To eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil may result in ultimate gain. A more conscious and individualistic attitude may result in definite conceptions of duty and rights, of values and ideals. At the same time, as humanity's eyes have been opened and its wisdom increased, many forms of nakedness unknown in ruder conditions have been disclosed. With every increase of opportunity and efficiency for good there is a corresponding opportunity for evil. An immensely more complex environment gives scope for correspondingly more capable and subtle personalities. Some will react to the situation in such a way as to rise to a higher moral level, both in personal integrity and in public usefulness. Others will find in facilities for gratifying some appetite or passion a temptation too strong for their control and will become vicious, or will seize the chances to exploit others and become unjust in their acquirement and use of power and wealth. There will be a Nero as well as an Aurelius, a CÆsar Borgia as well as a Savonarola, a Jeffreys as well as a Sidney, a Bentham, or a Howard. For an Eliot or a Livingston or an Armstrong, there are the exploiters of lower races; and for an Elizabeth Fry, the women who trade in the wretchedness of their kind. By the side of those who use great abilities and resources unselfishly are those who view indifferently the sacrifice of human health or life, and pay no heed to human misery. Such contrasts show that the "evolution of morality" is also an evolution of weakness, wretchedness, evil, and crime. They suggest some general comparisons between custom and reflective morality. They require from every age a renewed analysis of conduct and the social system. As a preliminary to such an analysis, we review in this chapter some of the general relations between the morality of custom and the morality of reflection.

§ 1. ELEMENTS OF AGREEMENT AND CONTINUITY

The moral life shows its continuity in two ways. First, the earlier type of group and customary morality persists in part; in the second place, when the moral is differentiated from the other spheres of life in which it was embedded, it does not have to find entirely new conceptions. It borrows its terms from the group life or from the various spheres, religious, political, Æsthetic, economic, which separate out from the older group unity.

The following quotation from Grote will serve as a vivid restatement of the rÉgime of custom:

The important facts brought out are (1) the existence in a social group of certain habits not only of acting, but of feeling and believing about actions, of valuing or approving and disapproving. (2) The persistent forcing of these mental habitudes upon the attention of each new member of the group. The newcomer, whether by birth or adoption, is introduced into a social medium whose conditions and regulations he can no more escape than he can those of his physical environment. (3) Thus the mental and practical habits of the newly introduced individual are shaped. The current ways of esteeming and behaving in the community become a "standing habit" of his own mind; they finally reign as "habitual, self-suggested tendencies." Thus he becomes a full member of the social group, interested in the social fabric to which he belongs, and ready to do his part in maintaining it.

1. Persistence of Group Morality.—Comparing this state of affairs with what obtains to-day in civilized communities, we find certain obvious points of agreement. The social groups with which an individual comes in touch are now more numerous and more loosely formed. But everywhere there are customs not only of acting, but of thinking and feeling about acting. Each profession, each institution, has a code of which the individual has to take account. The nature of this code, unexpressed as well as formulated, is brought to the attention of the individual in countless ways; by the approval and disapproval of its public opinion; by his own failures and successes; by his own tendency to imitate what he sees about him, as well as by deliberate, intentional instruction.

In other words, group morality does not vanish in order that conscious and personal morality may take its place. Group and customary morality is still the morality of many of us most of the time, and of all of us for a good deal of the time. We do not any of us think out all of our standards, weigh independently our values, make all our choices in a rational manner, or form our characters by following a clearly conceived purpose. As children we all start in a family group. We continue in a school group and perhaps a church group. We enter an occupation group, and later, it may be, family, political, social, and neighborhood groups. In every one of these if we are members, we must to a certain degree accept standards that are given. We have to play according to the rules of the game. As children we do this unconsciously. We imitate, or follow suggestions; we are made to conform by all the agencies of group morality—group opinion, ritual, pleasure and pain, and even by taboos;[97] above all, we act as the others act, and coÖperate more or less to a common end. We form habits which persist, many of them as long as we live. We accept many of the traditions without challenge. Even when we pass from the early family group to the new situations and surroundings which make us repeat more or less of the experience of the race, a large share of our conduct and of our judgments of others is determined by the influences of group and custom. And it is fortunate for progress that this is true. If every one had to start anew to frame all his ideals and make his laws, we should be in as melancholy a plight morally as we should be intellectually if we had to build each science anew. The fundamental safeguards which the group provides against individual impulse and passion, the condition of close association, interdependence and mutual sympathy which the group affords, the habituation to certain lines of conduct valued by the group—all this is a root on which the stem and flower of personal morality may grow. Individualism and intellectual activity, however necessary to man's progress, would give no morality did they not start out of this deeper level of common feeling and common destiny. The rational and personal agencies of the "third level" come not to destroy, but to fulfill the meaning of the forces and agencies of the first and second levels described in Chapters III and IV.

