2 Though I must at once mention the first great error which accompanied the true insight, the shadow which went alongside of the light, namely, my understanding of the above principle mainly in a negative sense. My ethics was largely what may be called non-violation ethics.

3 The relation of chastity to the birth of the idea of personality among the Hebrews I have touched upon elsewhere. The Hebrew people abhorred promiscuity, or the dishonoring of oneself by indiscriminate mingling. It is instructive that this did not stand in the way of polygamy. Those persons whom the Hebrew received, so to speak, into the sphere of his personality, did not imperil his sense of personal intactness. And personal intactness seems to have been the determining motive in the severe attitude taken toward prostitution. The fact that the worship of other gods, the worst of crimes in the eyes of the Hebrew legislator, was described as “whoring after other gods” is particularly significant. The sacred, sensitive self, the holy thing whatever it might be, which the Hebrew discovered within his own sex experience, was thereafter attributed also to others, and especially to those who had the same aversion to promiscuity as he. Hence perhaps the limited ascription of holiness to members of the Hebrew people.

4 Pantheism has always seemed to me the least satisfactory of theological or ethical solutions. The system of thought which will be found later on in this volume may have a certain superficial resemblance to Pantheism, but in reality is as far from it in origin and purpose as pole from pole.

5 There are also passages in books that have the same revolutionizing effect (Cf. the passage quoted from St. Paul in St. Augustine’s “Confessions”). However, it is curious to observe that the effect brought about may be quite out of proportion to the cause. The book or the passage may prove to be of inferior value, so far as its subject is concerned, and may yet serve suddenly to call attention to the subject itself, and give rise to trains of thought that eventually go far beyond the impetus that set them in motion. “Ripeness,” says Shakespeare, “is everything,”—ripeness to receive the impetus. Relatedness to the state of mind of the recipient is the decisive factor, and this accounts for the astounding changes that result.

6 I still go back to that fountain-head for refreshment and inspiration, much as a modern poet may go back to Homer, without attempting to copy him, or as a modern sculptor or architect may go back to the Greek artists without relinquishing his right and his duty to help in producing a different kind of art, which perchance may one day culminate in masterpieces like theirs, though his own performance be but the poor beginning.

7 Compare the ejaculatory deliverance of Isaiah, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Parables of Jesus. Who can attempt in language to express what they saw as they did?

8 No seriously religious person will attempt to strike out into a new path unless he be under inward coercion to do so. The advantages of what is commonly called historic continuity (I have just shown wherein real continuity consists, that of growth along the trunk, and not of growth along the branch) are great. There is for one thing the support derived from leaning on an ancient tradition, the proud humility felt in passing on the torch that had been held by mighty predecessors, the self-dedication to that which is larger than self, i.e., to an institution and ideas that existed in the world before one was born, and will exist after one is gone. There is the strength drawn from contact with a large and powerful organization, powerful both in sustaining one’s efforts, and in restraining and correcting them when need be. There are, on the other side, the perils of innovation, the errors into which one is led for lack of restraint and correction, the too great dependence on self, the spiritual loneliness and the lack of many gracious and useful aids to the religious life such as a noble ritual, majestic music, the fit emotional expressions of religious feeling, which are not to be had for the asking, the fine embellishments that are precious in their way, and that, like the fruits in the Gardens of the Gods, ripen slowly, and may not be extemporized or anticipated.

9 See Chapter IX on the Religious Society in Part IV of this volume. It gives rise to the belief that men as individuals or collectively are the objects of a special Providence, and that the universe is so arranged as to be adapted to man’s needs, not to say his wishes; whereas the facts show that man must adapt himself to the universe, and find his physical safety and his ethical salvation in so doing. The belief in the Father who allows not one hair of our heads to fall unnoticed raises expectations to which actual experience fails to correspond.

As to the issue between monotheism and trinitarianism, it has long since become obsolescent, if not obsolete. The forward-looking men and women of our time are absorbed in far other issues—Is the mechanical theory propounded by science the ultimate account of things? Is the world in which we live a blind machine? Is man a chance product of nature, like the beasts that perish? Not is God one in unity or is He a Triune God, but, is there a God at all? Is there a supersensible reality? Is religion capable of a new lease of life, and of giving a new lease of life to us who now are spiritually dead?

10 Of many ethical types of behavior no examples whatever as yet exist, for instance, of the ethically-minded employer or merchant, ethically-minded in thought and in practice. The standard of ethical behavior which we apply is at present higher and more exacting. The standard itself indeed is in process of being defined, and there are no illustrations of it, or none but very imperfect ones, on which to dwell with satisfaction. But the same is true of other vocations. We are very thankful for any examples that can be found. They seem to prove that that which ought to be can be. But we may not lean on them too hard. They are never quite adequate, even in their limited sphere; and there is ever an Ought-to-be beyond that which has been even partially realized, beyond that which has even as yet been conceived. To make too much of example is to check moral progress. Along with a due appreciation of past moral achievements, there should be encouraged a spirit of brave adventure, a certain intrepidity of soul to venture forth on voyages of discovery into unknown ethical regions, taking the risks but bent upon the prize.

