this factor of morality (the "works" of theological discussion) which is responsible for the not uncommon idea that moral goodness means loss of practical efficacy. When inner disposition is severed from outer action, wishing divorced from executive willing, morality is reduced to mere harmlessness; outwardly speaking, the best that can then be said of virtue is that it is innocent and innocuous. Unscrupulousness is identified with energy of execution; and a minute and paralyzing scrupulosity with goodness. It is in reaction from such futile morality that the gospel of force and of shrewdness of selecting and adapting means to the desired end, is preached and gains hearers--as in the Italy of the Renaissance[192] in reaction against mediæval piety, and again in our own day (see _ante_, p. 374).
=Moral Courage and Optimism.=--A characteristic modern development of courageousness is implied in the phrase "moral courage,"--as if all genuine courage were not moral. It means devotion to the good in the face of the customs of one's friends and associates, rather than against the attacks of one's enemies. It is willingness to brave for sake of a new idea of the good the unpopularity that attends breach of custom and convention. It is this type of heroism, manifested in integrity of memory and foresight, which wins the characteristic admiration of to-day, rather than the outward heroism of bearing wounds and undergoing physical dangers. It is _attention_ upon which the stress falls.[193] This supplies, perhaps, the best vantage point from which to survey optimism and pessimism in their direct moral bearings. The individual whose pursuit of the good is colored by honest recognition of existing and threatening evils is almost always charged with being a pessimist; with cynical delight in dwelling upon what is morbid, base, or sordid; and he is urged to be an "optimist," meaning in effect to conceal from himself and others evils that obtain. Optimism, thus conceived, is a combination of building rosy-colored castles in the air and hiding, ostrich-like, from actual facts. As a general thing, it will be those who have some interest at stake in evils remaining unperceived, and hence unremedied, who most clamor in the cause of such "optimism." Hope and aspiration, belief in the supremacy of good in spite of all evil, belief in the realizability of good in spite of all obstacles, are necessary inspirations in the life of virtue. The good can never be demonstrated to the senses, nor be proved by calculations of personal profit. It involves a radical venture of the will in the interest of what is unseen and prudentially incalculable. But such optimism of _will_, such determination of the man that, so far as his choice is concerned, only the good shall be recognized as real, is very different from a sentimental refusal to look at the realities of the situation just as they are. In fact a certain intellectual pessimism, in the sense of a steadfast willingness to uncover sore points, to acknowledge and search for abuses, to note how presumed good often serves as a cloak for actual bad, is a necessary part of the moral optimism which actively devotes itself to making the right prevail. Any other view reduces the aspiration and hope, which are the essence of moral courage, to a cheerful animal buoyancy; and, in its failure to see the evil done to others in its thoughtless pursuit of what it calls good, is nextdoor to brutality, to a brutality bathed in the atmosphere of sentimentality and flourishing the catchwords of idealism.
§ 3. JUSTICE =In Ethical Literature Justice Has Borne at Least Three Different Senses.=[194]--In its widest sense, it means righteousness, uprightness, rectitude. It sums up morality. It is not _a_ virtue, but it is virtue.
The just act is the _due_ act; justice is fulfillment of obligation. (2) This passes over into fairness, equity, impartiality, honesty in all one's dealing with others. (3) The narrowest meaning is that of _vindication_ of right through the administration of law.[194] Since Aristotle's time (and following his treatment) this has been divided into (i.) the _distributive_, having to do with the assignment of honor, wealth, etc., in proportion to desert, and (ii.) the _corrective_, vindicating the law against the transgressor by effecting a requital, redress, which restores the supremacy of law.
=A Thread of Common Significance Runs through These Various Meanings.=--The rational good means a comprehensive or complete end, in which are harmoniously included a variety of special aims and values.
The just man is the man who takes in the whole of a situation and reacts to it in its wholeness, not being misled by undue respect to some particular factor. Since the general or inclusive good is a common or social good, reconciling and combining the ends of a multitude of private or particular persons, justice is the preëminently social virtue: that which maintains the due order of individuals in the interest of the comprehensive or social unity.
Justice, as equity, fairness, impartiality, honesty, carries the recognition of the whole over into the question of right distribution and apportionment among its parts. The equitable judge or administrator is the one who makes no unjustifiable distinctions among those dealt with. A fair price is one which recognizes the rights of both buyer and seller. An honest man is the one who, with respect to whatever he has to distribute to others and to receive from them, is desirous of giving and taking just what belongs to each party concerned. The fair-minded man is not bribed by pleasure into giving undue importance to some element of good nor coerced by fear of pain into ignoring some other. He _distributes_ his attention, regard, and attachment according to the reasonable or objective claims of each factor.
