The moral life of the modern western world differs from both Hebrew and Greek morality in one respect. The Hebrews and Greeks were pioneers. Their leaders had to meet new situations and shape new conceptions of righteousness and wisdom. Modern civilization and morality, on the other hand, received certain ideals and standards already worked out and established. These came to it partly through the literature of Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, partly through Greek art and Roman civilization, but chiefly, perhaps, through two institutions: (1) Roman government and law embodied Stoic conceptions of a natural law of reason and of a world state, a universal rational society. This not only gave the groundwork of government and rights to the modern world; it was a constant influence for guiding and shaping ideas of authority and justice. (2) The Christian Church in its cathedrals, its cloisters, its ceremonials, its orders, and its doctrines had a most impressive system of standards, valuations, motives, sanctions, and prescriptions for action. These were not of Hebrew origin solely. Greek and Roman philosophy and political conceptions were fused with more primitive teaching and conduct. When the Germans conquered the Empire they accepted in large measure its institutions and its religion. Modern morality, like modern civilization, shows the mingled streams of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and German or Celtic life. It contains also conceptions due to the peculiar industrial, scientific, and political development of modern times. Thus we have to-day such inherited standards as that of "the honor of a gentleman" side by side with the modern class standard of business honesty, and the labor union ideal of class solidarity. We have the aristocratic ideals of chivalry and charity side by side with more democratic standards of domestic and social justice. We find the Christian equal standard for the two sexes side by side with another which sets a high value on woman's chastity, but a trivial value on man's. We find a certain ideal of self-sacrifice side by side with an ideal of "success" as the only good. We cannot hope to disentangle all the threads that enter this variegated pattern, or rather collection of patterns, but we can point out certain features that at the same time illustrate certain general lines of development. We state first the general attitude and ideals of the Middle Ages, and then the three lines along which individualism has proceeded to the moral consciousness of to-day.

§ 1. THE MEDIÆVAL IDEALS

The mediÆval attitude toward life was determined in part by the character of the Germanic tribes with their bold, barbaric strength and indomitable spirit, their clan and other group organizations, their customs or mores belonging to such a stock; and in part by the religious ideals presented in the church. The presence of these two factors was manifest in the strong contrasts everywhere present.

The harsh clashes of the Venus music over against the solemn strains from the Pilgrim's Chorus in TannhÄuser might well symbolize not only the specific collision of the opera but the broader range of passions opposed to the religious controls and values in this mediÆval society.

The Group and Class Ideal.—The early Germans and Celts in general had the clan system, the group ideals, and group virtues which belonged to other Aryan peoples, but the very fact of the Germanic victories shows a military spirit which included both personal heroism and good capacity for organization. Group loyalty was strong, and the group valuation of strength and courage was unbounded. A high value was also set on woman's chastity. These qualities, particularly the loyalty to the clan and its head, survived longest in Celtic peoples like the Scots and Irish who were not subjected to the forces of political organization. Every reader of Scott is familiar with the values and defects of the type; and the problems which it causes in modern democracy have been acutely described by Jane Addams.[85] Among the Germanic peoples, when the clan and tribal systems were followed by the more thoroughgoing demarcation of classes, free and serfs, lords and villains, chevalier or knight, and churl, the old Latin terms "gentle" and "vulgar" found a fitting application. The term "gentle" was indeed given in one of its usages the force of the kindred term "kind" to characterize the conduct appropriate within the kin, but in the compound "gentleman" it formed one of the most interesting conceptions of class morality. The "honor" of a gentleman was determined by what the class demanded. Above all else the gentleman must not show fear. He must be ready to fight at any instant to prove his courage. His word must not be doubted. This seems to have been on the ground that such doubt would be a refusal to take the man at his own estimate, rather than because of any superlative love of truth, for the approved way to prove the point at issue was by fighting, not by any investigation. But the class character appears in the provision that no insult from one of a lower class need be noticed. Homicide was not contrary to the character and honor of a gentleman. Nor did this require any such standard in sex relations as a "woman's honor" requires of a woman. In conduct toward others, the "courtesy" which expresses in ceremony and manner respect for personal dignity was a fine trait. It did not always prevent insolence toward inferiors, although there was in many cases the feeling, noblesse oblige. What was needed to make this ideal of gentleman a moral and not merely a class ideal, was that it should base treatment of others on personal worth rather than on birth, or wealth, or race, and that it should not rate reputation for courage above the value of human life. This has been in part effected, but many traits of the old conception live on to-day.

