy when in the depths of this bottomless pit." "O corruption! O
monster of life and depth of death! Is it possible that I liked to do
what I might not, simply and for no other reason than because I might
not?"

Saint as he was, Augustine would have made a sorry schoolmaster. It is
evident that the enlightened mind cannot regard schoolboys as unique
monsters of iniquity for making a raid on an orchard.

The community whose decisions are made under the influence of erroneous
preconceptions undoubtedly wills, but its will is determined by the
accident of ignorance. It is to be likened to the man who, in unfamiliar
surroundings, takes the wrong road in his desire to get home. He chooses,
but he does not choose what he would if he knew what he was about.

79. HEEDLESSNESS AND THE SOCIAL WILL.--Numberless illustrations might be
given of the fact that, not merely ignorance and error, but also a short-
sighted heedlessness plays no small part in introducing elements of the
accidental and irrational into the social will. The man who spends freely
with no thought for the morrow is not more irrational than the state that
permits a squandering of its resources, and wakes up too late only to
discover that it has lost what cannot easily be replaced.

The life of the community is a long one, and calls for long views of the
interests of the community. These are too often lacking. Heedlessness and
indifference are a fertile source of abuses. In which case, the will of
the community resembles that of the impulsive and erratic man, who has
too little foresight and self-control to consult consistently his own
interests. We may say that he desires his own good on the whole, but we
cannot say that he desires it at all times. Future goods disappear from
his view. His choices clash. His actual will at any given moment appears
to be the creature of accident. So it may be with the community.

80. RATIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE IRRATIONAL WILL.--The actual social will, as
revealed in custom, law and public opinion, often appears, thus, highly
irrational, and we may be justified in distinguishing between it and the
real will which we conceive of as struggling to get itself expressed.
Nevertheless, in justice to custom, law and public opinion, we must look
below the surface of things. Even where the decisions of the community
seem most irrational, and where there appears to be little consciousness
of the ends pursued by the real will, the discriminating observer may see
that pure irrationality does not prevail. The individual may show by his
actions that he has comprehensive ends, and may yet not be distinctly
aware of them. So may a community of men.

"The true meaning of ethical obligations," says Hobhouse, [Footnote:
_Morals in Evolution_, New York, 1906, p. 30.] "--their bearing on
human purposes, their function in social life--only emerges by slow
degrees. The onlooker, investigating a primitive custom, can see that
moral elements have helped to build it up, so that it embodies something
of moral truth. Yet these elements of moral truth were perhaps never
present to the minds of those who built it. Instead thereof we are likely
to find some obscure reference to magic or to the world of spirits. The
custom which we can see, perhaps, to be excellently devised in the
interests of social order or for the promotion of mutual aid is by those
who practice it based on some taboo, or preserved from violation from
fear of the resentment of somebody's ghost." It is not wholly irrational
that, in the laws of various peoples, an allowance should be made for the
sudden resentment which flames up when wrong has been suffered, and that
an offence grown cold should be treated more leniently than one which is
fresh and the smart caused by which has not had time to suffer
diminution. Society has to do with men as they are. It is its task to
bend the will of the individual into conformity with the social will.
That resentment for wrongs suffered is an important element in the
establishment of order in the community can scarcely be denied, nor is it
wholly unreasonable, men being what they are, for the community to make
some concessions to the natural feeling of the individual. Moreover, the
offender caught in the act is indubitably the real offender; and settled
animosities are more injurious to the social order than are fugitive
gusts of passion.

And if it is true that the arbitrary laws of hospitality, as recognized
by some primitive and half-civilized communities, are reinforced by the
superstitious fear of the stranger's curse, it is none the less true that
they serve certain social needs. The fact that hospitality tends to
decline when it becomes superfluous is sufficient to indicate its social
significance.

Again, collective responsibility--the making of a man responsible for the
delinquencies of those connected with him, even when he could in no way
have prevented the evils in question--appears to modern civilized man, in
most instances, [Footnote: Only under normal conditions. We have recently
had abundant opportunity to see that in time of war civilized nations
have no scruples in making the innocent suffer with the guilty, or even
for the guilty.] an irrational thing. Yet men are actually knit into
groups with common interests and accustomed to cooperation. To treat them
as wholly independent units, responsible only to some higher organization
such as the state, is to overlook actual relationships which have no
small influence in determining the course of their lives. Within each
lesser group the members can and do encourage or repress given types of
action beneficial or the reverse. Is it irrational for the larger group
to set such influences to work by holding the lesser group responsible in
its collective capacity? In China the principle has worked with some
measure of success as an instrument of order for many centuries. In an
enlightened society some better method of attaining order may obtain, but
it would be a mistake to assume that there is nothing behind the
principle of collective responsibility save the unintelligent attempt to
satisfy resentment by striking indirectly at the offender through those
connected with him, or the mental confusion that identifies the culprit,
through mere association of ideas, with other members of the group to
which he belongs.

