CHAPTER I

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations

in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other

spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Footnotes are located at the end of the chapters.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.

AN ETHICAL

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

PRESENTED IN ITS MAIN OUTLINES

BY

FELIX ADLER

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

This book records a philosophy of life growing out of the experience

of a lifetime. The convictions put in it are not dogmatic, for dogma

is the conviction of one man imposed authoritatively upon others. The

convictions herein expounded are submitted to those who search, as the

writer has searched, for light on the problems of life, in order that

they may compare their experience with his, and their interpretations

of their experience with his interpretation.[1]

It is a great hope that some of the readers of this book may find the

general world-view expounded congenial, and for them also real and

true. It is believed that others may find the practical suggestions as

to the conduct of life in which the theory issues helpful in part, if

not in whole, as many of us accept from the teachings of the Stoics, or

of other thinkers, practical precepts, without on that account adopting

the philosophy from which these precepts are derived.

The book is divided into four parts: the first an autobiographical

introduction describing the various stations on the road by which

the author arrived at his present position, and offering incidental

appreciations and appraisements of the Hebrew religion, of Emerson,

of the ethics of the Gospels, of Socialism and of other social reform

movements.

The second part expounds the philosophical theory.

The third part contains the applications of the theory to the more

strictly personal life, under the captions of the Three Shadows of

Sickness, Sorrow and Sin, and also to the principal so-called Rights to

Life, Property, Reputation.

The fourth part applies the theory to the social institutions, to the

Family, the Vocation, the State, the International Society, and the

Church, these institutions being considered as an expanding series

through which the individual is to pass on his pilgrimage in the

direction of the supreme spiritual end.

The principal problems considered are:

1. How to establish the fundamental ethical dictum that every human

being ought to count, and is intrinsically worth while. This dictum has

been denied by many of the greatest thinkers, who assert the intrinsic

inferiority of some men, the intrinsic superiority of others. The

practice of the world also runs most distinctly contrary to it. How

then is it to be validated?

2. The problem of how to attach a precise meaning to the term

“spiritual,” thereby divesting it of the flavor of sentimentality and

vagueness that attaches to it.

3. How to link up the world’s activities in science, art, politics,

business, to the supreme ethical end.

4. How to lay foundations whereon to erect the conviction that there

verily is a supersensible reality.

For the repetitions that occur throughout the volume indulgence is

requested. In presenting an unfamiliar system of thought they may

sometimes assist the reader in retaining the thread.

The work is conceived as a whole, and should be read through before any

part of it is more minutely examined. The theory of Part II especially

should be read in the light of the applications submitted in Parts III

and IV.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PRELUDE 3

II. THE HEBREW RELIGION 14

III. EMERSON 27

IV. THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 30

V. SOCIAL REFORM 43

VI. THE INFLUENCE OF MY VOCATION ON INNER DEVELOPMENT 58

BOOK II

PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY

I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: CRITIQUE OF KANT 73

II. CRITIQUE OF KANT (_Continued_) 82

III. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON WORTH, AND ON THE REASONS

WHY THE METHOD EMPLOYED BY ETHICS

MUST BE THE OPPOSITE OF THAT EMPLOYED BY

THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES 91

IV. THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 100

V. THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE AND THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 114

VI. THE IDEAL OF THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE AND THE GOD-IDEAL 125

BOOK III

APPLICATIONS: THE THREE SHADOWS, SICKNESS,

SORROW AND SIN, AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE,

PROPERTY AND REPUTATION

I. INTRODUCTION 147

II. THE THREE SHADOWS: SICKNESS, SORROW, SIN 154

III. BEREAVEMENT 162

IV. THE SHADOW OF SIN 171

V. THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE TO BE OBSERVED TOWARDS

FELLOW-MEN IN GENERAL, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE

SPECIAL RELATIONS WHICH CONNECT US MORE

CLOSELY WITH SOME THAN OTHERS 179

VI. THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 202

VII. THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE: ACT SO AS TO ELICIT

THE BEST IN OTHERS AND THEREBY IN THYSELF 208

VIII. THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE (_Continued_) 220

IX. HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL _Numen_ IN

OTHERS 223

BOOK IV

APPLICATIONS: THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY, THE

STATE, THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ETC.

I. THE COLLECTIVE TASK OF MANKIND AND THE THREE-FOLD

REVERENCE 241

II. THE FAMILY 249

III. THE VOCATIONS 260

IV. THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 270

V. THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST: OUTLINE OF A THEORY

OF THE RELATION OF ART TO ETHICS 277

VI. EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS, OR VOCATIONS CONNECTED

WITH THE STATE 289

VII. THE STATE 305

VIII. THE NATIONAL CHARACTER SPIRITUALLY TRANSFORMED:

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY, OR THE

ORGANIZATION OF MANKIND 324

IX. RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP AS THE CULMINATING SOCIAL

INSTITUTION 341

X. THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 354

APPENDIX

APPENDIX I: SPIRITUAL SELF-DISCIPLINE 365

APPENDIX II: THE EXERCISE OF FORCE IN THE INTEREST OF

FREEDOM 369

INDEX 375

BOOK I

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

PRELUDE

What this book offers is a system of thought and of points of view as

to conduct, as these have jointly grown out of personal experience. It

will be useful to introduce them with an autobiographical statement.

The ideas which follow are such as have been found by me, the author,

to be fruitful. Certainly I claim for them objectivity; but I do so

because of what I have found them to mean in my own life. He who has

been scorched by lightning knows that the effects of the lightning will

be felt by all who are exposed to the same experience. I narrate my

experience; let others compare with it theirs.

There is, however, a serious, and most embarrassing difficulty in

the way of discussing the phases and vicissitudes of one’s ethical

development. Self-appraisement is necessarily involved in the

narration. The outstanding subject of ethics is the self and its

relations. The physicist, the chemist, the biologist, however the

methods they use may differ in other respects, agree in the endeavor

to eliminate the personal equation. The psychologist likewise does his

best to see the procession that moves across the inner stage like an

interested but detached spectator. In the case of ethics, however, the

personal factor cannot be eliminated, because the personal factor is

just the Alpha and the Omega of the whole matter; and if this be left

out of account, the very object to be studied disappears.

Ethical standards are exacting, separated often from performance by the

widest interval. To set up a standard, therefore, is to reflect upon

oneself, to expose oneself to the backstroke of one’s own deliverances,

to be plunged perhaps into deep pits of self-humiliation. How shall

anyone have the courage to face so searching a test, or the hardihood

to discuss with a lofty air, and to recommend to others ideals of

conduct against which he knows that he daily offends? How can anyone

teach ethics or write about it? The words of the Sermon on the Mount,

“Judge not that ye be not judged,” seem to apply very closely. Do not

judge others, do not lay down the law for others, because in so doing

you will be judged in the inner forum, becoming a repulsive object in

your own eyes, or standing forth a whited sepulcher. In brief, to touch

the subject of ethics is to handle a knife that cuts both ways, to cast

a weapon which returns upon him who sends it.

The difficulty then which confronts the ethical writer is that the

attitude of detachment possible in other branches of investigation is

found to be impossible when one attempts to sound the profundities

of that kind of inner experience which is called ethical. The self

obtrudes itself at every point, and it instinctively refuses to be

humbled. What may be denominated the struggle for self-esteem has

indeed played a leading rôle both in the outer and inner history of

mankind. This struggle, whose immense importance is often overlooked,

accounts for even more interesting facts than the biological struggle

for existence. The desire to exercise power over others, often ruthless

in the means adopted, is frequently nothing more than a miserable

attempt to save self-esteem by covering up the inner sense of the

weakness of the self. But the same struggle penetrates also into the

realm of theoretical ethics with which we are concerned. Here it

tampers with the standards which mortify self-esteem, by inventing

such ethical theories as seem to make the problems of personality easy

of solution, and by blinking the tragic facts of guilt, remorse, etc.

Various ethical systems that are in vogue at the present time are, at

least in part, exemplars of this process—the theory for instance that

ethics is nothing more than a calculus of self-interest, or a matter

of sympathetic feeling, or a balancing of the more refined against the

grosser pleasures. The instinct of self-preservation, in the shape of

the preservation of self-esteem, is quite incorrigible, and against its

insidious suggestion we have reason to be particularly on our guard in

the discussion which we are entering.

Are we then to refrain, out of sheer regard for decency, from touching

on this subject at all? Is everyone who writes on ethics, or attempts

to teach it, either a pedant or a hypocrite? But we cannot avoid

discussing it, nor resist the impulse to teach and write about it, for

it is the subject on which more than any other we and others sorely

need help and enlightenment. And we shall get help in the endeavor

to afford it to others. This, then, is my position: I do not presume

to lay down the law for anyone. I find that I can set forth the

better standards which in the course of trial and error I have come to

recognize. I would not shamelessly expose mere private failures and

failings after the manner of Rousseau in the “Confessions”; for there

is a tract of the inner life which ought to be kept from publicity and

prying intrusion. I shall then deal with deflections only in so far as

they can be traced to false standards or principles, and as they tend

to illustrate the flaw in those standards and principles.

What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as

such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see

how far it tallies with that which is here set forth. A distinction,

however, I wish to call attention to between the theory as expounded

in the second part of this volume, and the practical applications to

be found in the third and fourth parts. Persons who are not trained

in metaphysical thinking or interested in it, may do well to omit the

reading of the second part. To those who are competent in philosophical

thinking, and who disagree with the positions there taken, I may

perhaps be permitted to suggest that one can dissent from a philosophy

and yet find help in the applications to which it leads. And, after

all, it is the practice that counts.

With these preliminaries, I now proceed to delineate briefly the stages

of inner development which have led me slowly and with much labor to

the system of thought described in the following pages.

One of the leading principles to which I early gave assent, and to

which I have ever since adhered as a correct fundamental insight, is

expressed in the statement that every human being is an end _per se_,

worth while on his own account.[2]

Every human personality is to be safe against infringement and is,

in this sense, sacred. There is a certain precinct which may not be

invaded. The experience which served me especially as the matrix of

this idea was the adolescent experience of sex-life,—the necessity

felt of inhibiting, out of reverence for the personality of women, the

powerful instincts then awakened.[3]

The fact that I had lived abroad for three years in frequent contact

with young men, especially students, who derided my scruples, and in

the impure atmosphere of three capital cities of Europe, Berlin,

Paris and Vienna, where the “primrose path” is easy, tended to make

the retention of my point of view more difficult, and at the same time

to give it greater fixity, also to drive me into a kind of inward

solitude. I felt myself in opposition to my surroundings, and acquired

a confidence, perhaps exaggerated, to persevere along my own lines

against prevailing tendencies.

I ought next to mention the decay of theism which took place in my mind

in consequence of philosophic reading. Already at an early age I had

stumbled over the doctrine of Creation. I remember asking my Sunday

School teacher—How is creation possible? How can something originate

out of nothing? The answer I received was evasive, and left me uneasy

and unsatisfied. On another occasion I ventured to suggest to the same

authority—a revered and beloved authority—that the conception of God

seemed to me too much like that of a man, too much fashioned on the

human model; and he amazed me beyond words by replying that he himself

sympathized more or less with the ideas of Spinoza. This chance remark

set me thinking, and seemed to open wide spaces in which my mind felt

free to travel—though I never tended in the direction of Spinoza.[4]

My thoughts were driven still further by reaction against the narrow

theology of the lectures on Christian Evidences as taught at that time

in Columbia College, where I was a student. And all these influences

came to a head in the atmosphere of the German university at Berlin.

There I heard Zeller, Duhring, Steinthal, Bonitz. Above all I came into

contact with Herman Cohen, subsequently and for many years professor

of philosophy at the University of Marburg, and undertook to grapple

in grim earnest with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The net outcome

was not atheism in the moral sense,—I have never been what is called

an atheist,—but the definite and permanent disappearance of the

individualistic conception of Deity. I was attracted by the rigor,

the sublimity, of Kant’s system, and especially by his transcendental

derivation of the moral law. The individualistic basis of his ethics,

which is quite uncongenial to me, I ignored, and for a time simply

accounted myself a follower of Kant. Very often since then I have

discovered that men, unbeknown to themselves, are apt to sail under

false flags, ranking themselves Kantians, Socialists, or what not,

because the system to which they give their adherence attracts them

at some one outstanding point, the point namely, where it sharply

conflicts with views which they themselves strongly reprobate; and they

are thus led to overlook other features no less important in which the

system is really uncongenial to them. Thus a person who recognizes the

evils of the present wage system may label himself a Socialist, simply

because Socialism is most in evidence as an adversary of the wage

system, while he may by no means agree with the positive principles

that underlie Socialism, when he comes to examine them dispassionately.

I thought at that time of the Moral Law as that which answers to

or should replace the individualistic God-idea. I believed in an

unknown principle or power in things of which the Moral Law is

the manifestation, and I found the evidence of the moral law in

man’s consciousness. Matthew Arnold’s “the power that makes for

righteousness” is a phrase which at that time would have suited

me,—though perhaps not entirely even at that time. I have since come

to see that “making for righteousness” is a conception inapplicable to

the ultimate reality, and is properly applied only to human effort;

since purpose implies that the end sought has not as yet been realized,

and non-realization and ultimate reality are contradictory ideas. The

power that only makes for righteousness cannot be the ultimate truth in

things. The utmost we can say is that the ultimate reality expresses

itself in the human world as the power that inspires in men moral

purpose.

To return to my personal experiences, there fell into my hands, while

still a student abroad, a book by Friedrich Albert Lange entitled

_Die Arbeiterfrage_ (The Labor Question), which proved epoch-making

in my life. Bacon says in his essay _Of Studies_: “Some books are

to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and

digested.” He might have added that there are books that make a man

over, changing the current of his existence, or at least opening

channels which previously had been blocked.[5]

_Die Arbeiterfrage_ is not a great book. In the literature of the

subject it has long since been superseded. Yet it opened for me a

wide and tragic prospect, an outlook of which I had been until then

in great measure oblivious, an outlook on all the moral as well as

economic issues involved in what is called the Labor Question. My

teacher in philosophy, Cohen, once said to me sharply, that if there

is to be anything like religion in the world hereafter, Socialism

must be the expression of it. I did not agree with his statement that

Socialism spells religion, and have not seen my way to this day toward

identifying the two. But I realized that there was a measure of truth

in what he said,—and that I must square myself with the issues that

Socialism raises. Lange helped me to do this.

He aided me in other respects as well. His _History of Materialism_

dispelled some of the fictitious glamor that still hung about the

materialistic hypothesis at that time,—though the last chapter on the

ultimate philosophy of life, in which he identifies religion with

poetry, is distinctly weak. I read his book on the Labor Question with

burning cheeks; no work of fiction ever excited me as did this little

treatise. It was ethical in spirit, if not in its ruling ideas. It

favored productive co-operation, and seemed to point a way to immediate

action, as Socialism did not.

The upshot of it was that I now possessed a second object, namely, the

laborer, to whom I could apply my non-violation ethics. I had always

felt an instinctive, idealizing reverence for women, and this had its

influence in the first practical outcome of the philosophy of life with

which I started on my career. I would go out as the minister of a new

religious evangel. Instead of preaching the individual God, I was to

stir men up to enact the Moral Law; and to enact the Moral Law meant at

that time primarily to influence the young men with whom I came into

contact to reverence womanhood, and to keep inviolate the sacred thing,

woman’s honor. And now I had a second arrow in my quiver. I was to go

out to help to arouse the conscience of the wealthy, the advantaged,

the educated classes, to a sense of their guilt in violating the human

personality of the laborer. My mother had often sent me as a child

on errands of charity, and had always impressed upon me the duty of

respecting the dignity of the poor while ministering sympathetically

to their needs. I was prepared by this youthful training to resent the

indignity offered to the personality of the laborer, as well as the

suffering endured by him in consequence of existing conditions.

Accordingly, on returning from abroad, my first action consisted in

founding among men of my own or nearly my own age a little society

which we ambitiously called a Union for the Higher Life, based on

three tacit assumptions: sex purity, the principle of devoting the

surplus of one’s income beyond that required for one’s own genuine

needs to the elevation of the working class, and thirdly, continued

intellectual development. A second practical enterprise attempted was

the establishment of a co-operative printing shop. This having failed

because of the selfishness actuating the members, the Workingman’s

School was founded, with the avowed object of creating a truly

co-operative spirit among workingmen.

I must, however, pause at this point to explain how the development

described led me to separation from the Hebrew religion, the religion

in which I was born, and to the service of which as a Jewish minister

it was expected that I should devote my life.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In view of the writer’s connection with the Ethical Culture

Societies it is fitting to state expressly that the philosophical

positions herein set forth are not to be taken as an official

pronouncement on behalf of the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical

Societies as such have no official philosophy. _See_ Book IV, Chapter 9.

[2] Though I must at once mention the first great error which

accompanied the true insight, the shadow which went alongside of the

light, namely, my understanding of the above principle mainly in a

negative sense. My ethics was largely what may be called non-violation

ethics.

[3] The relation of chastity to the birth of the idea of personality

among the Hebrews I have touched upon elsewhere. The Hebrew people

abhorred promiscuity, or the dishonoring of oneself by indiscriminate

mingling. It is instructive that this did not stand in the way of

polygamy. Those persons whom the Hebrew received, so to speak, into

the sphere of his personality, did not imperil his sense of personal

intactness. And personal intactness seems to have been the determining

motive in the severe attitude taken toward prostitution. The fact

that the worship of other gods, the worst of crimes in the eyes of

the Hebrew legislator, was described as “whoring after other gods” is

particularly significant. The sacred, sensitive self, the holy thing

whatever it might be, which the Hebrew discovered within his own sex

experience, was thereafter attributed also to others, and especially to

those who had the same aversion to promiscuity as he. Hence perhaps the

limited ascription of holiness to members of the Hebrew people.

[4] Pantheism has always seemed to me the least satisfactory of

theological or ethical solutions. The system of thought which will

be found later on in this volume may have a certain superficial

resemblance to Pantheism, but in reality is as far from it in origin

and purpose as pole from pole.

[5] There are also passages in books that have the same revolutionizing

effect (Cf. the passage quoted from St. Paul in St. Augustine’s

“Confessions”). However, it is curious to observe that the effect

brought about may be quite out of proportion to the cause. The book or

the passage may prove to be of inferior value, so far as its subject

is concerned, and may yet serve suddenly to call attention to the

subject itself, and give rise to trains of thought that eventually

go far beyond the impetus that set them in motion. “Ripeness,” says

Shakespeare, “is everything,”—ripeness to receive the impetus.

Relatedness to the state of mind of the recipient is the decisive

factor, and this accounts for the astounding changes that result.

CHAPTER II

THE HEBREW RELIGION

The separation was not violent. There was no sudden wrenching off.

There were none of those painful struggles which many others have had

to undergo when breaking away from the faith of their fathers. It was

all a gradual, smooth transition, the unfolding of a seed that had long

been planted. I have never felt the bitterness often characteristic of

the radical, nor his vengeful impulse to retaliate upon those who had

imposed the yoke of dogmas upon his soul. I had never worn the yoke. I

had never been in bondage. I had been gently guided. And consequently

the wine did not turn into vinegar, the love into hate. The truth is, I

was hardly aware of the change that had taken place until it was fairly

consummated. One day I awoke, and found that I had traveled into a new

country. The landscape was different; the faces I encountered were

different; and looking casually into a mental mirror, as it were, I

perceived that I too had become different. And I was sure also that I

had gained, not lost, that into my new spiritual home I had taken with

me, not indeed the images of my gods, like Æneas, fleeing from Troy,

but something for which those images had stood, and which in other ways

would remain for me a permanent possession.

It has been said that the science of today lives only in so far

as it supersedes the science of yesterday. Whatever may be true

of science (and the statement is certainly not true without large

qualifications—the science of Newton and Darwin has not been

“superseded”—and it may even come to pass that outreachings of a more

ancient science frustrated at the time will hereafter be taken up anew

with fairer results than formerly were attainable), in religion at

all events there is no such thing as the bare substitution of the new

for the old. The religions of the past, at least the more advanced

religions, are not simply to be cast on the scrap heap, or treated as

exploded superstitions. There is in all of them a certain fund of truth

which may not be allowed to perish, but should be rescued out of the

wreck.

On the other hand, even the most advanced religions contain a large

admixture of error, survivals of primitive taboos, mythological

elements having their root in polytheism, while the very truths which I

have just admitted to be infinitely precious require to be restated so

as to fit them into a larger synthesis.

It is not easy to define my attitude toward the Old Masters, I mean

the Old Masters in religion, the incomparably great religious teachers

of the past, who tower above us like giants. My attitude is one of

profoundest reverence—toward the Hebrew prophets and Jesus especially.

The Hebrew religion first sounded the distinctively spiritual note.

Zoroaster had emphasized the struggle of the powers of Light and

the powers of Darkness, but the conception of light in his system

remained to a considerable extent materialistic. Buddha emphasized

Enlightenment in the sense of escape from Illusion, and in conjunction

with it sympathy for all who remain under the spell of illusion.

Confucius endeavored to walk, and taught his followers to walk, with

equipoise in the Middle Path; he emphasized what he thought to be the

cosmic principle of balance or equilibrium. Plato, taking his stand on

the highest terrestrial platform, caught, or believed himself to have

caught, sight of transcendental beauty as the ultimate principle in

things. But the prophets of Israel assigned to the ethical principle

the highest rank in man’s life and in the world at large. The best

thing in man, they declared, is his moral personality; and the best

thing in the world, the supreme and controlling principle, is the moral

power that pervades it.

The predominance of the ethical principle in religion dates from the

prophets of Israel. The religious development of the human race took

a new turn in their sublime predications, and I for one am certainly

conscious of having drawn my first draught of moral inspiration from

their writings.[6]

But nevertheless I found myself compelled to separate from the religion

of Israel. Now why was it necessary for me to take this step? Why not

continue along the path first blazed by the Hebrew prophets—smoothing

it perhaps and widening it? Why not separate the dross from the

gold, the error from the truth, explicating what is implicit in that

truth, and adapting it to the needs and conditions of the modern

age? The answer is that the truth contained in the Hebrew, and as I

shall presently show, in the Christian religion, is not capable of

such adaptation. It claims finality. I have mentioned that there is

an element of permanent value in both the Hebrew and the Christian

religion, and that it should be restated and fitted into a larger

synthesis. But this is impossible unless the Hebrew or Christian

setting be broken, unless the element to be preserved is taken out of

its context, and treated freshly and with perfect freedom. A religion

like the two I am concerned with is a determinate thing. It is a closed

circle of thoughts and beliefs. It is capable of a certain degree

of change but not of indefinite change. The limits of change are

determined by its leading conceptions—the monotheistic idea in the one

case, and the centrality of the figure of Christ in the other. Abandon

these, and the boundaries by which the religion is circumscribed are

passed.

The great religious teachers are men who see the spiritual landscape

from a certain point of view, including whatever is visible from their

station, excluding whatever is not. The religion which they originate

is thus both inclusive and sharply exclusive. What they see with

their rapt eyes they describe with a trenchancy and fitness never

thereafter to be equaled.[7] But in order to progress in religion it is

necessary to advance toward a different station, to reach a different,

a higher eminence, and from that to look forth anew upon the spiritual

landscape, comprehending the outlook of one’s predecessors in a new

perspective, seeing what they saw and much besides.

Religious growth may also be compared to the growth of a tree. To

expect that development shall continue along the Hebrew or Christian

lines is like expecting that a tree will continue to develop along

one of its branches. There is a limit beyond which the extension of a

branch cannot go. Then growth must show itself in the putting forth of

a new branch.

But let me now state with somewhat greater particularity the reasons

that compelled me to depart from the faith of Israel, and to leave my

early religious home, cherishing pious memories of it, but nevertheless

firmly set in my course towards new horizons.[8]

1. The difficulty created by the claim that Israel is an elect people,

that it stands in a peculiar relation to the Deity. This claim, at

the time when it was put forth, was neither arrogant nor unfounded.

It was not arrogant because the mission was understood to be a heavy

burden not a privilege: or if a privilege at all, then the tragic

privilege of martyrdom, a martyrdom continued through generations.

And the claim was not unfounded or preposterous at the time when it

was put forth because the Hebrews were in reality the only people who

conceived of morality in terms of holiness. It was not absurd for them

to assert their mission to be the teachers of mankind in respect to

the spiritual interpretation of morality, since there was something,

and that something infinitely important, which they actually had to

teach. Moral thinking and moral practices of course had existed from

immemorial times everywhere, but the conception of morality as divine

in its source, as spiritual in its inmost essence,—this immense idea

was the offspring of the Hebrew mind. On the other hand, I asked

myself, has not the task of Israel in this respect been accomplished?

Have not its Scriptures become the common property of the civilized

nations? And does not that teacher mistake his office who attempts to

maintain his magisterial authority after his pupils have come to man’s

estate, and are capable of original contributions? The “nations” are

not to be looked upon in the light of mere pupils. The ethical message

of Israel so far as it is sane is universalistic. It is founded on

the conviction that there is a moral nature in every human being, and

that the moral nature is a spiritual nature. And if this be so, then

the utterances, the insights, the new visions with which the spiritual

nature is pregnant, cannot be supposed to be restricted to members of

the Jewish people. If the teaching function is to be maintained it

must be exercised by all who have the gift. If there is to be an elect

body (a dangerous conception, the meaning of which is to be carefully

defined), it must consist of gentiles and Jews, of men of every race

and condition in whom the spiritual nature is more awakened than in

others, peculiarly vivid, pressing towards utterance.

2. Aside from the spiritual interpretation of morality, the mission

of the Jewish people has been said to consist in holding aloft the

standard of pure monotheism as against trinitarianism. But pure

monotheism is a philosophy rather than a religion. Taken by itself it

is too pure, too empty of content to serve the purposes of a living

faith. The attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, etc., ascribed to

Deity are highly abstract, too abstruse to be even thinkable, save

indirectly, and they certainly fail to touch the heart. As a matter

of fact it was the image of the Father projected upon the background

of these abstractions, that made the object of Jewish piety. Jahweh

is the heavenly spouse; Israel is to be his faithful earthly spouse.

The Children of Israel are pre-eminently his children. Other nations

likewise are his children,—some children of wrath to be cast out

and destroyed like the rebellious son in Deuteronomy, others to be

eventually gathered into the patriarchal household. But this view comes

back to the same general conception of the relations of Israel to other

nations which has just been discussed. Moreover, the Father image, as

representing the divine life in the world, even when extended so as to

include all mankind on equal terms, is open to a serious objection.[9]

3. If, nevertheless, the Jews have a mission, is it perhaps this: to

rehabilitate the prophetic ideal of social justice? Is it not social

justice that the world is crying for today? Were not the prophets of

Israel the great preachers of righteousness in the sense of social

justice? Did they not affirm that religion consists in justice and in

its concomitant mercifulness, but above all in justice? Did not Isaiah

say: “When ye come to tread my courts, who has demanded this of you?

Go wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil that is in your hands.

Cease to do evil; learn to do good.” And later on, “That ye let the

oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke.” These are solemn,

marvelous words assuredly! They have been ringing down through the

ages, and still find their echo in our hearts. And yet the justice

idea of the prophets is inadequate to serve the purpose of social

reconstruction today. To go back to it would mean repristination, not

renovation. It is sound as far as it goes, but it does not go far

enough. It is negative, rather than positive; it is based on the idea

of non-violation. What we require today is a positive conception, and

this implies a positive definition of that holy thing in man that

is to be treated as inviolable. To the mind of the prophets justice

meant chiefly resistance to oppression, since oppression is the most

palpable exemplification of the forbidden violation. The prophets in

their outlook on the external relations of their people stood for the

weak, the oppressed, against the strong, the oppressor. They stood for

their own weak little nation, the Belgium of those days, against the

two over-mighty empires, Egypt and Assyria, that bordered it on either

side. In the internal affairs of Israel they espoused the cause of

the weak against the rich and strong: “Woe unto them that add house

to house and field to field, that grind the faces of the poor.” Ever

and ever again the same note resounds, the same intense, passionately

indignant feeling against violation in the form of oppression. But this

aspect of justice, as I have said, is the negative aspect,—inestimably

important, but insufficient. Where oppression does not occur, have the

claims of justice ceased? Is there not something even greater than

mere non-infringement, greater than mercifulness or kindness, which in

justice we owe to the personality of our fellows, namely, to aid in the

development of their personality? Righteousness, yes, by all means,—but

does the righteousness of the prophets of Israel exhaust or begin to

exhaust the content of that vast idea?

The universalistic ethical idea in the Hebrew religion is bound up with

and bound down by racial restrictions. The issue between monotheism

and trinitarianism is no longer a vital issue of our day. The Father

image as the symbol of Deity raises expectations which experience does

not confirm. The ideal of social justice as conceived by the prophets

of Israel is a valid but incomplete expression of what is implied in

social justice. These are weighty considerations that make it difficult

to retain the belief in the elect character attributed to the people of

Israel. There is one other, of very deep-reaching importance, that must

be noticed. An elect people is supposed to be an exemplary people, one

that sets a moral example which other nations are expected to copy. But

it has become more and more clear to me that the value of example in

the moral life has been overestimated and misunderstood. No individual,

for instance, can really serve as an example to others so as to be

copied by them. The circumstances are always somewhat different, the

natures are different, and the obligations, finely examined, are never

quite the same. In fact, the best that anyone can do for another by his

example is to stimulate him to express with consummate fidelity his

different nature in his own different way. I do not of course deny that

there are certain uniformities, chiefly negative, in moral conduct, but

I have come to think that the ethical quality of moral acts consists

in the points in which they differ rather than in those in which they

agree. The ideally ethical act, to my mind, is the most completely

individualized act.

And what is true of individuals is no less true of peoples. No people

can really be exemplary for other peoples, and in this sense elect.

Every people possesses a character of its own to which it is to give

expression in ways which I shall indicate in the last part of this

work. But the way rightly adopted by one nation cannot be a law or a

model for its sister nations. If the ideal of the modern Zionists were

realized, if the Jews were to return to Palestine, to speak once more

the language of the Bible, to cultivate their distinctive gifts, they

would not therefore produce a pattern which could be copied in Japan,

or among the 400 millions of China, or in the United States, or among

the Slavic or Latin peoples.

In concluding these reflections, I may not conceal from myself or

from others that the objection to the function of exemplariness, if

sustained, affects at the root both the theology and the ethics of the

past. If no individual can be in the strict sense an example to others,

neither can an individual Deity be an example to be copied by men,

neither can Christ be the perfect exemplar to be imitated. There can

be no single perfect exemplar. Virtues that bear the same name are not

therefore the same virtues. Often it is only the name that is the same,

not the substance; and where they are in a broad way the same, yet

there remains a difference of accent. The natures of men are unlike.

Their moral destiny is to work out the unlikeness of each in harmony

with that of the others. The moral equivalence of men, rather than

their moral equality, is for me the expression of the fundamental moral

relation.[10]

At the early stage of my career to which I am still adverting it was

urgently put to me that with all the changes that had taken place in

my inner life, I need not separate myself from the religion of the

Fathers, nay, that I might remain a servant and teacher of religion

within the Jewish fold, gradually weaning away from the beliefs which

they held those whom I might contrive to influence, and drawing them

up—such was the phrase used—to my own “higher level.” But this advice

was repelled by every inmost fibre of my being, and could not but be

utterly rejected. I was to publicly represent a certain belief with

the purpose of undermining it. I was to trade upon the simplicity of

my hearers in order to rob them of what they, crudely and mistakenly

perhaps, considered their most sacred truth, by feigning provisionally,

until I could alter their views, to be in agreement with them. Would

this be fair to them or to myself? Was I to act a lie in order to teach

the truth? There was especially one passage in the Sabbath service

which brought me to the point of resolution: I mean the words spoken

by the officiating minister as he holds up the Pentateuch scroll, “And

this is the Law which Moses set before the people of Israel.” I had

lately returned from abroad where I had had a fairly thorough course in

Biblical exegesis, and had become convinced that the Mosaic religion is

so to speak a religious mosaic, and that there is hardly a single stone

in it which can with certainty be traced to the authorship of Moses.

Was I to repeat these words? It was impossible. I was certain that they

would stick in my throat. On these grounds the separation was decided

on by me, and became irremediable.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] I still go back to that fountain-head for refreshment and

inspiration, much as a modern poet may go back to Homer, without

attempting to copy him, or as a modern sculptor or architect may go

back to the Greek artists without relinquishing his right and his duty

to help in producing a different kind of art, which perchance may one

day culminate in masterpieces like theirs, though his own performance

be but the poor beginning.

[7] Compare the ejaculatory deliverance of Isaiah, the Sermon on the

Mount, and the Parables of Jesus. Who can attempt in language to

express what they saw as they did?

[8] No seriously religious person will attempt to strike out into a

new path unless he be under inward coercion to do so. The advantages

of what is commonly called historic continuity (I have just shown

wherein real continuity consists, that of growth along the trunk, and

not of growth along the branch) are great. There is for one thing

the support derived from leaning on an ancient tradition, the proud

humility felt in passing on the torch that had been held by mighty

predecessors, the self-dedication to that which is larger than self,

_i.e._, to an institution and ideas that existed in the world before

one was born, and will exist after one is gone. There is the strength

drawn from contact with a large and powerful organization, powerful

both in sustaining one’s efforts, and in restraining and correcting

them when need be. There are, on the other side, the perils of

innovation, the errors into which one is led for lack of restraint and

correction, the too great dependence on self, the spiritual loneliness

and the lack of many gracious and useful aids to the religious life

such as a noble ritual, majestic music, the fit emotional expressions

of religious feeling, which are not to be had for the asking, the

fine embellishments that are precious in their way, and that, like

the fruits in the Gardens of the Gods, ripen slowly, and may not be

extemporized or anticipated.

[9] See Chapter IX on the Religious Society in Part IV of this volume.

It gives rise to the belief that men as individuals or collectively

are the objects of a special Providence, and that the universe is

so arranged as to be adapted to man’s needs, not to say his wishes;

whereas the facts show that man must adapt himself to the universe,

and find his physical safety and his ethical salvation in so doing.

The belief in the Father who allows not one hair of our heads to fall

unnoticed raises expectations to which actual experience fails to

correspond.

As to the issue between monotheism and trinitarianism, it has long

since become obsolescent, if not obsolete. The forward-looking men and

women of our time are absorbed in far other issues—Is the mechanical

theory propounded by science the ultimate account of things? Is the

world in which we live a blind machine? Is man a chance product of

nature, like the beasts that perish? Not is God one in unity or is He

a Triune God, but, is there a God at all? Is there a supersensible

reality? Is religion capable of a new lease of life, and of giving a

new lease of life to us who now are spiritually dead?

[10] Of many ethical types of behavior no examples whatever as yet

exist, for instance, of the ethically-minded employer or merchant,

ethically-minded in thought and in practice. The standard of ethical

behavior which we apply is at present higher and more exacting. The

standard itself indeed is in process of being defined, and there are

no illustrations of it, or none but very imperfect ones, on which to

dwell with satisfaction. But the same is true of other vocations. We

are very thankful for any examples that can be found. They seem to

prove that that which ought to be can be. But we may not lean on them

too hard. They are never quite adequate, even in their limited sphere;

and there is ever an Ought-to-be beyond that which has been even

partially realized, beyond that which has even as yet been conceived.

To make too much of example is to check moral progress. Along with a

due appreciation of past moral achievements, there should be encouraged

a spirit of brave adventure, a certain intrepidity of soul to venture

forth on voyages of discovery into unknown ethical regions, taking the

risks but bent upon the prize.

CHAPTER III

EMERSON

I find on looking backward that my development proceeded with the help

of a series of definitions fixing my attitude toward teachers who made

a special appeal to me, and toward great historic tendencies past and

present. I was helped both by what I was able to appreciate in them,

and, where I diverged, by what they forced me to think out for myself.

Here let me acknowledge a passing debt to Emerson. As in the case

of Kant, a strong attraction drew me toward Emerson with temporary

disregard of radical differences,—although the spell was never so

potent or so persistent in the latter instance as in the former. I made

Emerson’s acquaintance in 1875. I came into touch with the Emerson

circle and read and re-read the _Essays_. The value of Emerson’s

teaching to me at that time consisted in the exalted view he takes

of the self. Divinity as an object of extraneous worship for me had

vanished. Emerson taught that immediate experience of the divine power

in self may take the place of worship. His doctrine of self-reliance

also was bracing to a youth just setting out to challenge prevailing

opinions and to urge plans of transformation upon the community in

which he worked. But I soon discovered that Emerson overstresses

self-affirmation at the expense of service. For a time indeed I

reconciled in my own fashion the two contrary tendencies. The divine

power, I argued, flows through me as a channel—hence the grandeur

which attaches to my spiritual nature. But the divine power manifests

itself in redressing the wrongs that exist in the world, and in putting

an end to such violations of personality as the sexual and economic

exploitations which disgrace human society. So for a time I continued

to walk on air with Emerson, and had my head in the clouds,—the clouds

in which Emerson enveloped me.

Out of this false sense of security, this quasi-pantheistic

self-affirmation, the experiences of the next few years effectually

roused me. I came to see that Emerson’s pantheism in effect spoils his

ethics. Be thyself, he says, not a counterfeit or imitation of someone

else. Be different. But why! Because the One manifests itself in

endless variety. Penetrating below the surface, however, one finds that

in this kind of philosophy the value of difference, to which I attach

essential importance on ethical grounds, is nothing more than that of

a foil. According to Emerson life is a universal masquerade, and the

interest of the whole business of living consists in the ever-renewed

discovery that the face behind the different masks is still the same.

