Chapter X

Instances

The Forerunner: Vol. V, No. 10 (p. 271-277)

October 1914

In studying the pitiful deficiencies of our primitive ethics in the face of immediate modern problems, it is illuminating to show instances. Properly to rate such instances we need new and definite standards of measurements; and some gradation in order of importance.

"Sin," the old generalization, was "breaking the law of God"; and, from that point of view, one sin was as bad as another. Both church and state, however, have always recognized gradations, and administered penance and punishment accordingly.

Our new recognition of wrong conduct as something which injures the individual, the family, or humanity, is open to the most full and careful gradation. To eat green apples and so bring on a colic is bad, but not so bad as to take prussic acid—self-made indigestion is not so evil as suicide. Neither is plain unqualified "sin," for there might be occasion when green apples were the only attainable food, or when suicide was quite justifiable.

So in family ethics it is bad to be an ill-natured and censorious father, but not so bad as to be no father at all—faultfinding is less wicked than desertion. And in Social Ethics, to offend against the State by mere apathy is bad enough, but to offend by some direct injury to human life, to human happiness, virtue or improvement, is far worse.

The simple old standards of arbitrary "right" and "wrong" were quite easy to follow—or to break.

The standards of Ethics as a science requires study—as does any other science.

There is no longer a question of submission to authority, of blindly following a little string of rules; this is something we can all spend our lives in learning about, and to which each generation can bring new light.

Now, for the purpose of studying a few instances of our advance in, or our ignorance of, Social Ethics, let us arbitrarily make a little scale, brief and limited, having say ten grades of value, five above the line of conduct which neither helps nor hinders, and five below.

At the top we will place those acts which conduce to the highest advancement of the most people; at the bottom those acts which conduce to the lowest degradation of the most people.

We must needs stretch our imaginations to put at the top some enormous race benefit, some human action which should result in endless and increasing improvement to us all. As an instance within reach we might place the invention of the printing press, or, on the psychic plane, the recognition of evolution.

At the bottom should be some instrument of evil, working wide and continuous mischief, as a prison; or some world-arresting lie, such as fatalism, or damnation.

Between these tremendous extremes lies the field of human conduct.

We may live, as most of us do, pretty near the medium line, our behavior kept carefully level with that of the people about us, not benefitting the world much, and not injuring the world much.

This vast majority of us moves slowly onward, pushed by genetic forces, and, as we have seen in earlier chapters, steadily opposes this forward movement, by maintaining the dead weight resistance of indifferences, and the more violently retarding force of false ideas.

Above this majority are the advance guard of the world, that sturdy minority, pushing on, alert and courageous, in ever-narrowing lines, to those few foremost souls whose great discoveries whether material or psychic, lift us along our endless upward path.

Below, in the five lower grades, we must count the real detrimentals; the great numbers of incapable, defective, or positively mischievous persons, who are produced, in increasing malignity, by the wrong conduct of those above them; the utterly inert and indifferent who constitute the dragging burden of the world, and those parasites, harmless, or actively evil, who weaken society, or poison it outright. Worse than these come the real criminals, labelled or unlabelled, who are to society what disease germs are to us; and who, if unchecked, would destroy their own source of life by destroying the great social body in which they live.

Along the middle line we may put the man who "behaves himself"; who does not cheat in his business, who does his work well, and who, if he is no more progressive than his forefathers, is at least no less so. Also his wife, behaving herself, bringing up children in her own image, keeping step with her husband in the praiseworthy process of "marking time." These people are generally quite complacent, because, having accepted a field of ethics about the size of a teatray, they fulfill its demands, and are satisfied.

A chess player would have as much reason to be satisfied because he did not bite the heads off his pawns, or get the board dirty.

The people who do nothing to promote the progress of the world would still be hairy savages—if it had not been for those who have lifted them along the ages in spite of themselves.

Here the lack of ethics is clear.