81. THE SOCIAL WILL AND THE SELFISHNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.--There is,
then, often some reason to be discovered even in what appears at first
sight to be wholly irrational. But no small part of the irrationality of
the actual social will must be set down, in the last instance, to that
peculiar form of irrationality in the individual or in groups of
individuals which we call selfishness.

That some degree of inequality should be necessary in communities of men,
in view of the differentiation of function implied in cooperative effort,
may be admitted. How far the inherited organization or the existing
environment of a given community may make it necessary, in the interests
of all, to grant a large measure of power or prerogative to a single
individual, or to the few, is fair matter for investigation. But the most
cursory glance at the pages of history, the most superficial survey of
the present condition of mankind, must make it evident that a far-seeing
and enlightened social will has not been the determining factor in
bringing into existence many of the institutions which are accepted by
the actual social will of a given epoch.

Neither Alexander the Great nor Napoleon can be regarded as true
exponents of the social will. The rule of the oligarchy is based upon
selfish considerations. The institution of slavery overrides the will of
the bondsman in the interests of his possessor. The perennial struggle
between the "haves" and the "have nots"--the rich and the poor--is,
unfortunately, carried on by those engaged in it with a view to their own
interests and not with a view to the good of society as a whole.

That those to whom especial opportunities are, by the accident of their
position, open, or by whom special rights are inherited, should accept
the situation as right and proper is not to be wondered at. All rights
and duties have their roots in the past, and conceptions of what is
feasible and desirable are always influenced by tradition. While from the
standpoint of the real social will anomalous and accidental it is
nevertheless psychologically explicable and natural that the mediaeval
knight should be bound by the rules of chivalry only in his dealings with
those of his own rank; that the murder of a priest should be regarded as
a crime of a special class; that benefit of clergy should be extended to
a limited number of those guilty of the same offence; that the lists of
the deadly sins should, in an age dominated by the monastic idea, smack
so strongly of the cloister.

Natural it is, and, perhaps, inevitable, that such expressions of the
social will should make their appearance. They have their place in the
historic evolution of society. But they betray the fact that man is
imperfectly rational. They cannot be regarded as expressions of the
permanent rational will which belongs to man as man.

CHAPTER XXI

THE RATIONAL SOCIAL WILL

82. REASONABLE ENDS.--We have seen in the chapter on "Rationality and
Will," that we cannot consider a man rational unless his choices are
harmonized and converge upon some comprehensive end. It has been hinted,
furthermore, that not all comprehensive ends can be described as
reasonable or rational.

A child may be consistently disobedient to its parents, and, given
parents of a certain kind, it may find its life highly satisfactory. A
man may consistently be a bad neighbor, and may harbor the conviction
that, on the whole, he gains by it. A miser may be consistent; he may
come to joy in denying himself luxuries and even comforts, repaid in the
consciousness of an increasing store. The philosophical egoist may reason
with admirable consistency, and may habitually act in accordance with his
convictions, leading, for him, a very endurable life.

All these may be intelligent, even acutely intelligent, and may reason
clearly and well. Nevertheless, men generally refuse to consider their
behavior reasonable. There are ends which we regard as rational, and
others which we condemn as irrational.

It is not enough, hence, that a man's volitions should be intelligently
harmonized and unified. His will must be adjusted to ends which
themselves can be judged rational.

And in deciding whether the ends he chooses are rational or not, we
proceed just as we do in judging the rationality of his individual
choices. If the latter are made in the light of information, if their
significance is realized, if they converge upon some comprehensive end
and do not merely clash and defeat one another, we have seen that they
are made under the guidance of reason or intelligence. The individual
volitions are congruous with the permanent set of the man's will. They
are judged by their background, by their harmony with the "pattern" which
is revealed in the man's volitional life.

Even so, each such volitional pattern, the harmonized and unified will of
the individual as directed upon some comprehensive end, is judged to be
rational or not according as it does or does not accord with the ends
pursued by the social will. Individuals, whose wills are thoroughly
unified and harmonized by the dominant influence of given chosen ends,
may be thoroughly out of harmony with the chosen ends of the larger
organism of which they are a part. They may be out of harmony with each
other. Considered alone, each may display an internal order and unity.
Taken together they may be seen to be in open strife.