The Ideal of the Church.—The ideal of life which the church presented contained two strongly contrasting elements, which have been frequently found in religion and are perhaps inevitably present. On the one hand, a spiritual religion implies that man in comparison with God is finite, weak, and sinful; he should therefore be of "a humble and contrite heart." On the other hand, as a child of God he partakes of the divine and is raised to infinite worth. On the one hand, the spiritual life is not of this world and must be sought in renouncing its pleasures and lusts; on the other hand, if God is really the supreme governor of the universe, then this world also ought to be subject to his rule. In the mediÆval view of life, the humility and withdrawal from the world were assigned to the individual; the sublimity and the ruling authority to the church. Ethically this distribution had somewhat the effect of group morality in that it minimized the individual and magnified the corporate body of which he was a part. Asceticism and humility go hand in hand with the power of the hierarchy. Individual poverty—wealth of the church; individual meekness and submission—unlimited power and authority in the church; these antitheses reflect the fact that the church was the heir both of a kingdom of God and of a Roman Empire. The humility showed itself in extreme form in the ascetic type of monasticism with its vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It was reflected in the art which took for its subjects the saints, conceived not individually, but typically and according to tradition and authority. Their thin attenuated figures showed the ideal prescribed. The same humility showed itself in the intellectual sphere in the preËminence given to faith as compared with reason, while the mystic losing himself in God showed yet another phase of individual renunciation. Even charity, with which the church sought to temper the hardship of the time, took a form which tended to maintain or even applaud the dependent attitude of the recipient. So far as life for the individual had a positive value, this lay not in living oneself out, but rather in the calm and the support afforded by the church:

On the other side, the church boldly asserted the right and duty of the divine to control the world,—the religious symbol of the modern proposition that conscience should dominate political and business affairs. "No institution is apart from the authority of the church," wrote Ægidius Colonna. "No one can legitimately possess field or vine except under its authority or by it. Heretics are not owners, but unjustly occupy." Canossa symbolized the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power, and there is a sublime audacity, moral as well as political, in the famous Bull of Boniface VIII., "We declare that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff."

The church as a corporate society expressed also the community of its members. It was indeed no mere collection of individual believers. As a divine institution, the "body of Christ on earth," it gave to its members rather than received from them. It invested them with new worth, instead of getting its own worth from them. Nevertheless, it was not an absolute authority; it represented the union of all in a common fellowship, a common destiny, and a common cause against the powers of evil.

The massive cathedrals which remain as the monuments of the ages of faith, are fitting symbols of these aspects of mediÆval life. They dominate their cities architecturally, as the church dominated the life of the ages which built them. They inspired within the worshipper, on the one hand, a sense of finiteness in the presence of the sublime; on the other, an elevation of soul as he became conscious of union with a power and presence not his own. They awed the worshiping assembly and united it in a common service.

§ 2. MAIN LINES OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT

We have seen that the mediÆval life had two sets of standards and values: one set by the tribal codes and the instinct of a warlike people; the other set by a church which required renunciation while it asserted control. Changes may be traced in both ideals. The group morality becomes refined and broadened. The church standards are affected in four ways: (a) The goods of the secular life, art, family, power, wealth, claim a place in the system of values. (b) Human authority asserts itself, at first in sovereign states with monarchs, then in the growth of civil liberty and political democracy. (c) Instead of faith, reason asserts itself as the agency for discovering the laws of nature and of life. (d) As the result of the greater dignity and worth of the individual which is worked out in all these lines, social virtue tends to lay less value on charity and more on social justice.

It must not be supposed that the movements to be outlined have resulted in the displacement or loss of the positive values in the religious ideal. The morality of to-day does not ignore spiritual values; it aims rather to use them to give fuller meaning to all experience. It does not abandon law in seeking freedom, or ignore duty because it is discovered by reason. Above all, it is seeking to bring about in more intimate fashion that supremacy of the moral order in all human relations for which the church was theoretically contending. And in recent times we are appreciating more thoroughly that the individual cannot attain a full moral life by himself. Only as he is a member of a moral society can he find scope and support for full development of will. In concrete phrase, it is just as necessary to improve the general social environment in which men, women, and children are to live, in order to make better individuals, as it is to improve the individuals in order to get a better society. This was a truth which the religious conception of salvation through the church taught in other terms.

To follow the development of the modern moral consciousness, we shall rely not so much on the formal writings of moral philosophers as on other sources. What men value most, and what they recognize as right, is shown in what they work for and fight for and in how they spend their leisure. This is reflected more immediately in their laws, their art and literature, their religion, and their educational institutions, although it finds ultimate expression in moral theories. The more concrete aspects are suggested in this chapter, the theories in Chapter XII.

