Chapter XI
Conduct and Progress
The Forerunner: Vol. V, No. 11 (p. 300-305)
November 1914
Without accurate and reliable knowledge of physics, both empirical and theoretic, we could make small progress in the mechanical arts which develop our social body.
Without a similarly accurate and reliable knowledge of ethics, we can make small progress in those psychic arts which develop our social soul.
At present the body is faring better than the soul. We elaborate a magnificent mechanism of external life, only to see it collapse and decay because the spirit which should go with it is not there.
Landlords complain that their ignorant tenants use their bathtubs for coal-bins; travelers tell us of a savage chieftain insisting on riding on the box of the statecoach and making the driver sit inside. The conduct of our so-called "civilized" nations is of a similar absurdity.
To use a college as a medium for playing football is quite as absurd as putting coal in a bathtub. To use a church as a means of social advancement, to use clothing as a glaring means of sex-attraction, to use the law as a prepared shelter for dishonesty, to use the government as a feeding trough,—things like this show as little knowledge of the true purpose and dignity of civilized life as does the bare-legged black king riding on the coachman's box.
The people who do these things are not, as a rule, evilly disposed. They are simply ignorant, grossly, shamefully, pathetically, ignorant. They have never been taught the science of ethics.
We stand in the great game of life like chessmen who have to do their own playing, but we have no better knowledge of the game than would be shown by those same chessmen fighting duels and pushing one another off the squares, or playing squat-tag and puss-in-the-corner instead of chess.
Until a definite knowledge of the nature and processes of human life is taught to our children from infancy, accompanied by the clear laws of conduct based on those rules of conduct; until such teaching goes on in higher and fuller application in our schools, colleges and churches, we can manifest no better behavior than we do.
We do not know how to behave as social beings should, because we do not know why. Our old "whys" depended either on mere authority-which we no longer accept; on tradition and habitwhich we are outgrowing; and on immediate reactions of our neighbors-which have changed with time.
This is no casual and temporary accident. It is a consequence of social growth which always occurs.
Many reasons have been advanced to account for the decay of morals and manners in advanced civilizations that nation-wide corruption which is seen throughout all history, accompanying the highest progress, and preceding ruin.
Here is a better reason than any of them:
Unconscious conduct, based on inherited instincts and on mere reactions, is, in a state of external progress, necessarily behind the times. As instance: "Mother instinct" has never kept pace with education.
This inadequacy of instinctive or reactive conduct is more marked in proportion to the speed of our progress. As instance: Note the break-down in behavior of the children of peasant peoples hurled into American civilization.
The only way to keep our behavior abreast of civilization is to have the conscious conduct advance as swiftly as do the external conditions.
This conscious conduct is the one great source of human superiority. The "soul" we boast of is just that; the larger consciousness which can see all around instincts, habits and reactions, and decide what to do on quite other grounds.
On what grounds?
That question underlies this whole science of ethics. Why should we do thus and thus?
And here is where civilization, so far, has fallen down.
It is easy to teach a system of ethics based on self-interest, based on authority, based on reward and punishment. Little children, yes, animals, may be taught to govern their conduct thus.
It is not too hard to enlarge this range of ideas to the scope of a family. Quite primitive races show large capacity for conscious conduct on a high plane, in the interests of a family or tribe.
But the healthy growth of a large and progressive civilization calls for a new code of conduct, a code based on the common interests of immense numbers, extending over great distances, covering long periods of time.
This new code is demanded by changing conditions more rapidly than it is apprehended and practiced by the people. There you have the explanation of the "fall of nations."
The outside grows faster than the inside. It is as if we built an ocean liner and manned it from a Chinese junk or the paddlers of some carven war canoe. Our streets, our harbors, our buildings,—our great Public Body-that is highly socialized; but our Public Spirit,-where is that?
As fast as a society develops two processes should go on, urged by all our conscious powers.
One is the extension of the advantageous development to all the citizens. No civilization can be healthy and strong that is not homogeneous. For some of its people to use steel, some bronze, and some unchipped flints, will not do.
This simple principle has never been realized by any nation in the past. They have always imagined that they could live in strata, in loose sections tied or nailed together; in slippery pyramids where a domineering few held together on top of a more or less quiescent mass below—a mass always liable to sudden disruption or eruption; and, nowadays, in a state of continuous squirming protest and muffled rebellion.