11 I am aware that a highly esteemed school of modern theologians maintain that the apocalyptic element is a secondary and even an embarrassing feature for Jesus. But I am unable to convince myself of the justice of this view.

12 See the similes used in the previous chapter on the growth of the tree as manifested in the putting forth of a new branch, and the ascent of an eminence which includes the part of the spiritual landscape previously seen, but also that part which from the previous station was excluded.

13 I say caused, but perhaps not deliberately intended, although there are instances of the latter. An act is diabolical when maliciously designed to inflict a wrong on another; as rape for the purpose of dishonoring a family. It is cruelly selfish but not fiendish when it springs from scorn of others as if they were only fractional human beings. The Brahmin’s attitude towards the lower castes, the attitude of the feudal lord toward the serf, of Shakespeare’s nobility toward the common citizens, and of some modern theorists toward the democratic multitude, are instances in point. In such cases the moral sense itself is astray, but there is perhaps no deliberate sinning against the light.

14 I have not touched upon the further question to what extent we can really compass the happiness, except at rare moments, even of a single human being. The altruistic philosophy is apt to confound the removal of manifest evils with positive benefaction. But the removal of one kind of evil lets in new kinds; and wherein then consists the gain so far as happiness is concerned?

15 To ward off the most serious misunderstanding, I must remind every reader of the chapter on Social Reform, as well as on the Hebrew religion and on the ethics of the Gospels, that I am narrating the phases of my own development. I am not attempting to do justice to all that is excellent in those great religions and in these great social movements; I am trying to show at what points, despite those excellences, I myself felt compelled to diverge from them, to push beyond them. In regard to Socialism I recognize the immense service it has performed in awakening the conscience of modern society to the sufferings of the working class. And in pointing out the dangers of opportunism, the fallacy of provisionalism, I am speaking of dangers from which I felt that I must escape, not casting a slur on the noble personalities that have appeared in the field of social reform during my own time and among my friends and acquaintances. Such personalities, because of their inbred fineness, may be immune against tendencies which yet undeniably exist, and which therefore require to be explicitly apprehended.

16 See the published accounts of the Ethical Culture School.

17 The word “edification” as commonly used has a sentimental flavor. It does not as a rule convey the idea of constructiveness at all. It frequently suggests a kind of warm, moist, semi-tropical atmosphere for the emotions of the hearer to simmer in. But in its genuine meaning of “building up” it is too valuable a word to lose.

18 A new conception of culture is needed, based neither on exclusive specialism, nor on the ambition to know everything after the manner of Goethe in his early days, and such a conception of culture must supply the foundation of an educational philosophy.

19 See II Samuel, VI, 6, 7.

20 Primitive communities valued coÖperation because it was socially useful. But there are different kinds of coÖperation. Which kind shall we of today adopt? The mere idea of coÖperation affords no clue. The self-sacrifice of the individual to the whole of which he is a part is socially useful. But on what occasions and to what degree is it useful? Altruism is socially useful. We are to serve others. But what in them shall we serve? Their physical needs, their intellectual needs, all their needs together? Is that humanly possible? Here again an ethical principle is required to define the quality and the limits of the service. The latent race-consciousness of which Darwin speaks affords no light on the ethical problems proper. The concept of social utility, if not valueless, is at best only of subsidiary value in any attempt to solve these problems. So far from reading once and for all the riddle of conscience, Darwin has not read aright the terms of the riddle.

21 He also assumes a society not only of rational intelligences determined by the same rational motives, but equal in ability to carry out their motives. (See my article in Mind [new series, Vol. XI, No. 42, p. 162], reprinted in the volume dedicated to William James, by the Philosophical Faculty of Columbia University.)

22 Surefootedness, or certainty in thinking and in acting seems to have been the chief desideratum at which Kant aimed. As against scepticism or mere empirical groping this element of the inner life is obviously of exceeding value. But it is far from being the only element to be taken into account.

23 See the more extended remarks on this subject in Book III.

24 In Kant’s view the rational element is projected on the irrational. In this way spatial juxtaposition is ideally transformed into a spatial continuum. In the same manner temporal sequence is ideally changed into a uniform temporal flux. Without the former, geometry could not have established its propositions; without the latter Galileo could not have measured the fall of the stone.

25 The ethical character of acts depends on the worth of the agent and the object. Is it right to kill or to enslave a fellowman? We do not hesitate to kill an animal, or to harness horses to vehicles, or to use them as beasts of burden. Why not kill men, or use them as beasts of burden in like manner?—Only because they possess a worth which gives them a different standing.

Is it on grounds of sympathy that I should observe the so-called moral rules? But if I am not sympathetic by nature, why should I be subject to censure in case I refrain from displaying a tenderness which I do not feel? Why should I sympathize with the pleasures and pains of fellow human beings any more than with the pleasures and pains of inferior sentient creatures, unless men have worth? And worth, as will appear in the subsequent chapters, signifies indispensableness in a perfect whole. No detached thing has worth. No part of an incomplete system has worth. Worth belongs to those to whom it is attributed in so far as they are conceived of as not to be spared, as representing a distinctive indispensable preciousness, a mode of being without which perfection would be less than perfect.