They do not recognize social progress as a duty, at all. To them society is static—not dynamic. Their pride is like that of a locomotive engine, sitting quite still and boasting that it does not fall off the track. "But for my weight," says the engine complacently, "there's no knowing where the train might go."

These middle-ground people, while not actively evil in any way, are far more of a drag on the world than the recognized or unrecognized criminals because there are so many of them.

When Social Ethics wakes the world, the most important stir will be among these stationary people, who will at last see that there is no life without motion, and that the right motion for humanity is upward and onward.

In our little arbitrary scale we might put Conservatism as number one, going downward; not a violent or incurable evil, but dangerous from its great extent and its almost irresistible contagiousness.

Yet they believe, really, that if it were not for them something dreadful would have happened to the world. They make an absolute virtue of what they proudly call "conservatism" which is only another name for mental inertia.

Second, that common error we call "Selfishness," the anachronism of a primitive ego, still dominant in our advanced social relation.

Third, all Untruth and Dishonesty, in every form.

Fourth, that simple common universal misuse of bodily functions, that pointless self-indulgence, which results in the overdevelopment of sex, and in that great trio of ensuing evils—War, Intemperance, and Prostitution.

Fifth, and worst of all, the arrest or perversion of social functions; as where government is made unjust, education denied, or the press degenerated.

Similarly in the five upward grades we will put, first Open-mindedness, Progressiveness, the spirit which is willing to see farther and to move on.

Second, the Social Spirit, that human instinct we call love, recognizing and serving common social needs.

Third, Truth; Truth in all things, material as well as psychic.

Fourth, Courage, and with it Will—the power to act.

Fifth, highest and most important of all, the Fulfillment and Improvement of Social Function—that tremendous front rank duty which leads on the world.

By these five grades up, and five down, let us measure ourselves, looking at the conduct of the world about us with new eyes.

As we look back along our history, or about us to-day, we see always some few people who are using their lives to advance humanity. Whether they die in the process or not, they push on, as long as they are able, and their achievements are our achievements—on them we climb forward.

Whether these Lifters and Leaders bring in new mechanical advantages, improvements in the plant or animal world, in chemistry or physics, in manufacture, in astronomy, in medicine; or whether they lift the soul along by better education, freer government, a higher vision in religion; whatever process they improve, they improve the world.

If our business here is social progress and improvement, they are the most virtuous, the most noble, who lead the most people farther onward. Jesus, with his vision of human unity and human love; Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin, with their vision of Life in Motion—the great world-hope of Evolution; Lester Ward, with his vision of the true relation of the sexes,— such as these stand highest for our psychic advancement. The mechanical world helpers we are more familiar with, but do not properly rate their social value. Such men as the Wright brothers, Burbank, Edison and Marconi—in all their splendid numbers, are world benefactors of the highest degree.

In the order of Courage and Power they all stand high—it is essential to their work. In Truth they are also Masters,—truth to function and truth in expression. Whether they have the social spirit or not does not matter—their work serves the world whether the conscience wishes it to or not. They may work from a consecration to their pet science or from personal ambition—it makes no difference to us. We do not ask affection from our eyes and ears—but true service.

In that conscious social spirit we have to-day a splendid army, wakening to a healthy consciousness of the world's pain, a sympathy with the world's joy, an eager hope for the world's betterment, and a desire to serve. They may not, immediately, accomplish much; they may lack in Truth, in Courage and Power, or have no special Gift of Service, but they care. They are beginning to realize the organic social life and to love it, and "love will find out a way."

Below these, in most reassuring numbers, are the swelling ranks of people who are at least willing to move. They no longer hold a belief because they cannot help it; they are willing, when they see that what they had believed was wrong, to leave off believing.

It is these people who ought to cheer the heart of the pessimist; this mighty and growing class who are passing from a static to a dynamic stage of life. As they increase, so grows our hope.

Then we come to the medium line, the motionless ones, doing no harm—and no good. We might as well leave them out altogether—they don't count.

