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Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory

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




Light appears to be thrown upon these problems when we reflect that
punishment is an instrument, employed by the Rational Social Will, in
pursuance of its ends.

(1) It is desirable that men should be deterred from committing crime. If
this cannot be done save by the infliction of punishment, then let men be
punished. But be it remembered that punishment is a regrettable
necessity, and that the occasions for the infliction of penalties may
greatly be diminished by the amelioration of the organism of society.
There is the born criminal, as there is the born inmate of an asylum for
the insane. But there is also the manufactured criminal; the product of
the slum, the victim of ignorance, the prey of the walking-delegate, the
sufferer from over-work and undernourishment, the inhabitant of the
filthy and overcrowded tenement, the man robbed of his self-respect, who
has no share in the sweetness and light of civilization. A society that
first manufactures criminals and then expends great sums in punishing
them is, in so far, not rational.

(2) It is desirable that the criminal should be reformed and returned to
society as a normal man. But this is not the one and only aim of the
social will. The whole flock should not be sacrificed to the one black
sheep, as some sentimental persons appear to believe. There is room here
for the exercise of judgment and of some cool calculation.

(3) As for the demand that a given pain shall be inflicted for a given
wrong done, irrespective of any gain to anybody, and irrespective of
consequences,--it appears to carry one back to ancient and primitive law.

Undoubtedly many punishments have been inflicted in the past to satisfy
the sense of resentment. [Footnote: It may be objected that we are not
concerned here with resentment but with the satisfaction of "justice."
Men's notions of the "justice" of punishments have been touched upon in
chapter ii, Sec 4. Plato suggests, in his Laws, that the slave who steals a
bunch of grapes should receive a blow for every grape in the bunch. This
has an agreeably mathematical flavor of exactitude. But what shall be
done to the man who steals half of a ham or a third of a watermelon?]
Undoubtedly the same is true of the present. Can anything be said in
favor of this impulse? It plays no small part in the life of humanity.

We feel that a bad man _ought_ to be punished. We harbor a certain
resentment against him. The resentment of the individual for personal
injuries we recognize to be wrong. It is not impartial, and it is apt to
be excessive and unreasoning. Public order demands that it be refused
expression.

But is the--we must admit, somewhat more disinterested--resentment of the
community a rational thing? Have men, collectively, no whims, no
prejudices? When a trial is deferred, and public indignation has cooled
off, how do the chances of the prisoner compare with those he enjoyed
just after the commission of the crime? And yet something may be said for
public resentment. It has a certain driving-power. It may be questioned
whether either our desire to deter men from crime, or our benevolent
interest in the criminal, would be quite sufficient to enforce law, if
all sense of resentment against the law-breaker were lacking. Its
usefulness as an instrument of the social will appears to give it a
certain justification. But it also suggests that even public resentment
should not be given free rein.

Before leaving the subject of reward and punishment, it may be well to
say a word touching our use of the terms _credit_ and _discredit_, _merit_
and _demerit_.

We do not give a man credit for an action, we do not think of him as
meritorious, merely because he has done right. Who thinks of praising the
young mother for feeding and washing her first-born? Who shakes the hand
of the Sunday-school teacher and congratulates him upon having stolen
nothing for a week? But the waif from the gutter who wanders through a
department-store and resolutely takes nothing, emerging exhausted with
the struggle, we slap upon the back and call a little man.

Our notions of credit and merit are bound up with our notions of
extraordinary rewards. The creditable action, the meritorious man, have a
certain claim upon us, if only the claim of special recognition. Any man
who makes a notable step forward deserves credit, whatever his actual
position upon the moral scale. He who only "marks time" upon a relatively
high level may be a good man, but we do not give him credit for the act
normally to be expected of him. The recognition of merit is a part of the
machinery of moralization.

149. VIRTUES AND VICES.--One swallow, said Aristotle, does not make a
spring, nor does one happy day make a happy life. Elsewhere he draws our
attention to the fact that one good action does not constitute a virtue.

We may define the virtues as those relatively permanent qualities of
character which it is desirable, from the moral point of view, that a man
should have. The vices are the corresponding defects. I shall not attempt
to draw up a list of the virtues. For a variety of lists, exhibiting
curious and interesting diversities, I refer the reader back to Chapter
III, Sec Sec 9-11.

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.