Such a combination does not make a healthy state.
The people must rise together, those external advantages which accompany our normal social development being rapidly distributed to all citizens.
We in America have seen this to some degree in the matter of general and compulsory education. A democracy, we say, must be educated. A democracy must be served much more fully than that, to be a safe and lasting one.
The second great process, absolutely essential to healthy social growth, is the continuous development of the social consciousness and the socializing of our governing ideas. As in the narrow limits of individual ethics we see every act simply and clearly related to self-interest; as in the somewhat larger scope of domestic ethics we see every act simply and clearly related to family interest; so, in a growing state, we should see every act simply and clearly related to the social interest.
Here we fall down.
We do not know what the social interest is.
All the real growth we have made in social ethics is blindly, along lines of special professions; nobly, but with sad limitations, in the establishment and pursuance of certain principles; and such. high standards as here and there appear in statesmanship and patriotism. Against these stands forth that hideous bloated individualism transferred to a nation; that maintenance of the lowest and worst instincts, savage and even sub-human, which turns a nation into a raging beast and allows us to do, collectively, what any individual would be hanged for be hanged for doing.
What can we do, now, to lift our social consciousness up even with our external progress, and make, at last, a sound homogeneous society, which shall both endure and grow?
We need a College or Commission of Social Ethics, selected from the best and wisest, and open to continuous replenishment from the better and wiser as fast as they appear. Such a Commission should base its labors on Biology and Sociology, using History mainly as a painful illustration of our pathetic mis-steps. It should prepare, for the use of schools and churches, certain plain and unquestioned records of fact, leaving open for further knowledge all points not clearly established, the general purpose being to show:
- What is social life?
- What is social progress?
- On what conditions does social progress rest?
- By what conduct is social progress most advanced, and most impeded?
- By what definite personal action may we soonest produce the desired conduct?
Such matters as these might be even now set forth so as to command agreement from large bodies of people. It is neither possible nor desirable that any one school of ethicists should formulate and force upon the world a given set of views. The desirable thing is, first to recognize the need of a scientific ethics based on the facts of social progress; and second to show, be it ever so imperfectly, how our personal conscious conduct is related to that progress.
A man may care very little for his individual life, may be willing to drown by himself, and yet not be willing to scuttle the ship and drown all his comrades. Moreover his comrades would not be willing. So long as we believed "the soul that sinneth, it shall die"-why let the man sin and die if he wants to-it is none of our business. But as soon as we see that nobody can keep his sins to himself; that in a social group all conduct is of importance to all the members; we have a new interest in one another's behavior.
Our condemnation now falls only on childish obvious primitive sins. The force of public opinion—the most tremendous of uplifters, arresters, or depressors is wasted on small irrelevant things.
We need to enlighten that public opinion, and quickly, that it may swing in line with real social forces, and help us live and grow.
Suppose now we prepare ethical charts for use in primary schools, and, more elaborated, all the way up, with appropriate text.
One process is illustrated,—say the feeding of humanity. The savage is shown, lean and famished, stuffing himself when possible; eating lizards, grasshoppers, acorns. The savage woman is shown gathering roots, fruit, seeds, beginning to plant them. Agriculture follows, with pictures of methods, of advance in tools, of irrigation, and our new steps in selection and deliberate improvement.
It is shown what a gain to humanity this is; how before agriculture we never had a sure food supply, or time and strength to do anything but hunt, eat, sleep, and hunt; how the settled home comes with agriculture-depends upon it; how the health and character of a people is affected by its food; how, in individuals or classes, too much food has this result, too little food has that; how the brain and all its activities, even the emotions, depend largely on what, when and how one eats.
Ethics as related to agriculture, is then established. In any given place or time, with historic illustration, the child is shown what conduct did most to advance agriculture, and what did most to hinder or pervert it.
He is shown, with note for future reference in other lines, what great worldlifting service was done by the inventors of new machinery, the discoverers and improvers of new foods; given a set of Heroes to admire who really did something. He is shown, as against these, the common indifference and inertia which everywhere checked advancement, and, in vivid pictures, the peasant plowing with a stick in one country, while the steam plough works in another.
He is shown pictures of the results of famine, of the starving poor, and, in direct contrast, pictures of the silly elaboration and waste of gorgeous banquets, from Lucullus to the monkey-dinners of today.
