Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory

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

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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.

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