=Justice and Sympathy or Love.=--The most significant questions regarding justice are as to its connection with love and with condemnation and punishment. It is a common notion that justice is harsh or hard in its workings and that it requires to be supplemented, if not replaced, by mercy. Taken literally this would mean that justice is not just in its workings. The truth contained is that what is frequently regarded as justice is not justice, but an imperfect substitute for it.
When a legal type of morality is current, justice is regarded as the working of some fixed and abstract law; it is the law as law which is to be reverenced; it is law as law whose majesty is to be vindicated. It is forgotten that the nobility and dignity of law are due to the place of law in securing the order involved in the realization of human happiness. Then the law instead of being a servant of the good is put arbitrarily above it, as if man was made for law, not law for man. The result is inevitably harshness; indispensable factors of happiness are ruthlessly slighted, or ruled out; the loveliness and grace of behavior responding freely and flexibly to the requirements of unique situations are stiffened into uniformity. The formula _summum jus summa injuria_ expresses the outcome when abstract law is insisted upon without reference to the needs of concrete cases. Under such conditions, there arises a demand for tempering the sternness of justice with mercy, and supplementing the severity of law with grace. This demand means that the neglected human values shall be restored into the idea of what is just.
="Social Justice."=--Our own time has seen a generous quickening of the idea of social justice due to the growth of love, or philanthropy, as a working social motive. In the older scheme of morals, justice was supposed to meet all the necessary requirements of virtue; charity was doing good in ways not obligatory or strictly exacted. Hence it was a source of peculiar merit in the doer, a means of storing up a surplus of virtue to offset vice. But a more generous sense of inherent social relationships binding the aims of all into one comprehensive good, which is the result of increase of human intercourse, democratic institutions, and biological science, has made men recognize that the greater part of the sufferings and miseries which afford on the part of a few the opportunity for charity (and hence superior merit), are really social inequities, due to causes which may be remedied. That justice requires radical improvement of these conditions displaces the notion that their effects may be here and there palliated by the voluntary merit of morally superior individuals. The change illustrates, on a wide scale, the transformation of the conception of justice so that it joins hands with love and sympathy. That human nature should have justice done it under all circumstances is an infinitely complicated and difficult requirement, and only a vision of the capacities and accomplishments of human beings rooted in affection and sympathy can perceive and execute justly.
=Transformation of Punitive Justice.=--The conception of punitive or corrective justice is undergoing the same transformation. Aristotle stated the rule of equity in the case of wrongdoing as an arithmetical requital: the individual was to suffer according to his deed. Later, through conjunction with the idea of a divine judge inflicting retribution upon the sinner, this notion passed into the belief that punishment is a form of justice restoring the balance of disturbed law by inflicting suffering upon the one who has done wrong. The end and aim of punishment was retribution, bringing back to the agent the evil consequences of his own deed. That punishment is suffering, that it inevitably involves pain to the guilty one, there can be no question; this, whether the punishment is externally inflicted or is in the pangs of conscience, and whether administered by parent, teacher, or civil authority. But that suffering is for the sake of suffering, or that suffering can in any way restore or affect the violated majesty of law, is a different matter.
What erring human nature deserves or merits, it is just it should have.
But in the end, a moral agent deserves to _be_ a moral agent; and hence deserves that punishments inflicted should be _corrective_, not merely retributive. Every wrongdoer should have his due. But what is his due?
Can we measure it by his past alone; or is it due every one to regard him as a man with a future as well? as having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad? Those who are responsible for the infliction of punishment have, as well as those punished, to meet the requirements of justice; and failure to employ the means and instrumentalities of punishment in a way to lead, so far as possible, the wrongdoer to reconsideration of conduct and re-formation of disposition, cannot shelter itself under the plea that it vindicates law. Such failure comes rather from thoughtless custom; from a lazy unwillingness to find better means; from an admixture of pride with lack of sympathy for others; from a desire to maintain things as they are rather than go to the causes which generate criminals.
§ 4. WISDOM OR CONSCIENTIOUSNESS As we have repeatedly noted, the heart of a voluntary act is its intelligent or deliberate character. The individual's _intelligent_ concern for the good is implied in his sincerity, his faithfulness, and his integrity. Of all the habits which constitute the character of an individual, the habit of _judging_ moral situations is the most important, for this is the key to the _direction_ and to the _remaking_ of all other habits. When an act is overt, it is irretrievably launched.