§ 3. THE OLD AND NEW IN THE BEGINNINGS OF INDIVIDUALISM

An interesting blending of the class ideal of the warrior and "gentleman" with the religious ideals of devotion to some spiritual service, and of protection to the weak, is afforded by chivalry. The knights show their faith by their deeds of heroism, not by renunciation. But they fight for the Holy Sepulcher, or for the weak and oppressed. Their investiture is almost as solemn as that of a priest. Honor and love appear as motives side by side with the quest of the Holy Grail. Chevalier Bayard is the gallant fighter for country, but he is also the passionate admirer of justice, the knight sans peur et sans reproche. Moreover, the literature which embodies the ideal exhibits not only feats of arms and religious symbolism. Parsifal is not a mere abstraction; he has life and character. "And who will deny," writes Francke,[87] "that in this character Wolfram has put before us, within the forms of chivalrous life, an immortal symbol of struggling, sinning, despairing, but finally redeemed, humanity?"

If chivalry represented in some degree a moralizing of the warrior class, the mendicant orders represented an effort to bring religion into secular life. The followers of St. Dominic and St. Francis were indeed ascetic, but instead of maintaining the separate life of the cloister they aimed to awaken a personal experience among the whole people. Further, the Dominicans adopted the methods and conceptions of Greek philosophy to support the doctrines of the church, instead of relying solely on faith. The Franciscans on their part devoted an ecstatic type of piety to deeds of charity and beneficence. They aimed to overcome the world rather than to withdraw from it. A bolder appeal to the individual, still within the sphere of religion, was made when Wyclif asserted the right of every instructed man to search the Bible for himself, and a strong demand for social justice found expression in Wyclif's teaching as well as in the vision of Piers Plowman.

In the political world the growing strength of the empire sought likewise a religious sanction in its claim of a divine right, independent of the church. The claims of the civic life find also increasing recognition with the spiritual teachers.

The State had been regarded by Augustine as a consequence of the fall of man, but it now comes to claim and receive a moral value: first, with Thomas Aquinas, as the institution in which man perfects his earthly nature and prepares for his higher destiny in the realm of grace; then, with Dante, as no longer subordinate to the church, but coÖrdinate with it.

Finally, the rise of the universities shows a most significant appearance of the modern spirit under the old sanctions. The range of secular studies was limited and the subject-matter to be studied was chiefly the doctrine of the Fathers. The teachers who drew thousands of eager young men about them were clerics. But the very fact that dialectics—the art of reasoning—was the focus of interest, shows the dawn of a spirit of inquiry. Such a book as Abelard's Sic et Non, which marshaled the opposing views of the Fathers in "deadly parallel," was a challenge to tradition and an assertion of reason. And it is not without significance that the same bold thinker was the first of the mediÆval scholars to treat ethics again as a field by itself. The title "Know Thyself" suggests its method. The essence of the moral act is placed in the intent or resolve of the will; the criterion for judgment is agreement or disagreement with conscience.

§ 4. INDIVIDUALISM IN THE PROGRESS OF LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY

Rights.—It is not possible or necessary here to sketch the advance of political and civil liberty. Finding its agents sometimes in kings, sometimes in cities, sometimes in an aristocracy or a House of Commons, and sometimes in a popular uprising, it has also had as its defenders with the pen, Churchmen, Protestants, and freethinkers, lawyers, publicists, and philosophers. All that can be done here is to indicate briefly the moral significance of the movement. Some of its protagonists have been actuated by conscious moral purpose. They have fought with sword or pen not only in the conviction that their cause was just, but because they believed it just. At other times, a king has favored a city to weaken the power of the nobility, or the Commons have opposed the king because they objected to taxation. What makes the process significant morally is that, whatever the motives actuating those who have fought its battles with sword or pen, they have nearly always claimed to be fighting for "rights." They have professed the conviction that they are engaged in a just cause. They have thus made appeal to a moral standard, and in so far as they have sincerely sought to assert rights, they have been recognizing in some sense a social and rational standard; they have been building up a moral personality. Sometimes indeed the rights have been claimed as a matter of "possession" or of tradition. This is to place them on the basis of customary morality. But in such great crises as the English Revolutions of the seventeenth century, or the French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth, some deeper basis has been sought. A Milton, a Locke, a Rousseau, a Jefferson, has but voiced the sentiments of a people in formulating an explicitly moral principle. Sometimes this has taken the form of an appeal to God-given rights. All men are equal before God; why should one man assume to command another because of birth? In this sense the Puritans stood for liberty and democracy as part of their creed of life. But often the appeal to a moral principle borrowed the conceptions of Greek philosophy and Roman law, and spoke of "natural rights" or a "law of nature."[88]

Natural Rights.—This conception, as we have noted, had its origin in Greece in the appeal from custom or convention to Nature. At first an appeal to the natural impulses and wants, it became with the Stoics an appeal to the rational order of the universe. Roman jurists found in the idea of such a law of nature the rational basis for the law of society. Cicero had maintained that every man had its principles innate within him. It is obvious that here was a principle with great possibilities. The Roman law itself was most often used in the interest of absolutism, but the idea of a natural law, and so of a natural right more fundamental than any human dictate, proved a powerful instrument in the struggle for personal rights and equality. "All men naturally were born free," wrote Milton. "To understand political power right," wrote Locke, "and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave or depending on the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal." These doctrines found eloquent portrayal in Rousseau, and appear in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. Finally, the effort to find in nature some basis for independence and freedom is given a new turn by Herbert Spencer when he points to the instinct for liberty in animals as well as in human beings as the origin of the law of freedom.

