SOCIAL COMPLEXITY AND ETHICAL IMPOTENCE
While there is good reason to regret the individualism of Protestantism
in a civilization which has increased the intimacy of all human
relations and made social and economic interdependence a basic fact,
yet it alone cannot be held responsible for the unethical nature
of modern society. This is attributable as much to the greater
difficulties which the human conscience faces in modern life as to any
weakness in the moral and religious idealism by which it is informed. A
much more adequate type of religious idealism might have been unequal
to the task of preserving ethical values in modern life.
The gradual secularization of economics through the growing complexity
of commercial relations has been a previous interest of our study. When
it became inconvenient and difficult to make simple moral standards,
expressed in prohibitions of usury and maintenance of a “just price,”
fit the new intricacies of international commerce and industrial
production, we have seen how men turned naturally and inevitably to the
consoling reflection that “in the providence of God life is so arranged
that each man seeking his own shall serve the common weal.” The
doctrine of laissez faire was in other words as much an admission of
defeat on the part of the moral forces of society as it was a conscious
effort toward secularization. Other factors beside a growing complexity
of social life helped however to secularize modern society. Modern
commerce and industry tend to increase the extent of coöperative effort
while they diminish personal contacts. World commerce and large-scale
production make human beings interdependent without offering them
the opportunity of entering upon personal associations. There is a
natural sympathy in the soul which saves men from actions which are
very obviously detrimental to their fellows. But if they are unable to
survey the consequences of their actions or to gauge the reactions to
their attitudes in the lives of others, their temptation to unethical
conduct is materially increased. The master of a manufacturing unit
in the old handcraft period of industry thus found it much easier to
maintain moral relations to his workers than a modern, frequently
absentee, owner of a large factory. If in addition ownership becomes
collective, with the resulting division of responsibility, while the
number of workers increases until individuals lose their significance
in the mass, the problem of making industrial relations ethical is
further complicated. Ethical conduct is, in its last analysis, based
upon reverence for personality; and personality fails to make its
appeal to the conscience when considered in the mass and when regarded
at too long range. In such circumstances a degree of intelligence and
imagination, which mankind has not yet achieved, is required to gauge
the effect of industrial and commercial policy upon the individuals who
are involved in it. The unethical nature of modern civilization with
its destruction of confidence in the moral integrity of human nature
and with its deterministic obsessions is largely due to its mechanical
perfections which have increased the extent of social coöperation while
they have decreased personal contacts.
The same means of commerce and communication which have increased
the size of industrial groups and extended the range of commercial
transactions have also enlarged the political units and increased
interdependence between them. We are living in a world in which a
financial depression in America results in a panic upon the silk
exchange of Tokio; in which a boycott upon cotton goods initiated by
a Gandhi in India throws thousands of cotton spinners in Manchester
into unemployment; and in which Western industrialism may exploit
Chinese labor in the seaports of China without one beneficiary of this
industrialism out of a million being able to make a mental picture
of the social consequences of the commercial policies from which he
benefits. The difficulty of these long-range relationships is further
complicated by the fact that the participants are separated not only
by great distances but by the barriers of race and nationality. All
social decencies in the past have developed within the bounds of the
group, and men have not yet learned to treat individuals in other
groups with confidence, respect and honesty. Attitudes of tenderness,
sympathy and affection have been confined very largely to the family
group. From this intimate group they were finally sluiced out to
effect social relations in larger groups, but they have not changed
inter-group relations. Civilization has increased the size of groups in
which human relations have an ethical basis, but it has not moralized
the action of the group nor taught individuals in one social group
to treat individuals in other groups with the respect and confidence
which a wholesome social life requires. The connotation of contempt
which the Jews placed in the word “gentile” and the Greeks in the word
“barbarian” may be matched in the terminology of practically every
people. When groups are geographically separated, as in the case of
political states, fear and misunderstanding are multiplied by the
ignorance which results from a lack of contacts. But contacts alone
do not remove them; for the relations of political, social and racial
groups within the boundaries of the same state are only slightly
more ethical, as for instance the relation between white and colored
people in the United States or of the Scotch and Irish in Ulster.