The agent has no more control. The moral life has its center in the periods of suspended and postponed action, when the energy of the individual is spent in recollection and foresight, in severe inquiry and serious consideration of alternative aims. Only through reflection can habits, however good in their origin and past exercise, be readapted to the needs of the present; only through reflection can impulses, not yet having found direction, be guided into the haven of a reasonable happiness.
=Greek Emphasis upon Insight or Wisdom.=--It is not surprising that the Greeks, the first seriously to inquire into the nature of behavior and its end or good, should have eulogized _wisdom_, _insight_, as the supreme virtue and the source of all the virtues. Now, indeed, it seems paradoxical to say with Socrates that ignorance is the only vice; that man is bad not voluntarily, from deliberate choice, but only from ignorance. But this is largely because we discriminate between different kinds of knowledge as the Greek did not, and as they had no occasion for doing. We have a second-hand knowledge, a knowledge from books, newspapers, etc., which was practically non-existent even in the best days of Athens. Knowledge meant to them something more personal; something like what we call a "realizing sense"; an intimate and well-founded conviction. To us knowledge suggests information about what others have found out, and hence is more remote in its meaning. Greek knowledge was mostly directly connected with the affairs of their common associated life. The very words for knowledge and art, understanding and skill, were hardly separated. Knowledge was knowledge about the city, its traditions, literature, history, customs, purposes, etc. Their astronomy was connected with their civic religion; their geography with their own topography; their mathematics with their civil and military pursuits. Now we have immense bodies of impersonal knowledge, remote from direct bearing upon affairs. Knowledge has accordingly subdivided itself into theoretical or scientific and practical or moral. We use the term knowledge usually only for the first kind; hence the Socratic position seems gratuitously paradoxical. But under the titles of _conscience_ and _conscientiousness_ we preserve the meaning which was attached to the term knowledge. It is not paradoxical to say that unconscientiousness is the fundamental vice, and genuine conscientiousness is guarantee of all virtue.
=Conscientiousness.=--In this change from Greek wisdom to modern conscientiousness there have been some loss and some gain. The loss lies in a certain hardening of the idea of insight and deliberation, due to the isolation of the moral good from the other goods of life. The good man and the bad man have been endowed with the same faculty; and this faculty has been treated as automatically delivering correct conclusions. On the other hand, modern conscientiousness contains less of the idea of intellectual accomplishment, and more of the idea of interest in finding out the good in conduct. "Wisdom" tended to emphasize achieved insight; knowledge which was proved, guaranteed, and unchangeable. "Conscientiousness" tends rather to fix attention upon that voluntary attitude which is interested in _discovery_.
This implies a pretty radical change in wisdom as virtue. In the older sense it is an attainment; something possessed. In the modern, it resides in the active desire and effort, in pursuit rather than in possession. The _attainment_ of knowledge varies with original intellectual endowment; with opportunity for leisurely reflection; with all sorts of external conditions. Possession is a _class_ idea and tends to mark off a moral aristocracy from a common herd. Since the activities of the latter must be directed, on this assumption, by attained knowledge, its practical outcome is the necessity of the regulation of their conduct by the wisdom possessed by the superior class. When, however, the morally important thing is the desire and effort to discover the good, every one is on the same plane, in spite of differences in intellectual endowment and in learning.
Moral knowing, as a fundamental or cardinal aspect of virtue, is then the completeness of the interest in good exhibited in effort to discover the good. Since knowing involves two factors, a direct and an indirect, conscientiousness involves both _sensitiveness_ and =(1) Moral Sensitiveness.=--The individual who is not directly aware of the presence of values needing to be perpetuated or achieved, in the things and persons about him, is hard and callous or tough. A "tender" conscience is one which is immediately responsive to the presentation of good and evil. The modern counterpart to the Socratic doctrine that ignorance is the root of vice, is that being morally "cold" or "dead," being indifferent to moral distinctions, is the most hopeless of all conditions. One who cares, even if he cares in the wrong way, has at least a spring that may be touched; the one who is just irresponsive offers no leverage for correction or improvement.