Difference is not cherished on its own account. And here, as in the

case of the uniformity principle of Hebraism, I found myself dissenting.

Emerson is a kind of eagle, circling high up in the ether—_non soli

cedit_.

Emerson with his oracular sayings might have served as a priest at

Dodona or led the mysteries at Eleusis. Yet, withal, he is genuinely

American,—a rare blend of ancient mystic and modern Yankee,—a valued

poet too, but as an ethical guide to be accepted only with large

reservations.

CHAPTER IV

THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS

At about this time I began to occupy myself more seriously than I

had done before, with the study of the New Testament. I had, I think

a great advantage in my approach to it, for the very reason that I

had not been brought up in the Christian tradition. I came from the

outside, with a mind fresh to receive first-hand impressions. I had

not had instilled into me from childhood the kind of hesitant awe

that prevents impartial appraisement of excellences and of possible

deficiencies. On the other hand, as a searcher I was deeply interested

to ascertain what Christianity could give me, and to what extent it

could further my spiritual development. I had not the enforcedly

apologetic attitude; I did not come prepared to accept without question

nor yet to find fault; I came to test for my own use. Here am I, with

life and its problem before me—how can the teachings of Jesus help me

in my search, in my dire perplexities?

I must say to begin with that I was particularly struck with the

originality of Jesus’ teachings, a quality in them which to my

amazement I had found disputed, not only by Jews, but by representative

Christians. In Jewish circles it is not uncommon to speak almost

condescendingly of Christianity as of a daughter religion commissioned

to spread abroad the truths of Judaism, with such alloy as may be

needed to suit them to the apprehension of the gentiles. But Christian

teachers likewise—I remember particularly a recent sermon to that

effect—have taken the ground that Jesus added nothing new to the

ethical insight of mankind. His work, it is said, consisted merely in

supplying a sufficient motive for performing the duties which everyone

knows, but which, lacking this motive, we are supposedly impotent to

practice. This strange misapprehension of the intimate nature of Jesus’

contribution to ethical progress is largely due, I take it, to the

poverty of our moral vocabulary. Language puts at our disposal only

a few terms, such as Justice, Righteousness, Love,—which must needs

stand for a great variety of moral ideas. Thus Justice in Plato’s use

of the word, implies that “a shoemaker shall stick to his last,” that

those who perform the humble functions shall be content to perform

them in due subservience to their superiors. A very different meaning

was attached to justice by the Hebrew prophets as I have explained

in the last chapter. Again, a quite different conception of justice

is framed and stressed by modern social reformers. Now it is this

ambiguity of the moral vocabulary that conceals the novelty of Jesus’

precepts. Thus, to mention only a single capital instance, it has been

asserted that the Golden Rule as taught by Jesus is not original, but

substantially the same rule that had been laid down by Confucius 500

years before the time of Jesus. But on closer scrutiny it will be seen

that the two Golden Rules are by no means the same. As propounded

by the Chinese sage the rule appears to mean: Keep the balance true

between thyself and thy neighbor; illustrate in thy conduct the

principle of equilibrium. As impressed upon his disciples by Jesus it

means: Look upon thy neighbor as thy other self; act towards him as if

thou wert he.

To return to my point, the impression of novelty which I received

in reading the Gospels was definite and striking. The mythological

idealization of Jesus, indeed, I put aside as a thing that did not

concern me. On the other hand, to say with certain modern liberals

that he was just a man, an infinitely gracious personality, one who

exemplified in his life the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice,

did not satisfy me either. Buddha too had taught forgiveness: “For

hatred is not conquered by hatred at any time; hatred is conquered by

love.” It could not then be the bare precept of forgiveness that lets

light on the secret of Jesus. And self-sacrifice—“Greater love hath no

man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friend”—had

been practiced within and without the pale of Hebraism.

That he continued the work of his Hebrew predecessors I made no doubt.

On the Hebrew side he was a prophet, or rather, a saint in Israel. But

I had just as little doubt that he took a step beyond his predecessors,

that his teachings bear upon them the signature of originality.

To put my thought briefly, I came to conclude that the ethical

originality of Jesus consists in a new way of dealing with the problem

of evil, that is, of evil in the guise of oppression. The prophets, his

predecessors, as we have seen, identified injustice with oppression;

and in the first flush of their moral enthusiasm the more optimistic

among them believed that justice as they conceived of it would

presently triumph and that oppression would cease altogether—“Arise,

shine, for thy light is come.” God would miraculously interfere, and

bring about on earth a state of righteousness. But years and centuries

passed by, and oppression, far from ceasing, became under the ruthless

administration of Rome ever more grinding and terrible. The yoke of

Rome weighed upon the Jews as it did upon other peoples; but perhaps,

because they were more independent in spirit, it galled them more

sorely. The fiery zealots among the Jews persisted in hoping that

by supreme desperate efforts, God coming to their aid, they might

yet succeed in shaking off this yoke—efforts which culminated in the

horrors of the last siege of Jerusalem. Jesus was not of their way of

thinking. He seems indeed to have believed that the end of the existing

order was near. It was too incredibly bad to last. The world would

be consumed by fire. A new earth and a new heaven would appear. But

in the meantime how accommodate oneself to the intolerable fact of

oppression? Jesus said, Resist not evil in the guise of oppression, it

is irresistible. He mentions in particular three forms of intolerable

oppression: a blow in the face, the stripping of a man of his garment,

and the coercing him to do the arbitrary bidding of another. He says,

Resist not evil, resist not oppression. Shall then evil triumph? Is the

victim helplessly at the mercy of the injurer? Shall he even be told

that in a servile spirit he must accept the indignities that are put

upon him? No; this is not the meaning. Quite a different meaning is

implied. And here the teaching of Jesus takes its novel turn. There is

a way, he says to the victim, in which you can spiritually triumph over

the evildoer, and make your peace with irresistible oppression. Use

it as a means of self-purification; pause to consider what the inner

motives are that lead your enemy, and others like him, to do such acts

as they are guilty of, and to so violate your personality and that

of others. The motives _in them_ are lust, greed, anger, wilfulness,

pride. Now turn your gaze inward upon yourself, look into your own

heart and learn, perhaps to your amazement, that the same evil streams

trickle through you; that you, too, are subject, even if it be only

subconsciously and incipiently, to the same appetites, passions, and

pride, that animate your injurers. Therefore let the sufferings you

endure at the hands of those who allow these bad impulses free rein in

their treatment of you lead you to expel the same bad impulses that

stir potentially in your breast; let this experience fill you with a

deeper horror of the evil, and prove the incentive to secure your own

emancipation from its control. In this way you will achieve a real

triumph over your enemy, and will be able to make your peace with

oppression. There are other intolerable evils in the world besides

oppression which nevertheless must be tolerated. The method of Jesus

can be applied to these also. This method I regard as a permanent

contribution to the ethical progress of humanity.

A second original trait in Jesus’ teaching I found in his conception

of the spiritual nature, and of his doctrine of love as dependent on

that conception. The conception or definition is still negative as

in the non-violation ethics of the Hebrew prophets. The spiritual

element in man is hidden. It cannot be apprehended as to what it

is substantively. The attributes ascribed to it are the effects in

which it manifests itself; this goes without saying. To define the

spiritual nature means to describe these effects, these manifestations.

According to the Hebrew predecessors of Jesus the spiritual power is

to be conceived of as that which prompts a man to respect the holy

precinct of personality in others and in himself. What the holy thing

is remains unknown. This view leads to acts of justice and mercy, as

above explained. According to Jesus the spiritual essence in man bids

him expel the inner, impure impulses that lead to external violations.

In brief, the spiritual power is conceived of in terms of purity. It

is the pure thing in man that thrusts out as alien to itself whatever

is impure—whatever is of the world, the flesh, and, in mythological

language, whatever is Satanic. In this sense I say that the definition

is negative. It marks out, indeed, a definite line of conduct; and it

even leads, as we shall presently see, to active efforts in a specific

direction. A negative principle may have certain positive results.

But in the main, nevertheless, the teaching of Jesus enlightens us as

to what shall not be rather than as to what shall be. From the Hebrew

prophets we learn that there shall not be violation of personality or

injustice, the positive concomitant being mercy; from Jesus’ teachings

we learn that there shall not be impurity in the inner forum, the

positive by-product being the doctrine of love.

Taking over the Hebrew heritage, Jesus affirmed that the spiritual

nature exists in all human beings. In every man there is presumed to

be this inner power to reject the unclean admixtures, to ward off and

repel the carnal solicitations, to withdraw from the “world,” and to

move upward toward the source of purity, which is God. The spirituality

of man consisting of purity, the Father-God, the Father of Lights,

is likewise conceived as the absolutely pure, in this sense as the

most holy. In every man there is a ray of the eternal light emanating

from the eternal luminary, and all men are one in so far as their

rays converge at the focus of Godhead. To love men is to be conscious

of one’s unity with them in the central life, and to give effect to

this consciousness. Hence Christian love, the love that Jesus taught,

is no earthly love, no mere sentiment, or outreaching of the human

affections. On the contrary, the natural human ties are repeatedly set

aside in the _logia_. To love another is to love him in God. Later the

current phrase became, to love him in Christ; that is, to think of him,

and act towards him, as if he possessed the same capacity for purity

with oneself.

The love of others in God or Christ encouraged a particular kind of

earthly beneficence, and it especially inspired the followers of

Jesus with an unparalleled zeal in works of remedial (though never of

preventive) charity. This may at first sight seem paradoxical. The

young man is advised to dispossess himself of all he has, and in the

same breath is told to distribute his possessions among the poor.

Why not rather scatter them to the winds? Why should not the poor too

cease to toil and spin and take heed for the morrow? For their simple

necessities God would provide. The two-fold attitude, however, is easy

to understand if we remember that certain acts of helpfulness have a

symbolic significance, as attesting the value we set upon the person to

whose needs we minister, much as a flower offered to a beloved person

emblematically intimates our sense of the beauty and worth of the one

to whom the tribute is offered. Christian charity, on its earthly

side, has a similar meaning and purpose. It is intended to efface the

indignity to which human beings are subjected when reduced to extreme

indigence or allowed to suffer without relief, for it is the disdain

of the spiritual personality thus evinced which Jesus disallows. He

bids his followers intimate by earthly tokens their consciousness of

the super-earthly worth of their fellow-beings. But the pursuit of

riches as such he nowhere encourages—quite the contrary. And it is

certainly a mistake to represent Jesus, as has recently been done, as

a kind of precursor of modern Socialism, and to think of him as one

who, if he had lived in our time, would have laid stress on equality

of opportunity for all to gain earthly possessions. He who advocated

wealth for none could not be supposed to have sympathized with a social

movement whose first object it is to secure wealth for all.

It is this interpretation of love that helped me to understand the

interior meaning of the doctrine of the forgiveness of enemies

as taught by Jesus, and to perceive wherein it differs from the

apparently identical mode of behavior enjoined by Buddha and the Stoic

Seneca. It plays a capital rôle in Jesus’ teaching. As illustrated

by the proto-martyr Stephen it probably effected the conversion of

Paul. Jesus says: “Bless them that curse you.” But how is it possible

to bless those that curse us? How, for instance, was it possible for

Stephen to bless the men of blood at the very moment when they were

crushing him under stones? To bless them that curse you, to bless them

that despitefully use you, means to distinguish between the spiritual

possibilities latent in them and their overt conduct, to see the human,

the potentially divine face behind the horrible mask, and to invoke the

influence of the divine power upon them in order that it may change

them into their purer, better selves.

With complete and eager appreciation of the points of excellence

contained in these teachings, with a reverence which it is impossible

to express in words for their incomparable Author, and with a large

sense of the beneficent influence which they have exercised on human

history, I still could not avoid the question, so vital for me, Have

these ethical teachings of the great Master the stamp of finality upon

them? Has Jesus really spoken the last word in ethics? Is nothing left

for us but further to expand and apply the truth which he laid down

once and for all? When theology goes, the last stand of apologetic

writers is apt to be made on the ethics. The instinct to claim finality

for the religion in which one has been brought up asserts itself in the

claim that the moral teachings at least are unexceptionable and valid

for all time to come. The searcher who is in great moral perplexities

and who seeks help for others and himself, is bound to ask and will ask

in no captious spirit, is this so?

The decisive point is whether the ethical teachings of Jesus supply

a principle which enables us to work with zest in the world, to take

the keenest interest in all the manifold activities of human society,

to embrace the world with the view of penetrating it with a spiritual

purpose and of thus transforming it. Do these teachings exhibit a

way of making the world and the flesh instrumental to the spirit, or

do they serve to turn us away from the world and its interests, to

abandon the world in despair? Is the conception of spirituality as

purity adequate? Purity is certainly one aspect of morality; is it

the sole or the principal factor in it? The other-worldly attitude

in the Gospels is certainly clearly marked. It is the background on

which the ethical precepts stand forth. Tyrrel has argued as against

Harnack for the close connection between the thought of Jesus and the

apocalyptic vision. I asked myself, Can the apocalyptic vision, that

is to say the other-worldliness, be dissociated from the ethics, or

is the relation between them necessary?[11] If the world is speedily,

almost immediately, coming to an end, then it is justifiable to prefer

celibacy to marriage, to ignore the state, to counsel disregard of the

toiling and the spinning. All of this is warranted on the assumption

that the order of things in which these institutions and activities

have their place is about to disappear.

But if this expectation is deceived, if things continue in their

ancient course, if the world and the flesh persist, taking on ever new

and more baffling shapes, how is a system of ethics which is based on

the assumption of one state of things to be reconciled with a state

of things exactly the opposite? How shall an ethical person conduct

himself in a world which his philosophy of life teaches him to reject,

but with which the necessities of his existence compel him to come to

terms day by day and hour by hour? There must then be compromise. And

the history of Christianity up to the present moment is the record of

such compromises. Monasticism was one of the earliest. A distinction

was made, so to speak, between perfect and imperfect Christians,

between a class of men and women who lived in ascetic seclusion, as if

the world did not exist, and another class, the greater number, who

managed ethically as best they could, dependent on the supererogatory

merits of the real Christians or saints to eke out their unholiness.

Another species of compromise is illustrated, especially in Protestant

countries. It appears as a division between the contracted sphere

of holiness and the circumambient sphere of the practical life, in

both of which, however, the same individual has his place. Chastity,

forgiveness of personal enemies, and the like virtues are to be

practiced in the contracted sphere of private life, the ability to

practice these virtues being derived from mystical identification

with Jesus. In the Christian’s public life no such identification is

possible, and he is left to be consciously or unconsciously unholy. As

a politician, as a competitor in the struggle for wealth, he remains

without ethical direction. The ethical ideal of the Gospels requires

for its setting the apocalyptic vision. It derives its cogency from the

belief that the world is about to perish. Can it serve as a sufficient

guide to those who must live in the world, and affirm their ethical

personality in dealing with it? In politics, in business, in science,

in art, must we not somehow see our way to the conception that these

great interests are not alien to the spiritual nature, introducing

perchance impure admixtures into it, but rather can be made subservient

or instrumental to it? Yes; but instrumental in what way? At this

point, not only the Christian system, but every one of the systems of

ethics that have arisen since then has failed. And it is, moreover,

perfectly evident that the instrumental function of the sex relation

or of the pursuit of knowledge or of patriotism cannot be determined

unless we first answer the one question which the ethical writers are

in the habit of evading—Instrumental to what end? What is the ethical

end? Instruments are means to ends—how can the means be rightly

appraised without a definite conception of the end? And if the end be

the affirmation of our ethical personality, of our spiritual nature, of

that holy thing in us without which man loses his worth (and without

which the rule of non-violation itself falls to the ground, since where

there is nothing inviolable there can be no infringement), it is plain

that we must seek a positive definition of the spiritual nature which

shall serve as a principle of regulation where the empty concept of

purity has manifestly failed.

Christian ethics has promoted the moral development of mankind in a

thousand ways. It has helped even by its mythological embodiment of a

transcendental idea to place the individual more firmly on his feet. It

has emphasized the inner springs of conduct; it has given prominence to

certain principal virtues of the private life; but, like every product

of the mind and aspirations of man, it exhibits the limitations of the

time and of the social conditions under which it arose. The conditions

have since changed. Society has become infinitely more complex, and

in consequence new moral problems have forced themselves upon men’s

attention; and with the help of Christianity itself the human race has

advanced beyond the point of view for which Christianity stands.[12]

Speaking again only for myself I could not assent to the position

that finality appertains to the ethical teachings of the Gospel, that

they or their Author have spoken the last word in ethics. I could not

persuade myself that this is so because I failed to get from these

teachings, inestimably precious as they are, an answer to the question

that most pressed upon me—Instrumental in what sense, instrumental to

what end?

FOOTNOTES:

[11] I am aware that a highly esteemed school of modern theologians

maintain that the apocalyptic element is a secondary and even an

embarrassing feature for Jesus. But I am unable to convince myself of

the justice of this view.

[12] See the similes used in the previous chapter on the growth of the

tree as manifested in the putting forth of a new branch, and the ascent

of an eminence which includes the part of the spiritual landscape

previously seen, but also that part which from the previous station was

excluded.

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL REFORM

My position at that time may be summarized as follows: There is a

divine power in the world, not individual, manifest in the moral law

as revealed in human experience. The moral law involves recognition

of the presence of a something holy in each human being. Since the

world presents innumerable examples of the grossest violation of human

personality (e.g., prostitution and exploitation of laborers), the

business immediately in hand is to make an end of these violations.

There was as yet in my mind no positive definition of personality.

Clarification and further development were promoted by the necessity of

grappling with the problems of poverty and with the attempted solutions

of the Socialists and of other social reformers. At this period, the

notion of personality in my mind being still without determinate

content, empirical matter intruded, and a species of millennialism for

a time vitiated my thinking. In order to set up a goal for humanity, I

dallied with Utopias, and flattered my imagination with the vision of

something like a state of ultimate earthly felicity. The cheap cry of

“Let us have heaven on earth” was also on my lips, though the delusion

did not last long and perhaps never penetrated very deeply.

The problem of poverty, as mentioned above, engrossed me early. I

acted as chairman of the meeting at which Henry George was first

introduced to the public in New York City. But Henry George’s

remedy,—a single draught of Socialism with unstinted individualism

thereafter—never attracted me, while his descriptions of the misery

of the poor, eloquent as they were, and fitted to awaken persons

unacquainted with actual conditions, conveyed to me no novel message. I

had before then been profoundly stirred by the chapters in Karl Marx’s

_Kapital_ in which he collects from the English Blue Books frightful

evidence of the mistreatment of laborers and especially of children in

the early part of the nineteenth century. My errands in the tenement

slums of New York had also made me fairly familiar with the bitter

facts, and throughout my life I have been in touch in a practical way

with the appalling complexus of misery and wrong which we abstractly

designate as the Labor Question. I shall not here take time to discuss

Socialism or other social reform movements in detail. My intention is

to sketch a certain philosophy of life, and to trace the steps by which

I reached it. My reaction against Socialism and related movements,

however, was a prime factor in this inner development; and it is of

this reaction and the causes of it that I must speak.

The evils inherent in poverty are, in the first place, obviously, the

privations entailed by it; secondly, the fact that the greater part

of the life of the poor is consumed in efforts to provide the bare

necessaries, the mind being thus kept in bondage to bodily needs and

prevented from rising to other interests more appropriate to rational

beings; thirdly, the fact that the first two wrongs are caused,

not wholly it is true, but yet in a large measure, by fellow human

beings.[13] The sting in poverty is not so much the hardships suffered,

as the contempt for the manhood of the poor, exhibited by their

exploiters,—the inequity being thus turned into iniquity.

Now my reaction against Socialism was and is that it neglects the

third, the moral evil, and stresses only the first and second. I

am now speaking of Marxian Socialism, with which in its rigid form

I early acquainted myself. The Marxian Socialist does not deny the

pain felt in consequence of the inequity, nor the desire of those who

suffer to become the equals of their masters; but he regards this

desire as a fact of nature explicable on deterministic grounds, a

consequence of improvement in the technique or tools of industry. He

does not deny that there are so-called moral ideas, but he considers

them epiphenomena or by-products of economic development. The tendency

toward equilibrium of power in human society, termed democracy, is to

him just a fact and nothing more. The mere desire for it apart from

the rightness of the desire is the efficient cause which leads to

social readjustments. But evidently this account of the matter will

be persuasive only in case the efficient cause proves to be really

efficient, that is to say, in case the desire for equilibration is

on the point of effectuating itself. If it is not, if the desire

of the masses for power is thwarted, if the realization of their

hopes is indefinitely postponed, then the foundations of the theory

are undermined. Hence Marxian Socialism has been coupled with and

depends on a belief which is a kind of materialistic parallel of the

apocalyptic vision of Jesus,—the belief that the end of the present

world (the world of the wage system) is close at hand, only with

the difference that the end is to be brought about not by divine

interference but automatically by the acquisition of power on the part

of the masses.

To me neither hunger nor the bondage of the mind to physical

necessities nor the bare fact of inequity seem sufficient to justify

the demand for social reconstruction, apart from moral right. If there

be no such thing as morality, or if morality be but an epiphenomenon of

economic conditions, what warrant have the hungry or the disadvantaged

for complaining? Animals, too, hunger and sicken. If man be like them

a mere chance product of nature, why should he not share their fate?

Let the weak succumb! Surely the bald fact that the democratic masses

today chafe under the yoke of their masters and demand a better state

of things, is no more a ground of obligation for the former than the

tendency toward an ultimate equilibrium in nature of which scientists

speak can be a ground of obligation. The tendency will effectuate

itself or not as the acting forces determine. There is in truth no such

thing as obligation from this point of view. Then why not fold our arms

and wait for what will happen? The notion of democracy currently held

is obnoxious to the same criticism. Leave out the moral basis in the

claim to equity, and nothing remains but the brute fact that men, being

egotists, fret under the exercise of superior power by their fellow

egotists. But let Nietzsche or some one else demonstrate that certain

higher values, higher merely because subjectively relished as higher,

are incompatible with equilibrium of power, and he will be justified

at least in his own eyes in scoffing at equality and scourging the

democratic dogs back to their kennels. No one denies that the masses

have the desire to be treated as the equals of their masters (very

inconveniently for the latter), but it is quite another matter whether

their desire ought to be gratified. Social reconstruction, in other

words, must be motivated by other considerations than those by which

according to Marx the great change is to come about.

I have not stopped to consider whether the Socialistic scheme is

workable, whether the run of mankind are capable of coöperative effort

on a large scale without the preëminent leadership of master minds;

whether Socialism, if carried out, would really breed, as it is

expected to, the sentiment of ideal brotherhood; whether the sentiment

of brotherhood itself, unless it be rooted in the closer family and

national ties, is morally sound, whether the emotional forces that

sweep through and overwhelm large aggregations of men, can be bridled

and sufficiently enlightened to promote the ends of Socialism. All such

questions as these touch the feasibility of the ideal proposed; my own

reaction was and is against the ideal _itself_. Instead of pronouncing

as some do that mankind are not yet ripe to carry out so high an

ideal, I found myself seriously challenging and finally rejecting the

very ideal on the ground that it is not a genuine moral ideal at all.

It is ethically spurious, because it omits the notion of right and

substitutes for it that of power.

A different objection lies against certain modifications of Socialism

and against many of the social reform movements of our time. In

these movements the idea of personality is not absent as in Marx’s

theory. The inherent dignity of every human being is deeply felt, and

_per contra_ the indignity of the present condition of the greater

number. Man is worth while; and for the sake of the worth in him, the

unfavorable circumstances which stifle the promise of his nature are

to be changed. My objection in this case is that the higher spiritual

nature of man, or the notion of personality, is left indefinite and

remains vaguely in the background. It supplies indeed the initial

motive for practical efforts; but the instrumental relation of the

goods of life to the supreme good is not apprehended positively. And

thus the door is left open, as we shall presently see, for corrupting

influences to enter in.

There seems, it is true, at first sight, considerable warrant for

demanding certain instant reforms without troubling about ulterior

spiritual ends. We are confronted in modern society with evils which

seem to require immediate abolition. Exploitation is palpably one of

them. It is the clearest possible case of trespass on personality. Why

not then demand respect simply for personality in general, without

inquiring into the nature of personality? Is it not beyond all

question dishonoring to human nature that some should be on the verge

of starvation while others are even themselves injured by excessive

possessions; that the energies of children should be exhausted by

premature toil; that adults should be worked like beasts of burden?

Why not leave in abeyance the definition of the supreme end, and

concentrate effort on the removal of these incontestable evils?

My answer to this is, in the first place, that we cannot gain the

best leverage even for these initial reforms without a high and

defined conception of man as a spiritual being. Efforts directed

toward improving even material conditions are apt to be fluctuating,

spasmodic, and are ever in danger of dying down, unless material

improvement is seen in its relation towards something else that

commands the highest respect—implicit respect. Sympathy alone is

altogether inadequate. It often works grave harm; it is notoriously

intermittent, at one time broadly expansive and then again contracting

upon the nearest objects. Furthermore, we can at best sympathize

genuinely with only a very limited number of persons. If anyone were

to open his heart to the sufferings of all the millions of human

beings at present engaged in conflict on the battlefields of Europe;

if he were to try to realize the indirect consequences of this war; if

he were to take a still wider sweep and embrace in his imagination

the populations of India, China, and the races of Africa, the effect

upon him would be simply paralyzing. The possible effect of one’s

sympathetic action upon this huge volume of human suffering would

appear so insignificant as to make exertion on his part seem quite

irrational. We are assisted by sympathy in the matter of social reform

by the narrowness of our horizons; and even within these narrow

boundaries the efficiency of the motive depends largely upon the

transciency of the sympathetic mood. Sympathy as a permanent attitude

would disintegrate the self.[14]

The second answer is that by ignoring the ultimate end we _install

proximate ends in its place_. The reform movements of our day abstain

from attempting to set up an ultimate good. They are content, as they

say, “to evaluate the tangible goods ready at hand.” In consequence

these tangible goods inevitably usurp the place of the supreme good.

Begin as we may with the high notion of personality, we become

materialists before we have proceeded very far, and we infect the

laboring masses with our materialism if we omit to define the relation

of proximate ends to the ultimate aim. For remember that the ultimate

end is that which prescribes the limits within which the nearer aims

are to be sanctioned,—the limit for each being the degree in which it

conduces toward the highest end. Without a goal set up, without an

explicit conception of its regulative function, the proximate ends

abound, and are likely to expand _ad indefinitum_. This is evident,

for instance, in the case of wealth-getting. The poor have not enough

wealth, the rich have too much. “Let us then redress the balance by

at least securing enough for the poor. The necessary limitations

we can discuss after they shall have at least reached the limit of

sufficiency.” But we are thus kindling the desire for wealth; and this

desire and its possible gratifications are boundless. It is in the

nature of desire to be prolific of new desire, and to aim unceasingly

at new satisfactions. First, a decent dwelling, sufficient food,

education for the children, are wanted, then luxury, then millions,

then multi-millions. Secondary motives take the place of primary ones.

Wealth becomes a token; the satisfactions it gives are no longer

related to actual wants or needs, but solely to a fantastic desire for

preëminence. Has not this been the actual history of many of those

who have risen from poverty to great riches? But the same desires are

present, though suppressed, unsatisfied, in the masses, who look up to

the few with admiration or envy. And suppressed desires are often even

more insidiously poisoning, more contaminating in their effects than

satisfied desires.

The psychological fact is that human volition as expressed in action

is always determined by some end. A means is never adopted without

there being some object or purpose in view. Leave out the ultimate aim

and the means become themselves the ends. A decent subsistence should

be treated as related to the ultimate end,— a decent living, for

example, as a means to fit the worker for the duties of fatherhood and

citizenship.

It may again be urged that what has been said is true only of the

ambitious minority, and that the masses would be quite content with a

decent subsistence if only that much could be assured them. But the

prevalence of cheap imitations of luxury among the poor points in the

opposite direction. At least in a democratic community, the ambitions

of the few are apt to be contagious. And where this is not the case, as

in some of the older countries of Europe, a certain sordid Philistinism

is apt to manifest itself. The life of the middle class in Europe is

without the restless brilliance that characterizes the upward-striving

class in America,—is not daringly but meanly materialistic. Redeeming

features are, of course, not wanting, yet how anyone can conceive the

social ideal as a state of things in which the laboring people shall

be raised to the level at present occupied by the “middle class” is

difficult for me to understand. Nor is it a sufficient rejoinder to

say that the present complexion of the middle class, its narrowness

and Philistinism, are due to isolation from the social classes

beneath them, and that the broad sentiment of universal fellowship

and fraternity, when it shall have come to prevail, will purify the

atmosphere on the middle level. I have sufficiently indicated my doubts

as to the efficiency and soundness of what is called fraternalism.

In brief, if we are to preserve a man’s respect for himself as a moral

being, we must find a ground on which he can maintain his self-esteem

apart from the material conditions in which he is placed, and in

the interval before the desirable material changes can possibly be

accomplished. This interval is certain to be long. The betterment of

social conditions is sure to be gradual. The slum ought to be abolished

immediately, but until it goes we must find a reason to respect the man

in the slums even now, and a reason why he should respect himself even

now. This reason can only be derived from the spiritual nature of man,

from the spiritual end for which he exists; and on this account, above

all others, it is indispensable that the spiritual end be defined. How

painfully social reformers may be led into error by slighting this

consideration is seen in the readiness with which some have subscribed

to the amazing opinion that the issue between chastity and dishonor for

the working-girl depends ultimately on the amount of her wages.

There are two fallacies that affect the social reform movements of

today. The substitution of power for right is one. What I venture to

call the fallacy of provisionalism is the second. This is the fallacy

of the opportunist movements. “Lead the laboring classes provisionally

up to the level of sufficiency, or of decent existence, and then we

shall see.” But man does not act without ends, and unless we define the

ultimate end, we give license to the proximate ends. In other words, we

simply cannot act provisionally. We cannot ignore our spiritual nature

without offending against it. We may start with the idea of serving it,

but without explicit definition of it we shall presently find ourselves

disgraced in all sorts of idolatries.

What I am trying to show is how I came to perceive the inadequacy

of the non-violation ethics. Its formula is: “Admit the existence of

personality; do not infringe upon it. In your actions for the good of

others, try to abolish the manifest infringements or violations. Since

there must be some positive content to the idea of good, accept the

material or empirical goods as the provisional content with the general

understanding that they are to be instrumental to the higher life but

without troubling to define exactly how.”

The aberrations to which this view leads on the side of action toward

others I have pointed out. A word now as to the injurious effect on

self. Of these the following are the most important:

1. The leader in social reform is apt to be regarded by his followers

and to think of himself as a kind of savior. It is his sincere

intention to save society from some of the glaring evils with which it

is afflicted. But if salvation is sought in the betterment of external

conditions, the social savior is apt to become the victim of a false

sense of moral security. He is likely to be off his guard at the weak

points of his own character, and to fall abruptly from high levels into

the ditch.

2. The social reformer who adopts the fallacy of provisionalism is apt

to be absorbed in the _mechanical_ details of his work,—the settlement

or the municipal reform society, or the charitable association tend

to become highly organized and efficient pieces of machinery. But

moral idealism declines in proportion as this kind of efficiency

increases,—the salt loses its savor.

3. The social reformer who sets his heart on external changes is apt to

become _impatient_ to bring about those changes. For since he attempts

to work from without inwardly, and not at the same time from within

outwardly, he has nothing to show for his pains unless the desired

outward changes are actually effected. In this way may be explained a

certain dictatorial manner, a certain arbitrariness sometimes observed

in social workers of whose earnestness and devotion there can be no

question, the preposterous outcome being that in attempting to carry

out plans of reform in a democratic community such reformers offend

against the very principle of democracy by over-riding the personality

of others.

4. The Social reformer who concentrates his attention on external

changes is apt to be ambitious of large results, to measure betterment

by statistical standards. Though quality be not overlooked, _quantity_

is likely to be over-emphasized.

5. The painful spectacle is sometimes presented of a leader in social

movements who _goes to pieces morally in his private relations_

(becomes a bad father, a worthless husband, an unscrupulous sponge on

his friends, etc.). Absorption in extensive public movements has this

danger in it that it often tends to make men neglectful of the nearer

duties.

Facts of this kind, which came repeatedly under my observation in

the course of years, drove home to my mind the conviction that the

provisional method in social reform (the method of working for external

changes without definition of the end) is morally perilous, both in its

effects on those who are to be benefited, and in its reaction on the

character of the reformer himself. I parted company with opportunism in

every one of its forms; I became more and more imbued with the belief

that no one can really help others who in the effort to do so is not

himself morally helped, i.e., whose character is not improved in every

respect, who does not become a _better_ father, husband, citizen, a

more upright man in all his relations in and because of his endeavors

to benefit society. I became convinced that the ethical principle must

run like a golden thread through the whole of a man’s life, in a word,

that social reform unless inspired by the spiritual view of it, that

is, unless it is made tributary to the spiritual, the total end of

life, is not social reform in any true sense at all.[15]

The fundamental question, therefore, echoed and re-echoed with ever

intenser insistence: “What then is the holy thing in others? What

is the supreme end or good to which all the lesser goods should be

subordinate and subservient? And what is the holy thing in me?—for

I may not spiritually sacrifice myself. My own highest good must be

achievable in agreement with that of others. What definition of the

essential end is possible that shall reconcile egoism and altruism by

transforming and transcending them? And if there be such end thinkable

and definable, how establish the applicability of this end to empirical

man, either in the person of others or in my own?”

I shall have to dwell on this subject at length in the sequel. Here at

the outset I cannot forbear expressing my sense of the obliquities, the

folly, the meanness, the cruelties which human nature often exhibits

on the empirical side when dispassionately contemplated. That there

are also finer traits in people, gleams of gold in the quartz, I do

not deny. But even in the best exemplars of the race the alloy is

not wanting. And it is an open question how far any human being, if

his whole make-up and all the circumstances that influenced him be

considered, can be called predominantly good, assuming that goodness

is a matter of desert and not of chance. How, therefore, a being that

to actual, impartial observation reveals himself as so dubiously worth

while, can be regarded as possessing the quality of transcendent worth

(which seems to be implied in the idea of personality as inviolable

and precious) will be the starting-point of my inquiry into the

philosophical first principle in the second part of this volume.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] I say _caused_, but perhaps not deliberately intended, although

there are instances of the latter. An act is diabolical when

maliciously designed to inflict a wrong on another; as rape for the

purpose of dishonoring a family. It is cruelly selfish but not fiendish

when it springs from scorn of others as if they were only fractional

human beings. The Brahmin’s attitude towards the lower castes, the

attitude of the feudal lord toward the serf, of Shakespeare’s nobility

toward the common citizens, and of some modern theorists toward the

democratic multitude, are instances in point. In such cases the moral

sense itself is astray, but there is perhaps no deliberate sinning

against the light.

[14] I have not touched upon the further question to what extent we can

really compass the happiness, except at rare moments, even of a single

human being. The altruistic philosophy is apt to confound the removal

of manifest evils with positive benefaction. But the removal of one

kind of evil lets in new kinds; and wherein then consists the gain so

far as happiness is concerned?

[15] To ward off the most serious misunderstanding, I must remind

every reader of the chapter on Social Reform, as well as on the Hebrew

religion and on the ethics of the Gospels, that I am narrating the

phases of my own development. I am not attempting to do justice to

all that is excellent in those great religions and in these great

social movements; I am trying to show at what points, despite those

excellences, I myself felt compelled to diverge from them, to push

beyond them. In regard to Socialism I recognize the immense service

it has performed in awakening the conscience of modern society to the

sufferings of the working class. And in pointing out the dangers of

opportunism, the fallacy of provisionalism, I am speaking of dangers

from which I felt that I must escape, not casting a slur on the noble

personalities that have appeared in the field of social reform during

my own time and among my friends and acquaintances. Such personalities,

because of their inbred fineness, may be immune against tendencies

which yet undeniably exist, and which therefore require to be

explicitly apprehended.

CHAPTER VI

THE INFLUENCE OF MY VOCATION ON INNER DEVELOPMENT

The present chapter deals with my inner development as I believe it

to have been furthered by my connection with the Society for Ethical

Culture. The functions intrusted to me in this connection were, first,

various forms of so-called philanthropic activity. The effects of the

experience gathered in them has been described in a preceding chapter;

they may be summed up in the formula: littleness in the external

results achieved, consciousness of moral danger to self.

Secondly, the ministerial function of offering “edification” in public

addresses to Sunday assemblies, the solemnizing of marriages, and

the conducting of funeral services,—while in addition a large part

of my vocational life consisted in the building up of an educational

institution.[16]

_The Public Addresses._ Edification, or building up, as I understood

it, involved the profoundly difficult task of supplying a working

philosophy of life without traveling into the field of metaphysics,

teaching the practicable counterpart of a connected system of thought

concerning the problems of life,—the system being so firmly knit as to

make the appropriate feelings and impulses more or less natural to its

exponent. In my case, not having fallen heir to such a system, the task

of edification became doubly difficult. It meant from the beginning

unceasing self-edification, with a view to edifying others.[17] Setting

out with a general scheme along Kantian lines, I proceeded to fill in

the outline in the course of my public teachings, with the result that

the content filled in eventually disrupted the scheme, and compelled

a thoroughgoing reconstruction. The Holiness conception had been my

starting point. I never gave it up. I was attracted to Kant because

he affirmed it. I broke with him because he does not make good his

affirmation.