We have found the social will to be something relatively permanent and
moving with more or less consistency toward certain comprehensive ends.
That the ends chosen by given individuals may be very much out of harmony
with these is palpable. The deliberate idler, the whole-hearted epicure,
the habitually untruthful man, the miser, the cold egoist--these and such
as these are condemned in enlightened communities. Their lives do not
help to further, but serve to frustrate, the ends approved by the social
will. In so far they may be regarded as consistently irrational.

83. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.--Consistently irrational! it may be exclaimed;
how can that be? is not a far-sighted consistency the very mark of
rational choice?

The difficulty is only an apparent one. Many forms of consistency may
indicate a certain degree of rationality, and yet too slight a degree to
win approval. There is such a thing as a narrow consistency. He who
devotes his life to the purpose of revenge, may live consistently, but he
loses much. A bitter and angry life is not a desirable thing, even from
the standpoint of the individual.

But why should we limit ourselves to the standpoint of the individual, in
judging of the rationality of ends? There are those to whom it appears
self-evident that this should be done; those to whom it does not seem
reasonable for a man to do anything by which he, on the whole, loses;
those who deny the reasonableness of self-sacrifice in any form. This
doctrine will be examined later. [Footnote: See Sec 102 and 128.]

Here it is enough to point out that men do not actually limit the notion
of rationality in this way. In every, even moderately, rational life some
desires must be suppressed. All desires cannot be satisfied. Why should
it not be regarded as rational and reasonable that, to attain the
comprehensive ends of the social will, certain ends consistently chosen
by certain kinds of individuals should deliberately be denied?

As a matter of fact, men generally do so regard it. They employ the terms
rational and irrational, reasonable and unreasonable, to indicate the
harmony or lack of harmony between the individual and the social will. We
call the man unreasonable who insists upon having his own way regardless
of his fellows; and this, even in instances in which his fellows cannot
punish him for his selfish attitude.

It is not a matter of accident that this should be so. The analogy
between the relation of separate volitions to the dominant ends which
control action on the part of the individual, and the relation of the
ultimate choices of individuals to the ends pursued by the social will,
is a close one. In the well-ordered mind the clash of conflicting desires
is reduced to a minimum. In a well-ordered community the conflict of
individual wills is also reduced to a minimum. In each case, we are
concerned with the work of reason, and judgments as to rationality and
irrationality are equally in place.

84. REASONABLE SOCIAL ENDS.--The will of the individual, when affirmed to
be rational or irrational, is, therefore, referred to the background of
the social will. But the social will is more or less different in
different communities, and in the one community at different stages of
its development. Is there any measure of the degree of rationality of the
social will itself? is there any standard to which its different
expressions may be referred?

We may criticise a community as we criticise an individual man even when
he is taken as abstracted from his social setting. The man's choices may
be blind, conflicting, wayward, and ill-adapted to serve his interests
taken as a whole. In the last chapter we saw that a community may
resemble such a man. It may be ignorant, superstitious, short-sighted,
and in conflict with itself. The social will as actually revealed may be
an imperfect and inconsistent thing. Here enlightenment and inner
harmonization are called for, to set the social will free.

But even where the will of a community is something more definite and
consistent than this, it may be condemned by the moral judgment of the
enlightened. An appeal may be made from the will of the community in the
narrower sense to that of the larger community. The limits of nation,
race and religion may be transcended, and we may appeal to humanity as
such, refusing to recognize the will of any lesser unit as really
ultimate. He who occupies the one standpoint is apt to speak of defending
his legitimate rights, or of extending to subject races the blessings of
civilization. He who takes his stand upon the other may talk of lust of
dominion, or desire for economic advantage. The one may use the term
righteous indignation; the other, the word anger. The moral judgment
passed upon an act depends upon the concept under which men manage to
bring it. What is approved by the tribal ethics may be abhorrent to the
ethics of humanity.

But the larger social will, so far as it has gotten itself expressed at
all, seems to remain something vague and indefinite. It is appealed to as
rational; but how indicate clearly the end which it sets before itself
and the obligations which it lays upon mankind?

The difficulty of describing in detail the ultimate ends of the real
social will has led some writers to speak in terms of exaggerated
vagueness. The mere idea in a man "of something, he knows not what, which
he may and should become" can give little guidance to action; nor can one
aim with much confidence at a goal of which "we can only speak or think
in negatives." [Footnote: _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sec Sec 192, 172,
180. But GREEN is not always so indefinite. He is on the right track. He
reverences the social will and the historical development of the social
order.]

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