=(2) Thoughtfulness.=--While the possession of such an immediate, unreflective responsiveness to elements of good and bad must be the mainstay of moral wisdom, the character which lies back of these intuitive apprehensions must be thoughtful and serious-minded. There is no individual who, however morally sensitive, can dispense with cool, calm reflection, or whose intuitive judgments, if reliable, are not largely the funded outcome of prior thinking. Every voluntary act is intelligent: i.e., includes an idea of the end to be reached or the consequences to accrue. Such ends are ideal in the sense that they are present to thought, not to sense. But special ends, because they are limited, are not what we mean by ideals. They are specific. With the growth of the habit of reflection, agents become conscious that the values of their particular ends are not circumscribed, but extend far beyond the special case in question; so far indeed that their range of influence cannot be foreseen or defined. A kindly act may not only have the particular consequence of relieving present suffering, but may make a difference in the entire life of its recipient, or may set in radically different directions the interest and attention of the one who performs it. These larger and remoter values in any moral act transcend the end which was consciously present to its doer. The person has always to aim at something definite, but as he becomes aware of this penumbra or atmosphere of far-reaching ulterior values the meaning of his special act is thereby deepened and widened. An act is outwardly temporary and circumstantial, but its meaning is permanent and expansive. The act passes away; but its significance abides in the increment of meaning given to further growth. To live in the recognition of this deeper meaning of acts is to live in the ideal, in the only sense in which it is profitable for man to dwell in the ideal.
_Our "ideals," our types of excellence, are the various ways in which we figure to ourselves the outreaching and ever-expanding values of our concrete acts._ Every achievement of good deepens and quickens our sense of the inexhaustible value contained in every right act. With achievement, our conception of the possible goods of life increases, and we find ourselves called to live upon a still deeper and more thoughtful plane. An ideal is not some remote all-exhaustive goal, a fixed _summum bonum_ with respect to which other things are only means.
It is not something to be placed in contrast to the direct, local, and tangible quality of our actual situations, so that by contrast these latter are lightly esteemed as insignificant. On the contrary, an ideal is the conviction that each of these special situations carries with it a final value, a meaning which in itself is unique and inexhaustible. To set up "ideals" of perfection which are other than the serious recognition of the possibilities of development resident in each concrete situation, is in the end to pay ourselves with sentimentalities, if not with words, and meanwhile it is to direct thought and energy away from the situations which need and which welcome the perfecting care of attention and affection.
=Thoughtfulness and Progress.=--This sense of wider values than those definitely apprehended or definitely attained is a constant warning to the individual not to be content with an accomplishment.
Conscientiousness takes more and more the form of interest in improvement, in progress. Conscientiousness as sensitiveness may rest upon the plane of already secured satisfactions, upon discriminating with accuracy their quality and degree. As thoughtfulness, it will always be on the lookout for the better. The good man not only measures his acts by a standard, but he is concerned to revise his standard. His sense of the ideal, of the undefinable because ever-expanding value of special deeds, forbids his resting satisfied with any formulated standard; for the very formulation gives the standard a technical quality, while the good can be maintained only in enlarging excellence.
The highest form of conscientiousness is interest in constant progress.
=Love and Courage Required for Thoughtfulness.=--We may close this chapter by repeating what we have already noted, that genuine moral knowledge involves the affections and the resolute will as well as the intelligence. We cannot know the varied elements of value in the lives of others and in the possibilities of our own, save as our affections are strong. Every narrowing of love, every encroachment of egoism, means just so much blindness to the good. The man who pleads "good motives" as excuse for acts which injure others is always one whose absorption in himself has wrought harm to his powers of perception. Every widening of contact with others, every deepening of the level of sympathetic acquaintance, magnifies in so much vision of the good. Finally, the chief ally of moral thoughtfulness is the resolute courage of willingness to face the evil for the sake of the good. Shrinking from apprehension of the evil to others consequent upon our behavior, because such realization would demand painful effort to change our own plans and habits, maintains habitual dimness and narrowness of moral vision.
LITERATURE Upon the principle of virtue in general, see Plato, _Republic_, 427-443; Aristotle, _Ethics_, Books II. and IV.; Kant, _Theory of Ethics_ 256-314 (and for conscientiousness, 323-337); Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 475-482; Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, pp.
242-253; Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, chs. x. and xiv.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. v.; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. II., pp. 3-34 and 263-276; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 2-5 and 9-10; Rickaby, _Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. I., pp. 155-195; Mezes, _Ethics_, chs.
ix. and xvi.
For natural ability and virtue: Hume, _Treatise_, Part II., Book III., and _Inquiry_, Appendix IV.; Bonar, _Intellectual Virtues_.
For discussions of special virtues: Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book III., and Book VII., chs. i.-x.; for justice: Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book V.; Index); Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 599-637; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch.
xiii.; Mill, _Utilitarianism_, ch. v.; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book III., ch. v., and see Index; also criticism of Spencer in his _Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau_, pp. 272-302; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. II.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. v.