I began with Kantianism, which is predominantly individualistic, and I

found that in dealing with the problems of the family, with the labor

question, and in the attempt to reach an ideal of democracy beyond

the materialistic conception of it which is at present current—I

was introducing into my initial sketch elements incompatible with

individualism, and necessitating formulation in social terms. And since

I retained and stressed the notion of personality, I had to seek a way

of interpreting the term Social spiritually, as Kant had undertaken to

interpret the term individual spiritually. I certainly could not fall

in with Darwinism or other evolutionary interpretations of sociality,

inasmuch as they all leave out the concept of inviolable personality,

the indefeasible factor in my ethical thinking.

These things are here alluded to in order to emphasize the influence

of the public Sunday addresses delivered by me regularly for more than

forty years in stimulating, I had almost said forcing, my ethical

growth. To care for anyone else enough to make his problem one’s own

is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development. To care for

a group of people in the sense of being challenged to suggest to

them ideas and ways of behavior that shall really be of use to them

in the storm and stress of life, is the most searching incentive to

self-development imaginable. It is more powerful than the desire to

get truth for one’s own sake. The closet philosopher may be serious

enough in his search for truth, and he may succeed in constructing a

symmetrical system which at the time seems complete. Will it stand wear

and tear? Will it in the bitter moments of his life hold together? If

not, he has failed; but then he only is the loser, it is only his ship

that has gone down. But the situation is different when a company of

people venture with you on the same voyage, and trust to you as in a

way their pilot.

The challenge that comes from the expectant eyes of those who are in

trouble, of those whose relations to their friends or the members of

their family have become tangled, the challenge that comes from the

larger public towards which every public speaker has a certain ethical

duty—all these challenges press home the question: are the things that

you believe true, so true that you may confidently expect them to be

confirmed by the experience of those who in some measure depend upon

you? Are they genuinely of use?

There is also another kind of challenge that in a way is even more

taxing and searching: the silent appeal that comes from those who are

spiritually dead, from those who are sunk in sloth or sensuality, or

who waste their precious days in the pursuit of trivial, frivolous

ends, and from the insensitive consciences of the self-righteous and

the self-complacent. In the Bible we read that the prophet Elisha

once threw himself on the body of a dead child, in order with his own

life to kindle there the life that seemed extinct. In some such way

in public addresses, in which it is not the word but the personality

behind the word that counts, the speaker is bound to throw himself

body and soul, as it were, upon those who are spiritually numbed, and

to _enhance the life within himself_ in order to stir up life in them.

All of which means that the task of edifying others involves continuous

efforts at self-edification.

_The Solemnizing of Marriages._ In solemnizing marriages I had

the experience that some of those at which I had officiated ended

disastrously,—there had been no real marriage at all. Though such

instances were not numerous in my own experience, yet the statistics

of divorce prove that the number of unfortunate marriages in this

and other countries is very large, and is increasing. What are

the foundations of a permanent relation such as would tend to the

development of personality in and through marriage? was the question

urged upon me. Here is a social tie in which two individuals, and later

the offspring, are combined in the closest propinquity. How can an

ethical theory of marriage be reached, that is, a theory dependent

on the idea of the joint realization of the highest end of life by

the members of the family group? This ethical theory of marriage will

be set forth in a subsequent part of this volume. Here I wish again

to mark the retroactive effect of the function I was called upon to

exercise in the Ethical Society on the development of theory. The most

incisive effect of my practical experience, however, was the being

compelled to encounter the effect of _frustration_. How reluctant is

the natural man to face this fact! How he shrinks, and puts up screens

between his face and the head of Medusa! In my earliest marriage

addresses I remember how I used to describe the relation as one in

which each of the partners receives the cup of happiness at the hands

of the other. The second time I performed the ceremony, the bride

was the only child of excellent friends, whose life was completely

wrapped up in their one daughter. She was a charming young girl, and

the bridegroom was a fine-grained person entirely devoted to her. That

marriage feast I shall never forget. A little less than a year after,

the young wife having died in child-birth, I was called in to speak

at her bier. Where, then, was the exchange of happiness? How suddenly

had the house of bliss fallen into ruins! A similar experience that

touched me even more deeply was that of a friend, the first one among

my associates who believed with me in the possibility of a religious

society without a dogmatic creed. The course of love in his case had

not run smooth. The marriage between himself and the lovely young

woman he wedded was the happy culmination of many trials, a haven

of peace after storms. Hardly more than two years elapsed when he

suddenly developed a fatal form of mental disease, and lingered for

ten years in a long, slow, degrading decline. I thus became acquainted

with frustration in one of its most woeful shapes. I remember how the

poor young wife, during those ten years, widow in all but name, sought

alleviation in various directions for her intolerable grief. Work to

occupy her mind was one; caring for the needs of the poor another. I

remember also how futile these devices seemed. She had lived “on the

heights”; she must now descend to lower levels; she had had first best,

she must now put up with second or third best. Gladly indeed would she

have exchanged places with some of the poor women whom she assisted,

could she have kept her husband at her side as they had theirs. It was

well enough for her to try to alleviate the troubles of these people,

but what were their sorrows compared to hers? And to keep the mind

occupied by work, what was it at best but a temporary anodyne? When

the work was over, in the still, lonely hours of the night, the storm

of grief would break with all the greater violence. I had not taught

these my friends a really valid spiritual conception of the purpose

of marriage: I had failed in that: and when they were in need of it

they did not have it to support them. They had looked on marriage as a

scene of felicity; they had not been taught to make allowance for the

frustration.

I had not made preparation for the palpable frustrations just

mentioned, nor yet for others, for the discovery that the beloved

person is faulty, that the nimbus of divine personality does not

coincide with the character. And especially did the lack of any

explicit idea of personality prove fatal in those cases where the

frustration is most serious, where real or apparent incompatibilities

appear, or where actual degeneration occurs, and the hope of

regeneration becomes remote.

_Bereavement_ was the second shape in which the fact of frustration

most often came home to me. Hundreds of times I have spoken to people

in the moment of the last leave-taking. The usual consolations, aside

from those that depend on mythological beliefs, are: Submit to the

inevitable; clinch your teeth and face the storms of fate. Remember

the debt you owe to the living. There is work that remains for you

to do. See to it that you do not by excessive grieving destroy your

capacity for work. Instead of indulging in sorrow for your own loss,

take upon yourself the sorrows of others. In particular it is uplifting

for one who has been more severely afflicted to take upon himself the

sorrow of those whose burden is lighter. Be grateful for what you have

possessed. Think not so much of what you have lost, as of what you were

privileged for a season to call your own. Make the virtues of those

who are no longer living a force for good in your own life. Paint the

portrait of your friend incessantly. Retouch it. Eliminate what was of

merely transient value in him. Remember him in the light of his best

qualities, and live so as to be able to endure his purified glance.

Or, in the case of those whose lives were stained, seek to expiate

their faults in your life. Purify and perpetuate them in this way

in yourself. Memory is not a mere passive receptacle, it is rather

a creative faculty. Let it play upon the lives that are no longer

sensibly present, and thus maintain the connection with them. A friend

living across the sea, whom you will never see again, may yet be a

living presence for you if you continue by the aid of memory to be in

communication with him. In the case of the departed, likewise, their

effectual influence may remain none the less real.

These various modes of consolation have each a certain value. To

the one last mentioned I attach the greatest value. Bereavement is

a challenge for a fresh start in spiritual development. It should

not mean putting up with the second best, but reaching out toward

first best. The object to be achieved by the ethical teacher on such

occasions is to help the bereaved to tie anew the threads that have

been sundered, or rather to substitute a more ethereal but firmer tie

for the contacts mediated by the senses. But this task of the reweaving

of ties, spiritually, not sensibly, depends entirely for its success

upon a spiritual conception of personality. And if this be lacking, the

attempt is hopeless. Frustration itself must be recognized as partial

if it is to lead beyond itself. There must be found in man that which

cannot be defeated if the defeat is not to be accepted as final.

A third kind of frustration was brought home to me by the problem of

specialization, as it presented itself in the course of my efforts to

work out an ethical theory true to the facts of life. To discharge

competently my own special function, I saw that I ought to be

acquainted with the best ethical thought of the past. This meant an

exhaustive study of the philosophical systems of which the ethical

thought of the philosophers is the fruit. I ought further to be

familiar with the great religions, in which so much of the ethical

insight of mankind is incorporated. I ought to acquaint myself with

the moral history of mankind in so far as it is accessible, including

that of the primitive races. I ought to gain a survey of the variations

of moral opinion that have so staggered belief in the possibility of

ethical truth. I ought to master at least the general principles of the

physical and biological sciences, since it is impossible that the first

principles of ethics should not be related to the governing principles

that obtain in other departments of knowledge. I ought in addition to

master in their ethical aspect the economic and political problems of

the present day, as well as the psychology of individual and social

life, in order to be able to apply with some degree of competence the

directives of ethics to actual conduct. There are in addition other

subjects, such as jurisprudence, poetry and the fine arts, that have

ultimate relation to ethics, and that may not safely be neglected.

Behold, then, the problem of specialism in one of its most appalling

forms. For how can any one individual hope to adequately fill out such

a programme? And what I have said is but my own personal illustration

of a general problem that more and more besets every reflective person

in our time. And it is a problem that has direct bearings upon the

question of human personality. The personality is not a detached and

isolated thing. It is a center that radiates out in every possible

direction, and depends for the release of its energy on the influences

received in turn from all directions. On the one hand, to have a

footing at all in reality one must be a specialist, and the fields of

specialism are becoming more and more restricted. To know one thing

well is the indispensable condition of the sense of mastery, yes, of

self-respect. And yet it seems to be becoming increasingly clear that

one cannot really master a single specialty without knowing of other

specialties whatsoever is related to one’s own. Narrowness, and loss

of power, and consequent decay of the special function itself, seems

the one alternative. Dilettantism, the other. But again I ask, who can

actually fill out such a programme? The frustration of effort thus

appears, in its intellectual guise, as one more manifestation of that

general fact of frustration which we meet with wherever we turn.[18]

On the side of character the same reflections occur. Unity in the

direction of distinctiveness or uniqueness is the end and aim.

But instead of unity of character, conflict of inner tendencies,

ever-recurrent rupture of provisional harmonies, a duality of self

or multiplicity of selves, are the facts attested by one’s inner

experience. And frustration here, at the core of a man’s being, is

perhaps more painful and more seemingly contradictory of the very ideal

and purpose of ethical development than in any of the forms previously

recorded.

The last instance of frustration that I will mention appears in

connection with the cosmic relation of our race. The thought of the

death of the individual may be overcome by the idea of perpetuity in

the lives of successors. The death of the human race, its eventual

extinction, is capable of no such assured compensation. We are ethical

beings, committed to the pursuit of an ideal end, yet the cosmic

conditions are such as to make the end unattainable within the limits

of a finite world. This unattainableness of the end it is true is the

very ground and foundation of the supersensible interpretation of

ethical experience. Yet this thought itself can only be made good by a

positive interpretation of personality (of the spiritual nature), which

we are yet to seek. As viewed empirically, the human generations are

but accidents of nature, waves on the sea of life, passing shadows. And

viewing ourselves in this manner our self-respect goes to pieces. The

idea of obligation vanishes. Man’s claim to infinite worth is bitterly

mocked. Unless we can reach the spiritual view of life, the frustration

of purpose in the large, that is, of humanity as a whole, is final.

These then, summarily stated, are the problems with which an ethical

philosophy of life has to deal.

1. How to remedy the belittlement of man, the infinitesimal

insignificance of him as a creature of time and space, when compared

with the immensities of the world around him—its spatial and temporal

immensities. What is man in the presence of these myriads of worlds, of

this unending procession of time that he should attribute to himself

significance, nay, worth? Is he perhaps an infinitesimal member of an

Infinite?—preserving in this way the sense of his littleness, and of

the vastness that bears down upon him, and yet maintaining himself

irrefragably at his station, as indispensable to the perfection of the

whole.

2. How to discover a way of retaining the connection between man and

the lower forms of life that preceded him, not doing violence to the

facts which the evolutionists have brought out, and yet at the same

time assuring man’s spiritual distinction? Does he perhaps possess in

his ethical nature a window, so to speak, through which he can catch at

least a glimpse of the ultimate reality, of the infinite life which is

the real life, behind the picture screen of sea and mountain, plants

and animals?

3. How to overcome the various types of frustration mentioned above:

frustration on its intellectual side, or the reconciliation of

specialist efficiency with breadth and relatedness; frustration on the

character side.

Frustration in the social relations, as in marriage, or as in the case

of defective children.

Frustration through bereavement, or the privation suffered by the going

out of our life of lives with which we are inseparably connected by

ethical as well as affectional ties.

Frustration in the attempt to carry out projects of social betterment;

on what moral ground to assert the possible moral value of life in the

slums today, and at the same time to put forth and to stimulate the

most assiduous efforts to abolish the slum; on what grounds to affirm

that the best life is possible under the worst conditions, and yet not

to cease or for an instant relax the effort to change the conditions.

The problem of how to support and console the wretched multitudes

of mankind in the interval that must elapse before the reform of

conditions can take real effect; the problem of support and consolation

in fatal sickness, on the deathbed, and in the harrowing recollection

of irremediable and irrevocable wrong done to others; the problem

raised by the prospective extinction, or the possible old age and

degeneration before extinction of mankind—all these problems should be

taken together, not one, for instance the so-called social problem,

accentuated, leaving the rest out of sight. From one peg they all

hang, on one cardinal idea they all depend—the idea of personality

as positively defined, of the holy thing as not merely inviolable

without regard to its content, but inviolable because of a certain

positive content. The ascription of worth to man, in this sense, is the

fundamental problem of all, and to the full discussion of this we shall

turn in the constructive part of the volume which is now to follow.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] See the published accounts of the Ethical Culture School.

[17] The word “edification” as commonly used has a sentimental flavor.

It does not as a rule convey the idea of constructiveness at all. It

frequently suggests a kind of warm, moist, semi-tropical atmosphere for

the emotions of the hearer to simmer in. But in its genuine meaning of

“building up” it is too valuable a word to lose.

[18] A new conception of culture is needed, based neither on exclusive

specialism, nor on the ambition to know everything after the manner of

Goethe in his early days, and such a conception of culture must supply

the foundation of an educational philosophy.

BOOK II

PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: CRITIQUE OF KANT

I begin my statement of the ethical ideal with a critique of Kant.

The reason for this is that Kant stands forth preëminent among all

philosophers as the one who emphatically asserts that the attribute

of inviolability attaches to every human being, in his formula that

_every_ man is to be treated as an end _per se_, and never to be

used as a mere tool by others. The formula as thus worded by him is

subject to grave objections which will be dealt with later on. But the

grand conception of the moral worthwhileness of all men is specially

connected with the name of Kant. Did he succeed, on the basis of his

system, in establishing this conception? He seems to make it the

corner-stone of his ethics. Is the corner-stone secure?

Referring again to my individual development, I should find it

difficult to express how much Kant’s _Metaphysik der Sitten_ and

_Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_ at one time meant to me.

The one ethical fact of which I was so to speak perfectly assured,

the “inviolability” so often mentioned in previous chapters, is

extremely hard to justify to the thinking mind. The empirical school

of philosophers scoff at the very notion of it. The practice of the

world is a perpetual, painful evidence of the small attention paid

to it, and even idealistic philosophers from Plato down have found it

quite possible to construct quasi-ethical systems based on the idea,

not of human equality, but of the inferiority of the greater number.

In Kant, however, one encounters an epoch-making philosopher who not

only accepts as a fact the idea of inviolability, and of the kind of

equality that goes with it, but who undertakes to set it forth in such

a manner as to command the assent of the reason. For a long time I

believed that he had succeeded in his great enterprise; and it was only

after years of discipleship, not indeed without suppressed misgivings,

that I began to see that I had been mistaken.

My eyes were opened when I realized certain extremely questionable

moral consequences to which his doctrine led him: for instance, his

unspeakable theory of marriage, his defense of capital punishment,

the stiff individualism of his system, and his failure to establish

an instrumental connection between the empirical goods, of wealth,

culture, and the like, and the supreme good or supreme end as defined

by him. I was forced by these unsound conclusions to ask myself whether

the foundations of the system are sound. Surely if it is true of any

system of thought, it is true of an ethical system that it must be

judged by its fruits. The Kantian system is indeed vastly impressive,

and even sublime in some of its aspects. We travel on the road along

which Kant leads with a certain sense of exaltation, but when at the

end of our journey we find that we have reached a goal at which we

cannot consent to abide, it is imperative to inquire whether the point

of departure was well taken.

The point of departure in Kant’s exposition is the existence in all men

of a sense of duty. Moral relations subsist only between moral beings.

All men possess a sense of duty,—therefore all men are moral beings,

therefore all are morally equal,—therefore no one may be used as a mere

tool for the benefit of others, but is to be treated as worth while on

his own account. Thus runs the argument.

The sense of duty is the consciousness of being bound to render

implicit obedience to a categorical imperative. Our rational nature

tells us categorically what is right to do. Our rational nature issues

absolute commands. The sense of duty is man’s response to them. Kant

does not for a moment imply that either he or anyone else has ever

adequately obeyed. The moral dignity, the moral equality of men, does

not depend on the obedience but on the consciousness of the obligation

to obey—on acknowledged subjection to the command. The actual moral

performances of some men are certainly better than those of others; but

of no one, not even of the best of men, can it be shown that the moral

principle in its purity, that is, unadulterated by baser incentives,

was ever the actuating motive of his conduct. The different members of

the human species differ morally in degree, but are of the same moral

kind, being distinguished from the lower animals not because they obey

the moral law, but because they recognize the obligation to obey it.

This sort of consciousness may be dim in some, but it exists in all.

The most brutal murderer is dimly aware of the holy law which he has

transgressed.

The great dictum of the universal moral equality of mankind is thus

made to depend on an assumed fact. If this fact can be successfully

disputed, the dictum itself is imperilled. It has been disputed, not

flippantly, but most seriously, and it is in my opinion obnoxious to

fatal objections. I do not indeed believe it possible to establish the

negative, to wit, that the sense of duty does not lurk somewhere, is

not latent somewhere in the consciousness of persons morally the most

obtuse; but I hold it to be impossible to prove the affirmative, to

wit, that a sense of duty does exist in all human beings, even in the

most degraded. Kant’s dictum of equality depends on making good the

affirmative proposition, but this he has failed to do.

One circumstance especially which at first sight seems favorable to

Kant’s contention turns against him. He has been assailed on the

ground that his categorical imperative is a fiction, that no such

an imperative plays a rôle in the actual experience of men. On the

contrary, the actual experience of men is replete with categorical

imperatives. Nothing in the life of man plays a greater rôle than these

imperatives. The danger that threatens Kant’s demonstration is due

to the number of rival categoricals that compete with his, and from

which the one he sets up is not with certainty distinguishable. To put

the matter simply, what is called in technical language a categorical

imperative is nothing else than a way of acting somehow felt by the

individual to be obligatory upon him, whether he likes it or dislikes

it. It is a constraint in which he is bound to acquiesce, a public rule

of some sort which overrides his private propensities.

Constraints of this sort are numerous. Many of them no one would think

of designating as moral. Some are distinctly antimoral. I will mention

a few:—for instance, the rules of behavior derived from the _tabu_

notion. Certain kinds of food may not be eaten; certain objects like

the Ark of the Covenant in David’s time may not be touched.[19] Strict

_tabus_ obtain in regard to marriage such as the rules of endogamy and

exogamy. Certain persons may not even be looked at. A feeling of horror

is felt toward those who transgress these rules; and the transgression

of them is often considered far more reprehensible than a moral sin.

It would evidently be absurd to characterize a Hottentot or a Fiji

Islander as the moral equal of a civilized man on the ground that, like

the latter, he possesses the sense of duty, consisting in his case

of an unquestioning acknowledgment of the categorical imperative of

_tabus_.

Gang loyalty is another instance in point. In one of our prisons a

certain convict is at present paying the penalty of a crime which was

really committed by one of his pals. He could have got off scot free

if he had “squealed.” But “squealing” is contrary to the honor code of

the gang and he preferred to sacrifice his liberty rather than prove

recreant to the claims of gang loyalty. There are some writers who hold

that this is an instance of morality, genuine as far as it goes, but

restricted within too narrow a circle. The fact that it is restricted

within too narrow a circle, that fidelity to a few is compatible with

violent hostility against the community at large, seems to me to

prove that the moral quality is absent. Morality is either universal

or nothing. Gang loyalty is a social phenomenon, but not an ethical

phenomenon. The distinction between the two terms will be enforced

later on. In any event the sense of constraint is manifest. The moral

character of the constraint I deny.

Another example of an imperative which is categorical enough but

at the same time non-ethical is furnished by Darwin’s well-known

explanation of the original of conscience. He assumes that certain

ways of behaving which our ancestors found to be socially useful, have

become registered as it were in our organisms, and constitute a kind

of race-consciousness which persists in each individual. This latent

consciousness is potent as a tendency, though often not masterful

enough to repress the recalcitrant egoistic impulses. A conflict

ensues. The deep ingrained tendency makes itself felt. And as social

beings we are aware that we ought to side with it. But the egoistic

impulses break out on the surface of consciousness and vehemently

urge us in the opposite direction. The feeling of obligation, and

thereafter of remorse, are the record of the inner struggle. I do not

here undertake to discuss at length the truth of Darwin’s theory.

There are a number of weak spots in it, to which I shall merely allude

in passing. First, he speaks of acts found to be socially useful in

primitive communities. Is it possible to show that the same or similar

acts retain their utility in a developed industrial society like that

of the present day? Is not the term “socially useful” extremely vague,

and can the notion implied in it be expanded without the assistance

of a truly ethical principle?[20] Then again, why should the thing

called social utility overawe the individual mind and thwart individual

purpose? Why should not the daring egotist affirm his right to be and

flourish in the present hour, in the teeth of social utility? It will

be said that the claims are insistent, that the tendency is ingrained,

that it has become instinctive in him, and that he cannot release

himself from the control it exercises over him. But instincts can be

weakened and in time extinguished, like the fear of the dark, when

the absence of an objective cause is recognized. Why should not the

altruistic impulse likewise, by the method of Freudian analysis, if you

please, be exposed to the light, and the egotist thereby be enabled to

disembarrass himself of the interference of dead ancestors in his life

purposes, and to proceed on his way undisturbed by any inward qualms?

These examples serve to illustrate the point with which we are here

concerned, namely, that the presence and operation of undoubted

constraints does not establish the existence in all men of the sense

of duty on which Kant founds universal moral equality. Kant would

indeed object that all these so-called constraints or imperatives are

hypothetical, and not really categorical. By an hypothetical imperative

he understands one in which the command depends upon an “if”—_if_ there

be invisible spirits such as primitive men imagined, then the rules of

_tabu_ follow. _If_ the safety of the gang is an object of commanding

interest, then gang loyalty is obligatory. _If_ the preservation and

prosperity of human society in general (a society superior to that

of ants and of bees indeed but like them a product of nature and not

radically distinct from them) be regarded as the supreme end of desire

and endeavor, then the rules of social behavior are to be obeyed. But,

he would say, none of these objects are fit to rank so high. They all

are optional ends. An hypothetical imperative is one in which the end

pursued is optional, the imperative extending only to the means. If the

end be desired, then it is reasonable, and in so far imperative, that

we adopt the means that lead to its attainment. An imperative truly

categorical, however, is one in which the obligation extends to the end

proposed as well as to the means. It is not left to our inclination to

embrace or to refuse the end, it being of such a kind as absolutely to

constrain us to accept it.

But if this be so, then in this first part of our criticism we turn

upon Kant and declare that he has nowhere given us reason to believe

that the acceptance of an absolute end is implied in the kind of

constraints to which the generality of men submit. And again if such

acceptance cannot be proved, then the universal moral equality of men

based by him on the presence in all of the sense of duty disappears,

and his lofty ethical structure breaks down at this point.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See II Samuel, VI, 6, 7.

[20] Primitive communities valued coöperation because it was socially

useful. But there are different kinds of coöperation. Which kind shall

we of today adopt? The mere idea of coöperation affords no clue. The

self-sacrifice of the individual to the whole of which he is a part is

socially useful. But on what occasions and to what degree is it useful?

Altruism is socially useful. We are to serve others. But what in them

shall we serve? Their physical needs, their intellectual needs, all

their needs together? Is that humanly possible? Here again an ethical

principle is required to define the quality and the limits of the

service. The latent race-consciousness of which Darwin speaks affords

no light on the ethical problems proper. The concept of social utility,

if not valueless, is at best only of subsidiary value in any attempt to

solve these problems. So far from reading once and for all the riddle

of conscience, Darwin has not read aright the terms of the riddle.

CHAPTER II

CRITIQUE OF KANT (_Continued_)

I now proceed to the second point of criticism, which strikes at the

heart of Kant’s ethics. Man according to Kant is worth while on his

own account (an end _per se_), never to be used as a mere tool or

thing. He is a person, an object towards whom we are bound to evince

absolute respect. Yet Kant immediately goes on to say that there is

no object in all the world, neither man nor any other, that is worth

while on its own account, that deserves such respect. Kant’s views

of actual human nature are tinged with somber pessimism. (Compare

the chapter on Radical Evil in his _Religion Within the Limits of

Pure Reason_.) A strange paradox is thus presented to us. Man is

to be accepted as a worth while object, and yet there is no worth

while object. How does Kant seek to escape from this predicament? He

says, not the man primarily, but something that happens in the man,

is supremely significant: certain acts are worth while on their own

account,—the agent only in so far as he performs such acts (or, let

us add with a sigh, as he tries to perform them)—namely, acts which

have as their sole motive respect for universal law. Then he informs

us that similar processes occur in other agents, in fellow human

beings, or, more precisely, that these others are capable of trying to

act as I myself feel bound to try to act. Consider how far fetched

is the argument, on what wavering foundations has been placed the

ethical pronouncement of human worth and human equality in which our

interest is so profoundly engaged. We do wish to be assured of this

cardinal truth. No other truth is practically and theoretically of

greater importance. As against the iniquitous practices of the world,

as against the exploitation of labor, as against the degradation of

woman, as against political tyranny whether exercised by kings or by

mobs, we raise up for our shield the indefeasible worth of men—not of

some men but of all men. And now, behold! the thinker to whom we owe

the forcible expression of this truth seems to have left it in the air.

I scrutinize my neighbors, and find in their behavior no sure sign of

real worth. I fall back on myself and I discover what? The idea of an

act which, if I could perform it, would stand on its own merits (would

be self-justified). I then find that I am bound to try to perform such

acts. I cannot affirm that in a single instance I have ever performed

such an act. I next infer—on what tenuous ground has been shown in

the last chapter—that my fellow-beings have the same inner experience

as mine. And it is for this reason that by a circuitous inference I

declare them to be worth while objects.

That Kant has formulated a truth of the utmost importance for

mankind (that no man is to be treated as a mere tool), seems to me

incontestable. That he has not made good his own proposition is my

contention, and that the whole problem must therefore be taken up

_de novo_. It will assist us in doing so to expose the flaw in his

categorical imperative, or the formal principle of universality and

necessity applied to human actions, which in his view imprints upon

them the character of absolute rightness.

Note that Kant approaches the problems of ethics from the side of

physical science, and with the bias of the physical scientist. The

ethical principle he sets up, the bare idea of universal necessity or

of law in general, is derived by way of abstraction from the particular

laws of nature. It is a physical principle in disguise. To understand

Kant’s system, it is simply indispensable to keep this point in mind.

He was pre-occupied during the major portion of his life with profound

speculations on scientific subjects. The title of the _Critique of

Pure Reason_ might not be inappropriately changed into “A treatise on

the fundamental assumptions of science, as handled by Newton and his

successors.” He was undeniably interested in ethics. His ultimate aim

was to clear the way for the confident holding of ethical principles.

(See the Preface to the _Critique of Pure Reason_.) But he could not

divest himself of the prejudice of his temperament and of his lifelong

pursuit. He is not singular in this respect. To borrow the first

principle of ethics from some other field is a common and apparently

ineradicable error. Mechanics, æsthetics, and recently biology, have

been laid under contribution for this purpose. A consistent attempt to

study ethical phenomena on their own ground, to mark off what is really

distinctive in the data of ethical experience, and then to search for

some principle which shall serve to give a coherent account of them,

has to my knowledge never yet been undertaken. Always ethics has been

treated as an annex to some other discipline. Always we behold the

attempt to assimilate before the distinctive traits and characteristics

have been carefully investigated. Never yet has the independence of

this wonderful aspect of human nature been truly acknowledged. Kant

indeed freed ethics from its long tutelage to theology; but he left

it still in subjection, subject to his own favorite study, physical

science.

But though the notion of necessity, together with that of universality,

which he derived from physics was employed by him as a fundamental

principle of rightness in conduct, the principle itself insensibly, and

as it would seem unbeknown to himself, underwent a remarkable change

in the course of his undertaking to give it a new application. The

following brief comments will serve to elucidate this point.

In physics, whenever an antecedent phenomenon has been exactly

described, and a sequent phenomenon is defined in the same fashion,

the connection is pronounced to be necessary—as for instance the

transformation of mechanical energy into heat, and conversely. A

single carefully guarded experiment may suffice to establish the

necessary nexus between two phenomena. And after having established

the necessity, we are confident of the universality. If exceptions

should occur and contravene the supposed law, the calculations or the

observations are to be corrected. But never in physical science do

we start from universality and predict necessity therefrom. Kant in

his ethics invariably couples together the two terms Universal and

Necessary. But he reverses the procedure of science, he _begins with

the universality and thereupon affirms the necessity_.

Universality is for him the test of moral necessity. If an act can be

universalized, the performance of it, according to him, is morally

necessary. For instance, the question is asked, Is it right to kill?

Look at the act of killing, says Kant, and see whether it can be

universalized, that is to say, whether if everybody felt at liberty to

kill, the act of the murderer would or would not be self-defeating? He

kills in order to affirm his life at the expense of another’s. If his

action were to be generally imitated, his own life would be forfeit,

or at least in danger, and he would be annulling what he intends to

affirm. Hence murder is morally wrong: to sacredly respect the life of

others is right.

But not only is the order reversed, so that necessity follows on the

heels of universality, but the very meaning of the term necessity is

altered. _A logical necessity is substituted for a physical necessity._

The idea of necessity as handled by physical science denotes the

connection between one thing and something else. It is not the thing

itself but its relation to some other thing that is necessary. It is

not the phenomenon A nor the phenomenon B, in the case of a cause

and its effect, that is declared to be necessary, but the sequence

of B on A, the circumstance that B is tied up to A, must follow in

its wake. But the term Necessity as used by Kant in his _Ethics_,

denotes a relation of a thing to itself. It is in fact equivalent to

self-consistency, which is a logical notion derived from the principle

of self-identity. A is A, and it is not thinkable that it should

be non-A. Similarly Kant says: If a man desires to affirm his life,

that is, to be self-preserving, it is not thinkable, it would not be

rational or logical on his part, to perform an act which would be

self-defeating. Kant does not say that a man might not irrationally

take another man’s life, regardless of the consequences to himself; he

says that as a rational intelligence acting on purely logical motives

he could not do so.[21] To repeat, then, physical necessity is a

relation of one thing to another thing: the logical necessity involved

in self-consistency is a relation of a thing to itself.

My next contention, and this touches the root of the matter, is

that the notion of end is incompatible with self-consistency as the

paramount principle in ethics. For a self-consistent rational being

is a being in harmony with himself, one who if this harmony should in

some unaccountable way ever be broken would by his own endeavor seek

to return to himself. (Kant declares that the morality of any one man

cannot be affected by his fellows, by any influence from the outside;

it must be his own act.) But an end presupposes some outside object

as a means: means and ends are inseparable correlatives. On the other

hand, an entity which merely affirms itself, or if somehow alienated

from self endeavors without assistance from beyond its sphere to

return to itself, is no true end at all, and cannot be designated as

such. It is no end because it employs no means.

What warrant then has Kant for introducing the foreign notion of end

into a world of pure self-consistency? When we use the term Necessity

in relation to physical phenomena, as of cause and effect, we assert

unalterable sequence, unity of temporal and spatial differentiæ.

When we use the same term as Kant uses it, we assert the unity of a

thing with itself. But this in the nature of the case does not admit

the intrusion of the alien concept of the outside. The spiritual

society or pattern to which human society ought to be conformed, is

according to Kant a society of ends, of ends _per se_. This is his

great pronouncement. But the very idea on which he lays so much stress,

the idea of end, on closer scrutiny of his premises disappears. The

entities composing that society are self-sufficing, and moreover

intrinsically unrelated to each other. Rational self-preservation is

the only character that can be predicated of any of them.

I have laid stress on the fact that Kant derived his ethical principle

from his physics. The passage in which he speaks of the ethical order

as a universal and necessary order like that of nature is to my mind

conclusive. I now urge in addition that this sort of second nature

superimposed upon existing nature would not have to our contemplating

minds a dignity superior to that of physical nature. The moral order

as thus exhibited would not possess the worth we attribute to it as

exalted above what is called the natural order. The falling stone is

a perfect illustration of physical necessity. Necessity passed through

human consciousness, or bathed in human consciousness, is not on that

account a more eligible principle. Nay, since human consciousness

interferes and causes contingent actions, due to passion, appetite,

etc., the moral order constructed by men should be even less worth

while than the physical order of nature, if indeed necessity be the

touchstone of worth.[22]

To summarize: according to Kant man as an object is unfit to warrant

the claim of unconditional obligation on the part of others toward

himself. An abstract principle must be sought. This principle is

universality, and necessity based on universality. Respect for this

purely abstract notion is that which alone imparts a moral quality to

so-called moral acts. We start, according to Kant, with the declaration

that man is an end _per se_. But we reject him as an object, and take

refuge in a formal principle. We then assume that every human being is

conscious of the working within himself of this formal principle and

acknowledges his subjection to it, whether he is able to analyze it out

or not. And thus indirectly we derive out of emptiness a ray of glory

which we allow to fall upon each and every man.

The question now is, since this approach to the ethical problem

manifestly fails, must we not begin at the opposite end, and take the

attribution of worth to men, however unworthy they may actually be, as

our starting-point?

FOOTNOTES:

[21] He also assumes a society not only of rational intelligences

determined by the same rational motives, but equal in ability to carry

out their motives. (See my article in _Mind_ [new series, Vol. XI, No.

42, p. 162], reprinted in the volume dedicated to William James, by the

Philosophical Faculty of Columbia University.)

[22] Surefootedness, or certainty in thinking and in acting seems

to have been the chief desideratum at which Kant aimed. As against

scepticism or mere empirical groping this element of the inner life is

obviously of exceeding value. But it is far from being the only element

to be taken into account.

CHAPTER III

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON WORTH, AND ON THE REASONS WHY THE METHOD

EMPLOYED BY ETHICS MUST BE THE OPPOSITE OF THAT EMPLOYED BY THE

PHYSICAL SCIENCES

The moral equality of men is a corollary of the attribution of worth

to all men. Did we not ascribe worth to them, there is no reason why

we should not make servile use of them. But there are admittedly

formidable difficulties in the way of attributing worth to human nature.

The first and most obvious of these is the existence of repulsive

traits in human beings, such as sly cunning, deceit, falsehood,

grossness, cruelty: _homo homini lupus_! Secondly, there is the

prevalent error of employing ethical terms, like good and bad, to

denote the merely attractive and repellent traits.[23] Attractive

traits, such as gentleness, sweetness, kindness, a sympathetic

disposition, are, in those fortunate enough to possess them, pleasing

accidents of nature. We delight in them, but have no reason to ascribe

the superlative quality of worth to those who possess them. If the evil

that men do revolts us, the so-called good in them does not give us the

right to surround their heads with the nimbus of worth. Thirdly, and

perhaps even more deterrent than the ever-present spectacle of evil

and the inadequacy of so-called goodness, is the commonplaceness, the

cheapness of men.

It must be admitted that, with rare exceptions, our estimates of others

are apt to be low rather than lofty. Can we ascribe worth to those

whom we hold cheap? The reason of our habitual under-estimation of

fellowmen I think is that we regard them from the standpoint of the

use to which we can put them, and do not see them from the inside,

as it were, in the light of the marvelous energies of which human

nature is the scene. The grossest matter, the most ordinary physical

happenings, reveal to the instructed eye of the scientist the play of

forces which it taxes the most powerful intellects in some measure to

apprehend and describe. Yet these miracles escape the dull senses of

those of us who deal with the forces of nature from the point of view

of their immediate use. We turn on the electric light, but have little

more than a crude surmise of the things that the word electricity

meant to Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, or Hertz. And as we turn on the

electric light, so we turn on our fellowmen, as it were, to use them.