Human imagination and intelligence have not been equal to the task of
extending ethical attitudes beyond the boundaries of the group.
The ethical problem of group relations is made still more difficult
by the expansive desires and unethical attitudes which develop
naturally within the group as a corporate entity. That is, groups as
such find it even more difficult to maintain moral attitudes toward
other groups than do the individuals within it toward individuals in
other racial or political unities. All human groups tend to be more
predatory than the individuals which compose them. The most tender
emotions may characterize the relations of members of a family to
each other; but the family as such is easily tempted to gain its
advantages at the expense of other families. The tendency of family
loyalty to accentuate covetousness has been frequently noted by social
observers who have seen the family instinct as the very basis of the
sanctity which civilization has given private property. Religious
organizations are not free of the imperial ambitions which come
naturally to social groups of every kind. One fruitful cause of the
dilution of religious idealism is the desire of religious groups to
gain power and prestige among larger numbers. They therefore soften
the rigor of their ideal that it may captivate the morally mediocre
majority. Both employers and employees frequently find agreement in
specific cases of conflict difficult because the policies of both are
determined by considerations of loyalty to their respective groups.
Of all human groups the political state is probably most inclined to
unethical conduct. It was a dictum of George Washington’s that a nation
was not to be trusted beyond its interests, and history supports the
justice of his observation. After shrewdly observing the statesmen of
England equivocate on the attitude of their nation toward the southern
rebellion until they could determine their policy by considerations
of expediency, Henry Adams came to the melancholy conclusion that
masses of men were always moved by interest and never by conscience
and that morality is a private and a costly luxury.[15] One reason
why the relations of nations to each other are still characterized
by primitive fears and excessive caution is because their actions
have not, as a matter of fact, been morally dependable. The problem
of making nations and other groups conform to ethical standards of
any kind is particularly difficult because the ethical attitude of
the individual toward his group easily obscures the unethical nature
of the group’s desires. The patriot identifies his tender emotions
toward his nation with the attitude of the nation itself until he
becomes incapable of a critical appraisal of its policy; or he frankly
condones the selfishness of the nation because he recognizes no ethical
values beyond those implicit in group loyalty. The father of a family
may feel moral pride in essentially selfish pursuits because he means
to secure advantages by them not for himself but for his family.
Loyalty to “the firm” may give the business man a consciousness of
virtue even though it forces him to connive in predatory practices
of his concern. The class-conscious worker may be willing to disrupt
society in the interest of his class because all his moral needs are
satisfied by his devotion to what he regards as the most significant
social group. While this ethical paradox of patriotism is obviously
not confined to political groups, the nation is most seriously tempted
to unethical conduct because it is not a voluntary association, its
group is conveniently isolated from others and loyalty to it is least
qualified by other conflicting loyalties. It may be set down as a truth
of almost axiomatic finality, that groups tend to be unethical in
proportion to the degree of unqualified loyalty which they are able
to claim or exact of their members. In this connection it may be noted
that democracy has increased rather than diminished the imperialism
of nations, for it has given patriotism a higher moral sanction and
thus reduced the moral scruples which might qualify the loyalty of
their citizens. The arrogance of nations and their insistence on moral
autonomy has developed simultaneously with the extension of democracy.
It is this ethical paradox of patriotism which invalidates the
contention that the root of all imperialism is the imperialism of the
individual. It is true of course that group loyalty may become a device
for delegating our vices to the group and imagining ourselves virtuous.
Some types of political arrogance and race prejudice are obviously
methods of compensating individuals for their lack of opportunity
to bully their immediate neighbors. Yet on the whole the unethical
character of group action is determined as much by the partial virtues
as by the vices of individuals.