For benevolence, see Aristotle, _Ethics_, Books VII.-IX. (on friendship); Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, pp. 237-244, and _Aquinas Ethicus_ (see charity and almsgiving in Index); Paulsen, _System_, chs.
viii. and x. of Part III.; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch. xii.; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book II., ch. iv.; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. II.; see also the references under sympathy and altruism at end of ch. xviii. Courage and temperance are discussed in chs. x. and xi. of Mezes; in pp. 485-504 of Paulsen; pp. 327-336 of Sidgwick; ch. xi. of FOOTNOTES: [184] This is, of course, the point made in ch. iv. on "_Customs or Mores_," save that there the emphasis was upon the epoch of customary as distinct from the reflective morals, while here it is upon the customary factor in the present.
[185] This fact might be employed to reënforce our prior conclusion that moral rules, classifications, etc., are not of final importance but are of value in clarifying and judging individual acts and situations. Not the rule, but the use which the person makes of the rule in approving and disapproving himself and others, is the significant thing.
[186] Less is said on this point because this phase of the matter has been covered in the discussion of self-denial in the previous chapter.
See pp. 364-68.
[187] Strict hedonism would tend to reduce all virtue to prudence--the calculation of subtler and remoter consequences and the control of present behavior by its outcome.
[188] Says Hazlitt, "The charm of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death: in one word, in _extraordinary excitement_" (Essay on Bentham). But this is equally true in principle (though not in degree) of every temptation to turn from the straight and narrow path. Virtue seems dull and sober, uninteresting, in comparison with the increasing excitation of some desire. There are as many forms of excitement as there are individual men.
[189] There is something of the nature of gambling, of taking chances on future results for the sake of present stimulation, in all unrestraint or intemperate action. And the reflection of the specialist--that is, the one whose reflection is not subjected to responsible tests in social behavior--is a more or less exciting adventure--a "speculation."
[190] In the last words of Spinoza's _Ethics_, "No one delights in the good because he curbs his appetites, but because we delight in the good we are able to curb our lusts."
[191] What has been said about Self-assertion, in the last chapter, anticipates in some measure what holds of this virtue.
[192] See Sumner, _Folkways_, ch. xx.
[193] Upon this point see James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II., pp. 561-567, and Royce, _World and Individual_, Vol. II., pp. 354-360.
[194] This receives more attention in ch. xxi. of Part III.
[195] Compare what was said concerning the intuitive and the discursive factors in moral knowledge in ch. xvi.
* * * * * PART III THE WORLD OF ACTION GENERAL LITERATURE FOR PART III Addams, _Democracy and Social Ethics_, 1902, _Newer Ideals of Peace_, 1907; Santayana, _The Life of Reason_, Vol. II., 1905; Bergmann, _Ethik als Kulturphilosophie_, 1904, especially pp. 154-304; Wundt, _Ethics_, Vol. III., _The Principles of Morality and the Departments of the Moral Life_ (trans. 1901); Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, 1893, Vol. II., _Principles of Sociology_, 1882, Vol. I., Part II.; Ritchie, _Studies in Political and Moral Philosophy_, 1888; Bosanquet, _Philosophical Theory Nature and the Social Order_, 1902; Paulsen, _System der Ethik_, 5th ed., 1900, Book IV.; Runze, _Praktische Ethik_, 1891; Janet, _Histoire de la Science Politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale_, 3d ed., 1887; (trans. by Welldon, 1883); Hegel, _Philosophy of Right_ (pub. 1820, trans. by Dyde, 1896); Mackenzie, _An Introduction to Social 1902, Vol. II., 1905; Stein, _Die Sociale Frage im Licht der Philosophie_, 1897.
CHAPTER XX SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL =Object of Part and Chapter.=--The history of morals manifests a twofold movement. It reveals, on one side, constantly increasing stress on _individual_ intelligence and affection. The transformation of customary into reflective morals is the change from "Do those things which our kin, class, or city do" to "Be a person with certain habits of desire and deliberation." The moral history of the race also reveals constantly growing emphasis upon the _social_ nature of the objects and ends to which personal preferences are to be devoted. While the agent has been learning that it is his personal attitude which counts in his deeds, he has also learnt that there is no attitude which is exclusively private in scope, none which does not need to be socially valued or judged.
Theoretic analysis enforces the same lesson as history. It tells us that moral quality _resides in_ the habitual dispositions of an agent; and that it _consists of_ the tendency of these dispositions to secure (or hinder) values which are sociably shared or sharable.