2. The Moral Conceptions.—The conceptions for the moral are nearly all taken from the group relations or from the jural and religious aspects, as these have been gradually brought to clearer consciousness. As already noted, the Greek term "ethical," the Latin "moral," the German "sittlich," suggest this—ethos meant the "sum of the characteristic usages, ideas, standards, and codes by which a group was differentiated and individualized in character from other groups."[98]

Some specific moral terms come directly from group relations. The "kind" man acts as one of the kin. When the ruling or privileged group is contrasted with the man of no family or of inferior birth, we get a large number of terms implying "superiority" or "inferiority" in birth, and so of general value. This may or may not be due to some inherent superiority of the upper class, but it means at least that the upper class has been most effectual in shaping language and standards of approval. So "noble" and "gentle" referred to birth before they had moral value; "duty" in modern usage seems to have been principally what was due to a superior. Many words for moral disapproval are very significant of class feeling. The "caitiff" was a captive, and the Italians have their general term for morally bad, "cattivo," from the same idea. The "villain" was a feudal tenant, the "blackguard" looked after the kettles, the "rascal" was one of the common herd, the "knave" was the servant; the "base" and "mean" were opposed to the gentle and noble. Another set of conceptions reflects the old group approvals or combines these with conceptions of birth. We have noted the twofold root of kalokagathia in Greek. "Honor" and "honesty" were what the group admired, and conversely "aischros" and "turpe" in Greek and Latin, like the English "disgraceful" or "shameful," were what the group condemned. "Virtue" was the manly excellence which called out the praise of a warlike time, while one of the Greek terms for morally bad originally meant cowardly, and our "scoundrel" has possibly the same origin. The "bad" was probably the weak or the womanish. The economic appears in "merit," what I have earned, and likewise in "duty" and "ought," what is due or owed—though duty seems to have made itself felt especially, as noted above, toward a superior. Forethought and skill in practical affairs provided the conception of "wisdom," which was highest of the virtues for the Greeks, and as "prudence" stood high in mediÆval systems. The conception of valuing and thus of forming some permanent standard of a better and a worse, is also aided, if not created, by economic exchange. It appears in almost identical terms in Plato and the New Testament in the challenge, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?"[99] From the processes of fine or useful arts came probably the conceptions of measure, order, and harmony. A whole mode of considering the moral life is jural. "Moral law," "authority," "obligation," "responsibility," "justice," "righteousness," bring with them the associations of group control and of the more definitely organized government and law. Finally the last named terms bear also a religious imprint, and numerous conceptions of the moral come from that sphere or get their specific flavor from religious usage. The conceptions of the "soul" have contributed to the ideal of a good which is permanent, and which is made rather by personal companionship, than by sensuous gratification. "Purity" began as a magical and religious idea; it came to symbolize not only freedom from contamination but singleness of purpose. "Chastity" lends a religious sacredness to a virtue which had its roots largely in the conception of property. "Wicked" is from witch.

We have indeed certain conceptions drawn from individual experiences of instinct, or reflection. From the sense recoil from what was disgusting such conceptions as "foul," and from kindred imagery of what suits eye or muscular sense come "straightforward," "upright," "steady." From the thinking process itself we have "conscience." This word in Greek and Latin was a general term for consciousness and suggests one of the distinctive, perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the moral. For it implies a "conscious" thoughtful attitude, which operates not only in forming purposes, but in measuring and valuing action by the standards it approves. But it is evident that by far the larger part of our ethical terms are derived from social relations in the broad sense.

§ 2. ELEMENTS OF CONTRAST

Differentiation of the Moral.—The most obvious difference between the present and the early attitude is that we now make a clear distinction between the moral aspect of behavior and other aspects such as the conventional, the political, the legal; while in customary morality all activities esteemed by society were put upon the same level and enforced with the same vigor. Matters which we should regard as purely matters of fashion or etiquette, or as modes of amusement, such as styles of wearing the hair, were imperative. To mutilate the body in a certain way was as exigent as to observe certain marriage customs; to refrain from speaking to the mother-in-law as binding as to obey the chieftain; not to step over the shadow of the chief was even more important than not to murder the member of another tribe. In general we make a clear distinction between "manners" and morals, while in customary morality manners are morals, as the very words "ethical," "moral" still testify.

