Society.
Regard for others, merely as individuals, does not satisfy the deepest
yearnings of our social nature. The family is so much more to us than
the closest of ties which we can form on lines of business, charity, or
even friendship; because in place of an aggregate of individuals, each
with his separate interests, the family presents a life in which each
member shares in a good which is common to all.
The state makes possible a common good on a much wider scale. Still, on
a strict construction of its functions, the state merely insures the
outward form of this wider, common life. The state declares what man
shall not do, rather than what man shall do, in his relations to his
fellow-men. To prevent the violation of mutual rights rather than to
secure the performance of mutual duties, is the fundamental function of
the state. Of course these two sides cannot be kept entirely apart.
There is a strong tendency at the present time to enlarge the province
of the state, and to intrust it with the enforcement of positive duties
which man owes to his fellow-men, and which class owes to class. Whether
this tendency is good or bad, whether it is desirable to enforce social
duties, or to trust them to the unfettered social conscience of
mankind, is a theoretical question which, for our practical purposes, we
need not here discuss.
No man liveth unto himself. No man ought to be satisfied with a good
which is peculiar to himself, from which mankind as a whole are
excluded. No man can be so satisfied. Ignorance, prejudice, selfishness,
pride, custom, blind men to this common good, and prevent them from
making the efforts and sacrifices necessary to realize it. But the man
who could deliberately prefer to see the world in which he lives going
to destruction would be a monster rather than a man.
+This common life of humanity in which each individual partakes is
society. Society is the larger self of each individual. Its interests
and ours are fundamentally one and the same.+--If the society in which
we live is elevated and pure and noble we share its nobleness and are
elevated by it. If society is low, corrupt, and degraded, we share its
corruption, and its baseness drags us down. So vital and intimate is
this bond between society and ourselves that it is impossible when
dealing with moral matters to keep them apart. To be a better man,
without at the same time being a better neighbor, citizen, workman,
soldier, scholar, or business man, is a contradiction in terms. For life
consists in these social relations to our fellows. And the better we
are, the better these social duties will be fulfilled.
Society includes all the objects hitherto considered. Society is the
organic life of man, in which the particular objects and relations of
our individual lives are elements and members. Hence in this chapter,
and throughout the remainder of the book, we shall not be concerned with
new materials, but with the materials with which we are already
familiar, viewed in their broader and more comprehensive relationships.
THE DUTY.
+In each act we should think not merely "How will this act affect me?"
but "How will this act affect all parties concerned, and society as a
whole?"+--The interests of all men are my own, by virtue of that common
society of which they and I are equal members. What is good for others
is good for me, because, in that broader view of my own nature which
society embodies, my good cannot be complete unless, to the extent of my
ability, their good is included in my own. Hence we have the maxims laid
down by Kant: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy
will a universal law of nature." "So act as to treat humanity, whether
in thine own person or in that of another, in every case as an end,
never as a means only." Or as Professor Royce puts the same thought;
"Act as a being would act who included thy will and thy neighbor's will
in the unity of one life, and who had therefore to suffer the
consequences for the aims of both that will follow from the act of
either." "In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at once thy
neighbor and thyself. Treat these two lives as one."
+The realization of the good of all in and through the act of each is
the social ideal.+--In everyday matters this can be brought about by
simply taking account of all the interests of others which will be
affected by our act. In the relations between employer and employee, for
instance, profit sharing is the most practical form of realizing this
community of interest. Such action involves a co-operation of interests
as the motives of the individual act.
The larger social ends, such as education, philanthropy, reform, public
improvements, require the co-operation of many individuals in the same
enterprise. The readiness to contribute a fair share of our time, money,
and influence to these larger public interests, which no individual can
undertake alone, is an important part of our social duty. Every
beneficent cause, every effort to rouse public sentiment against a
wrong, or to make it effective in the enforcement of a right; every
endeavor to unite men in social intercourse; every plan to extend the
opportunities for education; every measure for the relief of the
deserving poor, and the protection of homeless children; every wise
movement for the prevention of vice, crime, and intemperance, is
entitled to receive from each one of us the same intelligent attention,
the same keenness of interest, the same energy of devotion, the same
sacrifice of inclination and convenience, the same resoluteness and
courage of action that we give to our private affairs.