The problem of bringing groups under some kind of ethical control is
not new in history. It has become unusually difficult in the modern
world not only because of the consolidation of the authority of the
state but also because rapid means of communication have increased the
size of social, political and economic units and made relations between
them more intricate. The larger the unit the more unqualified seems
to be the moral sanction which loyalty to it may claim. To an average
citizen, immersed in his parochial interests, the nation appears in the
light of a universal community in contrast to the smaller and voluntary
communities within the nation. Yet this same nation is one of many
human groups, most of which betray imperial desires reminiscent of Rome
but which aspire in vain after the universal dominion which gave Roman
imperialism a measure of moral worth. Treitschke, whose philosophy of
history was the object of so much opprobrium during the World War that
its faithfulness to the general prejudices of Western life would hardly
be surmised, presented the nation as the ultimate community because
all smaller societies are too petty to deserve and all larger ones too
vague and abstract to claim the unqualified allegiance of men.
The intricacies and propinquities of an industrial civilization tend at
some points to increase the imperial desires of nations and at others
to make their ordinary lusts more deadly. The feud between Germany
and France is a very ancient one, but the need of French industry
for German coal and of German industry for French iron explains some
aspects of their present difficulties which are not derived from
ancient animosities. Modern industry needs a unified world and, lacking
it, each nation is inclined to seek the completion of its industrial
establishment by the forcible appropriation of territory, rich in
needed resources. The economic imperialism of industrially advanced
nations is a product of the high productivity of modern industry which
produces more than one national unit can consume and which needs
more raw materials than the same nation can produce. Covetous eyes
are consequently turned upon undeveloped portions of the globe, rich
in raw materials and hungry for the products of modern industry. In
one sense the European war was incubated in Africa. Rapid means of
communication also extend the reach of the grasping nations. China is
attempting to throw off the shackles of a Western imperialism which
could never have gained the position it holds on Chinese soil but for
the new contiguity which has destroyed the boundaries between East and
West. Moreover, the intricacies of international commerce and finance
offer opportunities for a new kind of economic imperialism which hardly
needs, though it does not always avoid, the use of political force.
The economic forces of one nation simply penetrate the economic life
of another and, if there is a great disparity in economic power, the
weaker nation is brought under the dominion of the stronger without
the citizens of either being aware of the process by which this has
been accomplished. This is the type of imperialism which America
is most fitted and inclined to develop. In South America political
pressure does accompany economic penetration, but in Europe American
power increases under a policy of political isolation. The isolationism
of America, which has become a firmly established foreign policy
since the war, is prompted partly by the sense of power which America
feels as the richest nation of the world, and partly by a political
infantilism which tempts us both to pharisaism and to fear when dealing
with the supposedly more astute political bargainers of Europe. The
relation of America to the rest of the world is a perfect example of
the moral peril in the new intricacies of modern civilization. The
citizen of the state is as ignorant of the actual character of his
nation’s relation to other nations as of other peoples’ reactions to
the real policy of his own government. Probably not one American in a
thousand is able to comprehend a single reason why Europe should fear
or hate America and not more than one in a hundred is actually aware
of the existence of such hatreds and fears. There is therefore an
unconscious hypocrisy in the moral pretensions of the citizens of every
nation, a more or less conscious hypocrisy in the attitudes of the
governments which do not share but yet exploit the political ignorance
of the people, and an inevitable reaction of cynicism on the part of
those who know the real facts and suffer from the moral limitations
of the nation’s policy. Group relations, particularly those which are
intricate, are thus persistently unethical because part of the modern
world is too ignorant to make them ethical and the other part is so
worldly-wise that it has lost confidence in the possibility of ethical
relations. Frequently hypocrisy and cynicism are united in the same
person who knows how to discount the moral pretensions of other groups
but lacks the perspective from which he might arrive at a critical
evaluation of the real character of his own group. This curious
combination of insincerity and cynicism is obvious in the relation of
both economic and national groups, but it is particularly noticeable
in international difficulties. In the struggle between economic
groups there is a growing inclination to make no moral pretensions
on either side. Sometimes the group in power makes them but in that
case its insincerity is usually conscious rather than ignorant. In
international affairs the same patriots who ignorantly persecute every
person who seeks to qualify national loyalty or to make a dispassionate
appraisal of national policies frequently sink into moral despair and
disillusionment when history unfolds the inevitable consequences of the
anarchy of conflicting national lusts.