When Grote speaks of "Ethical, Religious, Æsthetical, and Social" beliefs, the term "ethical" belongs with the other terms only from a modern standpoint. The characteristic thing about the condition of which he is speaking is that the "religious, Æsthetical, and social" beliefs brought to bear upon the individual constitute the ethical. We make the distinction between them as naturally as the rÉgime of custom failed to make it. Only by imagining a social set in which failure to observe punctiliously the fashions of the set as to the proper style of dress makes the person subject to a disparagement which influences his feelings and ideas as keenly and in the same way as conviction of moral delinquency, can we realize the frame of mind characteristic of the ethics of custom.

Observing versus Reflecting.—Customs may be "observed." Indeed, customary morality made goodness or rightness of character practically identical with observing the established order of social estimations in all departments. This word observe is significant: it means to note, or notice as matter of fact, by perception; and it means to yield allegiance, to conform to, in action.[100] The element of intelligence, of reason, is thus reduced to a minimum. The moral values are there, so to speak, palpably, tangibly; and the individual has only to use his mind enough to notice them. And since they are forced upon his notice by drastic and unrelaxing methods of discipline, little initiative is required for even the attitude of attention. But when the moral is something which is in customs and habits, rather than those customs themselves, the good and right do not stand out in so obvious and external fashion. Recognition now demands thought, reflection; the power of abstraction and generalization. A child may be shown in a pretty direct and physical fashion the difference between meum and tuum in its bearing upon his conduct: a fence may be pointed at which divides his yard from that of a neighbor and which draws as well the moral line between what is permissible and what is forbidden; a whipping may intensify the observation. But modern business knows also of "intangible" property—good will, reputation, credit. These, indeed, can be bought and sold but the detection of their existence and nature demands an intelligence which is more than perception. The greater number of duties and rights of which present morality consists are of just this type. They are relations, not just outward habits. Their acknowledgment requires accordingly something more than just to follow and reproduce existing customs. It involves power to see why certain habits are to be followed, what makes a thing good or bad. Conscience is thus substituted for custom; principles take the place of external rules.

This is what we mean by calling present morality reflective rather than customary. It is not that social customs have ceased to be, or even have been reduced in number. The exact contrary is the case. It is not that they have shrunk in importance, or that they have less significance for the individual's activity, or claim less of his attention. Again, the reverse is the case. But the individual has to grasp the meaning of these customs over and above the bare fact of their existence, and has to guide himself by their meaning and not by the mere fact noted.[101]

Custom is Static.—This difference introduces a second very important difference. In customary morality, there is no choice between being enmeshed in the net of social rules which control activity, and being an outlaw—one beyond the pale, whose hand is against every man's, and every man's against him. The extent to which social customs are regarded as of divine origin and are placed under the protection of the gods, i.e., the tendency of all sanctions to become religious and supernatural, is evidence of the binding force of institutions upon the individual. To violate them is impiety, sacrilege, and calls down the wrath of gods, as well as of men. The custom cannot be questioned. To inquire means uncertainty, and hence it is immoral, an attack upon the very foundations of the life of the group. The apparent exception, which after all exhibits the rule, is the case of great reforming heroes who demarcate epochs of history even in customary societies. Such individuals meet contemporary opposition and persecution; it is only by victory, by signal success over a rival faction at home, over plague and famine, or over an enemy abroad, that the hero is justified. Thereby it is proved that the gods are with him and sanction his changes—indeed that he is their own chosen instrument. Then the modified or new customs and institutions have all the binding sacredness and supernatural sanction of the old. It is not yet an outgrown story for the fathers to kill the prophets, and for the sons to build and adorn their tombs, and make them into shrines.

Reflection Discovers a Higher Law.—But in so far as the individual's activity is directed by his comprehension of the meaning of customs, not by his apprehension of their existence, so far the notion of moral progress or reform in social affairs becomes ethically important and greater moral responsibility is put upon the individual just as greater practical freedom is secured to him. For (a) the individual may set the meaning of a custom against its present form; or (b) he may find the meaning of some custom much more commanding in value than that of others, and yet find that its realization is hindered by the existence of these other customs of less moral importance. On the basis of such discrimination, the abolition or, at least, the modification of certain social habits is demanded. So far as this sort of situation frequently recurs, the individual (c) becomes more or less vaguely aware that he must not accept the current standard as justification of his own conduct, unless it also justify itself to his own moral intelligence. The fact that it exists gives it indeed a certain prima facie claim, but no ultimate moral warrant. Perhaps the custom is itself wrong—and the individual is responsible for bearing this possibility in mind.