So that morality depends on the attribution of worth to men, and worth depends on the formation in the mind of an ideal plan of the whole—or instead of a complete plan let me say more precisely a rule of relations whereby the plan is itself progressively developed.

26 To rate anyone as an end per se means that in a world conceived as perfect his existence would be indispensable. The world we know may not be perfect, is not perfect, but we do conceive of an ideal world that is. And to ascribe to anyone the quality of worth, to denominate him an end per se, is to place him into that world, to regard him as potentially a member of it.

27 For a creature endowed with different senses, and having a mind unlike our own, the world would be a totally different world.

28 To deny such a priori knowledge of the object called God is not to deny that the production of this object is due to constructive principles of human thinking; while, in turn, to assert the functional derivation of the God-idea is not to validate that idea itself as permanent and inexpugnable. It may have owed its origin to a permanent disposition of the mind, and yet be fallible because of the historical conditions under which it arose and the defective data in which it was expressed. By way of illustration we might apply the same reflection to the Ptolemaic astronomy. The mathematical processes by which this astronomy was constructed may be traced to permanent singularities of human thinking, yet the astronomical theory of Ptolemy is not on that account a priori true.

29 It must, however, be understood that the formula in which a finality is expressed is not itself a final formula. The business of definition is precarious, liable to error and dogmatic abuse, and the formulas of finality are to be constantly subjected to revision. Possible and even probable abuse, however, does not warrant the negative attitude at present taken; it does not justify the revulsion of feeling against A Priorism which is just now general. Exasperation with absolutism does not of itself justify recourse to the opposite extreme of pragmatism.

30 Say not part or element, but member, to distinguish the components of the ethical manifold from such concepts as are used in mathematics and physical science.

31 The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants. We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in the case of sex, of coÖperation, in the vocation, etc. But value ceases when the want or need is gratified. The value which one human being has for another is transient. There are, in the strict sense, no permanent values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and developed members of a community is small; from the standpoint of value most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. The custom of speaking of ethics as a theory of values is regrettable. It evidences the despair into which many writers on ethics have fallen as to the possibility of discovering an objective basis for rightness.

32 But the verification itself is the clearer and more explicit vision of the ethical relation, as it ought to be.

33 The term “ethical unit” used above should be found useful. The chemists have found the concept of the atom useful, though no one has ever seen an atom. And all the sciences have recourse to similar inventions,—such as the electron, or the ion, or energy regarded as a substance, and in mathematics the sublimated, space-transcending concepts. Looking through the eyes of science, we are taught to see, underlying the grossest forms of matter, imaginary entities which are well-nigh metaphysical in nature. Science starts from the realm of the sensible, and constructs its super-rarefied devices on mechanical models. Then it leaves the field of the intuitively perceptible, and rises by the path of analogy into realms where the notions with which it operates are no longer imaginable. I do not wish, in speaking of an ethical, invisible, and unimaginable entity, to derive the postulation of this conception from science. The ethical concept transcends wholly the field of sensible experience. It is not discovered by way of analogy. It is frankly and overtly supersensible. It is not exemplified in the effects it produces in the world of volition as the most nearly metaphysical concepts of science are exemplified in the field of phenomena by the recurrences or uniformities which they serve to account for. The ethical concepts are not verified by their results at all, not by recurrences of phenomena, but by the persistence of the effort to attain that which is finitely never attained, and by the more explicit perception of the ideal itself which follows the persistent effort; for as has been shown above, when face to face with fundamental truth, seeing is believing. But I allude to these matters in order to show that the movement in ethical thinking represented by the system which I propose is not contrary to the present-day movement in science, but in line with it, though beyond it. It does not ask leave of science; it does not base its certainty on scientific precedent; but neither does it expect a veto from the lips of science. The worthwhileness of scientific endeavor itself depends at bottom on the sanction which the ideal of the complete carrying out of the reality-producing functions lends to their incomplete execution in the world of the space and time manifold.

34 I do not however agree with those who regard the shreds of theology remaining in his system as a concession, not wholly ingenuous, to orthodoxy. He was brought up in the pietistic faith, and had probably not entirely outgrown the emotional impressions of those early teachings. The noumena, however, play a part in the system itself distinct from the theology, and are not to be taken as supersensible realities. They are limiting concepts intended to serve as incentives or lures, winning the mind to continue without cessation its advance along certain paths within the field of experience; but they are not supposed to give any clue as to what is beyond experience. That which is beyond the field of experience is simply unknowable. Thus the noumenon called “thing per se” is notice given to the mind not to be deterred in its proper business of unifying the space and time manifold by the difficulties which arise when the time and space manifold is taken as an ultimate account of reality. The thing per se is a welcome to science and not a bar set up in its path.

