CONCLUSION
Love is so often proclaimed as a social panacea that I have thought it
well to subject it to a careful criticism and indicate its defects when
regarded as a complete embodiment of altruism. Some of those defects
are incidental. Since it is an affair of human beings it cannot fail to
show the imperfections characteristic of such wayward creatures. Seldom
does even marriage, love’s best opportunity, attain that full mutuality
which I have eulogized. Self-assertion intrudes early. The interests
of one or the other party become predominant, and mutuality gradually
declines. When the simple-minded man was told that in marriage two
persons become one, he naturally enough asked: “Which one?” Yet if
the completely conjunct life is rare, it is precious as an ideal for
directing conduct. We often speak of love as something we fall into.
Rather it is something to be made, developed, steadily approximated.
The best marriages are accomplished works of art, yielding large
rewards through all their progressive stages. But love is ever
unstable. Unwatched, it slips down among the lower forms of altruism.
These defects of love are, however, but incidental and such as are
common in all man’s undertakings. There is nothing in love which can
render it immune from human infirmity. But there are also in it certain
fundamental defects which prevent it from becoming an organizing
world-principle. At least before it can weld individuals into societies
and states it must undergo large transformation and appear rather as
justice than domestic affection. For love is naturally selective and
individual, picking out one and rejecting another. It does not offer
its bounty alike to all. Private altruism, it might be called, so that
it always seems indelicate to speak of it in public. It concerns only
those immediately involved and only their most intimate experiences.
From such limitations it needs to be freed before it can become
formative over society. All that is conjunctive in it must be retained
and only its exclusions removed. In this way general justice will
supplement individual love. All the varieties of mutuality are alike in
joining self-regard with extra-regard. They differ only in the extent
of that extra-regard.
In my last chapter I began the discussion of that superpersonal love
which I called Justice. It is concerned with functions rather than
individuals, and love is thus extended to a multitude who still remain
unknown. To keep the framework of society steady large co-operation
is required, each of its members becoming responsible for the working
of some one among its many functions and having his own well-being
bound up with its. To that function each is to devote himself as the
lover does to his lady, and through it he sends his benefactions
abroad to whoever stands in need. Such is the ideal of professional
responsibility; and whether seen in shoemaker, doctor, or head of a
family, it is something of wider scope and more generous impulse than
private love.
Yet even in professional responsibility an element of selection
remains. After studying the needs of the community I pick out what
work I will do. On some single need I fasten--the need of settling
quarrels, and I become a lawyer; the need of instruction, and I become
a teacher; the needs of the breakfast-table, and I become a grocer. In
all these cases my service is given not to man as man, but only to a
section of men, to those who are conscious of a certain specific need.
It is possible, however, to extend justice and, not confining attention
to wants already known, to endeavor to enlarge the whole intellectual
horizon of our fellows. Thus love becomes peculiarly impersonal and
creative.
For example, when I become an artist or scientific man I do not know
precisely what I shall contribute to the good of the public. The public
itself has experienced no want of the wares which I shall furnish. In
devoting myself to the higher mathematics I am pursuing something for
which a practical application may never be found. But that uncertainty
should not hold me back. I know that the mind of man moves off in that
direction. I will follow and see how far it can be pressed. These
investigations I am making in astronomy are curious. They satisfy my
passion for knowing. Believing they will satisfy that passion in
others also, I ask no more. Passing beyond the immediate application of
my results, I simply aim at developing persons more fully as persons,
so that their capacity for knowledge may be increased. Just so does
the artist attempt to reveal aspects of beauty hitherto unperceived.
When he furnishes what has been done before, what men have learned to
enjoy and now demand, he is a professional workman and belongs in the
preceding class. But a true artist explores phases of unacknowledged
beauty. Having himself seen what others have not seen, he takes the
risk of announcing it, certain that if it is comprehended he will open
men’s eyes to fresh enjoyment. Rightly therefore do we hold artists
and scientific men in high honor as enlargers of humanity. We see that
altruism like theirs calls for risk and special disinterestedness. They
are discoverers, going out into wide lands, far from sure what will
be found there, but ready to sacrifice themselves for possible human
betterment. Intellectual soldiers, we may call them, accepting the
risks of doubtful battle. Theirs is a lofty altruism, and none the less
because success may bring them fame and fortune.
Perhaps I strain the word justice in applying it to them, yet they as
truly as the professional man do not pick out individuals as receivers
of their benefits. Indeed, that absence of particularity so emphasized
in justice goes to such a degree with them that their work seems to
proceed from the spirit of science or spirit of beauty rather than from
a particular person. They strike us as transcending their age, their
own peculiarities, and to embody the conjunct self of humanity.
Still another form of justice, or of love, which passes beyond the
individual, is the service of institutions. Artists, scientific and
professional men all follow interests of their own, believing, however,
that their work in the long run will benefit the public. But in the
service of institutions not only does the public receive a benefit, it
fixes also what our work toward bringing it about shall be. Personal
choice, therefore, altogether disappears. The action is conjunctive
throughout. But to understand this dark saying we must bring clearly
before our minds what an institution is. It is a large term which we
are apt to allow to fill out a big gap in our knowledge.
I mean by institutions those fairly permanent relations between
persons which past experience has established for the promotion of
human welfare and successive generations have approved. Ever since
civilization began men have been experimenting how to live together
most helpfully. The results, tested by the induction of ages, become
the inherited habits of individuals and the institutions of society.