Consequent Transformation of Custom.—Of course the plane of customary morality still persists; no wholesale divergence of reflective from customary morality exists. Practically, for example, many business men do not bother themselves about the morality of certain ways of doing business. Such and such is the custom of the trade, and if a man is going to do business at all he must follow its customs—or get out. Law, medicine, the ministry, journalism, family life, present, in considerable extent, the same phenomenon. Customary morality persists, almost as the core of present morality. But there is still a difference. A few, at least, are actively engaged in a moral criticism of the custom, in a demand for its transformation; and almost everybody is sufficiently affected by the discussions and agitations thus called out to have some lingering and uneasy idea of responsibility for his part in the maintenance of a questionable custom. The duty of some exercise of discriminating intelligence as to existing customs for the sake of improvement and progress, is thus a mark of reflective morality—of the rÉgime of conscience as over against custom. In the morally more advanced members of contemporary society, the need of fostering a habit of examination and judgment, of keeping the mind open, sensitive, to the defects and the excellences of the existing social order is recognized as obligation. To reflect on one's own behavior in relation to the existing order is a standing habit of mind.

Deepening of Meaning.—While the materials and conceptions of more conscious morality are provided by the earlier stages, and taken from other spheres of life, we find that these conceptions naturally undergo a deepening of meaning when they are used to express the more intimate and personal attitude. Take, for example, the conceptions borrowed from the jural sphere. It is in the school of government and courts that man has learned to talk and think of right and law, of responsibility and justice. To make these moral instead of jural terms, the first thing that is needed is that we make the whole process an inward one. The person must himself set up a standard, recognize it as "law," judge his conduct by it, hold himself responsible to himself, and seek to do justice. It takes several persons to carry on these processes in the realm of government. Legislators, judges, jury, executive officers, all represent the State, organized society. That a single person can be himself lawgiver, judge, and jury, as well as claimant or defendant, shows that he is himself a complex being. He is a being of passions, appetites, and individual interests, but he is also a being who has a rational and social nature. As a member of society he not only feels his individual interest but recognizes social interests. As a rational being he not only feels the thrill of passion but responds to the authority of a law and obeys the voice of duty. Like a member of a democratic State he finds himself in the sphere of conduct, not only a subject but a sovereign, and feels the dignity of a person. A conscientious person is in so far one who has made the law of God or man an inward law of life—a "moral law." But the act of making the process inward makes possible a deepening of meaning. Governments and courts are necessarily limited in purview and fallible in decisions. They are sometimes too lenient, sometimes too severe. Conscience implies a knowledge of the whole act—purpose, motive, and deed. Its authority makes claim for absolute obedience. The laws of the State are felt to be binding just because they are believed to be, on the whole, right and just as measured by this moral court of appeal. When they conflict, the power may be with the political sovereign, but the man whose conscience is clear believes that he follows a "higher law." Much of the great literature of the world draws its interest from its portrayal of this fundamental fact of human experience. "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

The conceptions taken from the economic sphere show similar deepening. In the economic world things are good or have value if people want them. It is in the experience of satisfying wants that man has learned the language of "good and evil," and to compare one good with another; it is doubtless by the progress of science and the arts that objective standards of more permanent, rational, and social "goods" are provided. When this term is taken up to a higher level and given moral meaning, two new factors appear. First the individual begins to consider his various goods and values in relation to each other and to his life as a whole. In the second place, in thus comparing the various goods and the desires they satisfy, he begins to realize that in some way he is himself more than the mere sum of his natural instincts and appetites. He finds that he can take an interest in certain things, and is not merely passive. He gives value as well as measures it. He feels that as such an active and organizing judge and creator of value, he himself has a higher worth than any of the particular things that gratify particular desires. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." "The life is more than meat." Or, to use the phrase which will be explained later, moral good implies purpose, character, "good will." In common language, it implies being, and not merely having.

The term good where used in our judgments upon others (as in a "good" man), may have a different history. As has been noted, it may come from class feeling, or from the praise we give to acts as they immediately please. It may be akin to noble or fine or admirable. All such conceptions undergo a similar transformation as they pass from the sphere of class or public opinion to become moral terms. As moral they imply in the first place that we consider not merely outward acts, but inward purpose and character. They imply in the second place that we who judge are ourselves acting not as members of a class, not as merely emotional beings, but as social and rational. Our moral judgments in this sense are from a general, a universal standard; those of a class are partial.