The thought of the poet—“What a piece of work is man, how infinite

in faculty!” occurs to us only at scattered moments. And yet things

transpire in the inner life of human beings far more marvelous than the

chemical processes or the flux of electric waves, did we but attend to

them. There is in particular one kind of energy to which the quality

of worth may well attach itself. It is unlike the physical forces; it

is not a transformed mode of mechanical energy. It is _sui generis_,

underivative, unique; it is synonymous with highest freedom; it is

power raised to the Nth degree. It is ethical energy. To release it

in oneself is to achieve unbounded expansion. Morality, as commonly

understood, is a system of rules, chiefly repressive. Ethical energy,

on the contrary, is determined by the very opposite tendency; a

tendency, it is true, never more than tentatively effectuated under

finite conditions. And because the energy is unique, it points toward

a unique, irreducible, hence substantive entity in man, from which it

springs. This entity is itself incognizable, yet the effect it produces

requires that it be postulated. The category of substance, which is

almost disappearing from science, is to be reinstalled in ethics.

Ethics cannot dispense with it. This, as a prelude, may suffice to

indicate the path along which we shall proceed.

_The Reason Why the Method of Ethics Must Be the Opposite of the Method

Employed by the Physical Sciences_

Physical science begins from the bottom and builds upwards. It analyzes

phenomena into their elements, and thereupon seeks to combine these

elements into structures that shall correspond to experience. In this

business it never comes to a finish. Its analysis of the elements is

provisional. Every element is hypothetical. Indeed it is plain in the

nature of the case that no element can be ultimate. An element is a

unit, and every empirical unit necessarily conceals in its bosom a

plexus of which it is the unification. The very idea of unit requires

for its complement a manifold of some kind. In hypothetical units, or

ideal constructs that have for their purpose to lead to the discovery

and arrangement of real phenomena, science abounds. Atoms, electrons,

energy conceived as a substance by Ostwald, Spencer’s physiological

units, are examples.

The results achieved by science are never more than approximations in

the sense that the units, the bricks with which the house is built, are

liable to be rejected, and the constructions achieved are subject to

revision.

The point however which I wish to emphasize is that the scientist is

satisfied of the truth, the reality of its partial results. Newton,

for instance, in formulating the law of gravitation has, so to speak,

marked off a strip of reality. The ground covered cannot be lost; when

some natural law is enunciated, the proper conditions for its discovery

and verification having been observed, a sure footing in reality has

been gained, science standing to this extent on _terra firma_, though

beyond the domain within which the law applies the phenomena may be

heaving and billowing like the sea.

Now the question I am intent upon is, Why is it possible for science

to be content with partial acquisition? Why does it profess to know

positively a part without knowing the whole? And why can ethics not

take a step without an ideal of the whole?

Kant’s chief purpose in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ was to vindicate

the certainty of the physical knowledge of a part as being compatible

with total ignorance of the whole. The older metaphysics was engaged

in the attempt to supply the whole, to sketch it out in order to

give certainty to the part that is within the reach of science. The

older metaphysics said to science: You have in hand the conditioned,

but remember the conditioned depends on the unconditioned. Unless,

therefore, you round out what you possess, with the help of the

unconditioned, the certainty you seem to have within the field of the

conditioned disappears. Again, science traces causes, and the older

metaphysicians insisted that the whole chain of causes hangs in air

unless it be attached to a first cause. Now Kant’s _Critique of Pure

Reason_ really amounts _in nuce_ to this: you do not require the whole

in order to explain the part. Link the partial phenomena together in a

certain way, a way dependent on the joint action of the space and time

intuitions and the categories, and you will gain the desired certainty.

The certainty is in the linkage. We may add link to link of the chain

of reality without troubling to consider by what piers it is supported

or on what shore the piers rest—if indeed there be piers and shores at

all. The bridge hangs over the River of Time and we can safely travel

on it. How we get on to this bridge we do not know, and where we shall

leave it we cannot know either.

It is a mistake to speak of Kant as a rationalist pure and simple. When

he expelled the older metaphysics he antagonized pure rationalism.

The older metaphysics held that the mere existence of the conditioned

proves the existence of the unconditioned, requires the unconditioned.

In Kant’s answer to this lies the gist of his enterprise in philosophy:

You are quite right, he says, that the _idea_ of the conditioned

requires the idea of the unconditioned, logically, rationally. But

observe well, nature is not just logical or rational. There is an

irrational element in it, namely, extended manifold and temporal

sequence. Juxtaposition and sequence are irrational, because, if I

interpret him rightly, in the case of each the relation presented to

the mind is that of parts outside each other—in the one case alongside,

in the other before and after; while in the logical or rational

relation the parts are implicit in the whole as in the case of the

premises of a syllogism and the conclusion, the relation of a genus to

the species, the universal to the particular.

We have in nature, according to Kant, a partnership between the

irrational and the rational factors. And thereupon he proceeds to

argue that we impose laws on nature, understanding thereby that we get

hold of reality or objectivity in so far as we are able to imprint

the rational element upon the irrational. The positing of the thing

_per se_, which has proved a stumbling-block to many, is no more than

a confession that we shall never succeed entirely in this business of

subjecting the irrational to the rational factor. The thing _per se_ is

the X that remains over when the rational function has done its utmost.

A thing, a real object, is that which is imprinted with, penetrated

with, rationality. The manifolds of space and time, of juxtaposition

and sequence are incapable of completely receiving this imprint, that

is, of completely responding to our quest for reality, and this their

incompetency is expressed in the notion of the thing _per se_.

To return to the main question as to the difference between the method

by which science proceeds and the reverse method prescribed to ethics,

I ask, Why is absolute knowledge of nature impossible? The answer

is, Because absolute knowledge would mean the completely rational

construction of nature, and this is prevented by the irrational element

existing in it. But why has the relative knowledge we possess the

character of certainty? Why are we sure of the law of gravitation? Why

are we justified in saying that science within certain limits plants

her foot on _terra solida_? Because at certain points the sense data do

coincide with the rational requirements. There are recurrent phenomena

of such a kind, coupled together in such a way, that each is capable of

mathematical measurement, and that the sequence of the one after the

other can therefore be predicted.

Nature might have been arranged quite otherwise. The time spans might

have been so long, as to prevent our observing the recurrences. A

day-fly cannot observe the periodicity of the earth’s revolution around

its axis. The fact however that there is this partial correspondence

between human rationality and the unknown nature of things is a bare

fact, incapable of explanation.[24] The answer, then, I take it, is:

our knowledge of nature is relative, which means incompletely rational,

because of the foreign element in nature unamenable to the operation

of the rational, the synthetic, function. This relative knowledge is

none the less certain, that is, in some sense absolute, because of

the partial coincidence of the phenomena of nature and the synthetic

processes of the mind.

With this degree of certainty we must perforce content ourselves, in

dealing with outside nature. In trying to understand and interpret

that which is not ourselves, we hit upon barriers which cannot be

transcended, upon a foreign factor which opposes itself to our

endeavors. But it is otherwise in the sphere of conduct. Here, if there

is to be certainty at all, in regard to right as distinguished from

wrong, if there is to be such a thing as right in the strict sense,

we cannot content ourselves with the paradoxical, relative-absolute

just described. For here we not merely interpret but act, and we must

possess an ideal plan of the whole if we are to be certain of our

rightness in any particular part of conduct. _For in conduct there is

no such partial coincidence between the rational and the irrational as

in the case of physical law._ There is not a single partial rule of

conduct, neither “Thou shalt not kill” nor “Thou shalt not lie,” nor

any other that, taken by itself, is of itself ethically right. It may

be right, it may be wrong. It takes its ethical quality from the plan

of conduct as a whole, and without reference to the whole it is devoid

of rightness.[25]

I have thus indicated the ground of the distinction between the method

of science and the method of ethics, a distinction, it is true, to

which Kant himself did not adhere. Partial coincidence of the rational

with the irrational is expressed in physical law; absence of such

concurrence destroys any attempt to build up an ethical theory on the

empirical method. We cannot plant our feet on the part, gaining there

the sense of certainty: we must creatively conceive the ideal of the

whole and educe every partial mode of ethical conduct from that.

But how shall we proceed in the construction of such an ideal, for it

is obvious that knowledge, in the scientific sense of the word, is

entirely out of the question?

FOOTNOTES:

[23] See the more extended remarks on this subject in Book III.

[24] In Kant’s view the rational element is projected on the

irrational. In this way spatial juxtaposition is ideally transformed

into a spatial continuum. In the same manner temporal sequence is

ideally changed into a uniform temporal flux. Without the former,

geometry could not have established its propositions; without the

latter Galileo could not have measured the fall of the stone.

[25] The ethical character of acts depends on the worth of the agent

and the object. Is it right to kill or to enslave a fellowman? We do

not hesitate to kill an animal, or to harness horses to vehicles, or to

use them as beasts of burden. Why not kill men, or use them as beasts

of burden in like manner?—Only because they possess a worth which gives

them a different standing.

Is it on grounds of sympathy that I should observe the so-called moral

rules? But if I am not sympathetic by nature, why should I be subject

to censure in case I refrain from displaying a tenderness which I do

not feel? Why should I sympathize with the pleasures and pains of

fellow human beings any more than with the pleasures and pains of

inferior sentient creatures, unless men have worth? And worth, as will

appear in the subsequent chapters, signifies indispensableness in a

perfect whole. No detached thing has worth. No part of an incomplete

system has worth. Worth belongs to those to whom it is attributed in

so far as they are conceived of as not to be spared, as representing a

distinctive indispensable preciousness, a mode of being without which

perfection would be less than perfect.

So that morality depends on the attribution of worth to men, and

worth depends on the formation in the mind of an ideal plan of the

whole—or instead of a complete plan let me say more precisely a rule of

relations whereby the plan is itself progressively developed.

CHAPTER IV

THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE

To recapitulate and at the same time to enlarge somewhat the points

thus far covered in Book II: Kant proclaims man an end _per se_. This

promises a philosophic basis for an ethical world-view. The promise is

not kept. Kant takes as his point of departure absolute obligation, and

attempts to deduce out of an empty formula a worthwhile object. Kant’s

formula is: Treat man never merely as a means, but also as an end _per

se_. But how far man may be treated as a means, and what the relation

of the means to the end may be is left undetermined. An upper crust of

morality is formed, as it were, upon the empirical flood of passions,

desires, etc. A straight line is drawn beyond which the under world in

every man may not emerge. But a truly instrumental view of the means as

related to the end is not established. This is one of the great gaps

in Kant’s system. Note the almost puerile reason given for culture: we

should cultivate our talents _weil sie zu allerhand Zwecken nützlich

sein mögen_.

Kant’s ethical order is a duplicate of the physical order. The notion

of law is taken from physics, and expanded into the concept of law

in general. Ethical behavior is represented as behavior motivated by

the notion of lawfulness. Law is characterized by universality and

necessity. Chapter II, however, shows that in physics universality is

predicated on the ground of an ascertained necessary connection. In

physics, necessity has its true meaning as pertaining to a relation

between one thing and another. If the linkage can be established, the

universality follows. In Kant’s ethics, on the contrary, necessity is

taken as the consequence of the universality and the proper meaning of

necessity is lost. Self-consistency takes the place of the relation

to something else. The ideal society, as described, would therefore

be a society of self-preserving rational intelligences, ethically

solipsistic.

Next we began the investigation into the idea of worth. Why do men

hold themselves and others cheap? They regard each other from the

point of view of the _use_ to be made of others and of their own life,

and not from the point of view of the energies deployed. The turning

on of electric power was used as an illustration. Nevertheless, even

exceptional men, men regarded as illustrating in the highest degree the

mental energies implicit in human nature, would not possess the quality

of worth, that is, of being ends _per se_, merely on the score of their

scientific or their artistic activities. We cannot say that the world

would be less perfect if there were no scientists to discover its laws.

There is a supreme, a unique energy and it is to this that the quality

of worth belongs.[26]

The ethical quality called worth is the supreme good, and must be

accessible to all, even to those to whom the lesser goods are denied.

Ethics is a system of thought which stands or falls with the contention

that while the better may be within reach only of the exceptional few,

the best is within reach of all.

In attempting to approach the task of building up a world-view based

on ethical experience, it became unavoidable to consider the method

by which the approach might be made, and for this purpose to contrast

the methods of science and the methods of ethics. Science, as we have

seen, collects its bricks and builds its house by composition. Science

analyzes phenomena into units, which it then combines. The mystery is

how science can achieve certainty in respect to certain phenomena of

nature without previous knowledge of the whole of nature. Kant’s answer

is that there is partial congruity between the mental functions and the

data that come to us from the unknown. Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_

faces in two directions. It expels the older metaphysics which assumed

that the empirical world is rational throughout, or rationalizable, and

which thence argued the existence of the unconditioned as necessarily

implied in the existence of the conditioned, and of a first cause as

actually implied in the chain of causes and effects. Kant contends

that there is an irrational element, namely, bare juxtaposition

(part outside part), and bare sequence (part before and after part),

while the logical or rational relation implies that the part is to

be conceived as implicit in the whole. Juxtaposition and sequence,

therefore, can never be completely rationalized. On the other hand,

Kant undertakes to prove that whatever of reality we know is traceable

to the projection of the rational factor upon the irrational. One

might even say that, according to Kant, the mind itself produces the

irrational factor, since the intuitions of space and time are according

to him, functions of the mind itself—the mind setting up a manifold so

constituted as to receive sense impressions. At any rate the capital

point to which we were led up was that science puts her foot on _terra

firma_ in a restricted area, without reference to what lies beyond,

while if we are to proceed in ethics at all, we must begin with some

ideal plan of the whole, since in ethics we are not interpreting a

foreign nature, but act upon natures similar to our own; and since,

in the case of conduct, there is no such partial concurrence of

the rational and irrational as in physics, no one of the so-called

moral modes of behavior being moral when taken separately. Hence the

conclusion that there is no possibility of establishing the conception

of worth unless we have some ideal of the whole in which and in

relation to which the incomparable worthwhileness of a human being can

be made good.

We need hardly again remind ourselves that this conception of worth,

or of man as end _per se_, is not a mere abstraction, and that our

interest in it is not academic. Every outcry against the oppression

of man by man, or against whatsoever is morally hideous, is but the

affirmation of the cardinal principle that a human being as such is

not to be violated, is not to be handled like a tool, but is to be

respected and revered as an end _per se_. But what do we mean by end

_per se_, and how account for this notion? Does it come into our mind

like a bolt from the blue, or is it revealed as prefigured in the human

mind when we follow it into its intimate constitution?

Our knowledge of the world we live in is extremely limited—in its

details it is confined to the planet we live on, extending to

the myriads of celestial bodies beyond us only by means of scant

generalizations. If we have knowledge of only so small a portion, how

can we frame an ideal of the whole? At the same time we must remember

that the world we actually know, this earth and yonder starry myriads,

is in very truth _our_ world, the world as it exists for us, a world

which with the help of data coming to us from the unknown, we ourselves

have built up on certain constructive principles; and that these

principles have been found, within certain limits, availing.[27] I

say availing within certain limits. The defeat they meet with beyond

those limits is due to the intractable elements of juxtaposition and

sequence, of the time and space manifolds, which in themselves are

incapable of being completely rationalized.

Now the ideal of the whole is a plan or scheme in which the

constructive principles of the mind are conceived as having untrammeled

course and unhindered application, and the task of world-building, or

rather universe-building, is in idea carried out to completion.

The attempt to present an ideal forecast, or outline of the whole of

reality, as it would satisfy a mind constituted like ours, an ideal

landscape of this sort, is not at all to be confounded with the

arrogation of _a priori_ knowledge. _A priori_ knowledge is supposed

to be a kind of knowledge, and _knowledge_ of the whole is utterly

and confessedly beyond our reach. The phrase _a priori_, too, is

objectionable and unfortunate for two reasons. First, as just said,

because it has been supposed to be a kind of knowledge. By some

theologians men were supposed to possess _a priori_ knowledge of

God.[28] Secondly, because the word _a priori_ suggests precedence

in time, and our knowledge of the human mind and of its irreducible

capacities comes out only in the course of experience. Much that has

been called _a priori_, that is implicit in experience, did not become

explicit until after prolonged experience. The Greek thinkers before

Aristotle doubtless thought in terms of syllogism, but it was not until

Greek science had attained a certain ripeness that Aristotle was able

to dissect out the logic which had previously been employed more or

less unconsciously.

Instead, therefore, of using the term _a priori_, which gives rise to

the two-fold misapprehension of an _a priori_ knowledge and of temporal

precedence, and instead of throwing out the child with the bath, that

is, of ignoring the independent part played by our mental constitution

in building up experience, and in affording us the conviction of

certainty, and of reality, it is highly desirable that a new term be

found to take the place of _a priori_. The term “functional finality”

suggests itself to me for this purpose.[29]

My field is ethics. I am entirely desirous of sticking to my own last,

that is, dealing with such concepts as the data of my subject force

upon me. I do not wish to trespass, or to seem to trespass, on the

domain of my neighbors. Hence in dealing with functional finalities I

must deal with them primarily as they appear in the field of ethics,

that is, in the domain of the actions and reactions of human beings

upon one another. Irreducible _principia_ of ethics are the functional

finalities, which prescribe rules for such intercourse, or better which

create a scheme of ideal intercourse whereby the conduct of men shall

be measured and determined.

I must, however, glance for a moment at fields outside my own, for the

purpose not of controversy but of elucidation; not to deal with the

subject matter of my neighbors, but to mark off my own more definitely.

What then, I ask, is the most general expression by which to designate

the singularities of the human mind, the principles on which it acts,

its immutable modes of behavior, the invariants that recur amid all

the complex varieties of its processes? The principal invariants are

the positing of a manifold of some kind, and the apprehending of

that manifold as coherent. The manifold is not given, but is posited

by the mind. The positing is a mental function, just as much as the

apprehending of the plurality as coherent is a mental function. The

particular manifolds of space and time experience are said to be given,

but they would not be received by the mind were not the function of

manifold-positing prepared to apprehend them.

In recent physical science the notion of the manifold plays a

conspicuous rôle. Subtle speculations are employed to define the

kinds of manifold which the physicist finds opportune, and the kind

of unity of which these manifolds are respectively capable. The two

terms mentioned are themselves the most abstract conceivable, and

naturally, that which is here taken to underlie all the constructive,

world-building activity of the mind in every possible direction can

only be expressed in the most sublimated language. But the notions

themselves, or rather the acts of the mind, the functions designated,

are rich and replete with concrete utility when applied to subject

matter in the different fields.

Wherever we turn we find that the assurance of reality depends on the

joint use of the two principles mentioned, the joint operation of

the two kinds of mental action; that is to say—on the positing of a

manifold and on the simultaneous apprehension of the subject matter to

which it relates as coherent, as unified.

The simultaneity, the inseparableness of the two mental acts or

functions in regard to the same subject-matter is the essential point

on which hangs the web of the argument here submitted. Thus in geometry

space must be regarded as a continuum, unbroken, uninterrupted at any

point, and at the same time the same space must be treated as capable

of puncture, of linear and superficial delimitations; that is to say,

of division. That which is one must yet be apprehended as divided;

that which is divided, or delimitated, must yet be apprehended as one.

The difficulties that arise spring from the vain endeavor to separate

the two inseparable acts—the act of apprehending the manifold of space

_sub specie pluralitatis_, and the act of apprehending it _sub specie

unitatis_. Hence arises the puzzling question: How can that which is

continuous be divided, how can chasms between the parts of space,

however infinitesimal, be bridged? Witness the problem of Zeno, and

the pragmatist solution of it by a demonstration that satisfies us

indeed as to the fact (which no one doubts), but leaves the mental

puzzle as before; and also Bergson’s Method of accounting for division

by a comparison of the inner and the outer flux, wherein he seems to

overlook the difficulty that for the purpose of comparison two points

must be fixed, one in each flux, that is to say, the division in the

flux must be regarded as already existing.

In the physical sciences we are compelled to assume on the one hand

the atomic or granular constitution of matter, in other words,

manifoldness. On the other hand, if “action at a distance” is to be

escaped, we are bound to assume a continuum of some sort like the

ether. Again, in the organic world there is the manifold of structures

and functions, and the unity of organism. To whatever object of

inquiry we give our attention, we find ourselves not only restricted

fundamentally to the two functions described, but we discover that to

their insunderable co-operation we owe whatever of truth we possess.

Now the business of ethics is to define its own subject-matter, that

is to say the particular kind of manifold with which it deals, and the

kind of unity of which that manifold is susceptible. But as I approach

this first goal of my enterprise, there is one obstacle which I must

try to remove out of the way of the reader, before I can hope to win

him to a hospitable consideration of my conclusions. The jointness

or inseparableness of the two acts out of which certainty or reality

issues has created all the difficulties. The fact that the manifold

must be regarded as remaining a manifold, unaltered in its character

as such, not derivative from the One (there is no such One), and that

the unity does not contrariwise result from the manifold in the sense

of springing from or being derived from it;—in other words that we

must see the same landscape of things and events both _sub specie

pluralitatis_ and _sub specie unitatis_—has been the stumbling-block.

The history of philosophy might be written under the two headings: 1,

monistic systems that undertake, collapsing in their futile effort, to

derive the world and its plurality from the One, as if there were such

an One, out of whose bosom philosophy might evoke the many (creational

systems, pantheistic systems, emanation systems, evolution systems); 2,

pluralistic systems that essay, with equal lack of success, to explain

the unity as somehow the offspring of the plurality.

Why then have these systems flourished? Why are these vain undertakings

still renewed? The reason is that we cannot understand the joint action

of the two functions, and the very point where enlightenment is needed

is for us to recognize that no fundamental truths can be understood

by us, that we can only look at them, contemplate and accept them.

The point, I say, where enlightenment is needed is that the habit of

trying to understand is due to a prejudice, to what may be called the

_superstition of causality_.

I shall have to explain this hardy assertion with some care to prevent

misconception. Causality, it will be objected, is the one thread that

leads us through the labyrinth of nature. The search for causes enables

us to become at home in our world by foreseeing events. In what sense

then can it be permissible to speak of the prejudice of causality,

nay, of the superstition of it? With what warrant prescribe a limit to

the aspirations of the human intellect to push its inquiries to the

farthest limit, even so far as to understand the functional finalities

themselves, if such there be?

The answer, succinctly put, is this: explaining or understanding things

means tracing effects to their causes, and this is only one mode, a

somewhat _disguised_ mode, of the joint functional activity of which

I have spoken. The manifold in this case is that of the temporal

sequence of phenomena, of differences due to change of position in

time; and the unity established between them (as for instance energy,

of which the sequent phenomena represent the transformations) is an

ideal, fictive unity, mentally superimposed (real despite its ideal

or imaginary character, because of the necessity we are under to view

the sequent phenomena _sub specie unitatis_). That there is nothing

in the antecedent to compel the sequent to follow has been since the

days of Hume a commonplace in philosophy. That nevertheless there is

such a thing as the prediction of eclipses was made by Kant the basis

of his doctrine of synthesis _a priori_. Be the terms used what they

may, what counts is the fact that the _joint action of two functions,

which itself is inexplicable_, not to be understood, that is, not to be

referred back to a preceding cause (as if there could be such a thing

as a cause why we think in terms of causality) is the foundation of all

so-called understanding.

Moreover causality is an incomplete example of the fundamental

functional process. We never do thoroughly understand; we gain a

certain relief, a certain increased ease of mind by pushing the problem

back a step. And what I have called the prejudice of causality, is the

unwillingness on our part to acknowledge the fact that we are face to

face, in the case of causality, with the inexplicable; that that which

helps us partially to understand (and serves for practical purposes

well enough) is in its nature not to be understood, one of the modes in

which the joint action of the functional finalities manifests itself.

An ultimate principle has been defined as one which is presupposed in

every attempt to account for it. The functional finalities of which I

speak bear the test of this definition. The upshot of it all is that

the constitutive principles of the human mind cannot be explained or

understood, but can nevertheless be verified. And verification, in the

last analysis, means exemplification. If we look at these ultimate

truths, whether in geometry, in physics, or, as we shall later see, in

ethics and æsthetics, as enunciated abstractly, baldly, we confront

them blankly, we are as it were dumbfounded in their presence. They

seem arbitrarily imposed upon us. And why? Because we are endeavoring

to understand them. We have acquired the habit of trying to get hold of

truth by referring back to some antecedent. And therefore we are uneasy

and disconcerted. But the moment we see them exemplified, as in the

constructions of the geometer, in the laws or uniformities established

by the physicist, etc., we are convinced. The subject-matter of ethics

is different. The kind of exemplification is likewise different. But

verification is exemplification in ethics as elsewhere; and this will

be found to mean that the life, the ethical experience, must lead to

the certainty.

And now we have reached the point where a brief discussion of the

ethical manifold and its mode of unification comes up in proper order.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] To rate anyone as an end _per se_ means that in a world conceived

as perfect his existence would be indispensable. The world we know may

not be perfect, is not perfect, but we do conceive of an ideal world

that is. And to ascribe to anyone the quality of worth, to denominate

him an end _per se_, is to place him into that world, to regard him as

potentially a member of it.

[27] For a creature endowed with different senses, and having a mind

unlike our own, the world would be a totally different world.

[28] To deny such _a priori_ knowledge of the object called God is

not to deny that the production of this object is due to constructive

principles of human thinking; while, in turn, to assert the functional

derivation of the God-idea is not to validate that idea itself as

permanent and inexpugnable. It may have owed its origin to a permanent

disposition of the mind, and yet be fallible because of the historical

conditions under which it arose and the defective data in which it was

expressed. By way of illustration we might apply the same reflection

to the Ptolemaic astronomy. The mathematical processes by which this

astronomy was constructed may be traced to permanent singularities of

human thinking, yet the astronomical theory of Ptolemy is not on that

account _a priori_ true.

[29] It must, however, be understood that the formula in which a

finality is expressed is not itself a final formula. The business of

definition is precarious, liable to error and dogmatic abuse, and

the formulas of finality are to be constantly subjected to revision.

Possible and even probable abuse, however, does not warrant the

negative attitude at present taken; it does not justify the revulsion

of feeling against _A Priorism_ which is just now general. Exasperation

with absolutism does not of itself justify recourse to the opposite

extreme of pragmatism.

CHAPTER V

THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE AND THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is,

the ideal of the whole. The ethical manifold is the true universe, not

“Universe” in the sense in which the word is too laxly used at present

to designate those fragmentary and in many respects unconnected lines

of experience which might better by way of discrimination be called

World.

The ideal of the whole, as the terms imply, must fulfill two

conditions: it must be a whole, that is, include all manifoldness

whatsoever; and it must be ideal, or perfectly unified. In such an

ideal whole the two reality-producing functions of the human mind would

find their complete fruition.

Point 1.—The totality of manifoldness must be comprised.

Point 2.—The connectedness must be without flaw.

From point one it follows that the ethical manifold cannot be

spatial or temporal, since juxtaposition and sequence lapse into

indefiniteness, abounding without ceasing, but never attaining or

promising the attainment of totality. Our first conclusion then is that

the ethical manifold is non-temporal and non-spatial.

Furthermore it is necessary and decisive for the theoretical

construction here attempted to keep sharply in view, that the

manifoldness may not be derived from the unity, or conversely. The

manifold remains forever manifold. This means that in the ethical

manifold each member[30] will differ uniquely from all the rest,

and preserve his irreducible singularity. The member of the ethical

manifold was not created by _the_ One or any One. He is not derived

as effect from any cause. Causality does not apply to the ethical

manifold, being a category of spatial sequence. The member of the

ethical manifold, or the ethical unit, as we may now call him (I say

him metaphorically and provisionally) is unbegotten, induplicable,

unique. In the ethical manifold each infinitesimal member is

indispensable, inasmuch as he is one of the totality of intrinsically

unlike differentiæ. A duplicate would be superfluous. Inclusion implies

indispensableness; no member acquires a place within the ethical

universe save on the score of his title, as one of the possible modes

of being that are required to complete the totality of manifoldness.

But the reality-producing functions of the mind are two, and they

act jointly. The same manifold that is regarded as the scene of

irreducible manifoldness, is also regarded _sub specie unitatis_.

The immense practical importance of holding fast to diversity as

indefeasible, and at the same time stressing the unity, will amply

appear in the course of the third Book. It is this insistence on the

two aspects _jointly_, that distinguishes the theory here worked out

from preceding ethical philosophies, and will be found to open new

ethical applications to conduct. It is this insistence on the joint

action of the two reality-producing functions that will enable us to

see in the ideal of the whole _a pattern traced_, and to derive from

this pattern of relations a supreme rule of conduct. If the differences

that exist among the members of the manifold be slurred over, if the

indefeasible singularity of each member be overlooked, if the many be

derived from the One, since the One is an empty concept, we shall gain

no light upon the conduct to be followed by each of the many. It is

true that our notion of the distinctive difference or the uniqueness of

each ethical unit is also empty as far as knowledge goes. The unique

is incognizable. Yet we are able to apprehend, and do apprehend, a

determinate relation as subsisting between the ethical units, and this

relation supplies us with an ideal plan of the ethical universe and a

first principle and rule of ethics. The relation is that of reciprocal

universal interdependence.

Consider that an infinite number of ethical entities is presented to

our minds—each of them radically different from the rest. In what

then possibly can the unity of this infinite assemblage consist? In

this—_that the unique difference of each shall be such as to render

possible the correlated unique differences of all the rest_. It is in

this formula that we find the key to a new ethical system, in this

conception we get our hand firmly on the notion of right, and by means

of it we discover the object which Kant failed to find, the object to

which worth attaches, the object which is so indispensable to the ideal

of the whole as to authenticate unconditional obligation or rightness

in conduct with respect to it. It is as an ethical unit, as a member of

the infinite ethical manifold, that man has worth.[31]

In accordance with the above, the first principle of ethics may be

expressed in the following formulas:

A. Act as a member of the ethical manifold (the infinite spiritual

universe).

B. Act so as to achieve uniqueness (complete individualization—the most

completely individualized act is the most ethical).

C. Act so as to elicit in another the distinctive, unique quality

characteristic of him as a fellow-member of the infinite whole.

A and B are comprised in C. I am taking three steps toward a fuller

exposition of the meaning of the principle. To act as a member

according to A is to strive to achieve uniqueness as declared in

B. To achieve uniqueness as declared in C is to seek to elicit the

diverse uniqueness in others. The actual unique quality in myself

is incognizable, and only appears, so far as it does appear, in the

effect produced by myself upon my fellows. Hence, to advance towards

uniqueness I must project dynamically my most distinctive mode of

energy upon my fellow-members.

Since the finite nature of man is a clog and screen, clouding and

checking the action of man viewed as an ethical unit, it follows that

no man will ever succeed in carrying out completely the rule which is

derived from the ideal pattern. He will invariably meet with partial

frustration in his efforts to do so, and yet in virtue of his ethical

character he will always renew the effort. While in physical science

the recurrence of phenomena supplies the occasion for exemplification

or verification, in conduct, or the sphere of volition, not recurrence

but the persistence of the effort after defeat is at least a help to

verification, arguing in one’s self a consciousness, however obscured,

of the relation of reciprocal interdependence and of subjection to the

urge or pressure thence derived.[32] It is our own reality-producing

functions, exerted to their utmost, to which we are delivered over.

Hence the final formulation: So act as to raise up in others the ideal

of the relation of give and take, of universal interdependence in

which they stand with an infinity of beings like themselves, members of

the infinite universe, irreducible, like and unlike themselves in their

respective uniqueness.

The simile that may be used is that of a ray of light which has the

effect of kindling other rays, unlike but complementary to itself.

Each ethical unit, each member of the infinite universe, is to be

regarded as a center from which such a ray emanates, touching other

centers, and awakening there the light intrinsic in them. Or we may

think of a fountain from which stream forth jets of indescribable

life-power—playing out of it, playing into other life, and evoking

there kindred and yet unkindred life-waves, waves effluent and

refluent. Whatever the symbolism may be, inadequate in any case, the

idea of the enmeshing of one’s life in universal life without loss of

distinctness—the everlasting selfhood to be achieved on the contrary,

by means of the cross-relation—is the cardinal point.

I have here to answer one question. By what warrant do I ascribe worth

to any human being? Where is the head deserving that this ray that

streams out from me shall light upon it? What man or woman merits that

he be invested with this glory? Does not the same objection opposed

to Kant hold with respect to my own view? It is true that he found no

object at all, and sought indirectly to draw from the empty notion

of obligation the inference that man is an end _per se_. Perhaps

it will be admitted that the supremely worthwhile object has now

been found, the holy thing (holy in two ways, as being inviolable,

reverence-inspiring, holding at a distance those who would encroach:

and intrinsically priceless as a component of the ethical manifold, as

indispensable in a perfect whole). But this object, you will say, is

in the air, or in the heavens, and how shall it be made to descend on

empirical man?

My answer is that certainly I do not discover the quality of worth

in people as an empirical fact. In many people I do not even

discover value. Judging from the point of view of bare fact, many

of us could very well be spared. Many are even in the way of what

is called “progress.” And the suggestion of some extreme disciples

of Darwin that the degenerate and defective should be removed, or

the opinion of others that pestilence and war should be allowed to

take the unpleasant business off our hands, is, from the empirical

point of view, not easily to be refuted. I can also enter into, if

I do not wholly share, the pessimistic mood with regard to actual

human nature expressed by Schopenhauer and others. To the list of

repulsive human creatures mentioned by Marcus Aurelius in one of his

morning meditations,—the back-biter, the scandal-monger, the informer,

etc.—might be added in modern times, the white-slaver, the exploiter of

child-labor, the fawning politician, and many another revolting type.

And even more discouraging in a way, than these examples of deepest

human debasement—the copper natures, as Plato calls them, or the

leaden natures, as we might call them—is the disillusionment we often

experience with regard to the so-called gold natures, the discovery of

the large admixture of baser metal which is often combined with their

gold.

It is imperative to acquaint oneself, nay, to impregnate one’s mind

thoroughly with these contrary facts, if the doctrine of worth, the

sanest and to my mind the most real of all conceptions, is to be saved

from the appearance of an optimistic illusion.

The answer to the objection is that I do not _find_ worth in others

or in myself, I _attribute_ it to them and to myself. And why do I

attribute it? In virtue of the reality-producing functions of my own

mind. I create the ethical manifold. The pressure of the essential

rationality within me, seeking to complete itself in the perfect

fruition of these functions, _i.e._, in the positing of a total

manifold and its total unification, drives me forward. I need an idea

of the whole in order to act rightly, in such a way as to satisfy the

dual functions within me. My own nature as a spiritual being urges me

to seek this satisfaction. This ideal whole, as I have shown, is a

complexus of uniquely differentiated units. In order to advance toward

uniqueness, in order to achieve what in a word may be called my own

truth, to build myself into the truth, to become essentially real,

I must seek to elicit the consciousness of the uniqueness and the

interrelation in others. I must help others in order to save myself;

I must look upon the other as an ethical unit or moral being in order

to become a moral being myself. And wherever I find consciousness of

relation, of connectedness, even incipient, I project myself upon

that consciousness, with a view to awaking in it the consciousness

of universal connectedness. Wherever I can hope to get a response

I test my power. Fields and trees do not speak to me, as Socrates

said, but human beings do. I should attribute worth to stones and to

animals could they respond, were the power of forming ideas, without

which the idea of relation or connectedness is impossible, apparent in

them. Doubtless stones and trees and animals, and the physical world

itself, are but the screen behind which lies the infinite universe.

But the light of that universe does not break through the screen where

it is made up of stones and trees and the lower animals. It breaks

through, however faintly, where there is consciousness of relation: and

wherever I discover that consciousness I find my opportunity. It is

quite possible that the men and women upon whom I try my power will not

actually respond. The complaint is often heard from moral persons, or

persons who think themselves such, that what they call the moral plan

of rousing the moral consciousness in others will not work. Perhaps the

plan they follow is not the moral plan at all, but the plan of sympathy

or of some other empirically derived rule. But be that as it may,

the question is not whether we get the response but whether we shall

achieve reality or truth ourselves; in theological terms, save our own

life, by trying to elicit the response.

And here one profoundly important practical consideration will come to

our aid, namely, the sense of our own imperfection, coupled indeed with

the consciousness of inextinguishable power of moral renewal. Instead

of attributing the lack of response to the hopeless dullness of the

person upon whom we labor, a sense of humility, based on the knowledge

of our own exceeding spiritual variability—best moments followed by

worst moments, imperfect grasp on our own ideals, most imperfect

fidelity in executing them—will lead us to turn upon ourselves, and

far from permitting us to despair of others, will impel us rather to

make ourselves more fitting instruments of spiritual influence than

obviously as yet we are.[33]

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Say not _part_ or _element_, but _member_, to distinguish the

components of the ethical manifold from such concepts as are used in

mathematics and physical science.

[31] The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for

it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most

objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our

empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants.

We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us has

wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in the case

of sex, of coöperation, in the vocation, etc. But value ceases when

the want or need is gratified. The value which one human being has for

another is transient. There are, in the strict sense, no permanent

values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and

developed members of a community is small; from the standpoint of value

most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease

with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific

fertility of the human race. The custom of speaking of ethics as a

theory of values is regrettable. It evidences the despair into which

many writers on ethics have fallen as to the possibility of discovering

an objective basis for rightness.

[32] But the verification itself is the clearer and more explicit

vision of the ethical relation, as it ought to be.