He is taught the relation of water to the food supply, the relation of trees to water, the relation of lumber-men to trees, the relation of the state to the lumbermen—and then his own relation to the state.
He is shown the reason and relation of right and wrong in regard to this one function-the feeding of the world. Ships come into it; railroads come into it; brokers and speculators come into it.
Exhibit on the screen to a class of scholars photographs of, first, poor children poking in refuse cans; poor women chaffering with poor pedlars; poor families eating their meager meals—or those poorer ones who have no meals, but eat from hand to mouth; then, at the same date, photographs of San Francisco Bay or of New York Harbor dotted with melons, of carloads of peaches rotting on sidings and dumped, of orchards where pigs eat the apples or they rot and waste on the ground. Then photographs, where obtainable, of the Commission men, brokers, or whomsoever was responsible for some given instance of such waste.
Show them vivid pictures of the clean sanitary places where good food is prepared for the market; good bread is made; and then of the foul sheds where some of such work is done, the dark basement bakeries, foul and verminous.
Show them methods of adulteration, with the faces and names of the adulterators. Tell them of the embalmed beef sent to our soldiers-and give the senders' photographs. Let them have a new idea of what treason is-someone besides Benedict Arnold to execrate.
Then, if they become too easily personal, the teacher asks:-"Whose fault is it?" "Why his-that villian!" "What do you wish to do about it?"
They cry for punishment.
"How would that improve our foodsomeone else might do it."
"Make a law against it!"
"Who makes our laws?"
They mention Senators, the Representatives, the Government.
"And who makes them do it?"
Any child could see that where there is no king, the people must demand the laws they want—and the people must see that they are enforced.
Begin again with your illustration. Take a given instance of some long series of small misdeeds; a careless workman here, an extortionate storekeeper there, a speculator changing prices somewhere else—resulting in the end in bad food given to children; and picture their pinched faces, their wasted little bodies.
Ask whose fault it is—show them that it is not one person who is the efficient culprit, but many; and that ultimate responsibility lies not even on them, but on us all.
Nation after nation could be used in illustration of this one theme—the Ethics of Agriculture. Those dead lands, deforested and desoiled because of our sins against the bounteous earth; that terrible Chinese river with its man-made floods; those arid deserts, once gardens from wide irrigation; and, on the other hand, the reclamation work so nobly done in many countries.
There is room for vivid pictures, for interesting stories, for natural science and personal instances, for sympathy, admiration, enthusiasm, and condemnation. And at every step, ethics.
It is right for a given people at a given time to do thus and thus—clearly proven.
It is wrong for any people at any time to do so and so— clearly proven; with redoubled weight under special conditions.
And always show that this right and wrong conduct is traceable not merely to the immediate committers of given acts, but to the whole people.
Our ethical teachers should use all the armory of well chosen words and pictures to establish in the child's mind the connection in human conduct, the compound responsibility.
It should be as easy to show as in the old rigmarole of how "the cat began to kill the rat; the rat began to gnaw the rope; the rope began to hang the butcher; the butcher began to kill the ox"—and so on.
We should have surrounding our children in school, in mural paintings or hangings that could be changed from room to room, representation of the rise of mankind, and of those great special inventions and discoveries, which have lifted us by jerks as it were.
The use of fire—with a whole spreading tree of its advantageous results, heavily scored in black with its dangers and evils, would make a great chart in itself. A list, taken from the fire-insurance companies, of the causes of fire; pictures of forest fires with clear strong representations of the harm they do, followed by pictures of the careless campers who left their coals burning, or the more frequent smoker dropping his match or smouldering stub among dead leaves.
The relativity of human conduct-that is what every child should learn through eyes as well as ears. How small a personal offense may result in how large a mischief; how impossible it is to "fix the blame;" how essential, always, the combined moral sense of the whole community.
Out of the belittling atmosphere of personal praise and blame, reward and punishment, authority and irresponsibilitv, he should come into an enlightening atmosphere of cause and effect.
There is no reason whatever why we should not at once formulate a simple and clear method of teaching the ethics we do know, while our best minds are working on a farther development of the great science.
The teacher should be well equipped with the underlying principles, ready to show in answer to the everlasting "why" that goodness means advantage in the end, though the greatest goodness may cost both effort and pain for the time being.
Even with the smallest, the baby questioners, who are not put off in their gropings after justice by mere authority, it should be the joy and pride of the true teacher to provide such simple little sequences that even the baby can see "why."