§ 3. OPPOSITION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL AIMS AND STANDARDS

Withdrawal from the Social Order.—The development of reflection tends to set up a moral opposition between the individual and society. Sometimes "conscience" goes beyond the need of criticizing, of discriminating, of interpreting social customs, of following their spirit rather than their letter; it takes the form of an assertion of a purely inner, personal morality, so distinct from the conditions of social life that the latter are conceived to be totally lacking in positive moral significance. The prescriptions of morality are thought to be revealed in conscience, as a faculty of pure intuition or revelation, receiving neither material nor warrant from social conditions. The distinction already spoken of between the moral and the economic, legal, or conventional, is conceived as a complete separation; customs and institutions are external, indifferent, irrelevant, or even hostile to the ideal and personally perceived demands of morality. Such a conception of morality is especially likely to arise in a period when through the clash of ways and standards of living, all customs, except those maintained by force and authority, are disintegrating or relaxing. Such a state existed in the early years of the Roman empire when, for the first time in history, local boundaries were systematically overstepped; when the empire was a seething mixture of alien and unlike gods, beliefs, ideals, standards, practices. In the almost universal flux and confusion, external order was maintained by the crystallized legislation and administration of Rome; but personal aims and modes of behavior had to be ascertained by the individual thrown back upon himself. Christian, Stoic, Epicurean, alike found the political order wholly external to the moral, or in chronic opposition to it. There was a withdrawal into the region of personal consciousness. In some cases the withdrawal was pushed to the point where men felt that they could be truly righteous only by going by themselves into the desert, to live as hermits; or by forming separate communities of those who agreed in their conceptions of life; mental and moral aloofness from prevailing social standards and habitudes was preached by all.

Individual Emancipation.—In other cases, what takes place is a consciousness of liberation; of assertion of personal rights and privileges, claims for new modes of activity and new kinds of enjoyment. The individual feels that he is his own end; that the impulses and capacities which he finds in himself are sacred, and afford the only genuine law for his behavior; that whatever restricts the full exercise of these personal powers and hampers the satisfaction of personal desires is coercive and morally abnormal. Existing social institutions may be practically necessary, but they are morally undesirable; they are to be used, or got around in the interests of personal gratifications. As some feel that social conditions are hostile to the realization of the highest moral obligations, so others feel that they are hostile to the full possession of their rights, of that to which they are properly entitled.

Eventual Transformation of Social Values and Aims.—In extreme cases, the individual may come to believe that, either on the basis of his true obligations or his true rights, the very principle of society is morally indifferent or even unworthy; that the moral life is eventually or intrinsically an individual matter, although it happens to be outwardly led under social conditions. But in the main the opposition is not to the social relations as such, but to existing institutions and customs as inadequate. Then the reaction of the individual against the existing social scheme, whether on the ground of ideals too high to be supported by it or on the ground of personal claims to which it does not afford free play, becomes a means to the reconstruction and transformation of social habits. In this way, reflective morality is a mark of a progressive society, just as customary morality is of a stationary society. Reflection on values is the method of their modification.

The monastic Christian in his outward withdrawal from social life, still maintained the conception of a perfected society, of a kingdom of God or Heaven to be established. This ideal became to some extent the working method for changing the existing order. The Stoics, who held in light esteem existing community ties, had the conception of a universal community, a cosmopolis, ruled by universal law, of which every rational being was a member and subject. This notion became operative to some extent in the development of judicial and administrative systems much more generalized and equitable than the purely local customs, laws, and standards which it swept away. The Epicurean had the ideal of friendship on the basis of which were formed groups of congenial associates held together neither by legal ties, nor by universal laws of reason, nor by unity of religious aspiration and belief, but by friendship and companionable intercourse. Thus were afforded other centers of social reconstruction.

§ 4. EFFECTS UPON THE INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER

General Effects.—The characteristic differences which have been pointed out in the preceding section, when taken together with the specific conditions of change—liberty of action and thought, incentives to private acquisition, facilities for power and pleasure—enable us to understand the contrasts referred to at the opening of the chapter. We have, on the one hand, the inbred craving for power, for acquisition, for excitement, for gratification of sense and appetite, enhanced by what it feeds on. We have, on the other hand, the progressive differentiation of the moral, tearing the individual loose from the bonds of the external moral order and forcing him to stand on his own feet—or fall. Note how each of the points brought out in the preceding section operates.

(1) To separate out the moral as a distinct element from certain spheres of life, allows the less seriously minded and the less sympathetic individuals to live complacently a trivial or unscrupulous life. Fashion, "social duties," amusements, "culture" emptied of all earnest meaning, "business" and "politics" divorced from any humane or public considerations, may be regarded as justifiable vocations. A "gentleman" who no longer has the occupation of his fighting predecessors as an excuse for a distinct type of life, may find the support of a large leisure class in declining any useful service to the community and devoting himself to "sport"; a "lady" may be so engaged by the multifarious demands of "society" as never to notice what an utterly worthless round she follows.