+Co-operation, then, is of two kinds, inward and outward: co-operation
between the interests of others and of ourselves in the motive to our
individual action; and co-operation of our action with the action of
others to accomplish objects too vast for private undertaking.+--Both
forms of co-operation are in principle the same; they strengthen and
support each other. The man who is in the habit of considering the
interests of others in his individual acts will be more ready to unite
with others in the promotion of public beneficence. And on the other
hand the man who is accustomed to act with others in large public
movements will be more inclined to act for others in his personal
affairs. The reformer and philanthropist is simply the man of private
generosity and good-will acting out his nature on a larger stage.
THE VIRTUE.
+Public spirit is the life of the community in the heart of the
individual.+--This recognition that we belong to society, and that
society belongs to us, that its interests are our interests, that its
wrongs are ours to redress, its rights are ours to maintain, its losses
are ours to bear, its blessings are ours to enjoy, is public spirit.
A generous regard for the public welfare, a willingness to lend a hand
in any movement for the improvement of social conditions, a readiness
with work and influence and time and money to relieve suffering,
improve sanitary conditions, promote education and morality, remove
temptation from the weak, open reading-rooms and places of harmless
resort for the unoccupied in their evening hours, to bind together
persons of similar tastes and pursuits--these are the marks of public
spirit; these are the manifestations of social virtue.
+Politeness is love in little things.+--Toward individuals whom we meet
in social ways this recognition of our common nature and mutual rights
takes the form of politeness and courtesy. Politeness is proper respect
for human personality. Rudeness results from thinking exclusively about
ourselves, and caring nothing for the feelings of anybody else. The
sincere and generous desire to bring the greatest pleasure and the least
pain to everyone we meet will go a long way toward making our manners
polite and courteous.
Still, society has agreed upon certain more or less arbitrary ways for
facilitating social intercourse; it has established rules for conduct on
social occasions, and to a certain extent prescribed the forms of words
that shall be used, the modes of salutation that shall be employed, the
style of dress that shall be worn, and the like. A due respect for
society, and for the persons whom we meet socially, demands that we
shall acquaint ourselves with these rules of etiquette, and observe them
in our social intercourse. Like all forms, social formalities are easily
carried to excess, and frequently kill the spirit they are intended to
express. As a basis, however, for the formation of acquaintances, and
for large social gatherings, a good deal of formality is necessary.
THE REWARD.
+The complete expression and outgo of our nature is freedom.+--Since man
is by nature social, since sympathy, friendship, co-operation and
affection are essential attributes of man, it follows that the exercise
of these social virtues is itself the satisfaction of what is
essentially ourselves.
The man who fulfills his social duties is free, for he finds an open
field and an unfettered career for the most essential faculties of his
nature. The social man always has friends whom he loves; work which he
feels to be worth doing; interests which occupy his highest powers;
causes which appeal to his deepest sympathies. Such a life of rounded
activity, of arduous endeavor, of full, free self-expression is in
itself the highest possible reward. It is the only form of satisfaction
worthy of man. It is in the deepest sense of the word success. For as
Lowell says:
All true whole men succeed, for what is worth
Success's name, unless it be the thought,
The inward surety to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end.
THE TEMPTATION.
+Instead of regarding society as a whole, and self as a member of that
whole, it is possible to regard self as distinct and separate from
society, and to make the interests of this separated and detached self
the end and aim of action.+--This temptation is self-interest. It
consists in placing the individual self, with its petty, private,
personal interests, above the social self, with the large, public,
generous interests of the social order.
From one point of view it is easy to cheat society, and deprive it of
its due. We can shirk our social obligations; we can dodge
subscriptions; we can stay at home when we ought to be at the committee
meeting, or the public gathering; we can decline invitations and refuse
elections to arduous offices, and at the same time escape many of the
worst penalties which would naturally follow from our neglect. For
others, more generous and noble than we, will step in and take upon
themselves our share of the public burdens in addition to their own. We
may flatter ourselves that we have done a very shrewd thing in
contriving to reap the benefits without bearing the burdens of society.