[33] The term “ethical unit” used above should be found useful. The

chemists have found the concept of the atom useful, though no one

has ever seen an atom. And all the sciences have recourse to similar

inventions,—such as the electron, or the ion, or energy regarded as

a substance, and in mathematics the sublimated, space-transcending

concepts. Looking through the eyes of science, we are taught to see,

underlying the grossest forms of matter, imaginary entities which are

well-nigh metaphysical in nature. Science starts from the realm of

the sensible, and constructs its super-rarefied devices on mechanical

models. Then it leaves the field of the intuitively perceptible, and

rises by the path of analogy into realms where the notions with which

it operates are no longer imaginable. I do not wish, in speaking of an

ethical, invisible, and unimaginable entity, to derive the postulation

of this conception from science. The ethical concept transcends wholly

the field of sensible experience. It is not discovered by way of

analogy. It is frankly and overtly supersensible. It is not exemplified

in the effects it produces in the world of volition as the most

nearly metaphysical concepts of science are exemplified in the field

of phenomena by the recurrences or uniformities which they serve to

account for. The ethical concepts are not verified by their results

at all, not by recurrences of phenomena, but by the persistence of

the effort to attain that which is finitely never attained, and _by

the more explicit perception of the ideal itself_ which follows the

persistent effort; for as has been shown above, when face to face with

fundamental truth, _seeing is believing_. But I allude to these matters

in order to show that the movement in ethical thinking represented

by the system which I propose is not contrary to the present-day

movement in science, but in line with it, though beyond it. It does

not ask leave of science; it does not base its certainty on scientific

precedent; but neither does it expect a veto from the lips of science.

The worthwhileness of scientific endeavor itself depends at bottom

on the sanction which the ideal of the complete carrying out of the

reality-producing functions lends to their incomplete execution in the

world of the space and time manifold.

CHAPTER VI

THE IDEAL OF THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE AND THE GOD-IDEAL

We have seen whence the ideal of a spiritual universe arises. It is

unnecessary to prove that the universe is moral. What it is necessary

to verify is that a universe exists; for “universe” is an ethical

ideal, it is the ethical manifold, or, if we distinguish ethical as

concerning relations between man and man, then we may use the term

“spiritual” to designate that infinite system of interdependence

in which men as ethical units have their place. We begin with the

affirmation—Man is an end _per se_. This wonderful affirmation,

which the democracies are darkly and confusedly trying to express in

political and social arrangements, constitutes the problem of all

problems. It is the great datum of ethics, of which ethical theory

must give an account. All other data or problems that have been thrust

into the foreground—freedom of the will, responsibility, altruistic

self-sacrifice—are secondary, in the sense that they depend for their

solution on a right conception of man as end _per se_. As possessing

worth on his own account he is an ethical unit. Only as a member

of the infinite spiritual universe does he possess the two-fold

attributes implied in worth—inviolability with respect to outsiders

and indefeasible, intrinsic preciousness. Therefore I say that around

the individual, the ethical unit, we build up as a necessary postulate

the spiritual universe. Man ethically considered carries with him this

infinite environment.

Does this universe exist or is it a mere figment? It is the product of

the reality-producing functions in their ideal completion. It is the

necessary postulate required if the idea of right is to have validity,

and the idea of right is required by man in so far as he is an agent

and not merely a spectator of life. The ethical manifold, the spiritual

universe, exists in so far as there is a right.

Have we then reinstated the idea of God as existent? Not the idea of

God as an individual. We have on the contrary set aside that idea by

affirming that manifoldness cannot be derived from unity, that the

positing of plurality is just as much a primary function of the mind as

the positing of unity. We have discarded the God-idea as the _locus_ of

unity, since the unity subsists in the relation of the units. Strictly

speaking, we have replaced the God-idea by that of a universe of

spiritual beings interacting in infinite harmony.

But at this point I must go back for a moment to Kant, using his ideas

once more as a foil to make my own more explicit. Wilhelm von Humboldt

said of Kant that some of the things he had destroyed would never

be rebuilt, and that some of the things he had built would never be

destroyed.

For more than a hundred years the impression has prevailed that among

the things forever destroyed by Kant are the proofs of the existence

of God. He is represented as an intellectual giant whose blows have

forever shattered the proofs on which the existence of a supersensible

reality rested. Kant’s mind was preëminently scientific. He was the

philosopher who made explicit the principles underlying Newtonian

science as Aristotle had made explicit the logic underlying the Greek

science. His philosophy is essentially agnostic. The use that he

continues to make of the God-idea can be dissociated from his system

with advantage to the latter.[34]

But did Kant indeed destroy the idea of a supersensible reality

as existent, or are we warranted in undertaking to build anew the

supersensible world.[35] “_Du hast sie zerstörrt, die schöne Welt,

In deinem Busen baue sie wieder_”—not indeed in the realm of mere

feelings, but in the sphere of will. The spell of Kant’s shattering

attack still rests upon the intellectual world today. The notion of a

supersensible reality, if held at all, is held timidly, apologetically

and is apt to be based on subjective emotional need. The wish is more

or less admitted to be father to the faith—the will to believe is

defiantly asserted in despair of sound foundations. A scientist like

Dubois-Reymond enumerates seven world riddles, or mysteries that cannot

be explained, and after saying that they cannot be explained, he seems

to see that no alternative remains but to take refuge in resignation:

“Ignoramus, ignorabimus!”

That “explanation” is not the only avenue to truth, that the referring

of effects to their causes is not the highest operation of the

reality-producing functions, I have pointed out in a previous chapter.

But Kant, as has been said, is supposed to have utterly annihilated

the arguments intended to demonstrate the existence of God, and it

will clear up the matter at issue if we consider wherein he actually

succeeded and wherein he quite failed. As he himself declares, his

method is regressive; he does not attempt the progressive method path.

He seeks to ascertain whether by going backward along the chain of

effects and causes, or of conditions, he can somewhere find God as

first cause or as unconditioned. He does not look forward looking to

the ideals of the will. He does not enter into the realm of ends, where

the necessity of determining action in obedience to some universal plan

or scheme of relations might have forced itself on his attention. His

approach, like his habit of mind, is scientific. He is not primarily

an ethicist. Proceeding in this manner he shows that the notion of a

first cause is untenable, and he attacks in particular the ontological

argument by which every other argument supplements itself at the point

where it breaks down.

Did Kant, however, annihilate the Ontological Argument? Yes, in the

scholastic form in which it was held. No, in a form, based on the idea

of the ethical manifold, in which it can be restated. In the scholastic

form it runs: “There is such a thing as the idea of a perfect being.

Existence is an element of perfection. If the perfect being did not

exist it would be less than perfect. But the _ens realissimum_, the

perfect being, is present as an idea in the mind. Therefore it exists.”

The disproof of this amounts to the curt statement that what exists in

the mind does not necessarily exist outside of it, or, as Kant put it:

“The idea of 100 thalers in the head of a man is one thing, lacking no

element of conceptual integrity; while the existence of the 100 thalers

in the man’s purse is an entirely different matter.” The evidence of

existence, in other words, depends on the synthesis of the data of

sense as arranged in the space and time manifold in accordance with the

categories of the understanding. Existence is temporal and spatial. To

prove that God exists we should have to prove that he exists in the

world of the senses. Of any other kind of existence we are agnostic.

Kant’s disproof of the Ontological Argument thus depends on his

agnosticism.

But suppose that on ethical grounds we find ourselves compelled to

affirm that there is an object which has worth, and that to account for

the inviolableness, indispensableness and preciousness of this object

we are compelled to give free rein to the reality-producing functions,

and to place this object having worth as a member in a manifold

not spatial and temporal but infinite: and suppose we say that the

existence of this worth-endowed object, of this ethical unit with its

compeers, is as certain as the notion of rightness is certain, have we

not then without blame widened the conception of existence, and placed

the Ontological Argument where Kant’s disproof does not even touch

it?[36]

One more important remark is here in place, suggested by Kant’s

designation of God as the ideal of reason, and by his designation of

our highest nature as the rational nature.

Is “rational” equivalent to intellectual? If it be so, then feeling

must be classed as irrational, and impulse likewise, since neither

feeling nor impulse is subject to logical rules. And then the war will

be on between the intellectualists or rationalists and the champions of

irrational conceptions of life, since feeling and impulse actually make

up the major part of life, and can neither be left out of account nor

compressed into intellectualist formulas.[37]

Plainly, there is a deep misunderstanding between the two parties. An

error is involved somewhere. It appears to consist in assuming that

objectivity can be supplied only by the intellect, in overlooking the

fact that the feelings and still more the volition possess intrinsic

controls and norms of their own, that Science, the work of the

intellect, and art and ethics, spring from a common root, namely,

the reality-producing functions. The manifolds with which each of

the three respectively deals are different, the methods of synthesis

are different, but the root principle, synthesis of the manifold, is

identical in all.

To describe our highest nature, therefore, as the rational nature is

perilous, since the word rational suggests intellectual. Either we must

strain the signification of reason to include feeling and will, which

is contrary to common usage, or we should select some other term, such

as _spiritual_, to designate that nature within us which operates in

science and art and achieves its highest manifestation in producing the

ethical ideal.

Finally, if what has been said regarding the ethical manifold holds

good, then a genuine philosophy of life can only be reached by the

ethical approach to the problems of life. This has never yet been

consistently attempted. The approach has been made from the scientific

or the logical side, or as in the case of Plato from the æsthetic,

or as in modern times from the biological. Yet the ethical approach

is full of promise. A philosophy of physical nature may be feasible

without it, a philosophy of art may be possible without it, but not so

a philosophy of life. It has not been tried because ethics has lain

in the lap of theology, which was itself corrupted by the attempt to

apply to ethical problems the inadequate principle of causality in the

form of creation theories, while again in recent times, by way of

reaction against theology, the solution of ethical questions is sought

for in the empirical disciplines where a measure at least of objective

certainty has rewarded the investigators. Even Kant, who asserted

the independence of ethics, actually made it dependent on Newtonian

science. The great task now is, strictly to carry out the idea of the

independence of ethics, not indeed as if its principles were unrelated

to those of science and art, but in the sense of independently

investigating the problems _peculiar_ to ethical consciousness. I am

well aware that the attempt made in this volume to take the ethical

line of approach to a general philosophy of life, is tentative and

defective in a hundred ways, nevertheless it is an attempt in a new

direction.

In the next book I shall take up the practical consequences that

follow from the theory here advanced. Having delineated the ethical

ideal, and discovered the invaluable fact that there is a structural

plan contained in it, we shall see that our actual human duties

may be derived by applying this ideal scheme to the quasi-organic

groups already existing in human society. There are provocative

correspondences to the ethical ideal in the social life of men;

otherwise it would be impossible to apply it. There are human groups

in which a quasi-correlative membership in a common life already

exists. In the case of each of these groups we find some sort of

empirical multiplicity which must be studied scientifically, and also

an empirical motive which may be utilized in the interest of developing

the ethical relation. The family is the first of these groups which

offers a footing in the world of experience for the ideal. In the

family natural affection is the motive; in the vocational group, the

desire to express a talent or special gift; in the state, patriotism;

in the church, the need felt to integrate all human ideals.

Thus the things of earth are to be used as instrumentalities by

which we are to become aware of the spiritual reality. Only that the

disparateness of the physical world and the ethical universe should

ever be kept in the foreground. Every effort to solve the riddle by

somehow identifying the two has failed. To account for the existence of

a finite world of indefinite extensibility side by side with a universe

_ex hypothesi_ infinite is impossible. Instead of seeking to explain

let effort go toward utilizing. Let the _world_ be used instrumentally

for the purpose of verifying the existence of _universe_.

For the average man, and indeed for all men, the test of the truth of

a theory is in the practice to which it leads. Abstract metaphysical

arguments appeal only to a few, and even for them the formula in its

abstract guise is unconvincing. Look at the mathematical figure, and

see whether the axioms hold good. Look at the sequent phenomena and see

whether the so-called law of nature is exemplified. And so with respect

to conduct: look at the ways of human behavior traced out in accordance

with the plan of the ethical manifold, and see whether such behavior

wins the approval of the spiritual nature implicit within you.[38]

NOTE I

There are various points at which the system sketched in the text

deviates from current opinion, but in regard to the underlying

proposition the reader’s particular attention is called to the remarks

on the “prejudice of causality” and to the statement that verification

is exemplification.

How can ethical truth be verified? How can we be sure that ethical

ideals are more than fine wishes, expressing subjective aspiration,

but having no counterpart in the ultimate constitution of things? This

is the dark doubt that haunts the minds of ethical writers, as well

as of the average man. We ask to have the things we believe in, the

objects of our supreme aspiration, verified. How can they be verified?

I think that we shall see light in this matter once we have grasped

the thought that verification, both in science and in ethics, is

nothing more than exemplification. In the case of causality, in

science, verification does not consist in mere recurrence. For if

we find, even by a single carefully guarded experiment, that a

given phenomenon A is the true antecedent of B, then we take leave

to predict that B will always follow A, without regard to the

repetition of the sequence in our experience.[39] Indeed, no amount

of repetition would justify prediction. The problem in the case of

causality is to determine the true antecedent and the true consequent.

For at any moment there are innumerable phenomena that might possibly

be antecedents of B. How obtain certainty that A is the causal

antecedent? By the synthetic process. We assume a unity, say energy.

We assume that there are differentiæ, say a certain mathematically

determined quantum of mechanical energy in A, and a determined

quantum of thermal energy in B. No sooner have these differentiæ

been mathematically determined, than in virtue of the assumed unity

of energy underlying the differences, we pronounce the nexus to be

necessary. We predict that B will always follow A.

Causality, therefore, is an example of a synthesis which over-arches

sequences. The fact that the phenomena are sequent does not affect the

principle involved. Whenever we contemplate an example of synthesis,

that is, defined differentiæ of some sort, and a defined underlying

unity of some sort, the mind affirms that reality exists. There

are degrees of reality. The degree of completeness with which the

synthetic function is carried out in any instance determines the

degree.

Ethical verification is likewise exemplification, though in another

sense. When the ideal plan of ethical relations is presented, the

ideal plan being a synthesis not of sequences but of all co-existent

entities whatsoever, the mind assents to this ideal plan as

representing the complete synthesis or the complete reality. The

more explicitly and definitely the relation between the ethical

units is conceived, the greater the conviction of reality resulting.

Now frustration after partial achievement has the effect of making

more explicit the idea of the plan of relations as it ought to be

carried out in human life. And in this sense I would have the reader

understand the main practical argument of the book—that frustration

is the condition of our intensified conviction as to the reality of

the supersensible universe.

In virtue of the constitution of our minds we cannot help

acknowledging as real that which is synthesized. Synthesized and

real are synonymous terms. Hence the idea of the completed synthesis

necessarily is the idea of the ultimate reality.

NOTE II

The three principal respects wherein Kant has failed to justify his

affirmation that every human being is to be regarded as an end _per

se_, and not to be used as a tool, are:

1. Out of the bare experience of oughtness, absolute constraint, he

seeks to derive personality. Out of the empty categorical imperative

he seeks to draw a substantive entity—a being possessed of worth.

2. The society of ends _per se_ described by him is not a true

society, but a collection of atomic individuals juxtaposed. The

capital flaw in his ethics is here. He begins by detaching the

individual. He studies the individual, and discovers, or believes

himself to have discovered, that something happens in him (the

consciousness of absolute constraint) which entitles him to be

considered worth while on his own account.

Next, since the formula of university proposes imitability by others

as the test of a moral act, all others are called in as concomitants

of the detached atom first considered. Each of the concomitants in

turn is an atomic entity. It is in this mechanical way that the

conception of a kingdom of ends, or a holy community, is supposed

to be validated. Kant’s mistake is to assume that an individual

regarded as an isolated being can be worth while, can be an end _per

se_. The notion of end involves relation to others, not mechanical

juxtaposition, but intrinsic connection. No one is worth while by

himself. He has worth only as an organic member of a spiritual whole.

The unique quality which lends him incomparable distinction is the

creative life which emanates from him and quickens cognate but

diversely modified life in his associates.

3. Kant’s version of the ethical rule is strong on the side of

interdiction, but quite inadequate on the positive side. He tells us

that we are to look on others not merely as means to our own ends, but

also ends _per se_. The vagueness is in the formula “not merely ...

but also.” Where the dividing line is to be drawn he does not tell. I

am at liberty to use the services of others in the prosecution of my

own interests, as they may use mine, since we are social beings and

dependent on one another. But how far may I go in this direction? On

this point we are left wholly in the dark. Kant admits into his system

the so-called natural ends,[40] such as wealth, culture and the like,

gives them leave to abound, only with the proviso that they may not

overpass a certain limit,—the limit beyond which they would interfere

with the rights of fellowmen. An instrumental view of wealth, science,

culture, as positively promoting the ethical end of man, he does not

and cannot establish.[41] But the instrumental view is precisely that

in which modern society has most at stake, on the working out of

which the solution of our most pressing problems,—such as the labor

problem, the problem of the family, the problem of patriotism and

international relations—is entirely dependent. If Kant has failed at

this point, as I believe he has, his usefulness as a guide in the

reconstruction of modern life is seriously diminished. What he had

set out to demonstrate, the inalienable worth of man, remains; but

foundations other than his must be found. For the formula “not merely

as a means but also as an end” I would substitute: Treat every man

as a spiritual means to thine own spiritual end and conversely ...

treat the extent and the manner in which we are to use one another as

means being determined by the criterion that our exchange of services

shall conduce to the attainment of each other’s ends as ethical beings

conjointly.

NOTE III

I would also ask the reader to consider well the effect upon the

philosophy of life of the position taken throughout this volume that

there is no intellectual bridge between the finite order and the

infinite order. This involves dropping creation at the beginning and

immortality in its usual sense at the end. Creation is an attempt to

show how the world, including man, proceeded out of the infinite.

Immortality is an attempt to express how man returns to the infinite.

In this volume man’s dealings with the finite order are represented

as having for their purpose the achievement of the conviction that

there verily is an infinite life, a supersensible universe. Creation

systems, pantheistic systems, certain evolutionary systems, also

the Hegelian system, are futile attempts to explain the How. But

explanation is impossible; for to explain means to understand, and to

understand means to trace an effect to its cause. And causality is not

the kind of synthesis applicable to a co-existent totality.

Among practical consequences note the difference between the theistic

attitude in fatal sickness and the spiritual attitude.[42] The theist

presupposes that there is a God to whose will he must patiently

submit. But theism is a principle of explanation, the God-idea being

employed to account for the finite order. God is thus made responsible

for the suffering of the sick as well as for all other evils in the

world. Hence the very idea which is presupposed in order to produce

patience raises up doubts and perplexities, which imperil patience.

If God made the world why does he permit pain and evil? The spiritual

attitude, on the contrary, ethically interpreted, does not presuppose

the idea of a divine order as a dogma, but offers it as the product

of the experience of suffering itself. The conviction that there is

in man an essential spiritual self, a holy thing, and a spiritual

universe, a holy community, are not gifts to which we fall heir at

birth, or by some sort of revelation borrow from the experience of

ancient teachers; they are a supreme good to be arduously worked out

by ourselves. And the interpretation given to the facts of suffering

and frustration is that they can be used as the means of bringing to

birth in us that supreme conviction.

In general it may be said that the purpose of existence, both of the

individual and of the race, is so to work in the finite world as to

become possessed with ever greater distinctness of the conviction

of the reality of the wholly real world, the infinite supersensible

universe.

The attitude of the Christian is other-worldly. He shuns intimacy

with the finite world and turns his face toward his “true home.” The

attitude herein described is that of hearty attack upon the business

of life, and close embrace of all the partial reality which finite

experience contains, with a view of thus acquiring in some measure an

appreciation of the utter reality of which these partial realities are

hints and glimmerings.

NOTE IV

In the case of any new theory, it is true that one must live with it

for a considerable time before acquiring the habit of thinking in

accordance with it. The older habits constantly crop up and interfere

with the correct understanding of any new point of view. This is

especially so of a new attitude towards reality. The world seems

topsy-turvy to one who learns for the first time that grass and the

leaves of trees are not really green apart from the eye that sees

them, that beings with different organs might interpret differently

that which stimulates the human eye to its specific color reactions.

The heliocentric theory, when first announced by Copernicus, outraged

naïve commonsense. It exacted a new habit of thinking in regard to

the relation of the sun to the earth,—the real relation, apprehended

by intercalated mental processes being the direct opposite of the

apparent relation. The sun evidently revolves around the earth,

nevertheless the truth is that the earth revolves around the sun.

Modern science reveals behind the palpable world around us

unimaginable fluids, speeds, and physical units which are so

sublimated in thought as to be barely distinguishable from

metaphysical entities. The habit of penetrating with radium-like

glance the concrete screen of things, and of seeing behind the screen

the company of atoms, ions, etc., may be gradually acquired; but the

older habit of regarding the palpable and visible as the truly real

continues to assert itself in conflict with the new habit.

The ethical unit in an ethical manifold postulated in the text as the

closest, though still symbolic, reading of the ultimate reality, makes

a similar demand upon the reader, and requires of him in like manner

the formation of a new habit of thinking, against which the older

habits will doubtless continue to protest.

The most obstinate of the older habits that stand in the way has

been dealt with in the note on causality, namely,—the unscientific

habit of ignoring the boundaries of science, and of taking the method

employed in the physical sciences as the sole method that leads to

certainty. The prejudice of causality is probably ineradicable, just

as the illusion that the sun revolves about the earth persists. But

we can at least reach the point of realizing that it is a prejudice,

and to this extent overcome it. If it be synthesis, or the employment

in inseparable conjunction of the two functions mentioned, that for

the human mind spells reality, then one kind of synthesis called

causality, that of sequent phenomena, does not exclude the ampler,

though ideal synthesis, which is carried out in the mental production

of the ethical manifold. So much I wish to add to the statements

contained in the text in regard to the theory.

But there is also a new habit to be acquired in regard to the

practical ethical consequences of the theory. The chief of these is

the prizing of distinctive difference above uniformity or sameness.

The ethical quality is that quality in which a man is intrinsically

unique. The ethical act is the most completely individualized act (I

ought perhaps to say personalized, but the completely individualized

act _is_ that of a unique personality). In brief, the emphasis is

here put on that in which a man differs from all others, and not on

the common nature which he shares with the rest; or rather, since the

common nature is not denied, the stress is put on the intrinsically

different mode in which the common nature is expressed in him.[43]

The accentuation in current ethical discussion of the common nature of

man, and the fallacious assumption that the common interests are the

pre-eminently moral interests, that uniformity is the test of ethical

quality, is easy to understand. It is the reaction of the modern world

against feudalism, a social system not yet entirely outgrown, in

which the empirical differences of rank and birth were made the basis

of intolerably oppressive discriminations, and in which it was an

accepted axiom that some men are baked of better clay than others. It

is also a reaction against the capitalistic system that has taken the

place of the feudal, in which wealth is to a considerable extent made

the standard of social appraisement.

It is against these false discriminations that the voice of humanity

is now indignantly raised, affirming the moral equality of all men.

But equality is mistakenly taken to mean likeness in the sense of

sameness, not in the sense of that fundamental likeness on the

background of which the desirable unlikenesses stand forth. And this

notion of equality as identical with sameness leads to great practical

aberrations. Thus, for instance, women are not only to be recognized

as the equals of men, but are to be the same as men,—their education

patterned on that of men, their specific functions, as far as

possible, ignored. For unlikeness is supposed to connote inferiority,

and inferiority is justly repelled as morally intolerable. But aside

from this one example, the stressing of the common nature, or of the

basis of likeness at the expense of the outstanding unlikenesses,

leads to other leveling tendencies of which modern democracies

furnish many unpleasing illustrations. Thus uniform popular opinion,

encompassing the individual on every side, penetrates into his inmost

thinking, so that he hardly ventures to hold to his own judgment

against the judgments of the majority. And the impulses of the mass

tend also to threaten his independence in action. There is indeed a

certain intoxication in the very sense of being submerged in a large

whole, a certain glad loss of self in great impersonal movements, a

certain strain of democratic pantheism, as it were, that takes the

place with some of mystic absorption in Deity. But whatever the value

that may attach to these upswellings of feeling, it is counterbalanced

by the circumstance that in proportion as indiscriminate devotion to

society as a whole becomes the paramount motive, the sub-organisms of

society, the family, the vocation and the state, in which the ethical

personality is ripened, are threatened with effacement. Instead of

moral equality it were better to use the term “moral equivalence.” The

differences are to be stressed; they are the coruscating points in the

spiritual life of mankind. That every man is the equal of his fellows

means that he has the same right as each of the others to become

unlike the others, to acquire a distinct personality, to contribute

his one peculiar ray to the white light of the spiritual life.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] I do not however agree with those who regard the shreds of

theology remaining in his system as a concession, not wholly

ingenuous, to orthodoxy. He was brought up in the pietistic faith,

and had probably not entirely outgrown the emotional impressions

of those early teachings. The noumena, however, play a part in the

system itself distinct from the theology, and are not to be taken as

supersensible realities. They are limiting concepts intended to serve

as incentives or lures, winning the mind to continue without cessation

its advance along certain paths within the field of experience;

but they are not supposed to give any clue as to what is beyond

experience. That which is beyond the field of experience is simply

unknowable. Thus the noumenon called “thing _per se_” is notice given

to the mind not to be deterred in its proper business of unifying the

space and time manifold by the difficulties which arise when the time

and space manifold is taken as an ultimate account of reality. The

thing _per se_ is a welcome to science and not a bar set up in its

path.

The noumenon of freedom is an incentive to man urging him to act

as if he were capable of practicing the law of universality and

necessity. In fact the phrase “as if” plays a leading rôle in the

Kantian philosophy. The noumenon of God, as will presently be shown,

is afflicted with this conditional “as if” character to even a higher

degree. We are to assume God in order to look upon the vast field of

possible experience as if it were unified, as if a being who himself

stands for unity had been its creator. This assumption is supposed to

be necessary in order to encourage the scientist in his search for

the thread of unity, lest he flag by the way. As a matter of fact

scientists have contented themselves with the simple assumption of

the uniformity of nature as necessary to the prosecution of their

investigations, and have as a rule troubled themselves little to

hypostasize the notion of unity. Nor has recent progress in science

been associated with and influenced by the belief in an individual

Deity. The noumenon of God is unnecessary for science while in Kant’s

ethical application of it it is positively harmful. He introduces the

God notion as an artificial device for linking together happiness and

virtue, a device quite inconsistent with the noble austerity of his

ethical system, whatever its other defects may be.

The noumena, then, are apparitions that appear at the end of certain

paths in the field of experience, far off where the sky and the ground

seem to meet. These paths run off in different directions. At the

end of each is one of these limiting apparitions, and the society of

noumena is disconnected internally: there is no relation of unity

between the unifiers.

[35] The difference between “supersensible” and “supernatural”

is capital. I do not encourage relapse into supernaturalism. The

supernatural is the opposite of the supersensible. It is an attempt to

represent in natural or _sensible_ guise what is supposed to be beyond

the senses; and the naturalistic representation of the supersensible

is then taken not metaphorically but literally.

[36] He allows indeed the _Ens Realissimum_ to remain, and calls it

the ideal of the reason, the ideal of unity hypostasized, centralized

in an individual, and somehow harboring within itself all real

properties whatsoever. But it is quite impossible to conceive how all

real properties can belong to a single individual. For the properties

as we know them are incompatible with each other. Surely an individual

cannot be both great and small, beautiful and ugly, of all colors and

sounds, etc., etc. Or again if all properties were somehow assembled

in one individual, since that individual is conceived of as an

hypostasized unity, it would be impossible to speak of a relation

between them, and yet upon the relation of the differentiæ depends the

ethical utility of the idea of a supreme reality.

[37] Compare, for instance, the anti-intellectualistic philosophy

of Bergson, with its emphasis on planless spurts of energy, the

irrationalist philosophy of Schopenhauer, etc.

[38] The above exposition is not a transcendental derivation of

ethics. The ideal of the infinite society is a fulguration _out

of_ ethical experience, to be ever renewed _in it_. We build not

only our world, but our universe. The ethical principle is not a

working hypothesis, like those provisionally used in science. It is

the outgrowth of the functional finalities. It is a postulate. The

specific moral laws, or expressions of the ethical principle indeed,

are changeable, being the product of the principle with the varying

empirical conditions of human society. The fundamental principle is

unchangeable.

The consciousness of universal interrelation is not to be described as

mystical consciousness. The identity of the self remains intact; it is

never lost in the One or the All. The ethical consciousness includes

indeed the consciousness of other selves related to our own, in a kind

of superindividual consciousness. But this is reached along the sunlit

path of action (So _act_, etc.), and not along the dreamy flux of

emotionalism or in the silent depths of quietism.

[39] The frequent recurrence gives us a sense of safety in expecting

the consequent on the appearance of the antecedent. But the sense of

safety should not be confounded with the sense of the certainty. We

expect that day will follow night, because it has followed innumerable

times. But no amount of repetition can warrant the assertion that it

will and must do so. The Pragmatist view explains the sense of safety

in expectation, but does not appear to account for the certainty in

prediction, as for instance in the astronomer’s prediction of an

eclipse.

[40] A hybrid conception, since in nature there are only happenings,

but no ends.

[41] His efforts in some measure to remedy this defect in the Doctrine

of Virtue are artificial and unconvincing.

[42] See Book III for a fuller development of this point.

[43] Difference in the ethical meaning is not to be confounded with

mere idiosyncrasy, or originality, not to say eccentricity. It is

the kind of difference which elicits correlated difference in all

spiritual associates.

BOOK III

APPLICATIONS: THE THREE SHADOWS, SICKNESS, SORROW AND SIN, AND THE

RIGHT TO LIFE, PROPERTY AND REPUTATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Three main thoughts should be kept clear: the end to be realized, the

incongruity of the finite and the infinite order, and hence, thirdly,

the indispensable ministry of frustration in the realization of the

purpose of life.

In regard to the so-called moral end of life, there has been much

variety and contrarity of teaching. I shall touch only upon that

aspect of the doctrine expounded in the previous book wherein it seems

to resemble other doctrines, and where a distinct statement of the

difference is therefore imperative. “So act as to develop the faculties

of thy fellowman” is not the rule proposed. “So act as to develop

the so-called good qualities in the man” is not the rule proposed.

The rule reads, “Act so as to bring out the spiritual personality,

the unique nature of the other.” Now, in putting the matter in this

way, we incurred the danger of seeming to concentrate attention on

the individual as a detached being, we seemed to have him only in

mind, though it is true, in respect to what is intrinsic in him, the

irreducible ethical unit which he essentially is. We must, therefore,

constantly remind ourselves that the ethical unit, while unique, is

at the same time an inseparable member of a society of differentiated

units; that its very distinctiveness consists in injecting, as it

were, streams of dynamic energy into its fellow-beings. Or, as I have

elsewhere figuratively put it, the distinctiveness of any ethical

being consists, so to speak, in emitting a ray the color of which is

nowhere else to be found, the miraculous quality of which consists in

acquiring this color at the very instant in which it causes counter or

complementary colors to appear in its fellow-being. (I am using the

words “instant,” “miraculous,” “ray of light,” etc., of course, in a

wholly figurative sense.)

We have at last, this is my belief, achieved a positive definition of

the spiritual nature. The spiritual nature is that which forever is

social in a supra-social sense, as embracing not only human society,

but a universal society of spirits. The spiritual nature is that

of which the very life consists in starting up unlike but equally

worthwhile life elsewhere, everywhere. The spiritual experience to get

hold of, therefore, is the consciousness of this interrelation.

The moral end to be realized, in accordance with the deductions

of Book II, is “So to act upon another as to evoke in him, and

conjointly in oneself, in the same movement and counter-movement the

consciousness of the interlacedness of life with life, the reciprocal,

universal, infinite interrelatedness.”

Now, as a fact, we never realize this end. If we did we should possess

what alone is properly called freedom,—freedom in the positive sense

being the exercise of power peculiar to ourselves, welling up out of

our veriest self, and executing the totality of its effects. Freedom is

marked by these two signs: energy coming unborrowed out of self, and

producing the totality of its effects. I am free when the thing I do

is verily my own, when the power released is the power of my essential

self; and when that power is nowhere checked, inhibited or interrupted,

so that it produces its due, that is, its universal effects.

An ethical being in an ethical universe would be free. The dynamic

energy proceeding from it would be aboriginal. And since it would

radiate upon every other member of the infinite society, it would also

produce the unstinted plenitude of its effects. Each ethical unit, at

its station, would be at once the _producer and the recipient of the

totality of life_.[44]

It is apparent from what has been said that the superlative, sublime

thing, freedom, is not realizable except in an infinite world. And

hence that the supreme end to be realized by man as a finite being

cannot be the full release of unique power in himself. But neither can

the end be approximation. In so serious a business as a philosophy of

life we ought not to play with words, nor delude ourselves with the

implication of proximity seemingly contained in the word approximation.

For it being admitted that we cannot reach the ideal, approximation

seems to suggest that we come into its neighborhood. But the truth

is that the more we advance the less do we arrive in the immediate

neighborhood of the ideal, the distance at which it lies becoming ever

more remote. The moral end, therefore, for a finite nature, like that

of man, is just to realize the unattainableness of the end. There must

be no heaven-on-earth illusions, no resting in the development of our

inadequate human faculties, and no illusions as to approximation. The

unattainableness of the infinite end in the finite world by the finite

nature is the Alpha and Omega of the doctrine, as I propound it. Only

after this truth has been fully faced and recognized, shall we be in

a position to take in the vast significance of the fact that we are

nevertheless under a certain coercion to persist in our efforts to

attain the unattainable, and in inquiring into the source from which

this pressure comes, we shall be led to infer the influence in us of

an infinite nature enshrined in this finite nature of ours. In other

words, to admit the unattainableness of the end in a finite world by

a finite being is the very condition of our acquiring the conviction

that there is an infinite world, and that we, as possessing an infinite

nature, are included in it.[45]

I have now covered the points mentioned: the end to be realized,

the incongruity of the two orders, and the cardinal importance of

frustration as a spiritual experience, as a means of spiritual

education.

From this point of view the whole question of how to deal with the

frustrations of life assumes a new aspect. Lessing published his

well-known essay on the Education of the Race towards the close of the

eighteenth century.[46] Interest in the subject has since been obscured

by the scientific movement, and especially by the evolutionary

philosophy. The latter excludes the idea of education in the proper

sense, and substitutes for it a natural process, a genetic unfolding.

The education of the human race, and of the human individual from the

spiritual point of view consists in a series of efforts never to be

intermitted, but not necessarily following each other in an orderly

series, aiming to embody the infinite in the finite.

Both partial success and failure in these efforts are instrumental

to the achievement of the task of mankind. Both serve to make more

explicit the character and extent of the ideal, while the ultimate

inevitable failure painfully instructs man in the fact of the

incongruity of the two orders. The only outcome of human history that

we can view with satisfaction on a large scale, is the same as that

which we should regard as the best outcome of an individual life,

namely, the growing conviction and the clearer vision of the eternal

spiritual universe as real. We might say that that man had lived best

who on his deathbed could declare with perfect truth: “I have achieved

the certainty, and in through the vicissitudes of my life, that there

is a universe.” I here emphasize again the distinction between universe

and world. To say that the universe is “good” is equivocal. The term

“good,” as commonly used, describes the moral striving of a finite

nature, and not the quality that belongs to the spiritual universe

and its members, thinking of them as ideally we must, as freed from

finite limitation. Of the spiritual universe, we might use the term

“supra-good,” only we should then be careful to add that the “beyond

good” is to be conceived as lying in the direction of the good, while

transcending it. Thereby we avoid the pitfall of Nietzsche and of

others who speak in a totally different sense of the “beyond good and

evil.” We read of a man blessing his children on his deathbed. The

highest type of man is the one who _in articulo mortis_ can bless the

universe.

The discrepancy of the finite and the infinite order appears on the

physical and moral sides. On the physical side it thrusts itself upon

our attention in the circumstance that juxtaposition and sequence are

incapable of being unified, or totalized. Space and time and that

which fills them, matter, are by nature incongruous with spirit. On

the moral side the incongruity appears in the deflecting forces of

appetite and passion which hinder us in the attainment of the spiritual

end and in the fact that our so-called higher faculties are in

irreconcilable conflict with one another. The harmonious union of all

of them in any individual is a fiction. It is impossible to be fully

developed on all sides. And in addition the social substrata in which

the spiritual relation has to be worked out, are themselves too deeply

beset with internal contrarieties to serve their purpose adequately.

The sex relation, for instance, is to a certain extent favorable to the

achievement of spirituality, that is, of living in the life of another;

yet on the other hand there are elements in it that defeat this very

object.

I write, therefore, at the head of such words of counsel as I can hope

to give in respect to the conduct of life, the word _Frustration_.

It is understood that this word is not used in the pathetic sense.

First because there is partial achievement, moments in life at which

the rainbow actually seems to touch the earth. Love and marriage, the

completing of a beautiful work of art, the discovery of a new law of

nature, the emancipation of an oppressed class, are examples. But these

partial successes are presently seen to be partial; they are followed,

or even in the moment of triumph, permeated, with the sense of

incompleteness and the foreboding of new obscurities and perplexities

advancing upon the mind. Yet essentially the doctrine is not a

melancholy doctrine, because frustration, though a painful instrument,

is yet a necessary instrument of spiritual development. We are not open

to the reproach of dampening the zest and relish for life of those who

are setting out to try the hazard of their fortunes. They shall put

forth their best effort to succeed, but let them be so guided herein

that they may meet in the right attitude of mind the disillusionment

which is the condition of the revelation. The shadows will and must

descend before they can be parted, disclosing the landscape of the

spiritual universe.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Incidentally it may be remarked that in introducing the category

of interrelation we remove the objection against freedom which remains

unmitigable so long as freedom is supposed to be a kind of causality,

competing with natural causality. Causality is the unity of a temporal

manifold of sequent phenomena. The concept of interrelation is the

concept of the unity of co-existent entities.