(2) The fact that the morality of conscience requires reflection, progress, and a deeper meaning for its conception, makes it obvious why many fail to grasp any moral meaning at all. They fail to put forth the effort, or to break with habit. Under customary morality it was enough to "observe" and to continue in the mores. It requires a higher degree of insight and a greater initiative to get any moral attitude at all when the forms have become mere forms and the habits mere habits. Hence when a change in personal environment or in general social and economic conditions comes, many fail to see the principles involved. They remain completely satisfied with the "old-fashioned virtues" or intrench themselves in the "righteousness" and "honesty" of a past generation. This habitual and "painless" morality will often mean a "virtue" or "righteousness" which involves no conflict with present conditions. A man who feels honest because he does not break contracts or defraud in old-fashioned ways, may be quite at ease about watering stock or adulterating goods. A society which abhors murder with iron and explosives in the form of daggers and bombs, may feel quite unconcerned about the preventable homicides by iron machinery, or by explosives used in coal mines.

(3) The conflict with society which reflective morality requires, works to thrust some below the general level, while it raises others above it. To criticize the general moral order may make a man a prophet, but it may also make him a Pharisee. Practical reaction may make reformers, but it is likely to make another set of men dissolute; to make them feel superior to the morality of "Philistines" and therefore exempt from social restraints.

Vices Incident to Reflective Stage.—The vices increase with civilization, partly because of increased opportunity, partly because of increased looseness in social restraint. There is a further element. When any activity of man is cut off from its original and natural relations and made the object of special attention and pursuit, the whole adjustment is thrown out of balance. What was before a useful function becomes pathological. The craving for excitement or stimulation is normal within certain limits. In the chase or the battle, in the venture of the explorer or the merchant, it functions as a healthy incentive. When isolated as an end in itself, taken out of the objective social situation, it becomes the spring of gambling or drunkenness. The instincts and emotions of sex, possessing power and interest necessitated by their place in the continuance of the race, become when isolated the spring of passion or of obscenity or lubricity. Avarice and gluttony illustrate the same law. The gladiatorial shows at Rome became base and cowardly when the Romans were themselves no longer fighters.[102] Even the aspiration for what is higher and better may become an "otherworldliness" which leaves this world to its misery and evil. Such a series of pictures as Balzac has given in his ComÉdie Humaine, shows better than any labored description the possibilities of modern civilization.

There is, moreover, in civilized society a further most demoralizing agency unknown to earlier life. As the vices are specialized and pursued they become economic and political interests. Vast capital is invested in the business of ministering to the vicious appetites. It is pecuniarily desirable that these appetites should be stimulated as greatly as possible. It makes "business." The tribute levied by public officials upon the illegal pursuits forms a vast fund for carrying elections. The multitude engaged in the traffic or dependent upon it for favors, can be relied upon to cast their votes as a unit for men who will guarantee protection.

Relations to Fellow Men.—The motives and occasions for selfishness and injustice have been indicated sufficiently perhaps in preceding chapters. As the general process of increasing individuality and reflection goes on, it is an increasingly easy matter to be indifferent or even unjust. When all lead a common life it is easy to enter into the situation of another, to appreciate his motives, his needs, and in general to "put yourself in his place." The external nature of the conduct makes it easy to hold all to a common standard. The game must be shared; the property—so far as there is property—respected; the religious rites observed. But when standards becomes more inward the more intelligent or rigorous may find sympathy less easy. When they attempt to be "charitable" they may easily become condescending. The pure will not soil their skirts by contact with the fallen. The "high-minded citizen" refuses to mix in politics. The scholar thinks the business man materialistic. The man of breeding, wealth, and education finds the uneducated laborer lacking in courtesy and refinement and argues that it is useless to waste sympathy upon the "masses." The class terms which have become moral terms are illustrations of this attitude. Finally, the moral process of building up freedom and right easily leads to a disposition to stand on rights and let other persons look out for themselves. Kant's doctrine, that since all morality is personal I can do nothing to promote my neighbor's perfection, is a laissez faire in ethics which he did not carry out, but it is a not unnatural corollary of reflective morality. "Am I my brother's keeper?" is much more likely to be the language of reflective, than of customary and group life.

Reconstructive Forces.—We have dwelt at length upon the disintegrating forces, not because civilization necessarily grows worse, but because, having pointed out in earlier chapters the positive advances, it becomes necessary to allude also to the other aspect of the process. Otherwise it might appear that there is no problem. If the evolution were supposed to be all in one direction there would be no seriousness in life. It is only in the pressure of constantly new difficulties and evils that moral character adds new fiber, and moral progress emerges. Individualism, self-seeking, and desire for property force the establishment of governments and courts which protect poor as well as rich. Luxury and ostentation have not only called out the asceticism which renounces the world and sees in all gratification of appetite an evil; they have brought into the fore the serious meaning of life; they have served to emphasize the demand for social justice. The countless voluntary associations for the relief of sickness, misfortune, and poverty; for aiding the defective, dependent, and criminal; for promoting numberless good causes—enlist a multitude in friendly co-operation. The rising demand for legislation to embody the new sentiments of justice is part of the process of reconstruction. And now when all the arts and goods of civilization are becoming more and more fully the work, not of any individual's labor or skill, but rather of the combined labor and intelligence of many, when life in cities is necessitating greater interdependence, finally when contrasts in conditions are brought more forcibly to notice by the very progress of knowledge and the means of knowledge,—the more thoroughly social use of all that civilization produces becomes more insistent and compelling. It is not a matter of sentiment but of necessity. If any one is disposed to deny the claim, it becomes increasingly certain that Carlyle's Irish widow will prove her sisterhood by infecting the denier with fever;[103] that the ignorant, or criminal, or miserable will jeopardize his happiness.