The task of making complex group relations ethical belongs primarily
to religion and education because statecraft cannot rise above the
universal limitations of human imagination and intelligence. A
robust ethical idealism, an extraordinary spiritual insight and a
high degree of intelligence are equally necessary for such a social
task. The difficulties of the problem are enhanced by the fact that
the religious imagination and astute intelligence which are equally
necessary for its solution are incompatible with each other. Religion
is naturally jealous of any partner in a redemptive enterprise; and
the same intelligence which is needed to guide moral purpose in a
complex situation easily lames the moral will and dulls the spiritual
insight. It is possible that this difficulty may permanently destroy
every vestige of morality in the group relations of modern society.
The necessary partnership and the inevitable conflict between the
religio-moral and the rational forces is obvious in both the political
and the economic problems of the present age.
The unqualified authority and the boundless lusts of a modern state
need first of all to be brought under the scrutiny of clear minds who
understand the implications and can gauge the consequences of its
pretensions. Patriotism is a form of altruism and as such represents
the victory of ultra-rational sanctions over the selfish inclinations
of individuals which seem quite reasonable to the average man. The
emotional attitude and ethical achievement in patriotism endows the
patriot with a kind of madness and pride which make him as scornful
of more rational types of altruism as of the prudent and cautious
selfishness with which he has his primary conflict. It is because
patriotism represents a victory of an ethical ideal that religion
so easily becomes its uncritical partner. When many hearts are cold
anything that warms them will seem religious to the undiscriminating
champion of religious values. The defects of patriotic altruism are
thus left to the correction of rationalistic idealists who know how
to discover the absurdities into which an uncritical devotion to
partial values may issue and how to envisage the larger community
of mankind of which the nation is a part. During the last war moral
idealists of rationalistic persuasion, such as Bertrand Russell, Romain
Rolland, Henri Barbusse and Bernard Shaw, were more detached in their
perspective and freer of war hysterias than any religious leaders of
equal standing. To envisage the larger community of mankind which
lacks the physical symbols of the state and to dispel the parochial
prejudices which are harbored in mediocre minds and which make hatred
of others the inevitable commitant of love for one’s own is clearly a
task to which a discriminating intelligence must contribute.
However the problem of group relations, as has been previously noted,
is created not only by the parochialism of individuals but by the lust
and greed of the group itself. The task of persuading the group to
sacrifice some of its advantages for the sake of the whole of human
society is so difficult that it almost leads to despair. If it will
ever be accomplished religio-moral forces, whatever their present
impotence, must come to the aid of reason. Prudence alone may prompt
nations to a measure of self-sacrificing action, since unqualified
self-assertion must lead to mutual destruction. But prudential morality
reveals the same defects in inter-group relations which we have noted
in simpler social problems. Its ends are always too immediate and its
perspective is too narrow. Moral action which lacks some reference to
an absolute standard and some ultra-rational dynamic inevitably falls
short even of satisfying the social necessities. The prudence of
nations in the present state of international relations tends to prompt
a few, usually neighboring nations, to compose their differences, but
for the sake and at the price of sharpening the conflict with some
other alliance of states. The net result of such an enterprise is
simply to enlarge the unit of conflict once more without abolishing
warfare. The manner in which the triple entente and the triple
alliance, both formed with high moral pretensions, helped to make the
World War inevitable is a matter of history. More recently there are
indications that France and Germany will compose their differences “for
the sake of Europe.” Such a reconciliation will hasten the unification
of Europe but will also help to raise the specter of intercontinental
wars with continental units of conflict. The unification of Asia
upon a basis of common resentment against Western imperialism is an
almost unavoidable development in international affairs. All these
continental alliances are logical enough from any immediate perspective
but dangerous from the perspective of the welfare of the whole race.