Below comes our first downgrade of evil Conservatism.

It is common enough. The conservatives are far more numerous than those balancing on the fence, the indifferentists.

From the poor peasant in his millions, with narrow darkened mind, clinging stolidly to the beliefs and habits of his ancestors, to the rich aristocrat in his thousands, with "a liberal education," and an enlightened mind, also clinging to the ideas and habits of the past, and infinitely more blameable—the world is full of conservatives.

They constitute the great mass of the enemies of society. They keep it from growing up. They are the hugest obstacle to progress, to all progress. They dwarf and cripple us, trying eternally to keep a moving thing from moving, to hold society back where it used to be.

They are, as a rule, arrogant, and talk complacently of their value in checking the flights and vagaries of unsettled "radicals," a spirit shown, precisely alike, among the fellaheen of Egypt, the coolies of China, the mujicks of Russia, and the worthy "best people" in our own communities.

They simply do not understand that the world is meant to grow.

They think it is meant to stay still—they have always thought so; and the visible growth of all our thousands of years of social progress has no effect whatever on the conservative mind. They are rooted to the ground, immovable as trees. For the world to proceed these have to be simply ignored and left behind, or if they are too thick, they have to be overthrown. Their notion that the world would fly to pieces if they did not keep it tied up is one of the most laughable manifestations of ignorance.

Growth is not erratic and violent. You do not have to hold a large stone on a child's head because, if not hindered "there's no knowing how he might grow." He would grow upward of course; and in the shape of a human being.

As for those mad enthusiasts of whom the conservatives are so deadly afraid, if they are given free play they run frothing to the front and—froth. They do not and cannot lead the world astray. Given a general education and a free normal rate of advance, and we can manage any number of enthusiasts.

Below the conservatives, poor vegetables, comes the next grade of evil,—those who are actively selfish.

This is a positive evil—conservatism is as negative as a hitching post.

Selfishness is mischievous because it militates against the very structure of society. If a man is all alone somewhere, he may be as selfish as he likes and do no harm; but if he is a member of a community, the more highly advanced is the communal life the more dangerous is his selfishness. Its effect is like that of a bloodthirsty savage in a summer colony. The more peaceful, beautiful and orderly the place, the more amiable, trustful, and defenseless the people, the more harm he could do.

This simple and very general evil of a misplaced disproportionate egoism is so common that we call it "human nature”; whereas it is not human nature at all, but pre-human.

Humanity is essentially social. Social nature is human nature, and it is, inevitably, what we call "altruistic." The social consciousness is "human nature." Those who are persistently selfish in a highly developed society, are by that much sub-human.

The evil results of selfishness are too conspicuous to need much description. In men it has led to all the greediness of our business world. In women, to that hideous inversion of true femininity, the parasitic creature who takes all she can get, and gives nothing. One sees them in every city, wherever men have become rich enough to keep their women in corrupting idleness and luxury,—fat, pink creatures, whose clothes and jewels represent the labor of thousands; and who have not in their minds the faintest sense of obligation to the world. They even refuse, in some cases, the primal service of their sex, committing prenatal infanticide in serene repetition, or conspiring in other methods of sterile indulgence. If we had any clear idea of social ethics these women would be regarded as monstrous unnatural growths, warty excrescences, horribly soft and useless, and condemned and avoided accordingly.

But we have not that clear idea of ethics. We do not regard selfishness as unnatural, idleness as disease, sex-decoration on women an absolute perversion of nature, and sterile sex-indulgence as misuse of the body.

A woman who loves "not wisely but too well," who bears a child as the natural result of her natural affection and passion, we sweepingly condemn (Ella Wheeler Wilcox has recently published an admirable comment on this, in verse); but the woman who has not offended against our ancient standard of "personal ethics" or "family ethics," yet who breaks every law of social ethics, we have neither law nor custom to arraign. Until we recognize Social Ethics we cannot understand why and how she is doing wrong.