§ 5. MORAL DIFFERENTIATION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER

Two processes went on side by side in the movement we have traced. (1) The primitive group, which was at once a kinship or family, an economic, a political, a religious, an educational, and a moral unit, was broken down and replaced by several distinct institutions, each with its own special character. (2) The moral, which was so largely unreflective that it could be embodied in every custom and observance, became more personal and subjective. The result of this was either that the moral was now more consciously and voluntarily put into the social relations, thereby raising them all to a higher moral level, or that, failing such a leavening of the distinct spheres of the social order, the latter were emptied of moral value and lost moral restraints. We notice very briefly certain illustrations of this, leaving a fuller treatment for Part III.

The Family.—When the family was largely determined by status, when it was an economic, a political, and a religious unit, it had a strong support. But the support was largely external to the true purpose and meaning of the family. Only as these other elements were separated, and the family placed on a voluntary basis, could its true significance emerge. Affection and mutual supplementation of husband and wife, love and devotion to offspring, must stand the strains formerly distributed over several ties. The best types of family life which have resulted from this more moral basis are unquestionably far superior to the older form. At the same time the difficulties and perversion or subversion of the more voluntary type are manifest. When no personal attachment was sought or professed, or when marriage by purchase was the approved custom, the marriage contracted under these conditions might have all the value which the general state of intelligence and civilization allowed. When the essential feature which hallows the union has come to be recognized as a union of will and affection, then marriage without these, however "solemnized," almost inevitably means moral degradation. And if the consent of the parties is regarded as the basis of the tie, then it is difficult to make sure that this "consent" has within it enough of steadfast, well-considered purpose and of emotional depth to take the place of all the older sanctions and to secure permanent unions. The more complete responsibility for the children which has been gained by the separation of the family, has also proved susceptible of abuse as well as of service. For while savages have often practiced infanticide for economic reasons, it is doubtful if any savage family ever equaled the more refined selfishness and cruelty of the child labor which modern families have furnished and modern society has permitted.

The Economic and Industrial.—The economic lost powerful restraints when it became a separate activity divorced from family, religious, and, in the view of some, from moral considerations. It has worked out certain important moral necessities of its own. Honesty, the keeping of contracts, the steadiness and continuity of character fostered by economic relations, are important contributions. Modern business, for example, is the most effective agency in securing sobriety. It is far more efficient than "temperance societies." Other values of the economic and industrial process—the increase of production, the interchange of services and goods, the new means of happiness afforded by the increase of wealth—are obvious. On the other hand, the honesty required by business is a most technical and peculiarly limited sort. It does not interfere with adulteration of goods under certain conditions, nor with corrupt bargains with public officials. The measurement of values on a purely pecuniary basis tends to release a large sphere of activity from any moral restraints. The maxim "Business is business" may be made the sanction for any kind of conduct not excluded by commercial standards. Unless there is a constant injection of moral valuation and control, there is a tendency to subvert all other ends and standards to the purely economic.

Law and Government.—To remove these functions from the kinship group as such, is at once to bring the important principles of authority and duty, and gradually of rights and freedom, to consciousness. Only by such separation could the universality and impartiality of law be established. And only by universality can the judgment of the society as a whole be guaranteed its execution as over against the variations in intelligence and right purpose of individual rulers and judges. Moreover, the separation of law from morality has likewise its gain or loss. On the one hand, to separate off a definite sphere of external acts to which alone physical constraints or penalties may attach, is at once to free a great sphere of inner thought and purpose and to enable purely psychical values and restraints to attain far greater power in conduct. Liberty of thought and religious belief, sincerity and thorough responsibility, require such a separation. It is also to make possible a general law which rises above the conscience of the lower even if it does not always reach the level of the most enlightened and just. To make a command a "universal law" is itself a steadying and elevating influence, and it is only by a measure of abstraction from the individual, inner aspect of conduct that this can be achieved. On the other hand, the not infrequent contrast between law and justice, the substitution of technicality for substantials, the conservatism which made Voltaire characterize lawyers as the "conservators of ancient barbarous usages," above all the success with which law has been used to sanction or even facilitate nearly every form of oppression, extortion, class advantage, or even judicial murder, is a constant attestation of the twofold possibilities inherent in all institutions. Government in other functions exhibits similar possibilities. At first it was tyranny against which the subject had to defend himself. Now it is rather the use of political machinery for private gain. "Eternal vigilance" is the price not only of freedom, but of every moral value.