There is no indication that prudential statecraft has the resources
to prevent America from inciting the whole of Europe against our
economic overlordship of that continent. The increasing feeling aroused
by the problem of debt liquidations is symptomatic of the natural
resentment which must inevitably issue out of a relation of economic
interdependence between a very wealthy and a poor continent. For the
settlement of this issue no policy will be wise except one which will
appear very foolish to the wise statesmen. A prudent statecraft has
made the anxiety of a wealthy creditor the dominant note in American
international policy, and envy and fear the chief characteristics in
the attitudes of the peoples who must deal with us.
Social intelligence does of course produce a finer fruit than the type
of prudence which characterizes the international policy of modern
states. There is a whole class of social idealists who understand the
economic basis of most international difficulties and who would bring
peace to the warring classes and nations by an economic reorganization
of modern society. Since modern industrialism and capitalism have
materially complicated the ancient feuds between races and classes, it
is evident that no amount of moral and spiritual goodwill can produce
an ordered and stable international society if the economic roots of
war are not clearly discerned and finally eliminated. However the
same intelligence which is capable of such discernment easily drifts
into a cynicism which discounts all moral and personal factors in
social reconstruction and places its hope entirely in a new social
strategy. Loyalty to the class is substituted for loyalty to the
state, and class conflict is expected to issue in a lasting peace
for both classes and nations. Economic determinists show a superior
discernment in recognizing that in a civilization which is forced to
organize its economic life across national boundaries the conflict of
interest between classes does become more significant than the conflict
between states, particularly since the latter conflict is due either to
economic or to fantastic and imaginary causes. But their very realism
betrays them into a cynicism which finally issues in the most romantic
and unrealistic dreams. They imagine that social peace will result
from the victory of one class over all other classes. They have not
taken into account that modern capitalism produces a formidable middle
class the interests of which are not identical with the proletarians.
Moral and spiritual considerations may conceivably prompt this class
to make common cause with the workers in the attainment of ethical
social ends, but it will never be annihilated even by the most ruthless
class conflict nor will it be persuaded by the logic of economic facts
that its interests are altogether identical with those of the workers.
Even if one class were able to eliminate all other classes, which is
hardly probable, it would require some social grace and moral dynamic
to preserve harmony between the various national groups by which this
vast mass would be organized and into which it would disintegrate. Even
within one national unit any economic class will dissolve into various
groups, according to varying and sometimes conflicting interests, as
soon as its foes are eliminated. The Russian communists were not long
able to preserve their absolute solidarity after their revolution was
firmly established. The dominant group soon learned that no amount of
ruthlessness was able to prevent the gradual formation of a minority
group under Trotzky and Zinoviev. Significantly, the conflict of
interest between peasants and industrial workers is the real basis of
this schism within communist ranks.
In Europe the qualification of patriotism by class loyalties has in
some instances led to a mitigation of national animosities, but it has
not destroyed them. On the contrary it has added new hatreds to the
old and created a society which is divided not only by vertical but
also by horizontal divisions. The Marxian idea of the unification of
the world upon the basis of the common interests of the proletarian
class must be relegated to the category of millennial dreams. It is
based upon an illusion little better than that of nationalism. The
nationalists seek to escape the moral problem by delegating the vices
of the individual to the group and the Marxians fantastically endow
the group with virtues which it does not possess. Religious and moral
idealism, preaching goodwill and peace without taking the brutal
realities of the modern economic conflict into consideration, is little
better, and probably less serviceable than a cynical realism which is
blind to everything but the secular facts revealed in modern economic
life. The moral futility of such idealism is one of the very roots of
such a cynicism. Yet, finally, the problem of social reconstruction
cannot be solved without the resources of religious insight and moral
goodwill. The economic reorganization of society will not be effected
without conflict between those who possess the privileges and those who
suffer from the inequalities of modern industrialism. Neither can it be
effected without the mutual sacrifice of rights, the mutual forgiveness
of sins and a mutual trust going beyond the deserts of any party to
the controversy. In England, where economic theory and practice has
never been as completely divorced from religious idealism as on the
Continent, a gradual transfer political power and social privilege to
the ranks of the workers is being made with much less peril of a social
convulsion than in any nation of the Continent. Both the possessors of
privilege and those who challenge the possession are stubborn in the
defense of their advantages and in the championship of their rights;
but at least a measure of influence upon the struggle is exercised by
spiritual and moral considerations which Continental critics of England
identify with the British capacity for compromise but which probably
has deeper and more spiritual roots. Meanwhile religious idealism in
America is almost completely corrupted by sentimentality and betrayed
into social futility because the momentary unification of American
society upon the basis of the interests of the middle classes absolves
the religious conscience from facing the moral challenge in the social
and economic facts of modern society.