The noumenon of freedom is an incentive to man urging him to act as if he were capable of practicing the law of universality and necessity. In fact the phrase “as if” plays a leading rÔle in the Kantian philosophy. The noumenon of God, as will presently be shown, is afflicted with this conditional “as if” character to even a higher degree. We are to assume God in order to look upon the vast field of possible experience as if it were unified, as if a being who himself stands for unity had been its creator. This assumption is supposed to be necessary in order to encourage the scientist in his search for the thread of unity, lest he flag by the way. As a matter of fact scientists have contented themselves with the simple assumption of the uniformity of nature as necessary to the prosecution of their investigations, and have as a rule troubled themselves little to hypostasize the notion of unity. Nor has recent progress in science been associated with and influenced by the belief in an individual Deity. The noumenon of God is unnecessary for science while in Kant’s ethical application of it it is positively harmful. He introduces the God notion as an artificial device for linking together happiness and virtue, a device quite inconsistent with the noble austerity of his ethical system, whatever its other defects may be.

The noumena, then, are apparitions that appear at the end of certain paths in the field of experience, far off where the sky and the ground seem to meet. These paths run off in different directions. At the end of each is one of these limiting apparitions, and the society of noumena is disconnected internally: there is no relation of unity between the unifiers.

35 The difference between “supersensible” and “supernatural” is capital. I do not encourage relapse into supernaturalism. The supernatural is the opposite of the supersensible. It is an attempt to represent in natural or sensible guise what is supposed to be beyond the senses; and the naturalistic representation of the supersensible is then taken not metaphorically but literally.

36 He allows indeed the Ens Realissimum to remain, and calls it the ideal of the reason, the ideal of unity hypostasized, centralized in an individual, and somehow harboring within itself all real properties whatsoever. But it is quite impossible to conceive how all real properties can belong to a single individual. For the properties as we know them are incompatible with each other. Surely an individual cannot be both great and small, beautiful and ugly, of all colors and sounds, etc., etc. Or again if all properties were somehow assembled in one individual, since that individual is conceived of as an hypostasized unity, it would be impossible to speak of a relation between them, and yet upon the relation of the differentiÆ depends the ethical utility of the idea of a supreme reality.

37 Compare, for instance, the anti-intellectualistic philosophy of Bergson, with its emphasis on planless spurts of energy, the irrationalist philosophy of Schopenhauer, etc.

38 The above exposition is not a transcendental derivation of ethics. The ideal of the infinite society is a fulguration out of ethical experience, to be ever renewed in it. We build not only our world, but our universe. The ethical principle is not a working hypothesis, like those provisionally used in science. It is the outgrowth of the functional finalities. It is a postulate. The specific moral laws, or expressions of the ethical principle indeed, are changeable, being the product of the principle with the varying empirical conditions of human society. The fundamental principle is unchangeable.

The consciousness of universal interrelation is not to be described as mystical consciousness. The identity of the self remains intact; it is never lost in the One or the All. The ethical consciousness includes indeed the consciousness of other selves related to our own, in a kind of superindividual consciousness. But this is reached along the sunlit path of action (So act, etc.), and not along the dreamy flux of emotionalism or in the silent depths of quietism.

39 The frequent recurrence gives us a sense of safety in expecting the consequent on the appearance of the antecedent. But the sense of safety should not be confounded with the sense of the certainty. We expect that day will follow night, because it has followed innumerable times. But no amount of repetition can warrant the assertion that it will and must do so. The Pragmatist view explains the sense of safety in expectation, but does not appear to account for the certainty in prediction, as for instance in the astronomer’s prediction of an eclipse.

40 A hybrid conception, since in nature there are only happenings, but no ends.

41 His efforts in some measure to remedy this defect in the Doctrine of Virtue are artificial and unconvincing.

42 See Book III for a fuller development of this point.

43 Difference in the ethical meaning is not to be confounded with mere idiosyncrasy, or originality, not to say eccentricity. It is the kind of difference which elicits correlated difference in all spiritual associates.

44 Incidentally it may be remarked that in introducing the category of interrelation we remove the objection against freedom which remains unmitigable so long as freedom is supposed to be a kind of causality, competing with natural causality. Causality is the unity of a temporal manifold of sequent phenomena. The concept of interrelation is the concept of the unity of co-existent entities.

45 See some fine remarks on the unattainableness in Tyrrel’s Christianity at the Cross-roads.

46 Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts.

47 I have spoken of the sick bed as surrounded by loving friends and near of kin. There are sick beds where the situation is quite different,—in the poor wards of hospitals for instance. Nevertheless, the loneliest person is never without certain human relations. It may be the pauper in the next bed, the nurse, or the physician, to whom his behavior will be of lasting meaning.

I would add a word as to the attitude of a person who is threatened with insanity, and who is aware that the disease is approaching. His last conscious act should be to honor the community to which he belongs by voluntarily putting himself out of the way of harming them. Not that the physical harm is itself the principal thing, but that the wish not to harm physically is the sign of his sense of the ethical relation in which he stands to his fellows. Also a person threatened in this way ought to be willing to put himself in the keeping of others, even of strangers, as being no longer himself competent to judge rightly of what shall be done to him. It is true that in accepting the judgment of strangers as a substitute for his own he is taking the risk of being treated with insufficient consideration, and possibly even mistreated. Yet the jeopardy in which he thus puts his future, the sacrificial act he performs, is evidence of mental nobility at the very moment when mental night is about to set in for him.