By one of the paradoxes of history, the principle is now most often invoked in favor of "vested interests." "Natural" easily loses the force of an appeal to reason and to social good, and becomes merely an assertion of ancient usage, or precedent, or even a shelter for mere selfish interests. Natural rights in property may be invoked to thwart efforts to protect life and health. Individualism has been so successful in asserting rights that it is now apt to forget that there are no rights morally except such as express the will of a good member of society. But in recognizing possible excesses we need not forget the value of the idea of rights as a weapon in the struggle in which the moral personality has gradually won its way. The other side of the story has been the growth of responsibility. The gain in freedom has not meant an increase in disorder; it has been marked rather by gain in peace and security, by an increasing respect for law, and an increasing stability of government. The external control of force has been replaced by the moral control of duty.

§ 5. INDIVIDUALISM AS AFFECTED BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND ART

The development of industry, commerce, and art affects the moral life in a variety of ways, of which three are of especial importance for our purpose.

(1) It gives new interests, and new opportunities for individual activity.

(2) This raises the question of values. Are all the activities good, and shall one satisfy whatever interest appeals to him, or are some better than others?—the old question of "kinds of happiness."

(3) It raises further the question of sharing and distribution. How far may one enjoy the goods of life in an exclusive way and how far is it his duty to share with others? Do society's present methods of industry, commerce, art, and education distribute these goods in a just manner?

The examination of these questions will be made in Part III. It is our purpose at this point merely to indicate the trend of the moral consciousness with regard to them.

1. The Increasing Power and Interests of the Individual.—Power for the mediÆval man could be sought in war or in the church; interests were correspondingly limited. The Crusades, contact, through them and later through commerce, with Arabian civilization, growing acquaintance with the literature and art of Greece and Rome, were effective agencies in stimulating the modern development. But when once started it needed but the opportunities of sufficient wealth and freedom to go on. Art and letters have depicted a variety and richness of experience which the ancient world did not feel. Shakspere, Rembrandt, Bunyan, Beethoven, Goethe, Balzac, Shelley, Byron, Hugo, Wagner, Ibsen, Thackeray, Eliot, Tolstoy, to name almost at random, reflect a wealth of interests and motives which show the range of the modern man. Commerce and the various lines of industry have opened new avenues for power. No one can see the palaces or dwellings of Venice or the old Flemish ports, or consider the enormous factories, shops, and office buildings of to-day, without a sense of the accession to human power over nature and over the activities of fellow men which trade and industry have brought with them. The use of money instead of a system of personal service—slavery or serfdom—has not only made it possible to have men's labor without owning the men, it has aided in a vastly more effective system than the older method allowed. The industrial revolution of the past century has had two causes: one the use of machinery; the other the combination of human labor which this makes possible. So far this has greatly increased the power of the few leaders, but not of the many. It is the present problem to make possible a larger opportunity for individual freedom and power.

2. The Values of Art and Industry.—Are all these wider interests and fuller powers good? The church ideal and the class ideal already described gave different answers. The class ideal of gentleman really expressed a form of self-assertion, of living out one's powers fully, and this readily welcomed the possibilities which art and its enjoyment afforded.[89] The gentleman of the Renaissance, the cavalier of England, the noblesse of France, were patrons of art and letters. The Romanticist urged that such free and full expression as art afforded was higher than morality with its control and limitation. The church admitted art in the service of religion, but was chary of it as an individual activity. The Puritans were more rigorous. Partly because they associated its churchly use with what they regarded as "idolatry," partly as a protest against the license in manners which the freedom of art seemed to encourage, they frowned upon all forms of art except sacred literature or music. Their condemnation of the stage is still an element, though probably a lessening element, and it is not long since fiction was by many regarded with suspicion. On the whole, the modern moral consciousness accepts art as having a place in the moral life, although it by no means follows that art can be exempt from moral criticism as to its sincerity, healthfulness, and perspective.