When it comes to Lying, to Dishonesty, to all the forms of untruth which distort and ruin our lives, we are even blinder. Truth is so absolutely a social virtue, that we, in our personally limited view, have never rated it highly. Its lack, today, does us incalculable harm, and we do not even see it.

This is not merely a question of "telling a lie." Falsehood has more than verbal form. "All Truth is relative," says the philosopher. Quite so. It is a matter of relation. To be honest in word and deed is quite an elaborate matter. To be true,— true to one's self, to one's work, to one's friends; to be true in one's work; to be true from mind to body and from body to dress; to care for truth—to be careful in telling a story not to alter it-all this is difficult and rare. We may some of us have "an ear for music," but very few of us have an ear for truth.

And untruth, in the world today, works evil far and wide. We lie in cloth, in metal, in drugs; our workmanship is unreliable; we lack, apparently, even the desire to be true. With men this shows itself on the larger scale; in politics, in business, in the professions; so common is it in our courts of justice, that in a recent instance the judge reproved a counsellor for pointing out that the last witness was committing perjury—that was expected.

Among women, limited in life activities, lying has less reach, but it is no less common. It is not thought wrong, not generally. And their contented distortion or artificial "improvement" of their bodies, shows complete lack of any feeling for truth in expression.

Our fourth grade down, though in itself as simple as over-eating, is by no means simple in its consequences.

Terrible disease may be caused by a very slight disarrangement of function, in the social as in the physical body.

The initial error was, apparently, unavoidable. The growing intelligence and consciousness of primitive man, with his increased power over natural supplies, led to all forms of excess. He did not know the results of gluttony—he only knew he liked to eat. The natural pleasure of sex-indulgence, plus opportunity and power, and minus any knowledge of pathology, or hygiene, resulted in our general over-development in this line. Even when we found that in given instances physical disease resulted from certain forms of indulgence, we were still unable to generalize as to the effect on the race. That we are only now beginning to see.

In this general racial effect, even where the patient adjustment of nature has preserved a fair degree of individual health, the result of our oversexed condition shows in many further developments.

Notably our over-masculinized condition keeps up the combative instincts, with its crowning horror of war. The permanent habit of self-indulgence appears in all drug-temperance, as well as in the recognized "social evil" of prostitution.

But just as we have failed to properly honor and reward our greatest social benefactors, so have we failed, so do we still fail to see, to condemn, to punish, our greatest social criminals. The private criminal, poor man, with his hot-headed murder, his petty theft, we are quick to prosecute; but we literally lack power of vision to recognize the murderer of thousands, the thief of millions, the man who bestially. degrades society.

Where we do begin dimly to see these larger evils is in the comparatively simple lines of our public, governmental and business abuses. We do begin to feel that to sell a deleterious patent medicine is to be a poisoner; and that to sell canned goods, likewise deleterious, carries the same criminal result. Some of us see it, some of the time.

Also we begin to resent the great public "steals," and other large but clear offenses. Beyond that lie depths of iniquity unsounded.

Remember that these measurements do not involve personal reproach. A man is "wicked" in doing what he believes to be wrong. He may do something a thousand times as wrong—and never know it, may even think it a virtue !

That man who started the idea of Eternal Damnation did as wicked a thing as can be conceived; but he probably thought he was inspired by God.

As the highest good in human conduct is that which most improves our highest social functions, so the lowest evil is that which depraves, perverts, and hinders, these functions.

If we can conceive, for instance, of a man who should deliberately inject into the religion of a people a false idea, one which would from age to age lead people to useless crime; if we can imagine a man so handling the educational institutions of his country as to fill all students with unreliable science, with defective reasoning, with mind-weakening bad habits; or one who should use government for his own ends, turning normal taxation into universal extortion, and civic restraint into irresponsible cruelty, such a man, or such a woman, is the worst social criminal.

