Chapter VI
Virtues and Principles
The Forerunner: Vol. V, No. 6 (p. 160-166)
June 1914
The real weakness of ethics, as it has been presented to us in the past, is in its explanations. "Why is this right?" asks the child, or, more rebelliously, the older student, and, going further, "Why is this more right than that—what is most right?"
Our old answer was mere authority—"Thus saith the Lord," but when the student saw that some most grievous evils, such as gambling, bribery and treason, were not specifically forbidden; and that some of the noblest virtues, such as courage, patriotism, and intellectual honesty were not commanded— then was the student perplexed.
Certain general standards of morality he finds common to many religions, but the explanation of them lies in old race customs more than in the religious sanction. If he is a real student, using his own mind; if he looks at life about him, or in past history, to found judgment on fact, then there appears so tumultuous and perplexing an array of facts that judgment is most difficult.
Out of this welter we have evolved some fairly good rules of conduct, known as "principles." These principles are drawn from a large number of cases, and are supposed to hold conduct up to standard even when the immediate conditions are most confusing.
To-day we are changing our ideas about the old principles, and have not developed satisfactory new ones. Those who founded their beliefs on authority and revelation, are horrified at those who dispute authority, deny revelation, and demand reasons for their ethics.
Our study now is to find out, from the open book of human life, past and present, why virtues are virtues, what is their order of importance, and what is the true base for our principles.
Here is a list of some of those qualities we have called virtues, with their opposites, where we recognize them:
- Love–Hate.
- Truth–Falsehood.
- Justice–Injustice.
- Courage–Cowardice.
- Hope–Fear.
- Faith–Doubt.
- Obedience–Disobedience.
- Reverence–Irreverence.
- Mercy–Cruelty.
- Forgiveness–Revenge.
- Patience–Impatience.
- Endurance
- Contentment–Discontentment.
- Resignation–Rebellion.
- Humility–Pride.
- Loyalty–Disloyalty.
- Temperance–Intemperance.
- Prudence–Imprudence.
- Industry–Laziness.
- Chastity–Licentiousness.
- Generosity–Parsimony.
- Kindness–Unkindness.
- Cheerfulness–Complaining.
- Courtesy–Discourtesy.
- Self–control
- Hospitality–Inhospitality.
- Modesty–Immodesty.
- Honesty–Dishonesty.
- Gratitude–Ingratitude.
- Thrift–Wastefulness.
- Punctuality–Unpunctuality.
- Perseverance
- Unselfishness–Selfishness
- Patriotism–Treason.
- Honor-Dishonor.
There is one marked peculiarity in this enumeration. In most cases the virtue is positive and the vice mere lack of virtue; as in "im-prudence," or "dis-honesty"; but in one case the vice is given as positive, and the virtue negative,—"Selfishness," and "Un-selfishness." This would seem, at first, to rather belittle the virtue in question, and, as far as public recognition goes, we have done so. But in general habit and feeling, the one vice of all others most despised is that of selfishness; the one virtue most universally recognized and beloved is unselfishness. The social instinct recognizes this; for "unselfishness" is "love of the neighbor," the base of social progress.
Our measurement of these virtues as to relative importance varies according to the point of view.
If we take the standard of the Hebrew scriptures we should put first Faith, then Reverence and Obedience, then Justice and Mercy.
If we take the Christian standard we have the direct and overwhelming statement that Love, of God and of humanity Even St. Paul admits that covers all. Love is greater than Faith or Hope. One wonders a little at Hope being set so high. At the time it was doubtless due to that very practical and compelling Hope of the early Christians–the Second Coming of the Lord, and the visible establishment of His Kingdom. That Hope was what drove them, lifted them, held them firm. In later centuries this paled and dwindled (save among the "Second Adventists"), becoming, so far as it remained a virtue at all, the hope of heaven. This was always rather a weak sister, not to be mentioned, as a compeller, with the Fear of Hell.
Christianity covers all the Hebrew virtues except Justice–we cannot expect much stress on Justice from a Church which wrested the teachings of Jesus into the doctrine of Vicarious Atonement.
Hebrew, Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, Confucian, –all people of any real civilization, agree on many of the patently useful virtues which fill out the list Modern business life has added such recent and practical ones as Punctuality, Industry and Thrift. Honor stands high with some classes; Chastity, for both sexes, is but recently under discussion as a real possibility. Loyalty was developed by military life and throve under chieftain and monarch, slowly followed by Patriotism. Courage–a virtue older than humanity, and one of the best, has not been given high religious sanction, there was too much Reverence for authority to allow virtue to Courage; and there is one–perhaps as great as any, which has never been firmly insisted on, and for which, even yet, we have small respect, namely Truth.