In the case of industry the church ideal has prevailed. The class ideal of gentleman was distinctly opposed to industry, particularly manual labor. "Arms" or the Court was the proper profession. This was more or less bound up with the fact that in primitive conditions labor was mainly performed by women or by slaves. It was the business, the "virtue" of men to fight. So far as this class ideal was affected by the models of ancient culture, the prejudice was strengthened. The classic civilization rested on slave labor. The ideal of the gentleman of Athens was the free employment of leisure, not active enterprise. The church, on the other hand, maintained both the dignity and the moral value of labor. Not only the example of the Founder of Christianity and his early disciples, who were for the most part manual laborers, but the intrinsic moral value of work, already referred to, entered into the appraisal.[90] The Puritans, who have had a wide-reaching influence upon the standards of the middle and lower classes of England, and upon the northern and western portions of America, were insistent upon industry, not merely for the sake of its products,—they were frugal in their consumption,—but as expressing a type of character. Idleness and "shiftlessness" were not merely ineffective, they were sinful. "If any will not work, neither let him eat," commended itself thoroughly to this moral ideal. That the laborer brought something to the common weal, while the idler had to be supported, was a reËnforcement to the motives drawn from the relation of work to character. As the middle and lower classes became increasingly influential, the very fact that they were laborers and traders strengthened the religious ideal by a class motive. It was natural that a laboring class should regard labor as "honest," though from the history of the word such a collocation of terms as "honest labor" would once have been as absurd as "honest villain."[91] A further influence effective in America has been the fluidity of class distinctions in a new country. The "influence of the frontier" has been all on the side of the value of work and the reprobation of idleness. At least this is true for men. A certain tendency has been manifest to exempt women of the well-to-do classes from the necessity of labor, and even by training and social pressure to exclude them from the opportunity of work, and make of them a "leisure class," but this is not likely to establish itself as a permanent moral attitude. The woman will not be content to live in "The Doll's House" while the man is in the real work of the world.

3. The Distribution of the Goods of Life.—MediÆval society made provision for both benevolence and justice. Charity, the highest of the virtues, had come to mean specifically the giving of goods. The monasteries relieved the poor and the infirm. Hospitals were established. The gentleman felt it to be not only a religious duty, but a tradition of his class to be liberal. To secure justice in the distribution of wealth, various restrictions were imposed. Goods were not to be sold for whatever they could bring, nor was money to be loaned at whatever rate of interest the borrower was willing to pay. Society aimed to find out by some means what was a "reasonable price" for products. In the case of manufactured goods this could be fixed by the opinion of fellow craftsmen. A "common estimation," where buyers and sellers met and bargained in an open market, could be trusted to give a fair value. A maximum limit was set for victuals in towns. Or, again, custom prescribed what should be the money equivalent for payments formerly made in kind, or in personal service.[92] Money-lending was under especial guard. To ask interest for the use of money, provided the principal was returned intact, seemed to be taking advantage of another's necessity. It was usury. Class morality added a different kind of restrictions. As embodied in the laws, it bound the tenants to the soil and forbade the migration of laborers. The significant thing in the whole mediÆval attitude was that society attempted to control business and industry by a moral standard. It did not trust the individual to make his own bargains or to conduct his business as he pleased.

Modern Theory: Free Contract.—The distinctive feature of the modern development has been the tendency to abandon moral restrictions and to substitute a wage system, freedom of exchange, and free contract. It was maintained by the advocates of the new method that it was both more efficient and at least as just as the old. It was more efficient because it stimulated every one to make the best possible bargain. Surely every man is the most interested, and therefore the best promoter of his own welfare. And if each is getting the best results for himself, the good of the whole community will be secured. For—so ran the theory, when individualism had so far advanced—society is simply the aggregate of its members; the good of all is the sum of the goods of the members. The system also claimed to provide for justice between buyer and seller, capitalist and laborer, by the agencies noticed in the next paragraph.

Competition.—To prevent extortionate prices on the one hand, or unduly low prices or wages on the other, the reliance was on competition and the general principle of supply and demand. If a baker charges too high for his bread, others will set up shops and sell cheaper. If a money-lender asks too high interest, men will not borrow or will find a loan elsewhere. If a wage is too low, labor will go elsewhere; if too high, capital will not be able to find a profit and so will not employ labor—so runs the theory. Without analyzing the moral value of the theory at this point, we notice only that, so far as it assumes to secure fair bargains and a just distribution, it assumes the parties to the free contract to be really free. This implies that they are upon nearly equal footing. In the days of hand work and small industries this was at least a plausible assumption. But a new face was placed upon the situation by the industrial revolution.