48 In the New Testament, despite the preference expressed for celibacy, the relation of the bridegroom to the bride is used metaphorically to represent that of Christ with the church, and among the mystics the same figure represents the union of Christ with the believing soul.

49 I call attention to the difference between the view here expressed and that of Emerson in the last paragraphs of his Essay on Love, where he says: “Our affections are tents of a night. Our warm loves are clouds that pass over the firmament of mind with its overarching vault, its galaxies of immutable lights. In the personal relations we are put in training for impersonal submergence and absorption in God.” In my own view the infinite community of spiritual beings that takes the place of God consists altogether of personalities. Godhead, if you choose to apply that name to this infinite society, is not a person but a community of personalities. Personality is not drowned in the impersonal. On the contrary, the individual becomes a personality through his relation to his associates in the eternal life.

50 I have real intercourse with Aristotle and Kant, as the outgoings of their minds are still effectual in me—more vital intercourse than with many of those who surround me.

51 The category of interdependence implies that the lines of energy between A and B cross, so that A is subject to B’s influence, B subject to A’s influence, simultaneously. The simultaneity of the relation distinguishes the category of interdependence from that of causality.

52 This implies that the evil deed shall not be lost sight of, simply forgotten. Compare the inadequate account of repentance as given by Goethe in Faust and elsewhere.

53 Vide note at the end of the Chapter.

54 A right is a claim of one person upon another or others, and the justification consists in its relation to personality. Rights exist between persons for the sake of the maintenance and development of personality.

55 Animals, for the purpose now in hand, may be regarded as things, being devoid of personality, though certain modifications in the treatment of animals are prescribed by the fact that they are sentient creatures. But there is no moral interdiction of the involuntary servitude of animals.

56 See Chapter VII on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in The World Crisis, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1915.

57 A remark may here be in place regarding the erudition expended in determining which of the writings attributed to some great philosopher like Plato are spurious, and which genuine. Is the time and labor spent on such researches worth while? The object in this case is not so much to clear or vindicate the reputation of the philosopher, or to give him his due, as to rescue for posterity, free from corruptions, a living and quickening thing to which he has given birth, and which the world cannot afford to lose. For the work of a great philosopher like Plato is alive, and is valuable because it is still quickening. And it is quickening, not because of any positive formulation of truth (like a scientific law), but because of the Élan of the human spirit with which it is vibrant in attacking the eternal problems of life and destiny. The same applies to the industry of modern critics in collecting material wherewith to facilitate the deeper understanding of some great poet like Dante or Goethe.

58 I mean that it is usually considered sufficient, for purposes of reformation, to bring the wrongdoer up to the average standard of law-abiding citizenship, to restore him to the bosom of society as a safe and industrious member. Whereas a person who has had the searching experience of deep guilt is a candidate for a higher station in the moral scale. Humanity having fallen in him, he should be helped to rise to a higher than the average altitude. This at least should be the aim. Consider the fact that Jesus selected some of his most spiritual companions from among publicans and harlots.

59 Compare the words addressed by Sir Thomas More to his judges when sentence of death had been pronounced upon him—“For though you have been my judges to condemnation, may we meet merrily hereafter in everlasting salvation.”

60 Everyone admires a disinterested prison reformer, one who is able to see and to call out the good in a so-called bad man; but it is one thing to be disinterested and generous towards men who have acted badly towards others, and quite another thing to take the ethical attitude towards those who have acted wickedly towards oneself. Hence the touchstone of the character of the prison-reformer is to be found in the way in which he behaves and feels towards his personal enemies, for instance, towards those who malignantly attack him and interfere with the business of prison reform on which he has set his heart.

61 Perhaps I may add a word as to the forgiveness of those who, by an extension of meaning, may be called our intellectual enemies. By intellectual enemies I understand those whose point of view is radically opposed to our own, whose principles and premises, if accepted, would render the entire theory of life on which we act, and on which we found our convictions, untenable. We are apt to be exasperated in listening to them, or in reading the works in which they express their opinions. We are apt to feel that there is no room in the world in which we live for such ideas as theirs, that we and they cannot exist side by side. The bitter feuds of rival religious factions, the notorious odium theologicum, and in more recent times the thinly veiled animus shown in the controversies of philosophical schools are all alike traceable to this source. Racial antagonisms, too, are partly to be accounted for on the same ground. There are certain primary attitudes of mind, modes of feeling and directions of impulse, the correctness of which we cannot demonstrate just because they are primary, and which we all the more vehemently assert when we find them disputed. Love your intellectual enemies, may usefully be added to the stock of moral commandments; keep an open and hospitable mind to opinions and ways of acting, thinking and feeling which naturally repel you. And it will help us to discipline ourselves in this difficult behavior if we reflect that the views most contrary to our own are nevertheless sure to contain some element of truth which we cannot afford to disregard, and which will serve the purpose of correcting and supplementing such truth as we may ourselves possess.

62 Or more exactly act so as to elicit the sense of unique distinctive selfhood, as interconnected with all other distinctive spiritual beings in the infinite universe.