It is not to be expected that while Faith was the first requisite of any religion; that Faith involving the full acceptance of miracles and legends; that the human mind could develop a keen sense of Truth and its value.
Note that the Hebraic commandments, while forbidding perjury and the making of unfulfilled vows, did not even try to prevent so common a thing as lying.
Later peoples have set up certain standards in regard to Truth, but hold them shakily; even a gentleman may lie to or about a woman. Women are not expected to be truthful, tradesmen are expected to be untruthful, and do not disappoint us; neither the legal nor the medical profession is rigorous as to truthfulness; business and politics are alike unveracious; and as to "society"—Truth would flatly prohibit our present polite forms of "social intercourse."
Besides all these there are other virtues as yet but dimly seen, and having no place among the halos, so far.
Of these we may mention two, whose names arouse no thrill, yet without which we could not live at all, far less develop.
The first of these it is hard even to name. We may call it, clumsily enough, "Integrity of function." This means doing the special work one is meant to do in the world, the fulfillment of real social service.
The old fable of "The Lap Dog and the Ass" faintly shows the obverse. An Ass, however affectionate, is unsuited for sitting in one's lap; and a Lap Dog, though possessing every canine virtue, would be a poor beast of burden.
If one's real duty in life is to make music for the people, no amount of effort spent in the grocery business makes up for "malfeasance in office."
Another super-important virtue, though not yet listed, is that most practical of all–Efficiency. To well and thoroughly achieve, to accomplish one's task, to do one's work in the world not only "patiently" or "bravely" or "unselfishly," but well–that is a most necessary, most universally necessary virtue.
To recognize these distinctions needs military ethics and see how they fail. a revision of standards.
The first and all sufficient reason for our failure to establish clear provable ethics is our misapprehension of our own nature.
Ethics is a social science, not a personal one.
While we see, measure and treat life in terms of individualism, we can never understand ethics. Suppose, similarly, military ethics were based upon nothing but the advantage of the individual soldier–his personal hope of reward or his personal fear of punishment. If he was held from desertion only by fear of being shot, and then saw that to remain in the ranks meant the certainty of being shot–why not take a chance of escaping? If courage and devotion to duty meant only a decoration or increase of rank or salary, why show these virtues when they entail certain death?
No, a high standard of military ethics involves a clear ideal of the nature, place and purpose of the army, and is most generally lived up to where the "morale" of the whole army is high, where the soldiers understand such ethics.
When the common sailors of the British Navy respond to the cry: "England expects every man to do his duty," that shows in the common sailor a capacity to understand his relation to England, and to fulfill that relation at cost of life itself, even when the country he dies for has never done anything in particular for him.
All this is commonplace; what remains is for us to apply this capacity of ours to similar recognition of the nature of ethics in general. Once we recognize the vital organic character of our relation to one another, and see that the conduct of each is to be measured, not by its reaction on him, but by its effect upon all-then we have a workable basis for ethics.
This has been glimpsed in the ancient number," which is a far more reasonable phrase, "the greatest good to the greatest ground of conduct than the interpersonal Golden Rule, but so long as the "greatest number" were mere massed individuals, so long we could not soundly determine what was their "greatest good."
! Apply either of these standards to…
The army does not exist for itself, or for any number of its individual parts, but for the service of the community. It is "England" which expects the service—not any lesser group.
Apply this again to other service-to all service, to the conduct of each one of us throughout life, and, above even country, put the great concept of Humanity itself, and we have at last a reliable base for ethics.
The human race, society as a whole, is the organic form of which our conduct is the functioning.
In studying its needs we find the same order of duties seen in a simpler organism; the great Three: Self-preservation, Race-preservation, Evolution—To be, To Re-Be, To Be Better.
Society must live, and to that end has evolved its industrial processes; Society must reproduce itself and to that end intervenes with law and custom to regulate marriage, and to transmit the treasure of previous knowledge and achievement; Society must evolve to higher forms-and here comes in the splendid vanguard of the world, not only the explorers, inventors and discoverers, but those who see and feel and think ahead, and spread to others the new precepts and concepts whereby we grow.
Ethics applies to each of these fields of duty.
Right conduct in the first, is that which best promotes social well-being. In explicit instance consider the ethics of agriculture. Its work is to produce the most and the best food with the least cost, either of labor, money or time. Some farmers "do right" and others "do wrong" this is the measure.
Or take transportation of goods. Its work is to distribute the most goods at the least cost, in labor, money or time.
Note at once how the personal standard of ethics-or our lack of any, fails to promote these ends. The producers and distributers never see the social duty in their work. "England' does not "expect" anything of them-in these lines, and is not disappointed.
In the second field, social reproduction, we err again, from the same reason. In the physiological process we see only personality, and in the subtler, wider task of transmitting from age to age the best race achievements we show no conscious selection, but try to hand down the whole past, failures, follies, errors and all.