[45] See some fine remarks on the unattainableness in Tyrrel’s

_Christianity at the Cross-roads_.

[46] _Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts._

CHAPTER II

THE THREE GREAT SHADOWS: SICKNESS, SORROW, SIN

Having concentrated attention upon the point that the end is not the

development of any particular faculty or assemblage of faculties,

but the awakening in man, in and through his development, of the

consciousness of interrelation, of life in life, we shall now turn to

the three great shadows: sickness, sorrow, sin. In the case of sickness

the suffering, however acute, must be made to pass over into action.

There is a certain work to be done, something to be accomplished on the

sick bed. What is it? I shall briefly review a few of the answers that

have been given.

First, the Stoic says: A man in pain is to resist the pain by an act

of will, thereby demonstrating that his essential self is inaccessible

to bodily suffering. “If there is a pain in thy limb, remember that

the pain is in thy limb, and not in thyself.” Now the fortitude of the

Stoic is admirable as far as it goes; his counsels are bracing and

manly. But, because he is a materialistic pantheist, the reason he

gives for his defiance of pain is not convincing. In effect his appeal

is rather to the empirical than to the spiritual nature of man. The

spiritual nature is characterized by humility; the appeal of the Stoic

is to pride. Fate with all its sledgehammer blows shall not crush him.

Yet the Stoic’s pride when put to the supreme test does not avail, and

the proof of it is that at the last it breaks down in suicide.

We come to a second answer. There is business in hand for the sufferer

on the sick bed. What is the business? To hide the expression of his

suffering, so that the cloud which rests on him may not cast its shadow

upon others, obscuring their sunshine. But, we are bound to ask, are

others always worthy of such consideration? Is not our sympathetic

regard for their pleasures, their sunshine, often misplaced? Are not

their pleasures often selfish and frivolous? The Greeks believed that

outcries in situations of great distress are perfectly legitimate,

since they seem to afford a kind of relief. Is it not cruel to forbid

such outcries? In our age the view prevails that it is a proof of moral

grandeur to suppress the signs of suffering. But the cynical question

obtrudes itself whether it may not be the collective selfishness of the

multitude that imposes this rule. The common run of men desire to go

on their way undisturbed by cries that emanate from the sick chamber,

and perhaps it is on this account that they impose a rule of behavior

based, not on the principle of human worth, but on its opposite. The

individual forsooth is not to count; the unhappiness of one is not to

interfere with the happiness of the greater number!

There is, however, another view of the matter possible. Everyone

carries his own particular burden. When tortured by some painful

malady, we are apt to think that others, because they wear a smiling

exterior, are therefore free from pain. But often those who seem in

sound health are in fact as great sufferers as we, or even greater. And

physical pain is not the only kind of suffering. Why, then, should I,

for one, add to the troubles of others by imposing my own upon them?

Put in this way, it is plain that there is an ethical element in the

kind of behavior that is expected of a manly person. But the reason

assigned, sympathy with the pleasures of others, is unconvincing.

Unless there be some good to which grievous suffering can be made

instrumental, there is no warrant for enduring it. As for the Stoics,

so for the philosopher of sympathy, the logical end would be suicide,

at least when the pain is exceptionally intense.

There is a third answer. Something is to be worked out on the sick bed.

What is it? To be purified in the furnace, to learn patience and humble

submission to the inscrutable will of God. Patience is the supreme

virtue. “Be patient, Oh, be patient,” I once heard a dying man repeat

with touching accents. But patience for the sake of what? There must be

some object to be gained by the patience to make it commendable. I can

be patient in a storm at sea if I may entertain the hope of reaching

port. I can be patient in conducting a difficult scientific experiment

if I may hope that it will issue in an important discovery, or prepare

the way for such discovery by others. I can be patient in sickness if

I have any reason to expect a return to health. But patience for mere

patience’s sake is absurd. Well, then, the third answer is,—patience

for the sake of manifesting your faith and trust in a wise and

beneficent Deity. Why he has sent this suffering, why he has so made

the world that it is replete with the agony of sentient creatures we do

not know. We cannot know. But he knows. Trust him, have faith in him:

“Though he slay me yet will I trust him.”

Here a genuine characteristic of the spiritual attitude has been

expressed, but the ground on which it is put is once more unconvincing.

How do I know that there is such a being as this wise and loving Deity

of whom you tell me? By the evidence of his works, by the testimony

of the world he has created, by the life for which I am indebted to

him. But the world is the playground of good and evil forces. There

is a semblance of design; there is on the other hand apparently the

wildest disorder. The stars in their courses travel with incredible

celerity in every direction, but no astronomer has ever yet been

able to discern a plan in their journeyings. Human life is full of

sorrow as well as joy; and whether there be more sorrow or more joy

in the lives of most persons, who will venture to say? There is

kindness, but there is also cruelty. There is coöperation, and there

is merciless competition. There is health and bloom, and there is

miserable physical decay. At present, in my case, suffering and sorrow

are in the ascendant. The picture of the Deity as fashioned from the

evidence of experience is dark and bright, cruel and kind. If he be

omnipotent, why did he introduce the elements of discord and trouble

into his creation? Why, in particular, does he at present torture me

so cruelly? In order that I may believe in him despite the evidence!

But how can I believe, seeing that in my own case the evidence on the

bad side preponderates? Thus the mind of the sufferer on his couch

of pain gropes in the labyrinth of argument and counter-argument—for

the intellectual processes are often preternaturally acute in times of

physical suffering—and there is no outlet. In a fine spiritual nature

there is something which pleads that the counter-arguments ought not

to prevail. Desperately, by an act of faith, a man lays hold on his

God. But presently his faith again relaxes, his state of mind becomes

confused, and unless supported by strong impressions received in and

retained from childhood on, the third answer will not avail him.

There is business in hand on the sick bed. What is it? The fourth

answer, the answer as it appeals to me, depends on the very incongruity

of the finite and the infinite order. Every attempt to explain this

incongruity breaks down, every theodicy is a fiction. To explain is to

find the cause of effects. But the notion of cause does not apply to

the relation between the finite and the infinite. And of the infinite

order itself we possess only the plan or scheme of relations. The

members of this ideal world are related to one another in such a manner

that the essential uniqueness of the one is to be provocative of the

diverse distinctiveness of the others. This, as I think, is a very

fruitful formula, furnishing a rule of conduct to be applied to our

finite relations. But it sheds no light on the uniqueness itself, which

is forever ideal. What in its ultimate constitution our spiritual being

may be, remains unknown. Did we know, were we capable of comprehending

the infinite order, and seeing things in that supersolar light, we

might then be able to solve the insoluble riddle, the coexistence

side by side of the finite and the infinite. As it is, the problem of

finiteness especially in its human aspect of suffering and evil is

impenetrable, inexplicable. _But if we cannot explain suffering and

evil, we can utilize them for a definite spiritual end._ And that end

is to achieve through the ministry of frustration and the persistence

of the effort toward the unattainable, the consciousness of the reality

of the spiritual universe and of our membership in it.

The answer, therefore, which I should offer, is based on this pivotal

distinction between explaining and using. And thus the business in

hand, the end to be gained, is the intensified realization of our

spiritual interconnectedness with others, the life in life. To this end

we accept from the Stoic, though for a reason which he does not give,

resistance to pain, and from the philosopher of sympathy the obligation

of not clouding the life of others with our shadow, and from the

theologian the law of patience—and we take a step beyond all three.

Let me carry this out somewhat more in detail. To gain the

consciousness of interrelation, there must be an object outside of

myself of supreme interest to me, enabling me to transcend the ego.

Now, pain has the opposite effect, that of concentrating attention

on the ego. Pain builds a prison around us, raises up high walls

which shut us in. Anyone in great pain is incessantly reminded of his

physical state. In order that the mind may pass out of the prison

cell and over the encompassing wall, there needs to be some object

beyond the wall appealing enough to solicit the outward movement.

This object is the spiritual self of my fellowmen. It is my concern

for their spiritual self which is their highest good, it is my eager

wish to reinforce what is best in them that works the transcendence of

the ego and of its pains. In such supreme moments the lesser values

dwindle into relative insignificance. And what is best in others is

the same consciousness on their part of the interrelation. It is this

that I am to awaken in them, to strengthen in them by the intensity

with which I myself realize it. In the case of loving kin and friends,

they, too, suffer with me. In vain I try to hide my sufferings. They

divine what I try to suppress; and the more I try to suppress it, the

more they suffer with me. They suffer not only with the suffering, but

with the attempt to conceal the suffering. I have seen this in the

case of a mother at the bedside of her dying daughter. They go with me

to the brink of life. They enter into the anxieties and forebodings

that haunt my mind as I face death. There may be young children that

still need fostering care. Dangers to the family may arise after I am

gone. The more my life is implicated in the lives around me, the more

as I stand on the edge of life will my thoughts be occupied, not with

the obliteration of my empirical self, but with the future of those

that survive—that best future of theirs which I long to assure. And

they, in turn, if they are fine natures, will pass through this inward

experience with me. Thus I descend into the darkness and the depths,

and they descend with me; and I am also to rise out of the darkness and

the depths, and am to gain the force to do this in order that I may

lift them with me.

This is the business in hand. I am to draw myself out of the depths,

to overcome the centralizing, egotizing effects of physical and mental

pain, in order by my effort to make those around me realize the

intensity with which I feel my interrelatedness with them, and thereby

to reveal to them the same spiritual power in themselves. Plans for

the future education of the children, counsels of peace, by way of

anticipation for the too lonely hours that await the most loving and

the most beloved,—these things have value chiefly in so far as they are

insignificant of the indissoluble interlacing of life with life.[47]

FOOTNOTES:

[47] I have spoken of the sick bed as surrounded by loving friends

and near of kin. There are sick beds where the situation is quite

different,—in the poor wards of hospitals for instance. Nevertheless,

the loneliest person is never without certain human relations. It may

be the pauper in the next bed, the nurse, or the physician, to whom his

behavior will be of lasting meaning.

I would add a word as to the attitude of a person who is threatened

with insanity, and who is aware that the disease is approaching. His

last conscious act should be to honor the community to which he belongs

by voluntarily putting himself out of the way of harming them. Not that

the physical harm is itself the principal thing, but that the wish not

to harm physically is the sign of his sense of the ethical relation in

which he stands to his fellows. Also a person threatened in this way

ought to be willing to put himself in the keeping of others, even of

strangers, as being no longer himself competent to judge rightly of

what shall be done to him. It is true that in accepting the judgment of

strangers as a substitute for his own he is taking the risk of being

treated with insufficient consideration, and possibly even mistreated.

Yet the jeopardy in which he thus puts his future, the sacrificial act

he performs, is evidence of mental nobility at the very moment when

mental night is about to set in for him.

CHAPTER III

BEREAVEMENT

When we reflect on what actually happens in cases of bereavement, we

shall find great diversity in different situations. It may be that the

deceased person has led a worthless life, and that the grave is allowed

to close over him without much regret. Nevertheless, the honor due to

worth that _never appeared in him_ ought to be shown. In the worst

cases we may not treat human beings like animals. Besides, there are

generally one or more persons who seem to have an unreasoning natural

affection for the wretched being, and so he does not go wholly without

the tribute of tears. Others, like sufferers from cancer, pass through

days, weeks, months of acute pain before they die. In their case it is

said that death comes as a relief, and often the final relief from the

suffering obscures the loss.

Again, in most men’s lives there is an upper and an under side. Though

the public career of statesmen, poets, artists may be dazzling, yet

their faults or obliquities are probably well enough known to those

who have seen them at close range. Obituaries are seldom truthful.

Sometimes, however, the reverse happens; men whose names are held up

to public obloquy are not always as black as they are painted. Their

worst side becomes known to the public, yet they sometimes possess

wonderfully fine traits.

Very pathetic is the mourning for a baby, and its unfulfilled promise,

or for a defective child, long a burden, yet strangely grieved for when

its feeble little flame of life is extinguished.

The most poignant sorrow is that which cannot be communicated to others

or shared by others, because the tie severed by bereavement, like

that of husband and wife, is between two only. The loss by death of

a beloved life companion is apt to lead to an inconsolable state of

mind, because in this relation, when finely interpreted, the empirical

and the spiritual appear almost to coincide. The ethical rule, Live

in the life of another, live so as to enhance to the highest degree

the possibilities of another, seems almost no longer a counsel of

perfection but an actual experience. Hence the utter grief into which

the sundering of the tie is apt to plunge the survivor. On the other

hand, Jonathan Edwards said on his deathbed to his wife: “Our relation

has been spiritual, and therefore is eternal.” And there is indeed an

element of eternality in marriage, only it is not the sex relation as

such that is or can be conceived of as eternal. It is not man and woman

in their empirical form to which this attribute belongs. Marriage is

the sign; the spiritual relation that which is signified.[48]

It may be objected that marriage being a tie strictly between two, one

can hardly think without repugnance of an equally intimate, nay, far

more intimate, relation with all spiritual beings whatsoever. Yet the

spiritual relation is one in which the ethical being is conceived to be

in touch with each of the infinite beings that comprise the spiritual

universe, pouring its essential life into them, and receiving theirs in

return. Is not then the sign incompatible with and contradictory to the

thing signified? But it is not of the multitude of mortal men and women

surrounding us that we think when we speak of the eternal hosts. From

this surrounding swarm of mortals, we retreat, taking refuge in the

inmost privacy which we share with one other only. Yet this very inmost

intimacy, so far as it is pure, is the emblem of that pure intercourse

of essential being with essential being in which we are related to

all.[49]

Following up the subject of bereavement, we find the following

consolations employed:

The first to be mentioned is, “Bow to the inevitable.” I include

this because frustration is inevitable, on account of the discrepancy

between the finite and the infinite order, and because we are to use

inevitable frustration for the purpose of experiencing the reality

of the ideal. But without this use in mind, the inevitable presents

itself as a mere blind necessity, in which we can see neither right nor

reason, a hostile doom that simply crushes us. The psychological effect

of the thought of an event as inevitable, it is true, is in any case

calming, but the tranquillity thus induced is a heavy and hopeless one.

And those who accept the inevitable in this stupefying manner often

become meaner in their way of living. The light of life is for them

extinguished. They put up perhaps with creature comforts, or with work

that merely keeps the mind occupied, and prevents it from fretting the

wound, thus allowing slow time to cicatrize it.

There is, however, a larger way in which a materialist may regard the

inevitable. The world in his view being a vast machine, he may, as it

were, identify himself with the machine, and thereby rise in thought

superior to the injury it inflicts on him. But though we can imagine

someone thus deadening his feelings when he himself is the victim, we

cannot well conceive of the same remedy applying when a beloved person,

say an only child, is being crushed under the Juggernaut car of the

world-machine. _The great test of one’s philosophy of life is whether

it helps us in the case of those whom we love, rather than in the case

of the sufferings we experience in our own person._

A second consolation is: Remember the universality of sorrow. Look

around you, behold the vast multitude who are suffering like you;

remember the countless generations who have suffered in the past,

think of the generations to come that will suffer in like manner. Such

are some of the consolations of the choruses in the Greek tragedies.

Latent perhaps in this mournful view of the facts of existence is

another aspect of the matter, namely, the uprising from frustration

toward ideal realization. And in so far as this other uplifting view is

indeed latent or suggested, the thought of the universality of sorrow

has an ennobling effect. On the other hand, without the explication of

what may be regarded as implicit in them the consolations of the Greek

choruses are inexpressibly saddening.

A third and active variant of the former consolation is: Seek to

mitigate the sorrow and trouble of thy fellow-sufferers. Appease the

passion of thine own grief by compassion and the works to which it

leads. And by as much as activity of any kind is better than passivity,

or mere feeling, by so much is this third kind of consolation better

than the ones above mentioned. But at bottom the same criticism applies

to it. It leaves still unanswered the question, To what end this

suffering both of others and of oneself? Not Why? is the question,

but To what end? How bereavement may be used so as to bring it into

relation with the final end of life?

A fourth consolation is the popular belief in immortality. This

is a resort to supernaturalism, and the supernatural should ever

be distinguished from the supersensible. Immortality as popularly

held involves the continued existence in some empirical form of the

essential, central entity in man. For the suggestion that new organs

may replace the wornout terrestrial body does not alter the empirical

character of the conception. The new organs are still conceived in some

vague fashion as similar to those with which we are acquainted.

Finally, my own interpretation of consolation may be set forth in

contrast to all these. Again I say that for the bereaved, as for the

sick, there is business in hand, there is a task to be performed, a

work to be done. What is it? Let me endeavor to explain. The spiritual

nature of man is incognizable, only the plan of the relations between

spirit and spirit being given. Yet to think of a relation at all

we must think of entities or objects between which it subsists. Of

the spiritual part of our fellow-beings, therefore, we are bound to

fashion mentally a symbolic image, one that shall stand for the real

object, the spiritual nature, though we are well aware that it does not

adequately express it.

When the beloved person is no longer visibly present, the work we do

upon the symbolic image of him is not to cease. We are to review, to

summarize the whole existence of a departed friend, as we have probably

never done while he was with us. We are to get the total perspective of

his life, to see the fine qualities standing out more distinctly; to

seize the net result of his existence so far as those character traits

are concerned which in him were most analogous to spiritual traits.

This image we can now ideally contemplate with the advantage that none

of the actual infirmities of his nature can mar it, and that no future

events can henceforth alter our impression. The work of clarifying

the image of our friend goes on unimpeded. And our own activity in

the process of purifying his image of all that was merely fallible in

him benefits us in return. The effect of this activity of ours on the

datum of his life is our permanent gain. Thus both what he was and what

he was not is stimulative. While he lived we performed the function

of elimination and concentration with a view of producing progress in

him and in ourselves jointly. Progress, induced by us, so far as he

is concerned, for all we know is at an end. Progress so far as we are

concerned is assured by the activity we continue to expend as long as

we live on his memory. And the memory, or the image, stands for the

beloved person. There is real mental intercourse wherever there is a

movement of one mind towards the outgoings of another, even though the

retroactive relation be suspended. The beloved person benefits me,

though I no longer benefit him, except indirectly so far as in my own

life I possibly expiate his shortcomings and in so far as I bestow on

other living persons the advantage I receive from my mental intercourse

with him.[50]

What, then, is the business in hand? What is the work to be done?

Plainly to tie anew the threads that were broken, to bring it about

that the loss, infinitely painful though it be, shall lead to gain,

to substitute for the mixed relation of touch and sight the purely

spiritual relation.

One more remark must be made in connection with the above. There is

at present a tendency to dishonor the past in comparison with the

future. Interest seems to lie in what lies ahead. Hence a breathless,

forward-urging mood. One consequence of this is that the dead are less

honored than of old. Within a single generation, for instance, I have

seen not a few eminent persons in the city of New York pass away who

up to the time of their death and in their obituaries were greatly and

justly praised. I have hardly ever seen their names publicly mentioned

since. Already they seem practically forgotten. In our national history

likewise only a few of the most eminent are remembered. In like manner

in families, the names even of father and mother are seldom mentioned

by their surviving adult children, and ancestors at second remove

are barely remembered. Now excessive reverence for the past, as in

China, is a mark of stationariness. A retrospective point of view

is inconsistent with progress. Our face must necessarily be turned

toward the future. And yet forgetfulness of those human beings whom

we have known, and who represented to us while they lived much of the

best that life had to give, seems inhuman and incredible. It is true

that I have drawn a sharp distinction between the empirical selves

and those spiritual selves which the former for a time enshrined. The

empirical selves have now disappeared. The gleam of love in the eye,

the luster of beauty, whether of form or of expression, that touched

for a season the sacred features, have vanished. On the other hand, the

spiritual self as a member of the spiritual universe is confessedly

past knowing and past imagining. On what object then shall memory

dwell? It may dwell on the empirical self in so far as it was the sign

of the thing signified, in so far as the being we knew and loved was

to us convincing of the reality of that spiritual world which itself

is incognizable by sense or mind. The greatest boon any human being

can confer on another is to serve him in attaining the end for which

he exists; and the supreme end for us all is the realization of our

interrelation with the infinite community of spirits. The woman whom

we say we loved, we loved precisely because she revealed to us that

spiritual galaxy—because she was a Beatrice, ascending with us, and

opening to our sight the eternal expanses.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] In the New Testament, despite the preference expressed for

celibacy, the relation of the bridegroom to the bride is used

metaphorically to represent that of Christ with the church, and among

the mystics the same figure represents the union of Christ with the

believing soul.

[49] I call attention to the difference between the view here expressed

and that of Emerson in the last paragraphs of his _Essay on Love_,

where he says: “Our affections are tents of a night. Our warm loves

are clouds that pass over the firmament of mind with its overarching

vault, its galaxies of immutable lights. In the personal relations

we are put in training for impersonal submergence and absorption in

God.” In my own view the infinite community of spiritual beings that

takes the place of God consists altogether of personalities. Godhead,

if you choose to apply that name to this infinite society, is not a

person but a community of personalities. Personality is not drowned in

the impersonal. On the contrary, the individual becomes a personality

through his relation to his associates in the eternal life.

[50] I have real intercourse with Aristotle and Kant, as the outgoings

of their minds are still effectual in me—more vital intercourse than

with many of those who surround me.

CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF SIN

If any term in the moral vocabulary stands in need of strict

redefinition, it is sin. Three elements combine to complete the idea

of sin: first, that the deed was one that ought not to have been done,

not so much because of its painful consequences to others or to self,

or to both, or, by repercussion on society as a whole; but because it

was opposed to what is intrinsically right: in other words, because it

contravened the kind of interrelation which would exist in its purity

in the ethical manifold.

Secondly, the idea of sin implies that the sinner himself is the doer

of the deed, or that there is to this extent freedom of the will. I do

not say that he is the cause of which the deed is the effect. Causality

appertains to sequent phenomena. As regards freedom of the will,

the distinction between the category of interdependence and that of

causality is vital. A long series of causes, such as bad heredity, bad

environment, etc., may have led A to determine to murder B.[51]

The notion of the freedom of the will as here viewed signifies that

no matter what the causal series may have been which leads up to the

act, when the act itself is about to be performed, when B is about to

experience the effect of A as cause, in that moment the relation of

interdependence between A and B ought to arise before the mind of A and

withhold him from completing his evil purpose.

Thirdly, it is characteristic of sin that the fuller knowledge that the

harmful deed is sinful _comes after the act_,—that it is the Fruit of

the Tree, the enlightenment of the eyes. As the serpent said: “If ye

eat of the fruit ye shall be as gods.”

Many a man has done what is called evil, and done it most deliberately,

knowing evil as evil. Remember the career of a Cæsar Borgia, the

extermination of the Caribbean Indians by the Spaniards, the outrages

on women perpetrated during the present war, the exploitation of human

labor practiced on a large scale among the civilized nations. That the

blackest crimes may be committed with a full knowledge of the horrible

consequences to the victims seems hardly to admit of doubt. Evil is

known as evil.

But evil in its character as sin cannot be fully recognized prior

to the act. In this respect the Greeks had a certain prescience of

the truth when they asserted that no one can knowingly commit evil;

only they failed to distinguish between evil and sin. A man _can_

knowingly commit evil, but cannot with full consciousness commit sin.

The knowledge of the sin is the divine elixir which may be distilled

from the evil deed (“Ye shall be as gods”), and the object of every

kind of punishment should be to extract that pain-giving but ultimately

peace-giving elixir.

Above I mentioned the criminal as the extreme type. But evils in

less formidable guise, though not on that account less evil, refined

invasions of the personality of others, spiritual oppressions,

sometimes deliberate, often unwitting, are included in everyone’s

experience. And the process of expiation, by which evil is transcended

through the recognition of sin (with its prostrating effect at first,

its strangely elevating effect later on) is alike applicable to all.

The best of men have to go through this ordeal as well as the worst.

Especially is unwitting transgression inevitable. Sophocles makes it

the text of his philosophy in the _Œdipus_, though the solution offered

is that of Greek enlightenment and not that of the more profound

ethical consciousness.

We have next, in close connection with sin, to consider the tremendous

question of responsibility, interpreted from the point of view of our

ethical principle. Responsible means answerable. Answerable to whom,

and in what sense? As commonly understood, it means answerable to God

the Law-giver, to God regarded as the Author of the moral law. God is

likened to a sovereign. Any infraction of his law is an offense against

the sovereign. Answerable means subject to the pains and penalties

which it suits the sovereign to annex to moral offences. There is no

intrinsic connection implied between pain and redemption. The pain is

supposed to break the will of the offender, or to mellow him, so that

he will in future obey the mandates of the sovereign without a murmur.

Again, responsibility may mean responsibility to society. Crime is

infectious. A fissure opening at any one point in the dykes erected

against crime may let in a flood. The social order as a whole is

threatened in every single violation of law. The offender must answer

for his defiance of the public will by being subjected to the pains or

penalties which society annexes to his crime. The object is the same

as before, to break him into submission, to fit or force him into the

social mould, to make him harmless, or if possible what is called a

“useful citizen.” No internal redemptive change in the nature of the

evildoer is contemplated, except as it may be necessary to lead him to

a useful or at least a harmless life. The antisocial attitude is to be

replaced by the social attitude. Appeals to enlightened self-interest,

and to the sympathies are commonly thought sufficient for this purpose.

Thirdly, responsibility means responsible to oneself. There is an

inner forum, a tribunal in which the spiritual self sits in judgment

on the empirical self. Conscience, the voice of this spiritual self,

pronounces the verdict. (Cf. the passages in Kant in which this figure

of speech is used.) These are metaphorical expressions.

To grasp the meaning of responsibility from the ethical standpoint, we

must lift into view the concept of _the task of mankind as a whole_,

and of the individual as a factor in the fulfilment of that task. This

introduces a momentous turn into the discussion of the subject.

The task of mankind is to arrive through its commerce with the finite

world, through its unremitting efforts to incorporate the infinite

plan within the sphere of human relations, at an increasingly explicit

conception of the ideal of the infinite universe; and through partial

success and frustration to seize the reality of that universe.

Responsibility means _participation in this task_, sharing its doom,

and attaining in oneself, in part, its sublime compensation. The

evildoer is to achieve the knowledge that his evil deed is sin, that is

to say, that it not only carries with it harm to others and indirectly

to himself, but that it is _the defeat in him_ of the task which is

set for the human race as a whole on earth. Instead of doing his share

in fulfilling this task, in gaining a footing in the finite world for

the spiritual relation of living so as to enhance the life of others

and thereby his own, he has miserably sought to enhance his life at

the expense of other life. The knowledge that he has so acted sears

his awakened soul like fire, but it is also the beginning of healing.

The transgressor, now sees what he did not see before. He sees by way

of contrast the holy pattern of relations which in his act he has

travestied, the holy laws which he has infringed, and in imputing

sin to himself for transgressing them, he at the same time proclaims

himself in his essential being holy, that is, capable of executing

them, or at least of striving unceasingly to do so. It is thus that

he opens within himself the sources of redemption, unseals the deeper

fountains of spiritual energy.

That man is responsible means that he is answerable to do his share in

discharging the task of mankind. And when he is inwardly transformed

by the consciousness of the holy laws, and of himself as intrinsically

committed to holiness, he does thereby advance the business of his kind

on earth. In him humanity does take a step forward on the spiritual

road. In him one other member of our race has been lifted out of evil,

becoming perhaps, from the spiritual point of view, a more advanced

member of the forward-pressing host than those who have never passed

through an experience like his, who have not been overtly tempted, who

have remained conventionally moral, who have not realized the evil

that remains unexpurgated within them, and have not passed through the

cleansing process of self-condemnation and rebirth.

The incongruity between the finite and the infinite order is the basis

of this doctrine of responsibility. Mankind is responsible for seeking

to embody the infinite in the finite. It fails to do so, but gains

its compensation. The individual shares this responsibility, but both

mankind and the individual jointly take a step forward whenever an

evil deed is recognized, branded and expiated as sinful. The object

of punishment, whether inflicted by society or self-inflicted, is to

promote this regeneration which is the expiation.[52]

NOTE

Evil in its ethical meaning presupposes worth as attaching to human

beings. To do evil is to offend against worth. To assert the worth of

man is to view him as one of an infinite number of beings, united in

an infinite universe, each induplicable in its kind. Of this spiritual

multitude ideally projected by us as enveloping human society only our

fellow human beings are known to us. _The moral law is the law which

reigns throughout the infinite spiritual universe applied within, the

narrow confines of human society. It is applied within those confines,

it is spiritual, universal in its jurisdiction._

The task of humanity as a whole is to embody more and more the

universal spiritual law in human relationships, and thus to transform

and transfigure human society. In the New Testament we read the

expression: “the light of God reflected in the face of Christ.” The

ideal here indicated may be expressed in the phrase, The spiritual

universe with its endless lights reflected on the face of human

society! The task of humanity is one which can never be completed, one

from which mankind may never desist. To see evil as sin is to see it

as contravening the collective task of mankind, the task of weaving

the human groups more and more into the fabric of the spiritual

relations.

To see evil as sin is to see any single act or series of acts ideally

in their infinite connections. This is what I mean when I say that the

knowledge of sin comes after the act. I do not mean that there may not

be before the act a vague consciousness of the ramified consequences

of evil, but that the fuller knowledge of it as sin is the fruit

of the act. Nor do I mean that evil in its deeper significance is

revealed to every guilty person. The opposite is obviously true. What

I mean is that it is possible after having eaten of the Fruit of the

Tree to gain the enlightenment, in other words, to become aware of

the intrinsic holiness of our nature in consequence of our offense

against the holy laws. If anyone should ask “Must I then do evil in

order to gain the enlightenment?” the answer is that this question

is an idle one. No one can escape doing evil. If not in its grosser

forms, then in ways subtler and more complex, but not therefore less

evil, every one is bound to make acquaintance with guilt. He need not

go out of his way to seek occasion, let him see to it that he improves

the occasion when it comes, as inevitably it will, to his spiritual

advantage.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] The category of interdependence implies that the lines of energy

between A and B cross, so that A is subject to B’s influence, B subject

to A’s influence, simultaneously. The simultaneity of the relation

distinguishes the category of interdependence from that of causality.

[52] This implies that the evil deed shall not be lost sight of, simply

forgotten. Compare the inadequate account of repentance as given by

Goethe in _Faust_ and elsewhere.

CHAPTER V

THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE TO BE OBSERVED TOWARDS FELLOW-MEN IN GENERAL,

IRRESPECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONS WHICH CONNECT US MORE CLOSELY

WITH SOME THAN OTHERS

_The Right to Life_

The thoughts presented above on the subject of sin naturally lead over

to the next topic, the obligations we are under regarding the life,

the property and the reputation of others. The ancient moral laws

unquestionably remain: “Thou shalt not kill”; “Thou shalt not steal”;

“Thou shalt not bear false witness.” But their application is extended

and their significance intensified by the positive definition which has

been given to the term _Spiritual_.

So long as the mere inviolateness of the human personality is

emphasized, without any defined conception of what it is that is

inviolate (the inviolateness without the infinite preciousness),

there is danger that the physical part of man will be invested with

the sacred character that belongs to the spiritual, that the two, the

spiritual and the physical parts, will be identified.

The result will be mischievous in two ways: First, while the act

of killing will be reprobated, a kind of tabu being attached to

bloodshed, the taking of the life of fellow-beings in more indirect

ways, or what may be called constructive murder, will be lightly

regarded. The following case is mentioned by a recent writer. The

directors of a railroad refused to vote the sum of five thousand

dollars to provide a certain safety appliance for their cars. Soon

after an accident occurred, in which a number of men were killed.

The accident might have been prevented had the five thousand dollars

required for the installation of the safety appliance been voted.

Now the men were undoubtedly killed by the directors of the company.

As to the difference in the degree of guilt in the case of direct

and indirect murder, there is room for casuistical debate. The

consequences it is true were not present to the directors’ minds. But

are they not responsible for the very fact that the consequences were

excluded from their view? They were intent on their dividends, and

ignored the endangered lives. But is not this the substance of their

guilt? Does not moral progress lie in the direction of extending the

sense of responsibility so as to cover the indirect taking of life?

Similarly the use of poisonous substances in industry, bad sanitation,

inadequate fire protection, must be stigmatized as indirect murder. The

Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” must extend over a far wider area

than it has covered in the past.[53]

Secondly, the positive definition of the spiritual nature enables us

to perceive more distinctly that the physical part is the means and

the spiritual part the end, and to draw the necessary consequences.

That which is means is not to be cherished if to do so would defeat

the end itself; hence the physical life is _not_ to be preserved if by

preserving it we deny or defeat the very purpose which the physical

part is to serve. So long as men have the tabu feeling about bloodshed,

the fact that life ought of right to be taken in certain instances will

seem a hopeless contradiction of the general rule against killing.

Keeping in mind the spiritual end of existence on the other hand, we

affirm unhesitatingly that it is better that a man should die than

commit a heinous crime. It was better for the young girl mentioned

in a well-known tale, threatened with outrage, and seeing no other

possible way of escape, to strangle herself with her own hair rather

than submit. According to the opinion of certain scholastic writers on

ethics, dishonor resides solely in the consent of the soul, and where

this is absent the mere physical infringement cannot leave a moral

stain. This is a helpful point of view in regard to the victims of the

atrocities of war, the inmates of certain Belgian nunneries, and the

hapless objects of unspeakable brutality in certain Polish villages.

The anguish of a pure-minded woman who becomes a mother under such

circumstances is hardly conceivable. And to discriminate between the

infamy done to her and her own unpolluted soul is a plain duty, as well

as to relieve the innocent offspring of outrage from any participation

in the guilt to which it owes its existence. But the case to which

I refer is different. It is one in which the choice remains between

voluntary death and submission to intended violation. Submission in

such a situation argues a kind of consent, or at least the absence of a

sufficient revulsion.

It is right to kill an intending murderer supposing that there is no

other way of preventing him from committing his crime, whether the

intended victim be oneself or someone else. It is not only the life

thus protected from attack that is saved, but the murderer in a sense

is saved as well, so far as he can be saved, by the intervention. Also

the members of his family are saved, humanity is saved from moral

disgrace in his person. The same reasoning applies to the position

of the extreme non-resistants. They will not, they tell us, do a

wrong to prevent a wrong. In their eyes to take the physical life of

another is in every possible instance an absolute wrong. They fail to

take account of the instrumental relation between the physical and

the spiritual parts. And on the same grounds, a defensive war, a war

to ward off aggression, may be theoretically justified. But here the

application of the theory is dubious as well as dangerous. Exceptional

cases of high-handed aggression that ought to be resisted occur, but

aggression is rarely, if ever, one-sided. As a rule, there is more or

less wrong on both sides, and the tangle of accusations and mutual

recriminations is almost impossible to unravel. Very rarely, indeed, if

ever, is right altogether on one side, and wrong on the other, though

predominant right may be on one side and predominant wrong on the

other. And aside from this, the instruments of destruction in modern

warfare have become so monstrous, the efficiency notion applied to war

has led to such ruthlessness, the attempt to distinguish between the

civilian population and the armed forces has so nearly broken down,

that right-thinking persons everywhere are now eagerly intent on how to

prevent aggression before it can take effect, rather than to resist it

after it has occurred.

NOTE

The casuistical question may be raised whether from this point of

view we are not all murderers. The amount I spend on my house, food,

recreation, might if divided prolong the life of many a child in the

slums. Am I not then actually a parasite, that is, a murderer? It is

this shocking scruple that has led fine people to live among the poor,

and to try to equalize their mode of living with that prevailing in

the environment. The motive is noble, though as a matter of fact they

may never succeed in doing what they set out to do because they never

actually touch bottom. There are always depths of poverty to which

they can not descend. They may spend comparatively little, yet that

little is far in excess of the spending of the most indigent. And had

they stripped themselves of everything they would have been face to

face with the _reductio ad absurdum_ of their method, for they would

have abandoned civilization and degraded their human life to the level

of the wayside tramp.

What is inspiring in their example is just the immense compassion,

the willingness to give up so much. But the method itself is not a

solution.

Are we then murderers, all of us? Perhaps a distinction may be drawn

between acts which in themselves are hostile to the life of fellowmen,

like overtaxing the worker, and acts which tend positively to maintain

the higher values of life,—such as the providing of decent shelter,

support and education, for the members of one’s family. It is true

that, as Tolstoy warns us, we easily slip into indefensible luxury

under the pretence of maintaining the higher values. But this does not

affect the validity of the distinction itself.

And yet the distinction does not relieve us of what may be called our

share of the social or collective guilt. The exploiter is chargeable

with individual guilt. I who am trying to keep up the standard of

civilized living within my little sphere am nevertheless conscious of

participating in the social guilt, the guilt of a society that has

permitted and still permits such misery to exist. Well, it does exist,

and I can do but a very little to change it. Can I then endure the

contrast between my own lot and that of the greater number. Is it not

true after all that if I give up the comforts, or let me say the helps

to the maintenance of the higher values, I should be saving the lives

of many children? Those children are dying because I am not dividing

my possessions among the poor. Can I stand up and look at that fact,

at those deaths?