Maintained through passing years, criticised, readjusted to meet more
fully the needs they were intended to fulfil, they furnish each of us
a working capital as soon as we enter the world. We are not obliged to
decide in childhood whether to have three meals a day, whether man’s
dress shall differ from woman’s, whether to have provision made for our
instruction, worship, settlement of quarrels, safety on the street.
These matters were considered before we were born, and judgments about
them form our most precious inheritance. It is a veritable bank stock
of experience on which to draw for our support. We accept it all as a
thing of course at first, then begin to scrutinize it, asking how far
these particular institutions save social friction, open avenues for
enlarged activity, and how far that which once served these ends serves
them no more.
Such institutions are intended for the general good. By identifying
ourselves with them we both share in that good and exercise an
impartial love for mankind. For these have an influence over men
unequalled by any other agency. They fashion us in our unconscious
years and carry forward our purposes in years of discretion. To
comprehend their consolidated wisdom and conform ourselves to it will
be our chief means of serving our fellow men; to neglect or weaken
them through individual caprice is to be an enemy of society. Only
we must discriminate in our modes of strengthening. An institution
is not proved good by the bare fact of its existence. Perhaps the
presumption should be in its favor, for it could hardly get itself
established if injurious. But its original adaptation to human wants
is unstable, and strengthening it will really mean fitting it more
neatly to present circumstances. To maintain its outward form when it
no longer serves its purpose is to be unfaithful to it. Constructive
criticism is constantly required if institutions are to be kept sweet
and wholesome. Only it should be borne in mind that changes in the
framework of society can best come about slowly and only at the desire
of large groups of those affected. Presumptuous, indeed, is he who
will attempt to stand outside any of our fundamental institutions. The
setting up of his individual will against the general will proves him
no true socialist. He should remember that since everybody is wiser
than anybody his first business is to conform to the institutions
into which he is born, then to study elaborately their meaning, and
finally to persuade his fellows to join in readjusting them with a
view to their more effective working. Our love for our fellow men is
shown each day in our maintenance, critical study, and reform of the
social institutions around us. They survive only through our constant
approval, are too important to be neglected or lightly set aside, and
too liable to decay to be left uncriticised.
It is obvious, however, that institutions are of many grades of
importance. Some are fundamental, as the family, property, democracy;
others are local and individual, as Harvard University, Boston, the
Episcopal Church, the Democratic Party. As they become narrower our
acceptance of them changes its character, affectionate loyalty playing
a larger part, dutiful obedience less. A member of a college, for
example, comes to think of it almost as a person, symbolized in Alma
Mater, and gives to it the loving devotion he would feel for a revered
friend. Members of institutions so individual are apt to take their
membership as something like a personal trust and to pride themselves
on fidelity to it. But because such institutions are of limited range
and not applicable to all mankind, failure in allegiance to them is
generally regarded not as a moral lapse, but as an error of judgment.
Such are some of the aspects of justice, the impartial love of our
fellow men. When we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourself, we
cannot excuse ourselves by saying that love does not move by command
but takes its own way according to individual temperament. Even of
the simpler forms of love this is only partially true; wisdom,
purpose, and patience being also essentials of permanence even in our
private loves. But that public love to which we are summoned is no
mere emotion, arising blindly and passing with the mood. It is the
rational acceptance of our place in a social organization where all are
dependent on each. A good synonym for what I have called justice would
be public-mindedness.
And in this extended and superpersonal love altruism attains its
fullest and steadiest expression. But so does egoism, too. That
abstract egoism, it is true, which seeks its own gain regardless of
that of others, is submerged. It was always fictitious, and rapidly
conducted him who pursued it to emptiness. But that conjunct self, the
person constituted through relations, finds in this justicial love his
large opportunity. In like manner the abstract and sentimental _alter_,
figured as that uncriticisable idol to which individual interests must
daily be offered up, is overthrown and shown to have reality only in
the degree in which it fosters personal life. Socialism which does not
promote individuality, individuality which does not tend toward an
ever-completer social consciousness, are alike delusive. Each must find
its justification in the service it is able to render to its pretended
foe. Pure gifts, to individuals or the state, are rightly objects of
suspicion. Only when transmuted by mutuality can they be kept free from
taint.
Such at least is the doctrine of this book. In it there is nothing new.
Vaguely, waveringly, and with but a half understanding, I believe it
has ever guided the best endeavors of mankind. I have only hoped to
drag it into clearer light by a novel sort of approach. The dangers of
that mode of approach I readily see and wish my readers also to see.
As a pedagogue I have torn apart things which belong together and have
separately exhibited our protective, generous, and identifying impulses
as successively different aspects of the altruistic life. In this way
we teachers are obliged to proceed, picking to pieces a concrete whole,
even when our aim is to show wholeness. But my readers will not be so
simple as to imagine that things occur in experience so disjointed as
on my pages. Life is more closely compacted than our expositions.
Higher stages and lower move forward together, assisting one another.
The disparagements which I put on the lower varieties of altruism
these deserve only so far as they are detached from the higher. In
conjunction, the higher altruisms ennoble the lower and are themselves
enriched and diversified by whatever inferior stages they absorb. Among
the ingredients of character none can safely be thrown away. We study
ethics merely to find a place where each may be helpful to all.
Transcriber’s Notes
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.