Right conduct in this field is such parentage as shall preserve and improve the human stock, such historic and educational work as shall preserve and improve the gains we have already made, and to discard failures. Wrong conduct is the reverse.
In the third we have "sinned" worse than in either of the others, for we have not even known that we had this duty—growth.
To preserve the past we have striven, indiscriminately but with devotion.
To build the future we have never tried.
Yet this should be the governing consideration of all human conduct. We must of course live, socially as well as personally; and in the development of society's nutritive processes, as, more conspicuously, in its methods of offense and defense, we have done well.
Also in preserving and transmitting what we have accomplished we have done fairly well, honoring and rewarding the preservers and transmitters. But those supreme social servants whose duty it is to show the way to better things—for them has always been not only indifference and neglect, but ridicule, contempt, opposition, hatred, death.
In the complex of our interpersonal life, with no knowledge of humanity's real nature to guide us, we have nevertheless evolved from our social subconsciousness our list of Virtues–certain qualities proven valuable; and Principles–certain concepts of right conduct.
In the light of the new interpretation of Humanity as an organic whole, how may we interpret these qualities and concepts? What now stands highest, and why?
In order to judge we have but to compare the human race with other races, thus establishing our essential qualities; and to compare the highest humanity we know with the lowest humanity we know, thus establishing our line of progression.
Certain essentially social qualities are easily determined, and among them none ranks higher than Love. Love is as essential to a Society as it is to an antheap. The profound sociological insight of Jesus is sufficiently proven by his unswerving insistence upon inter-human love. Our total failure to understand him in this is due to our collateral failure to understand human nature. We took this "love" he demanded to be a sort of "required study," a quality we were to cultivate to please Him, or to imitate Him-not in the least as a quality essential to us. We found it very difficult to produce an arbitrary hand-made "love" on demand, and did not know how to cultivate it naturally. Those who "standardized" our religion for us soon gave up what they deemed excessive demands, and fell back on the pre-Christian virtues of Faith and Obedience. Therefore, even in our so-called Christian countries we see little enough of the one distinctive virtue of that religion.
With Love, in the highest rank of human virtues, should stand Truth, and Justice, and the lifting qualities of Courage and Hope go with them.
Faith is a very transient quality, useful where there is no knowledge, but wholly useless where there is. We do not need to "have faith" in what we know.
Obedience and Reverence are also the companions of Ignorance and Weakness, at times a necessity, and only so far a virtue. Mercy and Forgiveness go with the concept of a very bad-tempered personal God, quite likely to change his mind and let off the offender if properly besought and appealed to. See, for instance, the adroit Moses in the Hebrew story, persuading his Deity not to destroy the erring Israelites, with the prompt result quoted: "And the Lord repented of the evil he had thought to do against His people."
Patience, Endurance, Contentment and Resignation are also very uncertain virtues, sometimes becoming vices, and Humility is with them.
Loyalty was highly useful in monarchies and aristocracies. It is now often a mere excuse for conservatism.
Temperance, Prudence, Industry, Chastity, Generosity, Kindness, Cheerfulness, Courtesy, Self-control, Hospitality, Modesty, Honesty, Gratitude these are all useful minor virtues recognized as such by most of us.
Thrift, Punctuality and Perseverance, are wholly conditional; useful when needed.
There remain, of our best, Unselfishness, Patriotism, and Honor, with that most neglected of all virtues-Truth.
Unselfishness, that colorless negative name for the great social virtue of mutual love, we have misunderstood in more ways than one. Because the labor of the world was long performed by women, the loving service of motherhood, that first step toward social growth going with it; and because men despised women, therefore unselfishness was largely left to women. It was considered a feminine virtue, so used, and so ignored.
When, in early industrial development, man-slavery was added to woman slavery, the unselfishness was demanded of them, and obtained, perforce.
To be served, patiently, quietly, faithfully, efficiently, was the lot of the master; to so serve was the lot of the slave; and no master admired slaves' virtues.
To-day in our masculine industrialism, selfishness ranges as widely as it ever did in days of constant warfare; and the lines are drawn ever clearer between the small close ranks of the dominant master class, and the vast mass of the people being forced by pressure from above, to unite their selfishness against the united selfishness above them.
Neither feeling is social. The concept of public service does not dominate either the trust or the trade union, yet public service is the only ground from which to regulate industry.
Meanwhile the true social instinct leading to true public service is spreading throughout society; overflowing from our long restricted womanhood, growing among men in industrial comradeship, even manifesting itself among the rich and powerful in a way that shows how unreal is the arbitrary distinction. of "class" economics. The division between employing and employed which they insist on does exist, as slavery existed, but it is not a sociological division. It is a temporary and arbitrary division.