Economic determinists are not alone in sharing with an ordinary
prudential statecraft in the effort to organize the life of groups
by means of the resources of intelligence. The hopes of the more
conventional yet socially intelligent people for a new world are
involved in the idea of a society or league of nations. Since an
inchoate international society created by the new intimacy in which
nations live exists in spite of international anarchy, it is reasonable
to attempt the creation of more adequate forms and machinery for the
crystallization and expression of its collective will, the conciliation
of disputes among its members and the closer integration of its life.
Moral and spiritual forces are sometimes frustrated merely by the
lack of adequate machinery for the application of generally accepted
principles to specific situations. There is therefore great need for an
intelligent statesmanship which will give the soul of an international
society a body, and incarnate its aspirations in the instruments of
political order.
From another point of view, however, international society does not yet
exist and needs to be created; and the means for its creation are not
laws but attitudes, not organization but a type of life. Politically
minded people easily suffer from the illusion that laws create
morality, that organization creates society. Societies are not created
by political mechanism but by attitudes of mutual respect and trust.
Where these exist social relations are established and traditions
formed. These in turn are gradually codified and given definition and
precision by legal enactments. No one now takes the theory seriously
that human society was created by a conscious mutual contract between
individuals who suddenly realized that they could save themselves in
no other way from mutual self-destruction. Society is older than human
history and exists wherever individuals establish relations of mutual
reverence and trust. The family is usually the beginning of society
because here nature aids the imagination and consanguinity creates an
atmosphere of mutual trust. The family is enlarged by the fortunes
and the needs of war, the resulting clans may amalgamate into larger
units through intermarriage of leaders or through other exigencies,
and the emerging national or racial group is formed by similar forces.
The love and trust which unite a society are no more rational than the
hatred and mistrust which divide one society from another. People do
not regard each other as morally dependable because reason persuades or
experience prompts them to such an attitude. The attitude is determined
by natural and instinctive or by ideal and religious forces and, once
it is assumed, is inevitably verified; for in an atmosphere of mutual
trust human action finally becomes trustworthy and morally dependable.
In so far as national and racial groups live in a state of mutual fear
and hold life outside of the group in contempt rather than in reverence
there is no international society nor can political machinery create
it. Only in rare instances are new social traditions created by legal
enactments. Political forms and legal measures are usually belated
recognitions of previously established social facts and necessities.
The problem of group relations in modern society is as difficult as it
is because natural causes have operated to make the social units larger
and larger while no ideal forces have been strong enough to prompt the
group to enter into ethical relations with other groups. If a higher
degree of imagination than now seems probable does not inform the life
of modern nations only, one further step is possible—the consolidation
of continents. In such an eventuality the present League of Nations
could easily become the instrument of pan-Europeanism in conflict with
other Continents. A society of nations is impossible, in short, without
those ultra-rational attitudes which either instinct or religion must
create and which in the case of this final venture is beyond the
resources of natural instincts—except in the event of a threat from
some other planetary community.