The Religious Life.—When freed from interdependence with kinship, economic, and political association, religion has an opportunity to become more personal and more universal. When a man's religious attitude is not fixed by birth, when worship is not so closely bound up with economic interests, when there is not only religious "toleration," but religious liberty, the significance of religion as a personal, spiritual relation comes to view. The kinship tie is sublimated into a conception of divine fatherhood. It becomes credible that Job does serve God "for naught." Faith and purity of heart are not secured by magistrates or laws.

And the universality of religion is no less a gain. So far as religion was of the group it tended to emphasize the boundary between Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, between the "we-group" and the "others-group." But when this group religion gave place to a more universal religion, the kingdom of Israel could give place to the kingdom of God; brotherhood could transcend family or national lines. In the fierce struggles of the Middle Ages the church was a powerful agency for restraining the powerful and softening the feuds of hostile clans and peoples. The "peace of God" was not only a symbol of a far-off ideal, but an actual relief. The universality might indeed be sought by force in a crusade of Christian against Moslem, or in the horror of a thirty years' war between Catholic and Protestant. But as the conception of religion as a spiritual relation becomes clearer, the tendency must inevitably be to disclose religion as essentially a unifying rather than a divisive and discordant force. If any religion becomes universal it will be because of its universal appeal. And so far as it does make universal appeal, like science, like art, it invites its followers.

The differentiation of the moral from the religious is often difficult to trace. For the religious has often been the agency through which certain of the characteristics of the moral have been brought about. The inward and voluntary aspect of the moral, as compared with the verdicts of law or public opinion, has been emphasized. But this is often developed by the religious conceptions of an all-seeing God, an all-wise judge. "Man looketh on the outer appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart" has its literary parallels in Xenophon and Plato and Shakspere. The distinction between higher and lower values has received its most impressive symbol in the conception of "another world," in which there is neither pain nor sin, but eternal blessedness and eternal life. Ideals of character, when embodied in divine persons, command love, reverence, and devotion in supreme degree. A society in which love and justice are the law of life has seemed more possible, more potent to inspire sacrifice and enthusiasm, when envisaged as the Kingdom of God. But in all these illustrations we have, not the religious as distinct from the moral, but the religious as modified by the moral and embodying the moral in concrete examples and imagery. We can see the two possible types of development, however, in the concrete instances of the Hebrews and the Greeks. In Israel religion was able to take up the moral ideals and become itself more completely ethical. The prophets of religion were at the same time the moral reformers. But in Greece, in spite of the efforts of some of the great poets, the religious conceptions for the most part remained set and hence became superstition, or emotional orgy, or ecstasy, while the moral found a distinct path of its own. Religion at present is confronting the problem of whether it will be able to take up into itself the newer ethical values—the scientific spirit which seeks truth, the enhanced value of human worth which demands higher types of social justice.

A brief characterization of the respective standpoints of religion and morality may be added, as they both aim to control and give value to human conduct. The religious has always implied some relation of man's life to unseen powers or to the cosmos. The relation may be the social relation of kin or friend or companion, the political of subject to a sovereign, the cosmic relation of dependence, or that of seeking in the divine completer meaning or more perfect fulfillment for what is fragmentary and imperfect. In its aspect of "faith" it holds all these ideals of power, wisdom, goodness, justice, to be real and effective. The moral, on the other hand, concerns itself, not with unseen beings or cosmic reality, but with human purposes and the relations of a man to his fellows. For religion, conscience may be the "voice of God"; for morality, it must be stated in terms of thought and feeling. The "moral law" must be viewed as a law which is capable of being approved, at least—and this implies that it may also be criticized—by the mind. The difference which religion states as a choice between "God and mammon," between heaven and earth, morality must state in terms of good and evil, right and wrong, ideal interests and natural appetites. Instead of regarding its standards as laws established once for all by a divine authority, morality seeks to reach principles. Instead of embodying its ideals in persons, the moral seeks to reshape them continually. It is for religion to hold that "God reigns," and therefore "All's right with the world." The moral as such must be continually overcoming evil, continually working out ideals into conduct, and changing the natural order into a more rational and social order.

[96] Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, Vol. I., p. 249.