63 The conception underlying Robert L. Stevenson’s sketch of Jekyl and Hyde is to be taken seriously, and applied without exception mutatis mutandis to every human being whatsoever (but see footnote p. 76). It is not original with Stevenson. The French, who are perhaps the keenest psychologists, long ago invented the apercu that everyone has the defects of his qualities.

64 The use of the term duality is not intended to exclude the possibility of multiplicity, but only to call attention to one striking bifurcation of human character.

65 Stevenson falls into this error. He confounds Jekyl with the virtuous and Hyde with the vicious side of character. In reality the one should stand for the empirical plus traits, the other for the empirical minus traits.

66 Contract-keeping is peculiarly the moral rule applicable to mercantile transactions. To apply it without modification to the dealings of employers and wage-earners is to intrude the mercantile standard into the industrial sphere. This is what we are now witnessing. The industrial standard is only in process of development and clarification, and the accepted mercantile standard is really in conflict with it. Among merchants it is of the very essence of their transactions that a contract shall not be invalidated, despite the injurious consequences to one or the other party which it may turn out later on to involve. The security of commercial transactions would be gone if revision of the contract should be permitted whenever consequent loss appears. Again, and this is particularly important, merchants are assumed to be on a footing of equality in dealing with one another, equally free in accepting or rejecting a proposed contract, equally competent to take care of their respective interests. The relation of employers to wage-earners however is not that of economic equals, but of the economically stronger with the economically weaker. And this difference is of cardinal importance in determining the rule of justice as it should obtain in the industrial sphere. I do not of course intend to imply that an agreement between employer and wage-earners once made should not as a rule be kept as scrupulously as that between merchant and merchant. What I affirm is that in view of the greatness of the injury possibly inflicted upon the weaker, the economically stronger party is bound at least to share the responsibility with the weaker for the essential fairness of the terms of the agreement before it is finally completed. Nay, I would go a step farther, and say that despite the indispensable condemnation of contract-breaking, provision should be made for possible revision in cases where it can be shown that exceptional hardships have appeared, unforeseen and unforeseeable at the time when the agreement was made.

67 In a previous chapter I remarked that the cheap estimate of others and of oneself is due to the habit of regarding human beings from the point of view of the use they can be put to, ignoring the wonderful and mysterious energies and potencies which are exhibited day by day in every human being. If the force stored in an infinitesimal particle of radium is calculated to excite admiration, how much more the forces exhibited in man, looking at him merely as the stage on which the spectacle of these forces is displayed. Consider the occurrence of such a thing as thought, the sheer miracle of mentality, the working of the constructive imagination in the artist, etc. If we sufficiently dwell on these inward facts about men, instead of merely emphasizing their external utility to one another, we shall thereby be put in tune, as it were, for the higher spiritual view of man. The difference I have said is like that between understanding the theory of electricity and merely turning on electric power in the workshop or the home. And yet the scientific contemplation of the miracles of human nature as seen from within, while it serves as a propÆdeutic, cannot actually bring us up to the ethical point of view. For this sort of contemplation reveals only the working of impersonal forces or powers, thought, feeling, impulse in their endless actions and reactions, similar, in so far as they are impersonal, to the forces observed in nature. The ethical point of view alone discloses a centrality, an underivative, irreducible core, a substantive being, personality.

68 An expression occurring once only.

69 Thus the interdependence of nations in respect to their material interests is often erroneously expatiated on as if it constituted an actually ethical bond between them.

70 While at the same time the ethical personality, unlike the “windowless monads” of Leibnitz is effectuated only in the cross-relations which subsist between each one and his spiritual associates.

71 I may here point out the bearings of this general point of view on the much-mooted and confused question of the value of the study of history. Ranke holds that the aim of the historian should be to reproduce factually the occurrences of the past. Robinson insists on the uses of history. But uses to what end? The history of the past is fragmentary and full of gaps. The data with respect to some of the most important periods are irrecoverable. The attitude of the human race towards its own history, I take it, should be like that of an individual towards his past. I cannot really resuscitate my past. Memory is treacherous. Much has been forgotten. The events of my youth are discolored when seen in the perspective of later years. I should try to know myself as far as I can, but with a view of pressing on and realizing with such light upon myself as I have, the ethical aim. The same applies to mankind. And the important point is in the review to disengage the ideas that controlled the principal social institutions in the past, and to appraise these ideas from the standpoint of our present ethical insight. Thus, in treating the history of the family, we should single out the ideas that controlled the family relation, the idea of the patria potestas, the feudal idea, or the connection of the family with landed property. In writing the history of the organs of education, we should bring into view priestly education as among the Brahmins, musical or Æsthetic education as among the Greeks, the idea of princely education, the idea of preparation for the government of an empire, which accounts for the system of the English universities, the controlling idea of the German universities. And then at the end of our survey we shall be in a better position to discern what is to be the ideal of school and university education in an ethical democracy. The same applies to the controlling ideas of the state, and of the remaining social institutions.

72 Spurious or bastard organization was based on the empirical preËminence of some function like that of the priest or the warrior.

73 See Marriage and Divorce, D. Appleton & Co.

74 Just as the family is the organ of physical reproduction, but in that very capacity is ethically required to bring to birth the spiritual nature of its members.