Problem Raised by the Industrial Revolution.—The introduction of machinery on a large scale near the end of the eighteenth century brought about a change which has had extraordinary economic, social, and moral effects. The revolution had two factors: (1) it used steam power instead of human muscle; (2) it made possible the greater subdivision of labor, and hence it made it profitable to organize large bodies of men under a single direction. Both these factors contributed to an enormous increase in productive power. But this increase made an overwhelming difference in the status of capitalist and laborer. Without discussing the question as to whether capital received more than a "fair" share of the increased profit, it was obvious that if one "Captain of Industry" were receiving even a small part of the profits earned by each of his thousand workmen, he would be immeasurably better off than any one of them. Like the mounted and armored knight of the Middle Ages, or the baron in his castle, he was more than a match for a multitude of poorly equipped footmen. There seemed to be in the nineteenth century an enormous disproportion between the shares of wealth which fell to capitalist and to laborer. If this was the result of "free contract," what further proof was necessary that "freedom" was a mere empty term—a name with no reality? For could it be supposed that a man would freely make an agreement to work harder and longer than any slave, receiving scarcely the bare necessities of existence, while the other party was to gain enormous wealth from the bargain?

The old class morality was not disturbed by such contrasts. Even the religious morality was apt to consider the distinction between rich and poor as divinely ordered, or else as insignificant compared with eternal destiny of weal or woe. But the individualistic movements have made it less easy to accept either the class morality or the religious interpretation. The latter lends itself equally well to a justification of disease because it is providentially permitted. Moreover, the old group morality and religious ideal had this in their favor: they recognized an obligation of the strong to the weak, of the group for every member, of master for servant. The cash basis seemed to banish all responsibility, and to assert the law of "each for himself" as the supreme law of life—except so far as individuals might mitigate suffering by voluntary kindness. Economic theory seemed to show that wages must always tend toward a starvation level.

Sympathy.—Such tendencies inevitably called out response from the sentiments of benevolence and sympathy. For the spread of civilization has certainly made man more sensitive to pain, more capable of sympathy and of entering by imagination into the situations of others. It is noteworthy that the same Adam Smith who argued so forcibly the cause of individualism in trade, made sympathy the basis of his moral system. Advance in sympathy has shown itself in the abolition of judicial torture, in prison reform, in the improved care of the insane and defective; in the increased provision for hospitals, and asylums, and in an innumerable multitude of organizations for relief of all sorts and conditions of men. Missions, aside from their distinctly ecclesiastical aims, represent devotion of human life and of wealth to the relief of sickness and wretchedness, and to the education of children in all lands. Sympathy has even extended to the animal world. And the notable fact in modern sympathy and kindness, as contrasted with the mediÆval type, is that the growth in individuality has demanded and evoked a higher kind of benevolence. Instead of fostering dependence and relieving wants, the best modern agencies aim to promote independence, to set the man upon his own feet and enable him to achieve self-respect. "Social settlements" have been strong factors in bringing about this change of attitude.

Justice.—Various movements looking toward greater justice in distribution have likewise been called out by the conditions since the industrial revolution. Naturally one reaction was to denounce the whole individualistic tendency as represented in the "cash-payment" basis. This found its most eloquent expositor in Carlyle. His Past and Present is a bitter indictment of a system "in which all working horses could be well fed, and innumerable workingmen should die starved"; of a laissez-faire theory which merely says "impossible" when asked to remedy evils supposedly due to "economic laws"; of a "Mammon Gospel" which transforms life into a mutual hostility, with its laws-of-war named "fair competition." The indictment is convincing, but the remedy proposed—a return to strong leaders with a reËstablishment of personal relations—has rallied few to its support. Another reaction against individualistic selfishness has taken the form of communism. Numerous experiments have been made by voluntary associations to establish society on a moral basis by abolishing private property. "These new associations," said Owen, one of the most ardent and generous of social reformers, "can scarcely be formed before it will be discovered that by the most simple and easy regulations all the natural wants of human nature may be abundantly supplied; and the principle of selfishness will cease to exist for want of an adequate motive to produce it."

In contrast with these plans for a return to earlier conditions, the two most conspicuous tendencies in the thought of the past century have claimed to be advancing toward freedom and justice along the lines which we have just traced. The one, which we may call "individualistic" reform, has sought justice by giving free play to individual action. The other, socialism, has aimed to use the power of the State to secure more adequate justice and, as it believes, a more genuine freedom. The great reform movement in Great Britain during the nineteenth century emphasized free trade and free contracts. It sought the causes of injustice in the survival of some privilege or vested interest which prevents the full working of the principles of free contract and competition. Let every man "count as one"; make laws for "the greatest good of the greatest number." The trouble is not that there is too much individualism, but that there is too little. Tax reformers like Henry George have urged the same principle. If land is monopolized by a few who can levy a toll upon all the rest of society, how can justice obtain? The remedy for injustice is to be found in promoting greater freedom of industry and trade. Socialism on the other hand claims that individualism defeats itself; it results in tyranny, not freedom. The only way to secure freedom is through united action. The merits of some of these programs for social justice will be examined in Part III. They signify that the age is finding its moral problem set anew by the collision between material interests and social good. Greek civilization used the industry of the many to set free the higher life—art, government, science—of a few. The mediÆval ideal recognized the moral value of industry in relation to character. The modern conscience, resting back upon a higher appreciation of human dignity and worth, is seeking to work out a social and economic order that shall combine both the Greek and the mediÆval ideas. It will require work and secure freedom. These are necessary for the individual person. But it is beginning to be seen that these values cannot be divided so that one social class shall perform the labor and the other enjoy the freedom. The growth of democracy means that all members of society should share in the value and the service of work. It means that all should share according to capacity in the values of free life, of intelligence and culture. Can material goods be so produced and distributed as to promote this democratic ideal?