If the creation of an international society is a task to which
moral and spiritual resources must contribute, its maintenance and
development are no less dependent upon the coöperation of spiritual
insight with political prudence. Even at best human nature is so
imperfect and relations between groups as well as individuals so
fruitful in misunderstandings that it is impossible to maintain the
mutual trust and confidence which are the basis of society without
the spiritual achievement of mutual repentance and forgiveness. In
the relation between groups the ability to detect flaws in one’s own
and extenuating circumstances in the actions and attitudes of others
is at once more necessary and more difficult than in intra-group
relations. It is more difficult because the intricacy and long range
of the relations, and the inevitable hypocrisy in the pretensions of
governments, easily obscure the limitations of one and the virtues
and good intentions of the other party of the relationship. It is
more necessary because the frictions which fret the relations of
national and other groups are much more generally due to mutual guilt
than those of individual relations. They develop in a narrow world
and in a society of but few members in which a suspected peril may
lead to a gesture of defense, the defensive measure be regarded as
offensive and in turn prompt an actual attack which will be justified
in turn as a defensive measure. Thus fears produce hatreds, hatreds
express themselves in ugly grimaces and someone finally strikes the
first blow. The World War resulted from a spontaneous combustion of
fears and hatreds, and the partial mobilizations, full mobilizations
and final declarations of war are so intimately related to each
other that impartial historians find it increasingly difficult and
irrelevant to decide who was responsible for the actual hostilities.
The obvious fact is that every generation of every European state for
several centuries had gathered fuel for flames of war. Yet each group
declared its absolute innocence and heaped abuse upon the foe. Years
after the conflict only a small minority in each of the participating
nations has had the imagination to see or the grace to confess the
share of its nation in the mutual guilt. Meanwhile ancient feuds are
perpetuated because the hypocrisy of the victors is written into
solemn treaties and produces a resentment among the vanquished which
makes them incapable of any higher sincerity. Issues between nations
are so involved that only expert knowledge is able to ascertain the
real facts, but the very intricacies of the problems involved make
it possible to use the facts for the validation of almost any thesis
which national pride may dictate. The real task of persuading groups
to encourage forgiveness by repentance and repentance by forgiveness,
and thus to overcome rather than perpetuate evil, is a spiritual
and a moral one and cannot be accomplished in a completely secular
atmosphere. There is little evidence to justify the hope that spiritual
and moral forces, as they are now oriented, are prepared to aid in such
a task. But their responsibility is obvious; social intelligence may
be a partner in the process of conciliation but intelligence cannot
bear the burden alone when a disposition to humility and a capacity for
mercy is lacking.
Urging the necessity of religious attitudes between social and
political groups may seem to be a counsel of perfection when it is
remembered that intra-group relations, except in the circle of the
family and in small religious fellowships, have never been able to
profit by their aid. Society in general has usually contented itself
with the expedient of composing social friction and arbitrating dispute
by apportioning the relative guilt and innocence of the disputants
through a presumably impartial judicatory which enforces its decisions
upon the belligerents, however irreconcilable or obstreperous they
may be. But the fact is that such a method is both easier and more
effective in a society composed of individuals than in a society
of groups. In an ordinary national society the impartiality of the
court is guaranteed by a society of thousands and even millions of
individuals who are supposed not to be biased in favor of one or the
other litigants; and the parties to a controversy are therefore more
inclined to accept the verdict of a court. Furthermore the society
which supports the judicial tribunal is so powerful compared to
whatever political or physical strength the litigants possess that
it is able to enforce the awards of the latter however recalcitrant
the disputants may be. But the society of nations is too small,
judged by the number of its member nations, to function with absolute
impartiality in any major dispute. Judicial action is therefore
immediately less effective. It is to be noted that courts are less
serviceable instruments of social conciliation even within nations
when they deal with large economic and social groups such as unions
and trusts or when the issue involves basic economic problems; and the
reason for this is that the parties to a litigation represent so large
a part of the total community that the unbiased character of the court
is not as readily assumed and ought not be taken for granted. Tradition
and social custom usually bias the court in favor of one or the other
litigants, generally the one most firmly established in the traditional
organization of the society. In the case of nations it is obvious that
for some time to come an international court must confine itself mainly
to petty disputes among powerful nations and to the real disputes
of the petty nations, from whose perspective the large nations may
represent an impartial international society.[16] Even at best no
formal conciliation can heal wounds such as were made by the World War
if nations cannot develop the capacity for repentance and mercy and
learn how to restrain both the proud and the vindictive passions which
are the natural products of unreflective social life.