75 All that I have said in the beginning as to the relation of the finite and the infinite belongs under this head.

76 There is one point too obvious to be overlooked, but perhaps it had better be expressly mentioned. The scientist helps us to build our world, the physical nest in which we live, first by mastering nature’s procedures, then by making possible inventions, which increase the security of our footing in the physical world; dispense us from the brute task of pitting our merely physical strength against the forces of nature; render communication between distant peoples feasible, and thereby lay the first foundation for an international society.

77 Vide Introduction to the First Book.

78 The vocational group must be independent because the expert familiar with the conditions under which a service is performed is specially competent to decide on the improvements required to render the conditions more favorable to the development of human nature, the service more adequate. The representatives of the collective community, that is of the inexpert, outside mass (inexpert in respect to this particular service) can never perform the same office.

With regard to the present state of industry the gigantic obstacle in the way of improvement is obviously the subjection of the man to the machine. The great hardship which the millions of factory operatives suffer is not only the insufficient wage, it is the depersonalizing effect produced by the substitution of the machine for the hand and the blind subjection of adult workers to the arbitrary will of superiors. (Compare what I have said on this subject in the chapter on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in The World Crisis.)

79 Think of Mommsen, the author of a thousand treatises, whose knowledge of the facts of Roman history was unsurpassed and probably unequalled. Yet is his judgment on CÆsar or CÆsarism helpful as an ethical appraisement?

80 Aristotle regards the Œdipus Rex as the most perfect example of tragedy; let it serve the purpose of illustrating the idea here proposed. Read the play and get the total impression of it. Analyze it into its parts. Synthesize after the analysis. You will not fail to realize how every character, every speech and act, contributes to the total effect, and how in turn every single factor in the play receives a new significance from its relation to the rest, while still retaining its obvious meaning (the meaning it would have when taken out of the context of the play). Take the first speech of Œdipus as an example. He is the king solicitous for the welfare of his subjects, to whom they look up with admiration and gratitude. He is the father of his people. Read this speech again after you have taken in the entire play, and note how its color is changed. How the firmness, the fatherly, protective attitude is now seen to be the outward mask of a fugitive soul, unsure of itself, haunted by hideous fears.

81 The use made of pageantry, the revival of English and other folk-songs, the morris-dances and the like, the attempt to ennoble the leisure of the industrial workers by leading them back to forms of art which sprang up centuries ago in foreign countries, is evidence of the keen desire for art rather than a step in a new direction.

82 Art, like science, is to be subordinate. The relation between persons and persons is mankind’s supreme concern. The views above expressed differ radically from those of Schiller. See his Æsthetic Education of Man.

83 Compare with the spiritual conception of culture here outlined Matthew Arnold’s “knowing the best which has been thought and said”; and a recent definition of culture by an eminent American as “the knowing one thing well and a little of everything else,” without correlation of the little one knows of everything else with the one thing one is supposed to know extremely well.

84 See the chapter on “Ethical Development Extending Through Life” in The World Crisis.

85 Vide Appendix II, on Force and Freedom.

86 I use the word Organize in its spiritual sense. The empirical, animal organism is commonly taken as the type upon which the notion of organism is modeled. The animal organism, however, fails to express the implicit idea, for the following reasons: The number of members is limited; the combination of organs is, so far as we can know, accidental, and the relation is hierarchical,—there are inferior and superior organs. The spiritual conception differs in each of these points. The number of members is infinite; the relation is necessary; and they are equal, that is, of equal worth. To distinguish the spiritual pattern from the animal type the term metorganic may be used for the former, in analogy to such terms as metempirical, metaphysical, etc., and the system of ethics expounded in this volume may be called the metorganic system of ethics.

87 Representation by geographical districts is the logical outcome of the individualistic conception of democracy. Where this prevails, the state is supposed to take account only of the common interests, those in respect to which all individuals are alike, such as security of life and property, those interests being ignored in respect to which the groups that constitute society, the farmers, the merchants, the industrial laborers, etc., differ. Hence any convenient number of citizens, pursuing their life purposes side by side within a certain geographical area, may serve as a constituency. The absence of regard for the real diversity, and often the clash of interests, between persons belonging to such constituencies, is due to the atomistic, individualistic notion of democracy just mentioned. But sheer individualism is everywhere on the wane, and is bound to become less and less dominant in the degree that the industrial evolution of society proceeds, and the various groups stand out distinctly as different against one another in their functions and in the conditions subservient to those functions. Society is in fact not an aggregate of human atoms. It is already an imperfect organism, destined to become more and more adequately organized. And the system of representation has got to be remodeled and adjusted to this fact and this ideal.

88 By “interests” I understand fulfilment of the social function with which the group is charged.

89 And, as a matter of fact, because this is so, there is no state, no democracy, in which public opinion or public sentiment actually does rule, save by fits and starts. Government is usually in the hands of more or less selfish coteries, who operate behind the scenes, who do know what they want and who, like the Piper of Hamelin, are past masters of the art of leading the political children whither they will.

90 I am not of course discussing the merits or demerits of the protective tariff as such, but am using it as illustration. As such it will serve the purpose.