§ 6. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

The development of intelligence in the modern world, as in Greece, has two sides: on the one hand, a working-free from the restrictions which theology or the State or other social authorities imposed; on the other hand, positive progress in knowledge of nature and of human life. Under its first aspect it is known as the growth of rationalism; under its second aspect, as the growth of science and education. We cannot separate the development into two periods, the one negative, the other positive, as was convenient in the case of Greece. The negative and the positive in the modern world have gone on contemporaneously, although the emphasis has sometimes been on one side and sometimes upon the other. We may, however, indicate three periods as standing out with clearly defined characteristics.

(1) The Renaissance, in which the Greek spirit of scientific inquiry found a new birth; in which the discovery of new continents stimulated the imagination; and in which new and more fruitful methods of investigation were devised in mathematics and the natural sciences.

(2) The period of the Enlightenment, in which the negative aspect of the process reached its sharpest definition. The doctrines of revealed religion and natural religion were criticised from the standpoint of reason. Mysteries and superstition were alike rejected. General intelligence made rapid progress. It was the "Age of Reason."

(3) The Nineteenth Century, in which both the natural and social sciences underwent an extraordinary development. The doctrine of evolution has brought a new point of view for considering the organic world and human institutions. Education has come to be regarded as both the necessary condition for the safety of society and as the right of every human being; Science, in large measure set free from the need of fighting for its right to exist, is becoming constructive; it is assuming increasingly the duty of preserving human life and health, of utilizing and preserving natural resources, of directing political and economic affairs.

1. The Renaissance.—It would be giving a wrong impression to imply that there was no inquiry, no use of reason in the mediÆval world. The problems set by the inheritance of old-world religion and politics, forced themselves upon the builders of castles and cathedrals,[93] of law and of dogma. As indicated above, the universities were centers of discussion in which brilliant minds often challenged received opinions. Men like Roger Bacon sought to discover nature's secrets, and the great scholastics mastered Greek philosophy in the interest of defending the faith. But theological interest limited freedom and choice of theme. It was not until the expansion of the individual along the lines already traced—in political freedom, in the use of the arts, in the development of commerce—that the purely intellectual interest such as had once characterized Greece awoke. A new world of possibilities seemed dawning upon the Italian Galileo, the Frenchman Descartes, the Englishman Francis Bacon. The instruments of thought had been sharpened by the dialectics of the schools; now let them be used to analyze the world in which we live. Instead of merely observing nature Galileo applied the experimental method, putting definite questions to nature and thus preparing the way for a progress step by step toward a positive knowledge of nature's laws. Descartes found in mathematics a method of analysis which had never been appreciated before. What seemed the mysterious path of bodies in curved lines could be given a simple statement in his analytic geometry. Leibniz and Newton carried this method to triumphant results in the analysis of forces. Reason appeared able to discover and frame the laws of the universe—the "principles" of nature. Bacon, with less of positive contribution in method, sounded another note which was equally significant. The human mind is liable to be clouded and hindered in its activities by certain inveterate sources of error. Like deceitful images or obsessions the "idols" of the tribe, of the cave, of the market, and of the theater—due to instinct or habit, to language or tradition—prevent the reason from doing its best work. It needs vigorous effort to free the mind from these idols. But this can be done. Let man turn from metaphysics and theology to nature and life; let him follow reason instead of instinct or prejudice. "Knowledge is power." Through it may rise above the kingdom of nature the "kingdom of man." In his New Atlantis, Bacon foresees a human society in which skill and invention and government shall all contribute to human welfare. These three notes, the experimental method, the power of rational analysis through mathematics, and the possibility of controlling nature in the interests of man, were characteristic of the period.