Though morally dependable action develops most readily in an atmosphere
of mutual trust, it is not to be assumed that either nations or
individuals always justify trust by trustworthy action. Faith does not
produce conscience automatically. Much of the pacifism now cultivated
by socially effective religious forces has the defect that it fails
to gauge the stubborn resistance to ideal forces in the predatory
nature of national groups. It is difficult to develop moral attitudes
sufficiently honest not only to give the bearer of trust the prestige
of sincerity but to make the object of trust worthy of its faith. Trust
united with selfishness results in moral futility; and when it is
based upon illusion and fails to take account of the imperfect social
attitudes which it must overcome, it issues in mere sentimentality. It
is significant that the idea of the outlawry of war should be espoused
particularly in America and find little favor in other nations; for
here extraordinary power is united with remarkable political naïvete,
so that American idealists find it difficult to appreciate the
unsatisfied hungers of other nations or their resentful reaction to our
own satiety. If nations cannot be moved to make some sacrifices for
the sake of the ideal and to qualify their expansive desires by moral
purpose, all efforts to create an international society must finally
prove vain. It may be that the secular ambitions of nations are so
firmly established in social custom and their unethical attitudes so
generally sanctioned by the popular mind that nothing will avail to
give their actions even a touch of ethical character. It is difficult
enough to subdue and discipline the immediate and anarchic desires
which struggle for expression in the soul of the individual; but when
they express themselves in the life of groups and are veiled in seeming
sanctities even while they achieve new and more diabolical forms they
can be subdued only by the most astute intelligence united with a high
moral passion. Modern civilization lacks both this intelligence and
this moral passion and is in the peril of losing what it has of the
latter as it develops the former. Moral idealism which fails to gauge
the measure of resistance which its ideals must meet in the confused
realities of life or to fashion adequate weapons for its conflict
degenerates into mere sentimentality. But a social intelligence which
is overwhelmed by the discouraging realities and despairs of the
attainment of any ideal sinks into a morally enervating cynicism. Moral
leadership in Western society is divided to-day between sentimentalists
and cynics who combine to render the prospect of an ethical
regeneration of modern life well-nigh hopeless. If men are really to be
redeemed from the sins of greed and mutual fears and hatreds by which
they make their common life intolerable they need a faith which is not
held too cheaply but which is held nevertheless in defiance of every
discouragement. The same intelligence which the complexities of modern
life demand and create easily prompts not only to the cynicism which
declares that “all men are liars” but to a moral ennui which cries,
“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”
Benjamin Kidd who understood the need for ultra-rational sanctions in
social life better than most sociologists put the problem of modern
society in these words: “The great problem with which every progressive
society stands confronted is: How to retain the highest operative
ultra-rational sanctions for those onerous conditions of life which are
essential to its life, and at one and the same time to allow freest
play to those intellectual forces which, while tending to come into
conflict with such sanctions, contribute nevertheless to raise to the
highest degree of social efficiency the whole of its members.”[17]
To develop the wisdom of serpents while they retain the guilelessness
of doves is the task which faces the religio-moral forces if they
would aid in the moral regeneration of society. It may be that such
a task is too difficult for the resources of this or any generation
of the immediate future and that painful experience must first prove
other strategies inadequate. Meanwhile even the possibility of
future usefulness of religion demands the largest possible measure
of immediate detachment from the unethical characteristics of modern
society. If religion cannot transform society, it must find its social
function in criticizing present realities from some ideal perspective
and in presenting the ideal without corruption, so that it may sharpen
the conscience and strengthen the faith of each generation.