Unselfishness, from mother love to international patriotism, is a permanent social factor. Patriotism began most narrowly, most selfishly, a mere tribal feeling at first, then attached to a section of land, now growing swiftly on into a world sentiment-utterly unselfish.
Honor is a new virtue, rather a vague one, slowly emerging here and there as history advances. It is closely associated with a feeling we do not call virtue at all-Pride. "A high sense of honor""a delicate sense of honor"-is for those very refined and very superior always, and unutterably despising all who do not possess it.
Yet it is a very noble virtue, a sort of psychic skeleton key to all the others. By and by we shall have more of it, all of us.
Now for that great neglected angel, Truth.
Society, as a living creature, must have a body and a soul.
Its body is the mechanical world of our manufacture; in the creation of which all our so-called "practical virtues" are so visibly necessary, and have been so largely developed.
Its soul is the social consciousness.
In proportion as we possess that common spirit are we truly human. This common consciousness demands, as its natural medium of existence, the interchange of knowledge, thought and feeling. In the interests of this interchange came speech, with its resultant growth into writing, printing, and all the marvels of electric transmission of the spoken or the written word. When, by wireless, we can some day spread a common joy or hope or purpose over the whole world in a moment we shall have free room for this social soul.
In the interests of all this development it is easy to recognize the value of the mechanic arts by which our thoughts or feelings are preserved and transmitted. It is easy also to see how education comes in, the essential training of young minds that they may successfully receive and transmit the waves of force which pass among us or, as we put it, that they may be able to "understand," and to “express themselves properly."
No process is more inherently human. than this process of mental exchange, none is more essential to our existence, none more necessary to our growth.
By as much as our external and social life depends on production and distribution of material things, so does our internal social life depend on the production and exchange of the spirit, interchange of knowledge, of ideas and of emotions.
If this is admitted-and surely it cannot be denied-we may see why Truth stands so high as a Social Virtue. We may also see why it has never been recognized. Under our wholly personal view of life and all its qualities, we measured virtues, as we did other things, by their reaction upon individuals. Truth is essentially between people; it is a virtue of transmission. For the individual, incentive to transmit truly or falsely can be measured only by personal advantage; either the personal advantage of immediate profit or loss, or of some ultimate profit or loss. Unless the transmission itself is recognized as a thing of pre-eminent value to society, Truth as indispensable virtue, has no weight.
As the Sunday-School pupil solemnly recited: "A lie is an abomination to the Lord, and a very present help in time of trouble." The present help is the governing factor with most of us. Those who have established some sort of value for Truth are the ones who were in least need of help; the aristocrat, the gentleman; while falsehood is conspicuously associated with weak and defenseless people.
What we have not seen is the social sanction for Truth, the vital need of it in all true social relation. Apply it to our educational processes. We can all see at once that if what we learn is not true our learning is wasted. Mistakes we have made, of course, and errors of mere ignorance, but we do have a standard. of Truth in our text-books, and approximate it as closely as we can.
Apply it again to ordinary human. transmission of information; if the signboard lies, we are astray; if the package is mis-labelled we buy what we do not want; we have to depend for mere existence on the truth of this general transmission.
So far we can readily agree, and, in the matter of personal friendship we know, that if you cannot believe a person you cannot trust him, cannot love him, cannot depend upon him.
In business we have the most curious mixture of absolutely required truth and universally admitted falsehood. Business could not be done at all unless appointments were kept, orders filled as agreed, shipments meeting specification, and charges made as understood. Yet in and through all this solid growth of truth in business runs a web of falsehood as dangerous as leaks in a levee. The law toils vainly after in the endeavor to compel truth in business; the social consciousness recognizing some need of it, but not how much.
We have followed our ideas of personal ethics as far as they would go. Our religious aids to conduct urge continually the personal development of virtues, and deprecate the law's efforts at enforcement. "You cannot legislate morality" they say. Yet if it were not for the law and for the general average of morality it has "legislated" religion would find a much harder task.
But law, like religion, sees its ethics. for the most part through the limitations of individualism. It seeks to maintain personal rights against personal rights, keeping the balance as best it may among confessedly warring interests. Only occasionally is some line of conduct condemned as "against public policy." For any large understanding of that public policy we have got to recognize this organic relation to society.
The stimulus of religion will take on new vigor when it recognizes the social soul. The check and guidance of the law will become simple, popular and strong when it recognizes not only the social soul but the social body.
Every standard of measurement will change as we begin to realize what it is that we are measuring—a man, or Humanity.
For "a" man there is no ethics, no vice, no virtue, no right nor wrong save in the simple process of self-preservation.
For a family we rise to the scale of ethics involved in race-preservation.
But in Society alone, the Organized Human Race, do we find a true standard by which to measure our human virtues.
(To be continued)