2. The Enlightenment.—A conflict of reason with authority went on side by side with the progress of science. Humanists and scientists had often set themselves against dogma and tradition. The Reformation was not in form an appeal to reason, but the clash of authorities stimulated men to reasoning upon the respective claims of Catholic and Protestant. And in the eighteenth century, under the favoring influence of a broad toleration and a general growth of intelligence, the conflict of reason with dogma reached its culmination. The French call the period "l'Illumination"—the illumination of life and experience by the light of reason. The Germans call it the AufklÄrung, "the clearing-up." What was to be cleared up? First, ignorance, which limits the range of man's power and infects him with fear of the unknown; then superstition, which is ignorance consecrated by wont and emotion; finally, dogma, which usually embodies irrational elements and seeks to force them upon the mind by the power of authority, not of truth. Nor was it merely a question of intellectual criticism. Voltaire saw that dogma was often responsible for cruelty. Ignorance meant belief in witchcraft and magic. From the dawn of civilization this had beset man's progress and quenched many of the brightest geniuses of the past. It was time to put an end once for all to the remnants of primitive credulity; it was time to be guided by the light of reason. The movement was not all negative. Using the same appeal to "nature," which had served so well as a rallying cry in the development of political rights, the protagonists of the movement spoke of a "natural light" which God had placed in man for his guidance—"the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men's minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish." A natural and rational religion should take the place of supposed revelation.

But the great achievement of the eighteenth century in the intellectual development of the individual was that the human mind came to realize the part it was itself playing in the whole realm of science and conduct. Man began to look within. Whether he called his work an Essay concerning Human Understanding, or a Treatise of Human Nature, or a Theory of Moral Sentiments, or a Critique of Pure Reason, the aim was to study human experience. For of a sudden it was dawning upon man that, if he was then living upon a higher level of knowledge and conduct than the animal or the savage, this must be due to the activity of the mind. It appeared that man, not satisfied with "nature," had gone on to build a new world with institutions and morality, with art and science. This was no creation of instinct or habit; nor could it be explained in terms of sense, or feeling, or impulse alone; it was the work of that more active, universal, and creative type of intelligence which we call reason. Man, as capable of such achievements in science and conduct, must be regarded with new respect. As having political rights, freedom, and responsibility, man has the dignity of a citizen, sovereign as well as subject. As guiding and controlling his own life and that of others by the power of ideas, not of force, he has the dignity of a moral person, a moral sovereignty. He does not merely take what nature brings; he sets up ends of his own and gives them worth. In this, Kant saw the supreme dignity of the human spirit.

3. The Present Significance and Task of Scientific Method.—In the thought that man is able to form ends which have value for all, to set up standards which all respect, and thus to achieve worth and dignity in the estimation of his fellows, the Individualism of the eighteenth century was already pointing beyond itself. For this meant that the individual attains his highest reach only as a member of a moral society. But it is one thing to point out the need and meaning of a moral society, it is another thing to bring such a society into being. It has become evident during the past century that this is the central problem for human reason to solve. The various social sciences, economics, sociology, political science, jurisprudence, social psychology, have either come into being for the first time, or have been prosecuted with new energy. Psychology has assumed new significance as their instrument. Not that the scientific progress of the century has seen its greatest triumphs in these fields. The conspicuous successes have been rather in such sciences as biology, or in the applications of science to engineering and medicine. The social sciences have been occupied largely in getting their problems stated and their methods defined. But the discoveries and constructions of the nineteenth century are none the less indispensable prerequisites for a moral society. For the new conditions of city life, the new sources of disease, the new dangers which attend every successive step away from the life of the savage, demand all the resources of the sciences.[94] And as the natural sciences overcome the technical difficulties which obstruct their work of aiding human welfare, the demand will be more insistent that the social sciences contribute their share toward enabling man to fulfil his moral life. Some of the specific demands will become more evident, as we study in subsequent chapters the present problems of political, economic, and family life.

Education.—The importance for the moral life of the modern development of science is paralleled by the significance of modern education. The universities date from the Middle Ages. The classical interest of humanism found its medium in the college or "grammar school." The invention of printing and the growth of commerce promoted elementary schools. Supposed necessities of popular government stimulated a general educational movement in the United States. Modern trade and industry have called out the technical school. Germany has educated for national defense and economic advance; England has concerned itself preËminently for the education of statesmen and administrators; and the United States for the education of voters. But, whatever the motive, education has been made so general as to constitute a new element in the modern consciousness and a new factor to be reckoned with. The moral right of every child to have an education, measured not by his parents' abilities, but by his own capacity, is gaining recognition. The moral value of a possession, which is not, like material goods, exclusive, but common, will be more appreciated when we have worked out a more social and democratic type of training.[95]

Theoretical Interpretation of this Period in Ethical Systems.—While the theoretical interpretation of this period is to be treated in Part II., we may point out here that the main lines of development which we have traced find expression in the two systems which have been most influential during the past century. These are the systems of Kant and of the Utilitarians. The political and certain aspects of the intellectual development are reflected in the system of Kant. He emphasized freedom, the power and authority of reason, human dignity, the supreme value of character, and the significance of a society in which every member is at once sovereign and subject. The Utilitarians represent the values brought out in the development of industry, education, and the arts. They claimed that the good is happiness, and happiness of the greatest number. The demands for individual satisfaction and for social distribution of goods are voiced in this system.