The practice of “log-rolling” may at first sight seem to resemble the proposed plan. But, in reality, the two are diametrical opposites. By “log-rolling” is meant the kind of concessions made by the shipping interests to the manufacturers by the manufacturers to the farmers, or to the workingmen when the latter happen to be strong enough to enforce their demands. Each group persists in pursuing its selfish aims; only, in order to achieve them it makes concessions to the selfishness of the others. Each follows the path into the Hades of egotism, and throws the necessary sops to Cerberus on the way. The plan outlined in the text, on the other hand, has for its object the interlocking of the various social interests, the fitting them reciprocally into one another; or better, the object is to cure each group as far as possible of its selfishness by so modifying its claims, that the granting of them shall become beneficial to the rest.

91 See FouillÉe’s Esquisse psychologique des Peuples europÉens, also the Chapter on German, English and American Ideals in The World Crisis.

92 Each term in the series of social institutions is ethically defined by referring to the succeeding terms. The family prepares for the vocation, the vocation for the state or nation, the nation for the international society, and all the successive terms receive their ultimate definition from the infinite spiritual universe which includes them, and broods over them and dwells in each, so that the expanding ethical experience gained at the successive stations is spiritually the ratio cognoscendi, not the ratio essendi.

93 It is true that the state is concerned with those conditions of the spiritual reactions that are capable of being enforced, but in instituting such conditions the spiritual content is inevitably kept in view. And in the very process of fitting the body to the spirit, the form to the content, the content itself will be discerned more clearly and explicitly.

94 See the chapter in The World Crisis.

95 To myself as an individual I say: look to your radiations, consider the effects you produce on others; if the effects are harmful trace them to faults in your character, and let your desire and obligation to influence others beneficently be the spur to lead you to transform your own character. The same each people should say to itself. For instance the obvious faults of our democracy have retarded the progress of democracy in Europe. Our failure in municipal government is constantly quoted abroad as an argument against democracy. This should be a real incentive to rouse us out of our self-complacency.

96 Cf. Lord Cromer’s remarks on this subject in his book on Egypt.

97 See, however, the importation of Indian and Chinese coolies, and the surreptitious resurrection of the slave trade mentioned by Sir Charles Dilke in his Problems of Greater Britain.

98 As to practical steps that might be taken to give effect to this conception of international law, see my published address “The Great RÔle of the United States After the War,” in which is discussed the creation of an international law-making body or a Parliament of Parliaments. In connection with the latter, I should attach particular importance to the institution of commissions which may serve as a link between the international legislature and the less civilized peoples—the commissions to study the needs and gifts of those peoples with a view to securing their development along their own lines. In the case of civilized peoples that have until recently been stationary, like the Chinese, the commission representing the Western nations would sit in consultation with the most enlightened leaders of the Chinese people themselves, the common object being to discover the points of attachment in Chinese civilization which may wisely be made the starting point of a more modern and progressive evolution. For instance the filial piety of the Chinese, the rectitude of their merchants, the absence of an aristocracy, and their civil service resting on education (despite its defects). In this manner it may become possible to avoid the abrupt, superficial, and infinitely destructive substitution of modern ideas for the system at present existing, and gradual development will take the place of intrusive and uncongenial change.

99 I add that this conception will react on the internal life of democracy. Democracy is at present regarded as a relation between equals. In fact, we have in America the negro population, the illiterate and backward immigrants. A truer conception of democracy depends on our realizing that within each people as well as between people and people there is the distinction of the more advanced and the less advanced groups. Democracy rightly conceived will be found to consist in the effort spent by the more advanced in each vocational group to uplift the less advanced, the more advanced themselves coming into possession of their spiritual worth in the degree that they realize this their task of leadership and its great responsibilities.

100 Among other ethical relations based on free election, friendship is the most important. In a separate Book of Friendship which I hope to publish, I intend to review the ideals of friendship as they have arisen from time to time in the history of civilized mankind—the ideal of Pythagorean friendship, the ideals presented by Aristotle, Kant, Emerson. And I shall endeavor to show in each case the connection between the friendship ideal and the general philosophy of life. I shall then set forth that ideal of friendship which is the corollary of the spiritual conceptions outlined in this volume: the friend being in my view one who assists spiritual development as a spectator. He is the faithful mirror of his friend’s progress toward personality, the benevolent yet incorruptible recorder and appraiser. By this token friendship is distinguished from the interlocking relations such as that between partners in marriage, vocational co-workers, etc.

101 In certain Ethical Societies abroad, the fear of encouraging the rise of a new clericalism led to the plan of drawing for ethical teachers on professors of universities, and others engaged in various lines of practical activity. These persons could of necessity give only the leavings of their time and thought to the complex questions which they undertook to discuss; and the experiment, as might have been foreseen, proved disastrous.

102 It has been said that the science of today lives only in superseding the science of yesterday. Whether this be true of science or not it is not true of religion. The religions of the past are not merely superseded. There is much in them that is to be reinterpreted, and thus perpetuated.

103 A paper read before the Fourth Conference on Legal and Social Philosophy at Columbia University, November, 1915. (Reprinted from the International Journal of Ethics, April, 1916, pp. 420-423.)