In Part One we sketched the historical course of this development; in Part Two we traced its theoretic analysis. In the present and concluding Part, our purpose is to consider the distinctively social aspects of morality. We shall consider how social institutions and tendencies supply value to the activities of individuals, impose the conditions of the formation and exercise of their desires and aims; and, especially, how they create the peculiarly urgent problems of contemporary moral life. The present chapter will take up the general question, that of the relation of social organization to individual life.
§ 1. GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS From one point of view, historic development represents the increasing liberation of individual powers from rigid social control. Sir John Lubbock remarks: "No savage is free. All over the world his daily life is regulated by a complicated and apparently most inconvenient set of customs (as forcible as laws), of quaint prohibitions and privileges."
Looked at from another point of view, emancipation from one sort of social organization means initiation into some other social order; the individual is liberated from a small and fixed (customary) social group, to become a member of a larger and progressive society. The history of setting free individual power in desire, thought, and initiative is, upon the whole, the history of the formation of more complex and extensive social organizations. Movements that look like the disintegration of the order of society, when viewed with reference to what has preceded them, are factors in the construction of a new social order, which allows freer play to individuals, and yet increases the number of social groupings and the depth of social combinations.
This fact of historical development is well summed up in the following words of Hobhouse, set forth as a summary of a comprehensive survey of the historic development of law and justice, of the family including the status of women and children, of the relations between communities, and between classes, the rich and the poor.
He says: "Amid all the variety of social institutions and the ebb and flow of historical change, it is possible in the end to detect a double movement, marking the transition from the lower to the higher levels of civilized law and custom. On the one hand, the social order is strengthened and extended...On this side the individual human being becomes more and more subject to social constraint, and, as we have frequently seen, the changes making for the tightening of the social fabric may diminish the rights which the individual or large classes of individuals can claim...In this relation liberty and order become opposed. But the opposition is not essential. From the first the individual relies on social forces to maintain him in his rights, and in the higher form of social organization we have seen order and liberty drawing together again...The best ordered community is that which gives most scope to its component members to make the best of themselves, while the 'best' in human nature is that which contributes to the harmony and onward movement of society...The responsible human being, man or woman, is the center of modern ethics as of modern law, free so far as custom and law are concerned to make his own life...The social nature of man is not diminished either on the side of its needs or its duties by the fuller recognition of personal rights. The difference is that, so far as rights and duties are conceived as attaching to human beings as such, they become universalized, _and are therefore the care of society as a whole rather than of any partial group With this statement may be compared the words of Green and Alexander.
According to Green, moral progress consists in the _extension_ of the area or range of persons whose common good is concerned, and in the deepening or _intensification_ in the individual of his social interest: "the settled disposition on each man's part to make the most and best of humanity in his own person and in the person of others."[197] Alexander's formulæ for moral growth are the "laws of differentiation and of comprehension." The first means diversification, specialization, differentiating the powers of an individual with increased refinement of each. The law of comprehension means the steady enlargement of the size and scope of the social group (as from clan to modern national state) with its increased complexity of ways in which men are brought into contact with one another.[198] =Social Life Liberates and Directs Individual Energies.=--Breadth in extent of community life goes hand in hand with multiplication of the stimuli which call out an individual's powers. Diversification of social activities increases opportunities for his initiative and endeavor.
Narrow and meager social life means limitation of the scope of activities in which its members may engage. It means little occasion for the exercise of deliberation and choice, without which character is both immature and fossilized; it means, in short, restricted personality. But a rich and varied society, one which liberates powers otherwise torpid and latent, also exacts that they be employed in ways consistent with its own interests. A society which is extensive and complex would dissolve in anarchy and confusion were not the activities of its various members upon the whole mutually congruent. The world of action is a world of which the individual is one limit, and humanity the other; between them lie all sorts of associative arrangements of lesser and larger scope, families, friendships, schools, clubs, organizations for making or distributing goods, for gathering and supplying commodities; activities politically organized by parishes, wards, villages, cities, countries, states, nations. Every maladjustment in relations among these institutions and associated activities means loss and friction in the relations between individuals; and thereby introduces defect, division, and restriction into the various powers which constitute an individual.
All harmonious coöperation among them means a fuller life and greater freedom of thought and action for the individual person.
O=rder and Laws.=--The world of action as a scene of organized activities going on in regular ways[199] thus presents a public or common order and authority, with its established modes of operation, its