The only answer which it is possible to give at the point we have thus

far reached in our exposition is: push on, perfect civilization, a way

will eventually be found to uplift the masses and make them partakers

of the future civilization. The other alternative, that of Tolstoy,

is stagnation. Yet I cannot disguise from myself the fact that in the

meanwhile, while we are trying to push on, millions are perishing.

This is the true “burden of world pain,” not the sentimental world

pain due to the fact that one is not having oneself the best kind of a

time in the world, but the pain caused by the fact that while we are

reaching forward to help the suffering masses, those masses, though

composed of individuals morally as worth while as ourselves, and many

of them doubtless better, if we only knew it, are perishing before

our very eyes, and that we stand by and cannot save them. I have said

that in the meanwhile while we are trying to push on, millions are

perishing. The actual moral problem so often overlooked is underlined

in the words “in the meanwhile.”

There is one pathetic consolation. Envy is not the widespread vice

which it is sometimes represented to be. Those who are in trouble take

the will very largely for the deed. People in the worst conditions are

grateful to anyone who shows a real desire to help, even if his actual

performance does not go very far. And there is a still finer trait

in ordinary human nature, namely, the tendency to find a certain

vicarious relief in the joy of the few, provided that their joy be

pure.

_The Right to Property_[54]

“Property,” according to Blackstone, “is the sole and despotic dominion

which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the

world in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the

universe.”

Orthodox jurisprudence, like orthodox religion, is characterized by the

absoluteness of its formula. It ignores the genesis of its concepts in

the long line of antecedent historical development, and it disdains to

entertain the demand for modification, though the circumstances of the

time loudly call for it.

“The sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises,”

etc., may be a fact, but it is not a right. Property can only be

regarded as a right if shown to be subservient to the ethical end,—the

maintenance and development of personality. Orthodox jurisprudence

effaces the end, and treats that which is or has been at one time a

means as if it possessed a sanctity of its own. On the other hand, the

empirical treatment of jurisprudence, in dismissing the supposedly

absolute means, tends to leave out of sight the ethical end, and to

treat the social institutions as subservient to mere convenience.

The following propositions will indicate the changes in the conception

of the right of property required by our ethical theory.

1. Property is a relation between a person or persons and things. There

can be no property right in persons, but only in things.[55]

2. The right of property faces in two directions: Toward outside nature

and toward fellow human beings. We have a right over the external

things of nature. We have a right to the services, though not to the

personality, of fellow human beings. These two aspects of the right of

property must be kept apart and defined.

It is sometimes held that the human race as a whole, as over against

nature, has the right of dominion. Nature, it is said, is our quarry,

we can take out of it the stones we need to construct the edifice

of civilization. Nature is our tool. The laws of nature, as science

discovers them, become our servants. Nature offers the raw material

which we consume. Nature has no rights as against man. But I hold

that neither has man rights as against nature, except in so far as

he rightly defines the end in the interest of which he makes use of

nature—the maintenance and development of personality.

To suppose that the right of property as the extension of personality

over things is tenable without regard to its instrumental use, to

suppose that bare appropriation of nature as of “treasure trove” is

a prerogative of man, is to lend countenance to the false notion of

occupation, or first appropriation, which has confused the ethics of

the subject in the literature of jurisprudence, and prevented a right

understanding of it. If bare appropriation be the foundation, then the

first comer has a right against his successors, since the extension

of personality over the thing has been actually accomplished by him,

and that is all there is to be said about it. Again, on this view, a

case may be made out for vested interests, that is to say, for those

who have successfully appropriated the earth, yes, and the fullness

thereof, and who having thus effectually extended their personality

over things without regard to the uses they make of their possessions,

are then to be entitled to remain indefinitely in secure ownership of

them.

Without an ethical standard, without the notion of an end to be

subserved, stubborn possession will always be able to resist

modification, and on the other hand attempts at modification will be

haphazard. Neither the human species collectively nor the individual

has a right simply to appropriate the things of the external world.

Neither the first occupier nor the last is entitled to his goods unless

he can make out a greater good in the interest of which he should be

allowed to possess them.

But the case of primary occupation is academic. It occurs on Robinson

Crusoe’s island and in legal fiction. Even when the white race invades

Africa, it does not commonly take possession of unoccupied land, but

dispossesses the natives. On what ground does it dispossess them?

Is there an ethical standard by which the dealings of the civilized

nations with the populations of Africa can be measured? Is the

introduction of the appliances of modern civilization, the opening up

to trade, a sufficient ground for the subjection or the extermination

of the inhabitants? In this connection it becomes clear how urgent a

more clarified conception of property rights is. False ideas of this

so-called right are to no small extent responsible for the massacre

of the inferior races, and the mutual slaughter of those who covet

their lands. A proclamation of the Queen of England or of the Emperor

of Germany, or the signature of an irresponsible chief to a treaty

the meaning of which he scarcely understands, transfers millions of

subjects and their territory to one or other of the European powers.

What right of property have these European powers in the territory and

the peoples acquired by them in this fashion?

The last example shows that the right of ownership, except in very

rare instances, is not in question in respect to the dealings of man

with nature, but comes into play chiefly in the relation of man to his

fellows. There are competitors to be outstripped, thwarted. There are

weaker fellow-beings to be subdued. The use of force and cunning in

acquiring property is well nigh the general rule. Are there any ethical

ideals which, if they could be realized, might disclose a better way,

might bring order into this frightful chaos, and abate the conflicts?

From the ethical ideal as outlined in previous chapters this follows:

The extension of personality over things is a right in so far as things

are employed to maintain and develop potential personality. The use of

the services of a fellowman is a right in so far as his services are

used in such a manner as to preserve and develop his personality as

well as that of the user.

In speaking of the use of the services of others we touch upon the

social aspect of the property relation, and here is the crux of the

whole matter. It is coming to be affirmed more and more that property

is a “social” concept, that it cannot be explained either as implying

a relation of the individual to outside nature, save exceptionally,

nor as a relation of the individual considered atomistically to other

atomic individuals. The social tie, it is held, is intrinsic. The

nature of man as such is social, but the word “social” in current

discussion is very ill-defined, and is commonly understood to denote

merely the fact of the interdependence of men upon one another, without

conveying the idea of a rule or standard by which the system of

interdependence may be regulated. Vague notions, such as that of social

happiness, are believed sufficient to take the place of such a standard.

Let me then consider first the bare fact of interdependence, and see

what follows from it, and how far it will take us.

Every man has manifold wants for the satisfaction of which he depends

on others. His wants are legion; his ability and opportunity to satisfy

them exceedingly limited. It is this cross relation that expresses

the so-called social nature of man. But the reciprocal dependence

of men upon one another for the satisfaction of their wants by no

means constitutes an ethical tie. The tie between the Greek master

and the Greek slave, as described by Aristotle, was social, but not

ethical. The same is true of the tie that united the Southern planter

to his negro slaves. The relation was indeed far more social than that

between the modern mill-owner and the operatives in his factory, but

still it was not ethical. The reason is clearly stated by Aristotle

himself. According to him the slave is a living tool: the purpose of

his existence is not realized in himself but in his master. He fulfils

the end of his being by setting free the higher functions exercised by

his master. But from the ethical point of view no man may be regarded

as the tool of another. Each human being is an end _per se_, and the

highest object of his existence is to be fulfilled, not in others, but

jointly in them and in himself.

I have just said that the social and the ethical views are not

synonymous or coincident, as the loose use of language in current

literature would imply. I go farther and say that the social and the

ethical point of view are even on their face contradictory. It cannot

be denied that the natural system of interdependence resembles that of

the body and its members. A hierarchy of organs and of functions is

apparent in the human body, and likewise in the social body. Some men

do the lowest kind of work. Their function appears to be to produce

food, clothing and shelter, to satisfy the mere physical wants.

Some are the hands, so to speak, of society, while only a very few

effectually represent the brain. The simile has been carried out in

detail by well-known writers, in both ancient and modern times. It

is quite true that the artist and the scientist are dependent on the

manual laborer, just as he in turn is dependent on them. But then,

consider the difference in the dignity of the services they render one

another. Was not the Greek, who saw things dispassionately as they are,

right in asserting that, taking society in the large, the purpose of

human life is fulfilled in the few, and that the greater number exist

in order that by their inferior services they may enable these few to

express humanity in its highest terms?

It seems to me that the kind of social arrangement contemplated by the

great Greek philosophers, and by some of the mediæval publicists, as

well as by certain modern thinkers, is unquestionably social. The fact

of interdependence is stressed by them. The ethical note of equality,

or, as I should prefer to put it, equivalence, is left out.

I have endeavored in a recent book to indicate how the ethical system

may be superinduced over the social system.[56] Here I am concerned

chiefly to mark as strictly as possible the distinction between the

two terms social and ethical. And I must, therefore, at once amend my

previous statement that property is a social concept by saying that it

is the concept of a social relation considered as the substratum in

which is to be worked out the ethical relation.

The general consequences of the property concept as defined are these:

1. He who will not work, neither shall he eat; or better, he who will

not work if able-bodied shall be disciplined and trained in such a

manner that he will work. The fruits of nature do not fall into the lap

of mankind. We are not living in a state of Paradise. The human race

is engaged in the arduous labor of constantly renewing the capital on

which it subsists. As a member of the race, everyone is bound to do his

part.

2. No one has a property right in harmful or superfluous luxuries,

since property is the control of external things for the maintenance

and development of personality; and luxury, so far from maintaining,

undermines personality, and hinders its development.

No one has ethically a right of property in great fortunes like those

accumulated under the modern system of industry. Whatever is in excess

of one’s needs, rightly estimated, is not appropriate to one, not

proper to one, not his property. Since the present system of ownership

cannot be changed abruptly, the idea of the stewardship of wealth has

been suggested to quiet the consciences of those who have come to

realize that they have no moral right to excessive wealth. But the idea

of stewardship should be held with fear and trembling. It is at best

a makeshift, a bridge leading over to something more sound. It may be

so taught and received as to seem to justify by philanthropic use the

possession of great fortunes. But the power to dispose of vast funds

for philanthropic uses may come to be itself a badge of superiority.

And even if this be not so, if surplus wealth be used modestly, and

with a sincere intention to apply it in the best possible way, there

is yet no surety that any individual owner will have the breadth of

vision, the experience, the insight, to discharge adequately the

function of distributor. The defects of his early education, habits

ingrained in him in the course of his business career, may lead him to

bestow lavishly in one direction while turning a deaf ear to the appeal

of other needs even more urgent and fundamental. Nothing short of the

collective wisdom of the community, the collaboration of the best, can

safely direct the surplus wealth available for social benefaction.

3. Everyone is ethically entitled to a share of the products furnished

by nature and worked up into usable shape by his fellows, and also to

the direct services of fellow human beings, in so far as that share

and those services are necessary in order to enable him to perform in

the best possible way the specific service which he in turn is capable

of rendering. Our ethical theory here supplies us with a principle

which takes the place of remuneration. There is no such thing as a just

remuneration of labor, there is no such thing as a fair wage, if the

wage be considered as the equivalent of, or the reward for the work

done. It is not possible by any process of calculation to construct

an equation between labor and reward. The laborer is assuredly

not entitled to the product of his labor, as the current formula

awkwardly puts it, for it is an entirely hopeless undertaking to try

to ascertain what the product of any man’s labor is. In the modern

forms of industry, the contributions of the different factors engaged

in production are intimately intermingled, play into one another, and

are inseparable. Neither the so-called workers alone are the producers

of wealth, nor the employers and capitalists, nor yet both together

irrespective of the labors of past generations of which they enjoy the

usufruct. The question, what is a fair wage, or a fair profit, is badly

posed. There is no such thing as a fair wage or profit in the sense of

a fair compensation for the work performed.

The proper payment of the human factors engaged in production is

unascertainable genetically, _i.e._, if one goes back to the origin

of the product. It can only be approximately determined by fixing

attention on the end to be served. And the end in each case is the

maintenance and development of personality. In other words, that is

a fair wage which suffices to enable the different functionaries

coöperating in production each to perform his function, or render

his service, in the most efficient possible manner. The solution of

the labor question must be along teleological not genetic lines.

Adequate nourishment as to quantity and quality, suitable dwellings,

educational opportunities, etc., are all indispensable to the rendering

of service, even by “common laborers.” Specific requirements come up

for consideration with respect to the different special functions, and

those who perform them.

My intention in this chapter is to indicate the bearings of the ethical

theory on living questions of the day. Nothing is more emphatic in the

programmes of the working-class than this demand for social justice.

Nothing is more discouraging than to see the futile efforts made to

define social justice by extemporizing a notion of fair adjustment

which goes to pieces in every serious labor controversy.

One more remark should be made in regard to what is meant by property

as a relation between persons and things considered as a means of

developing personality. A convenient illustration is the use of a block

of stone by a sculptor. The sculptor’s attempt at self-expression is

an effort to combine two things in themselves uncongenial, an ideal

image, and an external tangible thing, the block of stone. The mental

image does not leap from the mind upon the stone and transform it

magically into its own likeness. The external thing, the stone, offers

resistance, and the resistance limits the artist’s effort. But the

limitation itself becomes in time an indispensable aid. For the ideal

image as at first it started up in the artist’s mind was vague, and the

limitations imposed by the intractable nature of the material compel

him to articulate the image, to grasp more firmly its complex details,

and thus to become more surely possessed of it. The same is true of the

mental thing which we call the relation of cause and effect in the mind

of the scientist, and of his endeavor to impose this mental relation

on the sequence of phenomena observed by him. And the same is again

true of that supreme thing which we call the ethical ideal, and of the

effort to embody it in the social relations. The attempt to express

the ethical ideal in human society inevitably hits on limitations, and

leads to frustrations. We have in our heads fine schemes of universal

regeneration. We find elements in human nature that resent and resist

our Socialisms, our communisms. We desire to enlarge men’s moral

horizon, the field of their moral interest, to lead out from the family

to the nation, to fraternity in general. We presently discover that

we are losing the benefit of the closer ties. In the very process of

building we seem to be in danger of destroying the foundations, and to

be building in the air. In this way our formulations of the ethical

ideal are tested. We are compelled to recast them, and the frustrations

which we meet with become the means of clarifying and articulating

the ideal itself, and of enabling us to experience more vividly the

coercive impulses that go out from it.

_The Right to Reputation_

The ethical rule is to show a sacred respect for the reputation of

others. In the present discussion intellectual and moral reputation may

be considered separately.

Under the first head of intellectual reputation, certain points suggest

themselves, one of them in regard to controversies concerning priority

of scientific discovery. What is the sense of such controversies? What

difference does it make whether the law of the conservation of energy

was first enunciated by Helmholtz or by Robert Mayer, or whether the

method of fluxions was invented by Newton or Leibnitz,—not to mention

lesser contrarieties of claims? Would it not argue, on the part of

the scientists and their friends, a more entire devotion to objective

truth if they showed themselves indifferent to personal credit? The

discovery, the invention, it may be said, is important, not the

reputation of the discoverer or the inventor. Nevertheless, such

controversies are carried on in a lively spirit. And it is usually felt

that something more than vanity is at stake, that a man is entitled to

be named in connection with the productions of his mind.

Such controversies resemble a suit at law undertaken to determine a

disputed title to some valuable property. Plagiarism is different. It

is barefaced intellectual theft. The title to the property in this case

is not disputed. The plagiarist just steals an idea or a form of words

in which an idea has been happily expressed, and palms it off as his

own, hoping to escape with his stolen goods undetected. In this case

too, it seems, one might say the idea is important, not the authorship.

Nevertheless, a profound resentment is felt, not only by the author,

but by the general public, against a plagiarist.

A rule is ethical when the conduct prescribed is instrumental to the

development of personality. Respect for reputation is ethical because

reputation is a help to the development of personality. A man projects

his mind outward, so to speak, into the productions of his mind. As

a thinking being he anchors himself in outside reality. He transfers

himself, as it were, into an external thing,—a discovery, an invention,

the expression of an idea in apt language,—each a thing that goes on

existing independently of himself. To deny his connection with it is to

infringe upon his personality, to efface his personality in so far as

his personality is enshrined in his mental product.

Again, a man’s reputation as a scientist or scholar is a prop to his

personality as a thinker. A man can never be quite certain of the

validity of his thinking until it is approved by the consensus of the

competent. To win that approbation is to know that as far as he has

gone he is on sure ground. He can thence proceed, can turn toward new

problems with a sense of power and a measure of self-confidence not

previously attained. To rob him of his reputation is to deprive him of

this invaluable aid to further mental development.[57]

Coming next to moral reputation, we find that the ethical rule

requiring respect for the moral character of others is even more

exacting, and that any contravention of it deserves an even more

strenuous reprobation. The Decalogue prohibits the bearing of false

witness and this rule is extensible from courts of law to ordinary

conversation, since the principle involved is the same. The Sermon on

the Mount menacingly warns against judging others: “Judge not that ye

be not judged.” Buddha enjoins his followers to refrain from malicious

gossip, and includes a prohibition to this effect among the principal

pronouncements of his religion. All the great teachers of ethics and

religion insist on this point, perhaps because the natural propensities

of men constantly tend in the opposite direction, and are so hard

to restrain. To stab one’s neighbor in the back, morally speaking,

to insinuate base motives, to spread damaging reports about him, to

suggest as possibly and then as probably true rumors which one does not

positively know to be untrue, to allow private repugnance to take the

place of evidence,—are infringements of the moral reputation of others

with some of which notoriously many even of the so-called best people

are chargeable. I do not here speak of the grosser attacks, attacks on

character inspired by envy, rivalry, and greed. The soundness of the

rule is generally admitted, though its violations are past belief and

without number.

But is the rule itself as to moral reputation tenable? There is a

difference between intellectual and moral reputation at which we must

at least cast a glance. Intellectual reputation is a fairly safe index

of merit; moral reputation is not. A man’s mind is reflected in his

intellectual performances. Is the same true of his moral character?

Is not the moral character an interior, elusive thing? The real

character escapes the eye of the outside spectator and judge; and if

this be so, why should it be so important a matter to safeguard a man’s

moral reputation, seeing that the reputation he deserves is past

finding out? A public official, for instance, is accused of corrupt

practices. He is innocent, and his friends and he are indignant at the

damaging accusations brought against him. But if not guilty of the

palpable derelictions with which he is charged, yet, in view of his

opportunities and education, he may not be less blameworthy for other

acts with which he has not been charged, and in his heart of hearts he

knows that this is so. Why then, this outcry?

Other examples might be adduced. The honor of a young woman is attacked

by the circulation of atrocious rumors, and the reaction at this most

sensitive point is certain to be extreme when the falseness of the

accusation is exposed. But is outward decorum, correct behavior, always

a sure sign of inward purity?

There is this difference then between the intellectual and the moral

character. The one can be measured, the other cannot. But the reply

to these sophistical objections is still the same as before. The

purpose of the ethical rule is to furnish aids in the development

of personality. The aim in view is not genetic, but teleological,

not to determine how far in analyzing a man’s character down to the

bottom he may be found to be already admirable, but to help him in

attaining excellence, by progressively advancing toward strength and

virtue. And moral reputation is a great help to this end. It is a prop

on which he can lean. He who does right acts and has the credit for

them, is thereby encouraged to do other right acts. And if the inner

voice whispers, as it is sure to do in the finer natures, that the

good opinion of his fellows, founded on his correct deportment, is

undeserved, the shame of it may lead him to more determined efforts

to merit the character which, on however insufficient evidence, is

attributed to him.

Reputation is sacred because it is an almost indispensable means to

further mental and moral progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] _Vide_ note at the end of the Chapter.

[54] A right is a claim of one person upon another or others, and the

justification consists in its relation to personality. Rights exist

between persons for the sake of the maintenance and development of

personality.

[55] Animals, for the purpose now in hand, may be regarded as things,

being devoid of personality, though certain modifications in the

treatment of animals are prescribed by the fact that they are sentient

creatures. But there is no moral interdiction of the involuntary

servitude of animals.

[56] See Chapter VII on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in _The

World Crisis_, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1915.

[57] A remark may here be in place regarding the erudition expended in

determining which of the writings attributed to some great philosopher

like Plato are spurious, and which genuine. Is the time and labor spent

on such researches worth while? The object in this case is not so much

to clear or vindicate the reputation of the philosopher, or to give him

his due, as to rescue for posterity, free from corruptions, a living

and quickening thing to which he has given birth, and which the world

cannot afford to lose. For the work of a great philosopher like Plato

is alive, and is valuable because it is still quickening. And it is

quickening, not because of any positive formulation of truth (like a

scientific law), but because of the élan of the human spirit with which

it is vibrant in attacking the eternal problems of life and destiny.

The same applies to the industry of modern critics in collecting

material wherewith to facilitate the deeper understanding of some great

poet like Dante or Goethe.

CHAPTER VI

THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS

In the last chapter we treated the imputation of evil to the innocent.

We must now consider the right attitude toward actual evildoers.

In discussing sin, one of the points emphasized was that of the moral

solidarity between the individual and society. The moral interest of

the individual is always identical with the moral interest of society;

and, on the other hand, the failure of the individual is a social

failure. The human race sags morally at the point of some particular

member of it.

Again, we defined the task of humanity as the incessant endeavor

to embody the ideal spiritual order in the finite sphere of human

relations. This effort meets both with partial success and with

failure. The gain derived by the human race from its experiences,

its labors, its sufferings, is that the spiritual universe in its

unattainable elevation and sublimity is more and more revealed to

the inner eye; in other words, that by way of effort and recoil, and

renewed effort and renewed recoil from the finite, the infiniteness of

the infinite world is realized. The essential point is that the boon of

realization must be gained both through partial success and failure.

Now sin is failure; everyone fails, everyone is convicted of sin. There

is no exception. In insisting on this point the Christian account

is exact. Only it should be remembered that sin or failure itself is

one of the instrumentalities by which the end of human existence is

achieved. These preliminaries being understood, certain propositions

may be brought forward as to the treatment of sin, and in particular as

to repentance, punishment and forgiveness.

Repentance is recoil, recoil not from the bad act and its painful

consequences, but from the principle underlying the act. Every kind of

sin is an attempt in some fashion to live at the expense of other life.

The spiritual principle is: live in the life of others, in the energy

expended to promote the essential life in others. Moral badness is

self-isolation, detachment. Spirituality is consciousness of infinite

interrelatedness.

Punishment, rightly regarded, is a name for the steps taken to lead the

unrepentant up to the point of repentance, _i.e._, up to the recoil.

Punishment is itself criminal when undertaken for any other object.

Punishment on the vindictive _lex talionis_ theory, or on the bare

deterrent theory, is excluded. Reformatory punishment as commonly

understood is no less inadequate, because it restricts the idea of

reformation as a rule to the externals of conduct.[58]

The steps taken to lead the evildoer up to the point of repentance

are to be criticised from this point of view. Transient or prolonged

separation from ordinary society may be necessary. Severe discipline

may be indispensable. Capital punishment, however, is wholly out of

the question, since the prevention of the crime now being impossible,

the achievement of the spiritual gain is the point to be aimed at. But

the most effectual aid in promoting repentance is faith in the better

nature of the wrongdoer, in that spiritual principle resident within

him which no crime committed by him can wholly crush, and which in

the most apparently hopeless cases is still to be presumed. But faith

in the good that persists in those whom we call bad must go hand in

hand with the acknowledgment of the bad that remains unexpurgated in

those whom we call good. The prison reformer who poses as impeccable

and righteous himself can never win the confidence of the poor human

derelicts with whom he has to deal nor effect in them the desired

change. He must share with them the conviction of sin if he would

impart to them the power of the resilience which he experiences within

himself.

Faith in the potential power of goodness resident in the evildoer is

often confounded with forgiveness. The distinction between the two,

however, should not be obliterated. Faith is help proffered from the

outside to effectuate the inner change. Forgiveness is a record of the

fact that the change has actually taken place, and belief that it is

likely to be permanent. Forgiveness, in the mind of spiritually-minded

persons, takes place almost automatically when the conditions on which

it depends are fulfilled. So long as he remains unrepentant a man

cannot be forgiven, although we may have the conviction that it is in

his power to repent and the earnest desire to bring about the change

in him. Jesus on the Cross says: “Forgive them, for they know not what

they do.” Perhaps “open their eyes so that they may see the Light” may

be the more just interpretation of the meaning—not “forgive” in the

strict sense, for forgiveness is not feasible while the heart of the

offender remains closed.[59]

Both faith and forgiveness are factors in regeneration: the one to

assist in accomplishing the change, the other to assist in making it

permanent. But both the faith and the forgiveness are exceptionally

difficult in the case of our personal enemies. _Enemies in the

spiritual sense there are and can be none._ Every human being, even

one who has done me the most cruel harm, is yet, from another point of

view, a fellow member of the spiritual society. But to discriminate

between the two relations in which the man stands to me—that in which

he is my foe, and the other in which he is my fellow—to be able to put

aside as less important the harm he has done, the suffering he has

forced me to endure, and to desire with perfect sincerity that the

recoil, the transformation, may take place in him, that is the most

searching test of one’s own ethical character.[60]

The forgiveness of personal foes, when complete, establishes a

strangely tender spiritual fellowship between the pardoner and the

pardoned. Both have transcended their normal empirical selves, both

have become partners in a sublime transaction: the one delivered from

the clinging of his baser desires, the other released from his first

crude reaction against evil. They will never forget what they thus owe

to one another. They will continue to walk hand in hand, the one still

leaning, the other supporting and himself unspeakably strengthened by

the support he gives.

Finally, to forgive is not to forget—quite the contrary. To forgive is

to remember the past action, but to remember it as belonging to the

past, as the act of one who has since undergone the great change. The

miracle of the change of water into wine at the feast of Cana would

not have seemed so wonderful to the guests had they not remembered

that what was turned into wine had before been water. To forgive is to

remember that what was water has become wine. And he, too, who has

been forgiven may not forget. The remembrance of the past he will need

as a warning and a safeguard.[61] Not to see the essentially divine

nature in others, and thus also in one’s self is the essence of the

wrong. To teach the guilty to see it is the object of punishment. To

forgive is to declare that what before was ignored is now seen and

known.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] I mean that it is usually considered sufficient, for purposes

of reformation, to bring the wrongdoer up to the average standard of

law-abiding citizenship, to restore him to the bosom of society as a

safe and industrious member. Whereas a person who has had the searching

experience of deep guilt is a candidate for a higher station in the

moral scale. Humanity having fallen in him, he should be helped to rise

to a higher than the average altitude. This at least should be the

aim. Consider the fact that Jesus selected some of his most spiritual

companions from among publicans and harlots.

[59] Compare the words addressed by Sir Thomas More to his judges

when sentence of death had been pronounced upon him—“For though you

have been my judges to condemnation, may we meet merrily hereafter in

everlasting salvation.”

[60] Everyone admires a disinterested prison reformer, one who is able

to see and to call out the good in a so-called bad man; but it is one

thing to be disinterested and generous towards men who have acted badly

towards others, and quite another thing to take the ethical attitude

towards those who have acted wickedly towards oneself. Hence the

touchstone of the character of the prison-reformer is to be found in

the way in which he behaves and feels towards his personal enemies, for

instance, towards those who malignantly attack him and interfere with

the business of prison reform on which he has set his heart.

[61] Perhaps I may add a word as to the forgiveness of those who,

by an extension of meaning, may be called our intellectual enemies.

By intellectual enemies I understand those whose point of view is

radically opposed to our own, whose principles and premises, if

accepted, would render the entire theory of life on which we act,

and on which we found our convictions, untenable. We are apt to be

exasperated in listening to them, or in reading the works in which

they express their opinions. We are apt to feel that there is no room

in the world in which we live for such ideas as theirs, that we and

they cannot exist side by side. The bitter feuds of rival religious

factions, the notorious _odium theologicum_, and in more recent times

the thinly veiled animus shown in the controversies of philosophical

schools are all alike traceable to this source. Racial antagonisms,

too, are partly to be accounted for on the same ground. There are

certain primary attitudes of mind, modes of feeling and directions of

impulse, the correctness of which we cannot demonstrate just because

they are primary, and which we all the more vehemently assert when we

find them disputed. Love your intellectual enemies, may usefully be

added to the stock of moral commandments; keep an open and hospitable

mind to opinions and ways of acting, thinking and feeling which

naturally repel you. And it will help us to discipline ourselves in

this difficult behavior if we reflect that the views most contrary to

our own are nevertheless sure to contain some element of truth which

we cannot afford to disregard, and which will serve the purpose of

correcting and supplementing such truth as we may ourselves possess.

CHAPTER VII

THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE: ACT SO AS TO ELICIT THE BEST IN OTHERS AND

THEREBY IN THYSELF[62]

It is difficult to see the potentially divine nature in men when masked

by the forbidding traits which human beings so often exhibit.

A number of vital considerations will now have to be emphasized as

pertinent to the subject we are dealing with.

The first point is that the character of every person contains contrary

elements.[63] Let the two kinds of qualities be called the fair and

foul, or more simply still the plus and minus traits. The bright

qualities, the plus traits, are undoubtedly more predominant in some,

the dark or minus traits in others. But potential plus qualities exist

in the worst characters, and potential minus traits may be surmised,

and on scrutiny will be found, in those whom the world most admires.

A second point is mentioned as an hypothesis not indeed as yet

verified, but I believe verifiable, namely, that certain defined minus

traits will be found to go with certain plus traits. Wherever bright

qualities stand out we are likely to meet with _corresponding_ dark

qualities or dispositions, and conversely. There are, I am persuaded,

uniformities of correspondence between the plus and minus traits, and

it would be of greatest practical help in judging others and ourselves

if these uniformities could be worked out. A kind of chart might then

be made, a description of the principal types of human character,

with the salient defects and qualities that belong to each. Extensive

statistical treatment of a multitude of biographies would lay the

foundation for such an undertaking; also sketches of the prominent

characteristics of nations, like those furnished by Fouillée, would be

utilized. Also the study of the character traits of primitive races as

partially carried out by Waitz in his _Anthropology_ and the character

types of animals, so far as accessible to observation, might be used

for comparison. Instructed in this manner, we should, on coming into

contact with others, either on their attractive or repellent side,

be prepared to expect and to allow for the opposite traits. And we

should learn to see ourselves in the same manner; we should see our

empirical character as it really is, the dark traits side by side with

the bright. The courage to wish to know the truth about one’s self is

rare, and when the revelation comes or is forced upon us, it often

breeds a kind of sick self-disgust and despair. The saint at such times

in moral agony declares himself to be the worst of sinners. He has

striven to attain a higher than the average moral level, and behold

he has slipped into only deeper depths. The minister of religion, the

revered teacher, the political and social leader, when abruptly shocked

into self-examination by some evidence of grossness or deviousness

in themselves, no longer to be glossed over or explained away, are

fated to go through the same ordeal. A profound despondency is the

consequence. It is not only the badness now exposed, but the previous

state of hypocrisy that seems in the retrospect intolerable. Some

persons live what is called a double life in the face of the world.

But who is quite free from living a double life in his own estimate?

Achilles said of himself ἄχθος ἀροῦρας (“cumberer of the ground”). Many

a man has echoed that cry with a bitterness of soul more poignant than

that which Achilles felt when he uttered the words.

Now the principle of the duality[64] of character traits, or as we may

also designate it, the principle of the polarity of character, applies

to our natural or empirical character, and our empirical character is

not our moral character. The distinction between the two will serve, as

we shall presently see, to rescue us from the state of moral dejection

just described. But first it is indispensable to fix attention on the

natural character, to recognize that we are composite, each and every

one of us, and that the all-important thing to know is which of our

plus qualities go with which of the minus. Here the psychologist

can help us. Here a great field is open for a practical science of

ethology. This would give us a more adequate knowledge of the empirical

character, the substratum in which ethical character is to be worked

out.

Point three opens up a great enlightenment in regard to the whole

subject. It is that the distinction must be drawn, and ever be kept in

mind, between the bright and dark qualities and the virtues and vices.

The bright qualities are not of themselves virtues. The dark qualities

are not of themselves vices. To suppose that they are, to confuse the

bright with virtue and the dark with viciousness, is the most prevalent

of moral fallacies.[65]

A person is found to be kind, sympathetic, gentle, and on this score is

said to be virtuous or good. But gentleness, kindness, a sympathetic

disposition, while they lend themselves to the process of being

transformed into virtues, are not of themselves moral qualities at all,

but gifts of nature, happy endowments for which the possessor can claim

no merit. And sullenness, irascibility, the hot, fierce cravings and

passions with which some men are cursed, are not vices, though it is

obvious how readily they turn into vices as soon as the will consents

to them.

The question becomes urgent: What then is a virtue? The fair qualities

are the basis, the natural substratum of the virtues, the material

susceptible of transformation into virtues. In what does the

transformation consist? When does it take place? The answer is, when

the plus quality has been raised to the Nth degree, and in consequence

the minus qualities are expelled. This result, of course, is never

actually achieved. The concept here presented is a concept of limits.

But in the direction defined lies growth and continuous development

not of but toward ethical personality. In public addresses I have

often said: Look to your virtues, and your vices will take care of

themselves. I can put this thought more exactly by saying: Change your

so-called virtues into real virtues: raise your plus qualities to the

Nth degree. And the degree to which you succeed in so doing you can

judge of by the extent to which the minus qualities are in process of

disappearing.

One or two examples will illustrate the pivotal thought thus reached

in the exposition of our ethical system with respect to its practical

consequences. To raise to the Nth degree is to infinitize a finite

quality, or to enhance it in the direction of infinity. I shall take

two examples, one _self-sacrifice_, the other _justice_, both viewed

in their finite aspect as plus traits requiring to be subjected to the

process of transformation.

The empirical motive of self-sacrifice may be egocentric or altruistic.

In egocentric self-sacrifice, doing for others is a means of exalting

the idea of self to the mind of the doer. He uses others, not as sacred

personalities, worth while on their own account, but subtly exploits

them by benefiting them. He uses them as objects by means of which to

achieve a finer self-aggrandizement. He may indeed go to the utmost

lengths of devotion for his friends. He may perform for them the most

repulsive offices. He may give freely of his means, denying himself

meanwhile comforts and even necessaries in order perhaps to extricate

them from pecuniary difficulties. He may contribute in refined ways

to their pleasure. As a physician he may watch night after night

at the bedside of the sick, foregoing sleep though fatigued to the

point of exhaustion in order to be at hand to mitigate the pains of

the sufferer, jeopardizing his own health in order to assist others

in recovering theirs. Yes, he may even give of his own blood to

renew their ebbing life. In all this he will look for no material

compensation. Gratitude, especially gratitude expressed in words, is

repugnant to him. The lofty image of self which he strives to create

would be marred if any such coarsely selfish motive were allowed to

intrude. All that he requires, but this he does inexorably require,

is that his beneficiaries shall silently confess their dependence on

him, that he shall see the exalted image of himself mirrored in their

attitude, and that they shall move in their orbits as satellites

around his sun. The egocentrism is veiled and easily confounded with

the purest moral disposition. But it is there all the same, and the

proof of it is that the very same person who is thus friendly to his

friends, and an unstinting benefactor to those who pay him the kind

of homage he exacts, is capable of behaving with almost inconceivable

hardness and even cruelty toward others who will not stand in this

subordinate relation to him, or who in any way wound his self-esteem.

Sister Dora, serving enthusiastically in a small-pox hospital, while

neglecting the nearer duties at home, intent on dramatic, histrionic

self-representation, is likewise a palpable instance of egocentric

self-sacrifice.

The self is precious on its own account. The non-self, the other,

equally so. A virtuous act is one in which the ends of self and of

the other are respected and promoted jointly. It is an act which has

for its result the more vivid consciousness of this very jointness.

Egocentric self-sacrifice errs on the one side, the personality of

another being made tributary to the empirical self, despite the actual

benefits conferred. Altruistic self-sacrifice errs in the opposite way.

In it the personality of the self is effaced or made servile to the

interests or supposed interests of another. Not, let me add, to the

real interests, for the spiritual interests are never achievable at the

expense of other spiritual natures. The wife or mother is an instance,

who slaves for husband or children, obliterating herself, never

requiring the services due to her in return and the respect for her

which such services imply, degrading herself and thereby injuring the

moral character of those whom she pampers. An historic instance of the

altruistic error on a larger scale is afforded by the Platonic scheme

of scientific breeding under state supervision, a suggestion revived

in modern times, in which freedom of choice between the sexes, and the

integrity of the personality of those concerned, is sacrificed to the

supposed interests of the community. Nietzsche’s doctrine may possibly

be regarded as a compound of the two errors described, the Superman

representing the egocentrism, while altruistic self-sacrifice, entire

annulment of their personalities is expected of the multitude.

It is easy to distinguish the plus and minus qualities in the

characters of the egocentrist and the altruist: in the one case,

beneficence combined with hardness; in the other, service of others

combined with absence of self-respect.

The second example to be briefly considered is the finite trait

commonly mistaken for justice. A typical illustration of this is

presented by the merchant who ascribes to himself a just character on

the ground that he is punctual in the payment of his debts, that his

word is as good as his bond; or by the manufacturer who entertains

the same opinion of himself because he pays scrupulously the wages

on which he has agreed with his employees.[66] One wonders that so

great and profound a notion as that of justice should be understood

so superficially, restricted to such narrow limits, and that rational

human beings should claim to possess so lofty a virtue on the score of

credentials so inadequate. The reason is that the empirical substratum

of justice is mistaken for the ethical virtue itself. This substratum

may be described as an inborn propensity toward order in things

and in relations, a natural impatience of loose fringes, a certain

mental neatness. Hence insistence on explicitly defined arrangements

and on simple, over-simple formulas. These are favored because they

keep out of sight the complex elements which if considered might

introduce uncertainty and possibly disorder into the situation. Thus

a manufacturer, impatient of looseness, over-rating explicitness,

will be led to grasp at a formula of justice which reduces it to the

bare literal performance of a fixed agreement, no matter with what

unfreedom, owing to the pressure of want, it was entered into by

the wage-earners, and no matter how deteriorating the effect of the

insufficient wage may prove to be on their standard of living.