There is, as we shall see, a penalty for negligence of social duty, and
that too most sure and terrible. Self-interest is the seed, of which
meanness is the full-grown plant, and of which social constraint and
slavishness are the final fruits.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+Lack of public spirit is meanness.+--The mean man is he who
acknowledges no interest and recognizes no obligation outside the narrow
range of his strictly private concerns. As long as he is comfortable he
will take no steps to relieve the distress of others. If his own
premises are healthy, he will contribute nothing to improve the sanitary
condition of his village or city. As long as his own property is secure
he cares not how many criminals are growing up in the street, how many
are sent to prison, or how they are treated after they come there. He
favors the cheapest schools, the poorest roads, the plainest public
buildings, because he would rather keep his money in his own pocket than
contribute his share to maintain a thoroughly efficient and creditable
public service. He will give nothing he can help giving, do nothing he
can help doing, to make the town he lives in a healthier, happier,
purer, wiser, nobler place. Meanness is the sacrifice of the great
social whole to the individual. It is selfishness, stinginess, and
ingratitude combined. It is the disposition to receive all that society
contributes to the individual, and to give nothing in return. It is a
willingness to appropriate the fruits of labors in which one refuses to
bear a part.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+The officious person is ready for any and every kind of public service,
providing he can be at the head of it. There is no end to the work he
will do if he can only have his own way.+--He wants to be prime mover in
every enterprise: to be chairman of the committee; to settle every
question that comes up; to "run" things according to his own ideas. Such
people are often very useful. It is generally wisest not to meddle much
with them. The work may not be done in the best way by these officious
people; but without them a great deal of public work would never be done
at all. The vice, however, seriously impairs one's usefulness. The
officious person is hard to work with. Men refuse to have anything to do
with him. And so he is left to do his work for the most part alone.
Officiousness is, in reality, social ambition; and that again as we saw
resolves itself into sentimentality;--the regard for what we and others
think of ourselves, rather than straightforward devotion to the ends
which we pretend to be endeavoring to promote. Officiousness is
self-seeking dressed up in the uniform of service. The officious person,
instead of losing his private self in the larger life of society, tries
to use the larger interests of society in such a way as to make them
gratify his own personal vanity and sense of self-importance.
THE PENALTY.
+All meanness and self-seeking are punished by lack of freedom or
constraint; though frequently the constraint is inward and spiritual
rather than outward and physical.+--We have seen that to the man of
generous public spirit society presents a career for the unfolding and
expansion of his social powers. To such a man society, with its claims
and obligations, is an enlargement of his range of sympathy, a widening
of his spiritual horizon, and on that account a means of larger liberty
and fuller freedom.
To the mean and selfish man, on the contrary, society presents itself as
an alien force, a hard task-master, making severe requirements upon his
time, imposing cramping limitations on his self-indulgence, levying
heavy taxes upon his substance; prescribing onerous rules and
regulations for his conduct.
By excluding society from the sphere of interests with which he
identifies himself, the mean man, by his own meanness, makes society
antagonistic to him, and himself its reluctant and unwilling slave.
Serve it to some extent he must; but the selfishness and meanness of his
own attitude toward it, makes social service, not the willing and joyous
offering of a free and devoted heart, but the slavish submission of a
reluctant will, forced to do the little that it cannot help doing by
legal or social compulsion.
To him society is not a sphere of freedom, in which his own nature is
enlarged, intensified, liberated; and so made richer, happier, nobler,
and freer. To him society is an external power, compelling him to make
sacrifices he does not want to make; to do things he does not want to
do; to contribute money which he grudges, and to conform to requirements
which he hates. By trying to save the life of self-interest and
meanness, he loses the life of generous aims, noble ideals, and heroic
self devotion.
By refusing the career of noble freedom which social service offers to
each member of the social body, he is constrained to obey a social law
which he has not helped to create, and to serve the interests of a
society of which he has refused to be in spirit and truth a part.
This living in a world which we do not heartily acknowledge as our own;
this subjection to an authority which we do not in principle recognize
and welcome as the voice of our own better, larger, wiser, social
self,--this is constraint and slavery in its basest and most degrading
form.