Real human evil is offense against society, and the offense is to be measured by the extent and permanence of the harm inflicted. In the case of hurting one human being we can easily distinguish between the relative evil of a scarless whipping, or a quick-healing clean wound, and some prolonged torture, some hopeless disfigurement or maiming; or, still worse, inoculation with a hideous and incurable disease.

The same relative judgment holds good in offenses against society.

Yet we can see clearly, in the individual case, how an ignorant man might think the man who beat him a terrible sinner, and take no notice of the person who fed him with disease germs—sugared.

Society is thus ignorant.

We do not understand our own social structure and functions enough to appreciate their most dangerous abuses.

Plain dishonesty, small and local, we see; but the evil of a great general habit in business, such as "watering stock" and weighing down a business with a load of dividend leeches, we simply do not mind.

We would not shake hands with a pickpocket, even if at large; but we are quite willing to shake hands with the railroad director who helps pick a million pockets annually.

The misuse of our government by private individuals, the making and administering of law to serve individual ends, with all its accompanying corruption—bribery, perjury, prostitution of the judiciary, and the like, we know is wrong, but we do not feel it. We have no general honest and hearty contempt for those outragers of society; our ethical sense is too pityfully narrow, too weak and old, to react forcibly against them.

Yet so far even these misdoers and the suffering public do intellectually know that their action is against the laws of ethics. Most dangerous of all are the offenses we utterly fail to recognize.

In this field the worst evil of our time is in a diseased and vicious press.

The daily press is one of our very latest and highest social processes. It has more influence than the church, more power than the government, more educational effect than the schools. It is the sensorium of modern society. Through it we see, hear, feel one another. Our degree of Social-ness, that condition of quick general consciousness which is essential to the life of a modern society, is largely maintained by the press.

So far as it functions truly we may then know our condition, our surroundings, our possible dangers and benefits, and take action accordingly.

So far as it functions falsely we are blinded or made to see crookedly; we are deafened and confused in hearing, we are blurred and calloused in feeling; we do not know one another, or our act true conditions, and therefore wrongly or remain inert when action is needed.

The one absolute basic virtue of a healthy press is Truth.

The one general disease of our press to-day is suppression and perversion of truth. It is subject also to the same traitorous misuse as government, the coercion of public power to private advantage; newspapers being freely used as personal engines of advancement.

If preachers were subject to election. to public office, and used their pastoral power to persuade the congregation to vote for them; or if teachers similarly used their powers as teachers to influence their pupils to vote for them, we can see what gross abuse of function that would be. It is precisely the same when that great teacher and preacher, the press, is so prostituted to private ends.

Still other diseases affect this invaluable public service. Whereas its normal use is to convey to the whole public quick and reliable information as to the facts and processes of current life; it has descended to the position of an entertainer, furnishing a vast body of matter which has no more to do with a newspaper than with an arithmetic.

In this gross catering to the mental appetites of the people our daily papers have outdistanced the "dime novel," the "penny-dreadful"; they deliberately load their columns with the rankest "sensation," not only distinct and additional, but staining and degrading the news itself.

In the trail of these abuses comes an insolent tyranny which has no parallel in our democracy. The church respects the conscience of the individual; the law respects the rights of the individual, the newspaper respects nothing.

The evil of all this is to be measured by its effect upon society.

Here, at our highest grade of advancement; in this, our highest social function, that "great moral engine" we so justly honor has become the greatest immoral engine we have.

Our Government is pure beside it.

Our Business is honest beside it.

Our Courts are just beside it.

Paper after paper, the country over, owns without the faintest shame, that it is supported by its advertisers-and obeys the hand that feeds it.

Fancy a Judge owning publicly and unashamed that he was kept in office by his constituents or supporters, and must judge to please them.

Thus riddled with disease our press staggers on, of most necessary service, even in its degraded condition, but doing daily evil to millions; an evil that clouds, weakens, misleads and steadily deteriorates, the human mind.

(To be continued)