But it is a far cry from this empirical predisposition to the sublime

ethical idea itself. The idea of “the just” as exemplified in any act

performed by me includes the totality of all those conditions which

make for the development of the ethical personality of others in so far

as it can be affected by my action. To do a just act is to act with the

totality of these conditions in view, in order to promote the end in

view, which is the liberation of personality or at least the idea of

personality in others and in myself.

It is thus evident that a just act—an ideally, perfectly just act,—can

be performed by no man. First because the right conditions of human

development are but very imperfectly known, and are only brought

to light by slow degrees. Secondly because even as to the known

conditions of justice, for instance the abolition of the evils of the

present industrial wage system, a single employer, or even a group of

well-intentioned employers can bring about the desired changes only to

a very limited extent.

Raising the finite quality underlying justice to the Nth degree

therefore means opening an illimitable prospect. The ethical effort

in this, as in all other instances, is destined to be thwarted. It is

an effort in the direction of the finitely unattainable; the effort

itself, with the conviction it fosters as to the reality of that

which is finitely unattainable, being the ethically valuable outcome.

The just man, therefore, in any proper sense of the word, is one who

is convinced of the fact that he is _essentially not a just man_,

and a deep humility as to both his actual and possible achievements

will distinguish him from the “just man” so-called, who arrogates to

himself that sublime attribute on the ground of the scrupulous payment

of debts, or the fulfilment of contracts. Humility in fact will be

found to be the characteristic mark of those who have attained ethical

enlightenment in any direction. It is the outward sign from which we

may infer that the finite quality in them is in process of being raised

to the Nth degree.

I have given these few specific illustrations of my meaning, but what

has been said applies equally to any of the plus qualities. The plus

qualities are the ones which are favorable for transformation into

the infinitized ethical quality. The ethical principle itself is one

and indivisible. Any one of the plus qualities, when ethicized, will

conduce to the same result. From whatever point of the periphery of the

ethical sphere we advance toward the center we shall meet with the same

experience. Thus self-affirmation or egoism when in idea raised to the

Nth degree will reveal that the highest selfhood can be achieved only

when the unique power of a spiritual being is deployed in such a way as

to challenge the unique, distinctive power that is lodged in each of

the infinite multitude of spiritual beings that are partners with us in

the eternal life.

And altruism, or care for others, at its spiritual climax, will

conversely involve the recognition that true service to others can

only be perfectly performed when the power that is resident in

ourselves is exercised in its most vigorous, most spontaneous, and most

self-affirming mode. And as the diverse empirical qualities which we

observe in one another all appear to be modes of or cognate with these

two principal tendencies—the self-affirming and the altruistic—the

method of transfiguring empirical qualities which has been set forth

may be found to apply in every instance.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] Or more exactly act so as to elicit the sense of unique

distinctive selfhood, as interconnected with all other distinctive

spiritual beings in the infinite universe.

[63] The conception underlying Robert L. Stevenson’s sketch of Jekyl

and Hyde is to be taken seriously, and applied without exception

_mutatis mutandis_ to every human being whatsoever (but see footnote p.

76). It is not original with Stevenson. The French, who are perhaps the

keenest psychologists, long ago invented the _apercu_ that everyone has

the defects of his qualities.

[64] The use of the term duality is not intended to exclude the

possibility of multiplicity, but only to call attention to one striking

bifurcation of human character.

[65] Stevenson falls into this error. He confounds Jekyl with the

virtuous and Hyde with the vicious side of character. In reality the

one should stand for the empirical plus traits, the other for the

empirical minus traits.

[66] Contract-keeping is peculiarly the moral rule applicable to

mercantile transactions. To apply it without modification to the

dealings of employers and wage-earners is to intrude the mercantile

standard into the industrial sphere. This is what we are now

witnessing. The industrial standard is only in process of development

and clarification, and the accepted mercantile standard is really in

conflict with it. Among merchants it is of the very essence of their

transactions that a contract shall not be invalidated, despite the

injurious consequences to one or the other party which it may turn

out later on to involve. The security of commercial transactions

would be gone if revision of the contract should be permitted

whenever consequent loss appears. Again, and this is particularly

important, merchants are assumed to be on a footing of equality in

dealing with one another, equally free in accepting or rejecting a

proposed contract, equally competent to take care of their respective

interests. The relation of employers to wage-earners however is not

that of economic equals, but of the economically stronger with the

economically weaker. And this difference is of cardinal importance in

determining the rule of justice as it should obtain in the industrial

sphere. I do not of course intend to imply that an agreement between

employer and wage-earners once made should not as a rule be kept as

scrupulously as that between merchant and merchant. What I affirm is

that in view of the greatness of the injury possibly inflicted upon

the weaker, the economically stronger party is bound at least to share

the responsibility with the weaker for the essential fairness of the

terms of the agreement before it is finally completed. Nay, I would go

a step farther, and say that despite the indispensable condemnation of

contract-breaking, provision should be made for possible revision in

cases where it can be shown that exceptional hardships have appeared,

unforeseen and unforeseeable at the time when the agreement was made.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE (_Continued_)

Whatever the steps that have thus far been taken, they are preliminary

to the final step. And the _method_ of “salvation,” the distinctive

feature wherein this ethical system differs from others, may now be

briefly stated. So act as to elicit the unique personality in others,

and _thereby_ in thyself. Salvation is found in the effort to save

others! The difference in method consists in the joint pursuit of the

two ends, that of the other and that of the self. The controlling

idea is that the _numen_ in the self is raised out of potentiality

into actuality by the energy put forth to raise the _numen_ in the

other,—the two divinities greeting each other as simultaneously they

rise into the light.

It is thus that both egoism and altruism are transcended. To be

egoistic is to assert one’s empirical self at the expense of other

empirical selves. To be altruistic is to prefer the empirical selves

of others to one’s own. It is not true that self-realization, keeping

to the empirical signification of self, leads insensibly to altruistic

conduct. The life of the great “self-realizer,” Goethe, may be cited

in evidence of this. Nor is it true that preference for the empirical

self of another necessarily involves maintaining the integrity of one’s

own empirical self. In the empirical field egoism and altruism are

conflicting and mutually contradictory. It is in the spiritual field

that they cease to be so, because both disappear in an object of the

will which includes them both and transcends them both. If this be so,

it may be asked why does the formula we have adopted read: So act as to

elicit the unique personality in others, and thereby in thyself? Why

not conversely:—So act as to realize the unique personality in thyself,

and thereby in others?—since in any case the ends in view are to be

achieved conjointly. The answer is that in the pure spiritual field,

in the world of ideal ethical units, it would make no difference from

which point of view the relation were regarded. But when the spiritual

formula is applied as a regulative rule to the mutual relations

of empirical beings there is a difference. Thus applied, it must

necessarily be couched in such terms as will make the spiritual birth

of the other the prime object, and the spiritual birth of the self its

incidental though inseparable concomitant. This is so because ethics

is a science of energetics, which has to do with the potencies of our

nature in their most affirmative efferent expression. All our higher

faculties are active, and touch for good or ill the lives of those who

surround us. Even the secret thoughts which seem only to affect our own

individuality, inevitably project their influence upon our associates.

Now ethics is a science of _right_ energizing. And since as a matter of

fact we do inevitably energize in such a manner as to affect others,

the fundamental question in ethics is: how are we to regulate the

incidences of our natures that fall upon other lives so that they shall

be right? Since we cannot help acting upon them and influencing them,

how can we act rightly toward them and rightly influence them? And the

rule supplied by the ethical principle is: Act upon their empirical

selves in such a manner as to draw from their empirical natures the

hidden personality, or at least the consciousness of it. And the

repercussion of the rule is: in the attempt to do so you will convert

your own empirical self into a spiritual personality, or at least evoke

in yourself the idea of yourself as a spiritual personality.

Incontestably, in the attempt to change others we are compelled to try

to change ourselves. The transformation undergone by a parent in the

attempt to educate his child is an obvious instance. No parent is a

true parent at the outset. As his perception deepens of the real needs

of the child, which is so entirely dependent on his self-control, on

his wisdom as well as his love, he will realize more and more his

own deficiencies, and seek to remedy them. The same is true of the

professor in relation to his students, of a leader and his followers,

of a religious teacher and those who look to him for advice and help.

In all such relations when rightly understood there is simultaneous

growth on both sides. In the ethical sphere there is a law of

levitation, the contrary of the law of gravitation that obtains in the

realm of matter. We actually tend to rise from a lower to a higher

level in proportion as we bend downward to lift those still lower than

ourselves.

CHAPTER IX

HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL _NUMEN_ IN OTHERS

We now have to consider how to acquire the faculty of seeing the light

that in our fellowmen is often so deeply hidden. We can love only that

which is lovable. If we could see holiness, beauty concealed within our

fellow-beings, we should be drawn towards them by the most powerful

attraction, willingly living in their life, and permitting them to live

in ours. We should then love all men, for we should see in all what is

unspeakably lovable. But the empirical man stands between us and the

spiritual man, and the empirical woman between us and the spiritual

woman; and very often the former are most repulsive, even when their

ugly traits do not affect us personally, even when as spectators merely

we observe how they behave.

Much more is it well-nigh insuperably difficult to worship, in the

sense of holding worthy, those whose characteristic traits directly

offend us, or are perpetual thorns in our side. We must somehow learn

to regard the empirical traits, odious, harmful or merely commonplace

and vulgar as they may be, as the mask, the screen interposed between

our eyes and the real self of others. We must acquire the faculty of

second sight, of seeing the lovable self as the true self. And how

without self deception we can possibly succeed in doing so is the

question.

In the first place, it is my own craving for resurrection out of that

death in life to which I seem doomed that must impel me to penetrate to

the essential life in others. My own spiritual nature is in fetters,

and to burst the fetters, to escape from the prison, there is but one

way. The unique personality, which is the real life in me, I cannot

gain, nor even approximate to, unless I search and go on searching for

the spiritual _numen_ in others.[67] The force which incites me to

penetrate beyond the empirical traits of others, to surmount the walls

which surround the shrine in them, is the consciousness that unless I

do so I am myself spiritually lost, I remain myself spiritually dead.

For it is only face to face with the god enthroned in the innermost

shrine of the other that the god hidden in me will consent to appear.

The expression “death in life” means living, even living passionately

and in a way efficiently, with a sense, nevertheless, underneath of the

hollowness, the futility of the objects of pursuit. The death in life

is the state of discontent that slowly gathers and augments in a man’s

mind as he pursues his customary ends, as he reviews his intellectual

achievement, the books he has written, the pictures he has painted,

the meager outcome of his schemes of social reform, the uncertain

result of his efforts at moral self-development. It is the ensuing

distaste for what he has actually accomplished, the disallowance of

it as in any way ultimately satisfying. And yet this death in life is

itself the well-spring of resurrection, out of which is engendered

an irrepressible yearning of the mind to attach itself to something

greater than all ephemeral interests, to something that has eternal

worth, and is of such a kind as to communicate of its eternal nature to

him who touches it. The god in the other, the eternal personality in

the inner sanctuary of the other, is that object which must be sought

and touched. The cry of my own soul for salvation is the impulse that

leads me on to search for that object. Without the previous discontent,

I shall not seek; without the appraisement of the temporal ends and

interests of man as in the last analysis unsatisfying, I shall not set

out on my quest. Enmeshed in the jungle of the empirical world, I shall

find no exit. I shall remain the victim of the illusion that the peace

I need can be found in the realm of temporal desire. I shall commit

what the theologians called Original Sin, that is, the preferring of

“the works of the Creator to the Creator himself.”

But there is a second force that must act in conjunction with this keen

desire for personal liberation or highest personal self-affirmation.

It is the sense of the _dependence of others_ upon what I can do for

them. Notoriously it is the dependence of the child that evokes in the

parent the noblest qualities of which he is capable, the self-denial,

the incessant willingness to labor for the good of the offspring. It is

the dependence of the student on the teacher, of the disciple on the

master that elicits the latter’s best thought. It is the dependence of

the multitude on the religious teacher that puts him on his mettle. But

if the dependence of others upon oneself is to produce its appropriate

results, that dependence will have to be interpreted in a spiritual

sense. We shall have to think of others as dependent on us not only for

the necessary empirical services we are bound to render them, but those

empirical services themselves will have to be regarded as instruments

by means of which we may render them the highest spiritual service.

This leads to a more _rigorous scrutiny of the notion of service_ than

has hitherto been customary.

The question we must answer, and it is one that has never been

adequately met, is: What is it in the other that we are to serve,

what is the true object of our service? Man is worth while on his own

account. Now no one can pretend that the welfare of the animal part of

man is an object worth while on its own account. To satisfy the hunger

or the thirst of another, or to promote his health is to serve his

body. But the body is the servant of a master. And I am not bound to

serve a servant. If I am to serve the servant at all it must be for the

sake of the master. Who then is the master?

The same argument applies also to the intellect. Human science is after

all but a narrow littoral along the illimitable continent of nescience.

No one who compares the intellectual achievements of mankind with the

problems that remain unsolved will pretend that the accomplishments

of the intellect are worth while on their own account. The mental no

less than the physical part of us has a master. There is an object

higher than the acquisition of knowledge to be attained in the course

of the mind’s endeavors to acquire knowledge, namely the growth of the

scientist towards unique personality, as will be shown in the chapter

on the Vocations in the last Book. Analogous considerations apply to

art and its achievements.

And if someone should say that neither the satisfaction of the body

alone, nor of the intellect, nor of the æsthetic sense, nor of the

affections, but of all of them taken together, is to be the object

of our service, the answer is that this would be merely serving a

whole household of servants, and still not serving the master. This

quite aside from the fact that the ideal of happiness as consisting

in the harmonious gratification of the various elements enumerated is

chimerical. Since some of the most indispensable elements of happiness,

such as freedom from disease and from bereavement, are beyond our

control. While even the higher faculties are far from harmoniously

coöperating, the one-sidedness of human nature being such that a marked

development in one direction is actually incompatible with complete

development in other directions.

Unless, then, there be some master end in everyone’s life, one

paramount to all others, to which all others are subordinate (the

subordination and the renunciation involved being themselves means

of spiritualizing one’s nature) there is no point to the notion of

service. That master end I have defined as the attainment of the

conviction of one’s infinite interrelatedness, the consciousness of

oneself as a member of the spiritual universe, a ἄπαξ λεγόμενον[68]

in the eternal life, a source of energy induplicable in its kind,

which radiates out and touches at the center each one of the infinite

multitude of spiritual associates, and receives from them the effect of

their aboriginally diverse modes of energizing in return.

I have mentioned two motives that impel me to search for the _numen_

in others. The one, the craving for my own liberation from the death

in life, my own desperate outreaching toward salvation; the other, the

sense of the dependence of others upon me. Yes, but this dependence

of theirs I must now interpret as spiritual dependence. I must look

for them also beyond the death in life to life itself. I must have

the courage and the truthfulness to look upon neighbor, friend, wife,

husband, son, daughter _sub specie æternitatis_, that is, as primarily

spiritual beings, and estimate any physical, intellectual or emotional

help I can give them by the consideration whether it does or does not

advance them toward the master end of their being.

Courage of this sort is rare, because precisely the physical, mental

and emotional wants of those who depend on us are the most obvious

and clamorous. I do not of course mean that we should not attend

effectually to their immediate wants. How could we avoid doing so? How

could we neglect the health, the education, etc., of our children? What

I say is that we should acquire the habit of looking upon the immediate

ends as instrumental, and keep in view the supreme end which they in

turn are to serve, and that we should beware of what I have called the

fallacy of provisionalism—that of supposing that we are at liberty to

provide for the lower immediate necessities first, leaving the higher

and the highest needs to be attended to later on.

The manner in which parents commonly plan for the future of their sons

and daughters is perhaps the fittest illustration of the idea I am

here seeking to exclude. During the period of infancy they pilot the

child through the dangers that beset its physical existence. Later on,

what is called education, the preliminary mental training required to

fit the young for the business of life, is felt to be imperative. Then

comes the selection of a vocation with a view of assuring the material

basis of subsistence. Still later, the advancement of the sons or

daughters in their chosen vocations, or their social success occupies

perhaps the parent’s mind. Thoughts of a happy marriage flatter the

parent’s imagination. If the moral side receives attention, the

utmost that as a rule is demanded is that the young person shall not

fall below the average moral standard that happens to prevail in the

community. And it is in such ways as these that we are apt to respond

to the claims of those spiritual beings for whose essential future

welfare we are to so large an extent responsible.

To widen this all too narrow conception of our responsibilities, the

following reflections may be found useful. A father in the last decade

of his life realizes acutely the brevity of his own past existence.

The curve of his life is now rapidly descending. Supposing him to be

nearing seventy, his adult sons and daughters may by this time have

reached the age of thirty or forty. Looking back on the thirty or

more years that separate him from them, and remembering how like a

dream the intervening years have glided by, it may come home to him

with sudden force how soon these, his sons and daughters too, though

now in their prime, will reach the point at which he has arrived. The

error of parents is to think of their grown sons and daughters only

as moving on the upward curve of life. They stop short in imagination

there. They look forward to marriage, vocational success and the like,

as finalities for those who are still young. We ought to remember

that the upward curve in the lives of our children will presently

descend just as ours has descended, that the few decades which separate

them from old age will pass as quickly for them as they have passed

for us,—almost in the twinkling of an eye,—and we ought to ask on

their behalf as we must on ours,—What is to be the result of it all?

What does it all profit? And it is this thought that will turn our

attention for them as for ourselves to the spiritual end which should

be dominant at all times,—in the morning, at noon, and in the evening

twilight of a human existence.

All that has been said has to do with the arousing in us of the desire

to see in others the god, the _numen_, the master end. The wish to

escape from our own death in life, the sense of the dependence of

others on us as interpreted,—these two are the means of stirring us up

to go forth upon the quest, and the seeking is already more than half

the journey. Seek, and ye shall find. But what exactly is it that we

are to seek? What are we to see in the other?—The spiritual nature. But

what is the spiritual nature? I have frequently urged that the lack of

a definite description of the spiritual nature is the chief defect in

ethics up to the present time. This defect I endeavor to supply. The

spiritual nature is the unique nature conceived as interrelated with an

infinity of natures unique like itself. The spiritual nature in another

is the fair quality distinctive of the other raised toward the Nth

degree. We are to paint ideal portraits of our spiritual associates. We

are to see them in the light of what is better in them as it would be

if it were transfigured into the best. We are to go on as long as we

live painting these ideal portraits of them. We are to retouch their

portraits constantly. We are not indeed to obtrude or impose upon

others these sketches, these mental creations of ours, but to propose

them diffidently, reverently, to hold them up as glasses in which our

associates may possibly see themselves mirrored. It is for them to

accept in whole or in part our rendering of their inner selves or to

reject it. But we are not to desist from our labor in creating the

ideal portraits, for in this consists the spiritual artistry of human

intercourse.

Our friends we are to see in the light of these glorified sketches,—our

friends and our enemies too. For only thus can we win them, and be

essentially their benefactors. There is no power so irresistible,

it has been said, as love. I do not quite accept the word Love. It

signifies the feeling that goes with the ideal appreciation of others;

and mere feeling supplies no directive rule of conduct. But it is

true that the power of ideally appreciating others, of seeing them in

the light of their possible best, and the feeling of love consequent

on this vision, is the mightiest lever for transforming evil into

good, and for sweetening the embittered lives of men. No greater boon

can anyone receive from another than to be helped to think well of

himself. Flattery is the base counterfeit of appreciation. Spiritual

appreciation, appreciation of the inner self despite the mask, is

the greatest of gifts, to manifest it is the greatest of arts. In

its supreme form it is the art of going down to the lowest of human

beings—the man in the ditch, the woman on the street—and making them

think well of themselves because of possibilities in their nature

they themselves hardly surmise. It is also the art of making the most

developed and advanced human beings realize in themselves something

still higher and better than they have ever reached. It is this art

by which the supreme human benefactors have worked their spiritual

miracles, and it is an art which to the extent of our ability we must

each acquire and practice, if human society is to be redeemed.

There are specially two points to be remembered: the one, that of

seeing the unattained excellence in those who are already in the way of

excellence; the other, where there is or seems to be a complete absence

of fine qualities or of the promise of development, as in the case of

backward children, that we should still not abate one jot of hope or

effort, seeking to win even the smallest improvement, in the conviction

that the best possible under the circumstances is incalculably worth

while. For, compared with the infinite ideal even the achievements of

the most advanced and most developed fall infinitely short, and what

are they more than the best possible under the circumstances. The best

possible under the circumstances represents for us the absolute best.

Now a word in regard to those who resist the better influence which we

may seek to exercise over them, for instance, the so-called black sheep

in families. Our chief concern should here be to prevent the resistance

from infecting ourselves and provoking unethical reactions. Ethics is

a system of relations. The ethical point of view consists in seeing

the relation between the offending person and ourselves as it ought

to be, in seeing with perfect objectivity the kind of conduct ideally

required by the relation on both sides, seeing it and thereby assisting

the other to see it. But we shall never succeed in doing this until we

purge from our thoughts and speech every trace of private irritation.

If we can point out to the one who has gone wrong how he has hurt

another, and has spiritually hurt himself; if while we do this we see

the fineness that is possible to him and make him realize that we see

it, we shall not utterly fail. I am aware that other methods should

accompany the spiritual appeal. In some cases, a temporary separation

is indicated, in other cases, a prolonged change of environment, or

the gradual formation of new habits of industry and application, the

awakening of interest in some pursuit that leads the mind away from

egocentric pre-occupation. Psychology and experience crystallized,

into commonsense have valuable counsels to give. But, along with the

technical aids, the spiritual influence should never be lost sight of

or relegated to the second place.

And finally two ideas should be mentioned which are pertinent to broken

relations, as for instance to the unhappy marriage relation and to

interrupted friendships: One that the break is never complete. There

remain certain threads unsundered, which should be most sedulously

preserved intact. They may serve as points of attachment to weave the

tie anew. Again, and this is still more important, thought that the

break would never have occurred if the relation had been as finely

conceived as it ought to have been on my side as well as on the others.

Take friendship as an example. A friendship of many years’ standing

is suddenly wrecked. Why? What were the terms on which the friendship

had been based? What had friendship meant to me?—A certain personal

attraction, mutual aid and comfort, taking counsel together, sympathy

in joy and sorrow. These are valuable elements of friendship, but

they do not even touch the essential point. They do not describe the

principal function which a friend has to fulfil. The friend ideally

is one who stands alongside another as the spectator of his spiritual

development, as one who appraises his friend’s advance toward the

master end of life disinterestedly, and yet with deepest personal

concern. He is the mirror in which his friend may see the stages of

his spiritual progress reflected. Now I have lost my friend. Why have

I lost him? Because he was never a true friend to me, and, I must add,

because I was never a real friend to him. I have not really lost him,

because I never really possessed him. And on making this discovery I

shall have a new light shed on what friendship might mean. I may never

be so fortunate as to find the actual friend, but I shall know what he

ought to be, and what it is in me to be to him. And when I say, “what

it is in me to be to him,” I think of resources of my inner being which

have never been called out; I think of the worth that belongs to me

as a spiritual being capable of giving forth and receiving highest

spiritual influence, and I am thereby immeasurably aggrandized in my

own esteem, the self in me is lifted nearer as it were to its infinite

counterpart in the eternal life. I walk henceforth on a higher level, I

dwell amid serener presences. And this aggrandizement of the self, not

on the ground of what I am but what I may be, and of others too, not on

the ground of what they are, but what they may be, is the compensation

derived from the bitter experience of broken relations. And what has

been said of friendship by way of example is true of frustration in

marriage as well, and of frustrations of every kind.

NOTE TO BOOK III

I may mention a certain test case for trying out the proposed rule,

namely, to idealize the fair quality in others, and thereby achieve

the concomitant transformation of the self. I mean the case of the

victims of a cruel race prejudice, such as is entertained against the

colored people of the South by the more brutal whites. I remember a

long evening which I once spent in the company of a leader among the

colored people, and one of the best men I have ever known. I looked

that night deep into a suffering, sensitive human soul, and I tried

to put myself in his place. I realized the hardships of his lot, the

anguish that I myself should suffer if I were in his position. But

would there be the spiritual equivalent? Would the way I had found

in trials less poignant be the way of release? To make the situation

clear, I selected two points in which the white man, my supposed

oppressor, has the advantage, two fair qualities of which he can

boast. His family life is purer on the average than that of a large

number of the colored people. And he has also learned in the case

of white men to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent.

He will protect the latter, and give up the former to justice. Now

my own people, putting myself in the place of the colored man, are

backward in both these respects. In consequence of the long centuries

of slavery their family relations are often unstable, while they are

apt to shield the colored criminal from the arm of the law. In both

respects I want to represent to myself the white man as he ought to

act. He ought to help me lift up my race, first, by making their

family life purer and more stable. But instead, many of the whites

debauch the women of my race, while perhaps respecting those of their

own race; moreover, by refusing decent accommodation on railroads they

compel educated and refined colored women to travel in cars in which

the coarsest men are herded together.

Again, how can I, as a leader among my people, teach them to

distinguish between the criminal and the innocent of their race so

long as mobs of white men indiscriminately lynch the innocent and

the criminal of my race alike on the barest suspicion? Against their

actual behavior I set up in my mind a picture of how the superior

race, superior in point of civilization, but still morally backward,

ought to act. I can but suggest this picture, keep it in view as a

constant protest, or still better as an imperative model.

But I can do more. I can turn upon myself, and upon others of my own

people who are in advance of the majority of them, and presently

I shall be compelled to admit that amongst ourselves something

of the same pride of superiority exists, something of the same

prejudice against those who are lower in the scale. For there is

also a stratification and a hierarchy of higher and lower among the

oppressed. And the relatively higher are apt to behave toward the

lower in the same fashion as their common oppressors behave toward

them all. We find the same tendency among other oppressed races, as

for instance in the attitude of certain of the Spanish and the German

Jews toward the Polish and the Russian. Purge thyself, therefore, is

the incisive monition; purify thine own nature of that pride which

hurts so cruelly when it is directed upon thee from without. Let the

sin committed against thee be the means of purifying thee from the

like sin. This is the spiritual compensation, this the thought that

leads to inward peace!

FOOTNOTES:

[67] In a previous chapter I remarked that the cheap estimate of others

and of oneself is due to the habit of regarding human beings from the

point of view of the use they can be put to, ignoring the wonderful

and mysterious energies and potencies which are exhibited day by day

in every human being. If the force stored in an infinitesimal particle

of radium is calculated to excite admiration, how much more the forces

exhibited in man, looking at him merely as the stage on which the

spectacle of these forces is displayed. Consider the occurrence of such

a thing as thought, the sheer miracle of mentality, the working of the

constructive imagination in the artist, etc. If we sufficiently dwell

on these inward facts about men, instead of merely emphasizing their

external utility to one another, we shall thereby be put in tune, as

it were, for the higher spiritual view of man. The difference I have

said is like that between understanding the theory of electricity and

merely turning on electric power in the workshop or the home. And yet

the scientific contemplation of the miracles of human nature as seen

from within, while it serves as a propædeutic, cannot actually bring

us up to the ethical point of view. For this sort of contemplation

reveals only the working of impersonal forces or powers, thought,

feeling, impulse in their endless actions and reactions, similar, in

so far as they are impersonal, to the forces observed in nature. The

ethical point of view alone discloses a centrality, an underivative,

irreducible core, a substantive being, personality.

[68] An expression occurring once only.

BOOK IV

APPLICATIONS: THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY, THE STATE, THE INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS, ETC.

CHAPTER I

THE COLLECTIVE TASK OF MANKIND AND THE THREE-FOLD REVERENCE

The social institutions, the family, the organs of education, the

vocation, the political organization, the organization of mankind, the

ideal religious society are to be treated as a progressive series. The

individual is to pass successively through them, advancing from station

to station toward ethical personality.

In designating the social institutions as an ethical series, care

must be taken not to confound the terms of the series as now existent

with the terms as they would be did they conform to their ethical

functions. For instance, even the monogamic family is as yet only in

part ethically organized. School and university are adrift as to their

ethical purpose. The majority of mankind are engaged in occupations

which it would be absurd to call vocations, and the international group

exists as yet barely in embryo. Hence when we speak of the social

institutions as a progressive series through which the individual is

to advance towards personality, we are describing the aim of social

reconstruction, not the present state of things. The spiritual nature

of man must create for itself appropriate social organs. It has been

painfully engaged in the attempt to do so since the existence of our

race on earth.

In each of the social institutions we are to distinguish between the

empirical substratum and the spiritual imprint which it is to receive.

We find in each ready to hand some natural non-moral motive or set of

motives of which we are to avail ourselves in the endeavor to evoke the

spiritual result. Thus in the family the non-moral motive is affection

due to consanguinity; in the school sociality, the school society being

the first society into which the child enters; in the vocation there

is the craving for mental self-expression, in the state, patriotism,

or the feeling we have for the larger whole in which we are included

on the basis of similarity of language, historic tradition, etc. The

natural basis of the international group of society is the empirical,

and as yet in no way ethical, fact of the commercial and industrial

interdependence of the different countries, a fact used by M. Bloch and

his more recent followers as an argument against war.

In popular literature the empirical substratum and the spiritual

relation to be produced by means of it are constantly confused. In any

genuinely ethical system they must be carefully discriminated.[69]

In each of the social institutions, or, as we may now call them, the

phases of life experience through which the individual must pass on the

way toward personality, the winning of the ethical result depends on

observance of _the three-fold reverence_. What I mean by the three-fold

reverence must be explained in some detail, especially as the reader

might otherwise be led into identifying my view with that expressed by

Goethe in _Wilhelm Meister_. The three modes of reverence mentioned

by Goethe in his sketch of the “pedagogical province” have for their

background the poet’s pantheism. The view here set forth is based on

ethical idealism.

In order to introduce my thought let me go back to the phrase

repeatedly used in Book III—“the task of humanity.” Mankind as a whole,

the generations past, present and to come, have a certain work to do, a

task to accomplish. A collective obligation rests on our race, spanning

the generations.

The spiritual conception of the collective task is the basis of the

three-fold reverence. The spiritual result, as was said above, is in

every instance to be superinduced upon an empirical substratum. The

empirical substratum in this case is mankind considered as a developing

entity, which partially reproduces in the present the mental and moral

acquisitions of ancestors, partially increases the heritage and passes

it on to the newcomers. I, as an individual, am also inextricably

linked up backward and forward with those who come before and those who

are to come after. I cannot take myself out of this web. The task laid

upon human society as a whole is also laid upon me. I am a conscious

thread in the fabric that is weaving, conscious in a general way of the

pattern to be woven.

But viewed empirically the development of humanity is haphazard. Much

is preserved from the past that ought to be cast aside. Many traces

of past error remain unexpunged in the life of the present. A mixed

stream, compounded of good and evil, passes through our veins into

our successors’. The empirical fact is simply the fact of partial

reproduction, partial augmentation and partial transmission. The

ethical conception of progress depends on the view that there is an

ideal pattern of the spiritual relation in the mind of man, destined

to become more explicit as it is tested out and that the present

generation ought to appraise the heritage of the past according to this

pattern, preserving and rejecting and adding its own quota in such a

way as to enable the succeeding generations to sift the worthful from

the worthless more successfully, and to see the ideal pattern more

explicitly.

The three-fold reverence has been described as reverence towards

superiors, equals and inferiors. For this inadequate description

I would substitute the following: In place of reverence towards

superiors, reverence for the valid work of ethicizing human relations

already accomplished in the past, reverence for the precious permanent

achievements and for those who achieved them,—the “Old Masters.” The

human race has gained a certain ethical footing in the empirical

sphere. The general task has not to be begun _ab initio_. In the act

of separating what is worth while from what is worthless, in the very

process of revision and reinterpretation, we manifest our reverence for

the past. It is thus that true historicity is distinguished from blind

conservatism. And besides, by studying the old masters, we acquire

a certain standard of excellence. Since those who have contributed

epoch-making advances in philosophy, in religion, in science, inspire

us by the grandeur of their attack on the great problems; and the

spirit of their attack, is unspeakably stimulating to us, even when we

reject their solutions. We cannot too humbly sit as disciples at the

feet of the great masters if discipleship has this meaning.

Reverence of the first type prescribes the same attitude towards

preëminent personalities among our contemporaries. They rank with the

great predecessors inasmuch as they are in a way for us predecessors.

They are in advance of us. To revere them is to endeavor to come

abreast of them, to obtain the advantage of the forward movement which

their superior capacity enabled them to initiate, and to start where

they leave off, adding our small quota.

The second kind of reverence is directed toward those who are, in

respect to their gifts and opportunities, approximately on the same

level with us, but whose gifts differ from and are supplementary

to ours. In our relation to them we may learn the great lesson of

appreciating unlikeness, and working out our own correlative unlikeness

by way of reaction.

The third kind of reverence is directed toward the undeveloped,

among whom I include the young, the backward groups among civilized

peoples, and the uncivilized peoples. We are to reverence that which

is potential in all of these individuals and groups, and we do so by

fitting ourselves to help them actualize their spiritual possibilities.

Reverence of the third kind takes the highest rank among the three.

The spiritual life of the world is a deep mine as yet explored only

near the surface. The unrealized possibilities of mankind are the chief

asset. But in order to effectuate our purpose with respect to the

undeveloped, we must have reverence toward the great Old Masters, to

gain a certain standard of excellence; and reverence towards unlikeness

in others to become ourselves differentiated individualities, and in

order to respect the unlikeness which we shall presently likewise find

in the backward and the young. So that the three reverences play into

one another and are inseparable from one another, the first two being

indispensable to the third. They are in truth a “trinity in unity.”

But the third reverence is the supreme one. The chief objective must

be the undeveloped, because our face must be turned toward the future,

because the task of mankind is as yet in its early stages. The third

reverence is supreme. Now it is only when we have grasped the meaning

of the triple reverence that we can fully appreciate the significance

of the family as the first matrix in which the reverential attitudes

are to be acquired. It is only then that we can rightly conceive of

the organs of education, and of the end upon which the activities of

school and university should converge. And similarly we shall find

our interpretation of the vocation, the state, and the international

society illuminated by this conception of the three-fold reverence.

In popular religious teaching the individual is thrust into the

foreground. His salvation as a detached entity is the principal object.

In positivism and evolutionalism society in its empirical aspect is

exalted, and the individual tends to be regarded as a stepping-stone.

In the spiritual interpretation of the collective task as outlined,

the individual remains integral and sacrosanct. The spiritual society

of which the image is to be imprinted on human society is a society

of indefeasible ethical personalities.[70] The individual even now at

his station in the present attributes to himself this lofty character

and the various obligations which he already recognizes, and which he

endeavors to fulfil, afford him ample opportunity to vindicate his

spiritual selfhood. If in addition he looks forward longingly to the

future, and to the greater spiritual fulfilment that may be expected

among posterity, this expectation is founded on the belief that what he

already possesses in germ will then be more unfolded, that the ideal

of the indefeasible worth of man of which he is already conscious

in himself will then be more completely recognized and its infinite

implications be more fully understood.[71]

FOOTNOTES:

[69] Thus the interdependence of nations in respect to their material

interests is often erroneously expatiated on as if it constituted an

actually ethical bond between them.

[70] While at the same time the ethical personality, unlike

the “windowless monads” of Leibnitz is effectuated only in the

cross-relations which subsist between each one and his spiritual

associates.

[71] I may here point out the bearings of this general point of view

on the much-mooted and confused question of the value of the study

of history. Ranke holds that the aim of the historian should be to

reproduce factually the occurrences of the past. Robinson insists on

the uses of history. But uses to what end? The history of the past is

fragmentary and full of gaps. The data with respect to some of the

most important periods are irrecoverable. The attitude of the human

race towards its own history, I take it, should be like that of an

individual towards his past. I cannot really resuscitate my past.

Memory is treacherous. Much has been forgotten. The events of my youth

are discolored when seen in the perspective of later years. I should

try to know myself as far as I can, but with a view of pressing on and

realizing with such light upon myself as I have, the ethical aim. The

same applies to mankind. And the important point is in the review to

disengage the ideas that controlled the principal social institutions

in the past, and to appraise these ideas from the standpoint of our

present ethical insight. Thus, in treating the history of the family,

we should single out the ideas that controlled the family relation, the

idea of the _patria potestas_, the feudal idea, or the connection of

the family with landed property. In writing the history of the organs

of education, we should bring into view priestly education as among the

Brahmins, musical or æsthetic education as among the Greeks, the idea

of princely education, the idea of preparation for the government of

an empire, which accounts for the system of the English universities,

the controlling idea of the German universities. And then at the end of

our survey we shall be in a better position to discern what is to be

the ideal of school and university education in an ethical democracy.

The same applies to the controlling ideas of the state, and of the

remaining social institutions.