In the young child's growth there are several distinct processes useful in ethics. One is this trained perception of Right and Wrong as associated with facts he can understand. Another is the power of self-control, both active and passive, developed as an exercise, in games, without moral pressure. moral pressure. Then comes the combination of the two—when the young soul is able to restrain an impulse it recognizes as wrong; or to compel an action it recognizes as right—and is met with joyful appreciation.
But the appreciation should be bestowed precisely as in the acquirement of some new physical dexterity, or some mental exercise. "I told the truth that time," is to be praised like—“I did remember." Ethical values should attach to all human conduct.
Punishment or reward has no place in such training,—not the old arbitrary methods that seek to modify conduct along the primitive lines of fear and desire; but the inexorable influence of results should be applied from the beginning, carefully chosen results, modified to the perceptions of infancy, but always clear reliable consequences of the act.
Sometimes the results are rewards in themselves, but to that we should add from the first the discriminating pressure of approval. On the other hand failure. in ethics should not be met with condemnation, any more than failure in arithmetic. If the child does not do well in ethics the fault lies in the method of teaching.
With a careful grounding such as this the older children would take their advanced courses easily. The habit from infancy of using the reasoning power to decide on conduct, and the will to govern it, would make later lessons easy.
There is no mystery in ethics, no ecstatic virtue and no unpardonable sin. It is a matter of plain but hotly interesting study. The instances used would vary from class to class, from child to child, and the teachers of this science should be chosen with more care than any.
From savage rites to social customs of today would be an easy step for the well taught child of ten or twelve, and they would bring back into the home a discriminating judgment, a penetrating power of question and analysis which would go far to lift even the generation behind us. Similarly from ancient history to modern politics is but a step; from caravan and bazaar to railroad train and department store.
The principles of ethics may be established on almost any group of data picked at random from our great field of conduct, and applied in particular to almost any others.
Of course, in a limited way, we have done this before now; with fairy-tale and fable, verse and tract and story-book, we have tried to teach our children such ethical values as we had. But we had not, until now, the real basis of ethics, the interrelated indissoluble composite life of society. About some points we may differ and argue for years to come, but that great common ground of union is a safe one.
It is not merely the Aristotleian phrase, so wise and so sound as far as it goes: "The greatest good to the greatest number;" it is a deeper recognition that that "number" is organically related, and its "greatest good" involves not only present gain, but progress.
At every stage in his ethical training the child should learn to measure conduct not only by its relativity to the state, to the world, but to that world's improvement.
Using the child himself as an illustration, with his own delight and pride in growing, we could easily show how such and such behavior would be good for him at such an age, but other acts would benefit him "when he was bigger"—would help him grow.
Show them the little peoples, the slow peoples, the backward peoples, compared to the greater ones. Show them a bone needle, a steel needle, a sewing machine; show them a green apple or a bunch of grass in a handkerchief as compared with a real ball; show them always in human affairs, progress—something better to be attained.
Wrong doing is easily exhibited. All the way up the Big Baby, Society, has made as many mistakes as the small ones we should be teaching. Over and over we can point out the mistakes, the big conspicuous patent mistakes they made, and be sorry.
"They didn't know any better," we say. "They did not understand ethics."
All human life should be held in easy survey before the child. Constant reference should be made with the charts and pictures before him to "when we were at that stage," or "when we knew no better than that." And all up and down the line, in strong color and with careful emphasis, we should show what were the real world-lifting acts, the material and psychic steps upward, closely and clearly related to their consequences.
All this needs of course to be kept in careful gradation. Easy and clear and simple the foundation, but broad and strong to hold the whole great superstructure.
Up from animals, up from savages, up from darkness and cold and terror, up from gluttony and drunkenness and lust and cruelty, up from bigotry and ignorance, up from all the blind prides and petty passions of the past, always tending toward the heights of clear reason, strong will, and loving kindness.
The little brother, the little sister, should learn that they belong to something; learn that It serves them and they must serve It; learn the clear lesson of Its needs and purposes, and the endless joy of fulfilling them.
That is the comfort and beauty of the new Ethics, Social Ethics.
It gives dignity and purpose to all human conduct, settles our long perplexity into a well understood recognition of law, and floods all life with the peace and happiness of a well-loved healthy growing child.
(To be continued.)