A Manual of Moral Philosophy Part 9

Hence it was inferred that the evil principle could be abjured and defied, and the good principle propitiated in no way so effectually as by renouncing the world and mortifying the body. Fasting, as a religious observance, originated in this belief. It was imported from the East. The Hebrew fasts were not established by Moses; they were evidently borrowed from Babylon, and seem to have been regarded with no favor by the prophets. The Founder of Christianity prescribed no fast, nor have we any reason to believe that his immediate disciples regarded abstinence as a duty. Christian asceticism in all its forms is, like the Jewish fasts, of Oriental origin, and had its first developments in close connection with those hybrids of Christianity and Oriental philosophy of which the dualism already mentioned forms a prominent feature.

With regard to all objects of appet.i.te, desire, and enjoyment, *temperance* is evidently fitting, and therefore a duty, unless there be specific reasons for abstinence. Temperance demands and implies moral activity. In the temperate man the appet.i.tes, desires, and tastes have their continued existence, and need vigilant and wise control, so that he has always work to do, a warfare to wage; and as conflict with the elements gives vigor to the body, so does conflict with the body add strength continually to the moral nature. The ascetic may have a hard struggle at the outset; but his aim is to extirpate his imagined enemies in the bodily affections, and when these are completely mortified, or put to death, there remains no more for him to do, and moral idleness and lethargy ensue. Simon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years on pillars of different heights, had probably stupefied his moral faculties and sensibilities as effectually as he had crushed to death the appet.i.tes and cravings of the body. It must not be forgotten that the body no less than the soul is of G.o.d's building, and that in his purpose all the powers and capacities of the body are good in their place and uses, and therefore to be controlled and governed, not destroyed or suppressed. The mediaeval saint, feeding on the offal of the streets, was unwittingly committing sacrilege, by degrading and imbruting an appet.i.te for which G.o.d had provided decent and wholesome nutriment.

Temperance is better than abstinence, also, because *the moderate use of the objects of desire is a source of refining and elevating influences*.

It is not without meaning that, in common speech, the possession or loss of the senses is made synonymous with mental sanity or derangement. By the temperate gratification of the senses the mind is sustained in its freshness, vigor, and serenity; while when they are perverted by excess, impaired by age, or deadened by disease, in that same proportion the mental powers are distracted, enfeebled, or benumbed. Taste, the faculty through which we become conversant with the whole realm of beauty, and than which devotion has no more efficient auxiliary, derives its name from what the ascetic deems the lowest animal enjoyment, which, however, has its range of the very highest ministries. The table is the altar of home-love and of hospitality, and there are cl.u.s.tered around it unnumbered courtesies, kindnesses, and charities that make a large part of the charm and joy of life. So far is thoughtfulness for its graceful and generous service from indicating a low type of character, that there is hardly any surer index of refinement and elegant culture than is furnished by the family meal. Similar remarks apply to the entire range of pleasurable objects and experiences. While there are none of them in which excess is safe, they all, when enjoyed in moderation, stimulate the mental powers, develop and train the aesthetic faculty, and multiply beneficial relations alike with nature and with society.

*Temperance*, rather than abstinence, *is needed on grounds connected with social economy*. Labor for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a t.i.the of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a nation of idlers.

It is the demand for objects of enjoyment, taste, luxury, that floats ships, dams rivers, stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates the wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance that sustain and aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, wants, and burdens; while moderate, yet generous use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of universal industry, progress, comfort, and happiness.

But there are *cases in which abstinence*, rather than temperance, *is a duty*.

*Past excess* may render temperance hardly possible. From the derangement consequent upon excess, an appet.i.te may lose the capacity of healthy exercise. In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and useless limb, we should suppress the appet.i.te which we can no longer control.

Physiological researches have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating drinks, when long continued, produces an organic condition, in which the slightest indulgence is liable to excite a craving so intense as to transcend the control of the will.

*Inherited proclivities* may, in like manner, render temperance so difficult as to make abstinence a duty. It is conceivable that a nation or a community may, by the prevalence of excess in past generations, be characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance as to render general abstinence a prerequisite to general temperance.

Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many around us our *example* in what we may enjoy innocently would be ensnaring and perilous. The recreation, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has become a source of corruption, it may be our duty to forego. The indulgence, safe for us, which would be unsafe for our a.s.sociates, it may be inc.u.mbent on us to resign. The food, the drink which would make our table a snare to our guests, we may be bound to refrain from, though for ourselves there be in it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil a.s.sociations an amus.e.m.e.nt or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a question of social morality falling under this head. The joyous side of life must be maintained. The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events have recreations, games, festivities, and of these there is not a single element, material, or feature that has not been abused, perverted, or invested with a.s.sociations offensive to a pure moral taste. To disown and oppose them all in the name of virtue, is to prescribe a degree of abstinence which can have the a.s.sent of those only who have outlived the capacity of enjoyment. The more judicious course is to favor, or at least to tolerate such modes of indulgence as may for the present be the least liable to abuse, or such as may in prospect be the safest in their moral influence, and by sanctioning these to render more emphatic and efficient the disapproval and rejection of such as are intrinsically wrong and evil.

Section IV.

Manners.

The ancients had but one word for *manners and morals*. It might be well if the same were the case with us,-yet with this essential difference, that while they degraded morals to the level of manners, a higher culture would lead us to raise manners to the level of morals. The main characteristics of good manners are comprised in the three preceding Sections. They are the observance, in one's demeanor and conduct toward others, of the fitnesses of time and place, and of the due and graceful mean between overwrought, extravagant, or fantastic manifestations of regard on the one hand, and coldness, superciliousness, or indifference on the other. Courtesies, like more substantial kindnesses, are neutralized by delay, and, when slow, seem forced and reluctant. Attentions, which in their place are gratifying, may, if misplaced, occasion only mortification and embarra.s.sment, as when civilities befitting interior home-life are rehea.r.s.ed for the public eye and ear. Nor is there any department of conduct in which excess or deficiency is more painfully felt,-a redundance of compliments and a.s.siduities tending to silence and abash the recipient, while their undue scanting inflicts a keen sense of slight, neglect, and injury.

*Politeness* must, indeed, in order even to appear genuine, be the expression of sincere kindness. There is no pretence so difficult to maintain as the false show of genial and benevolent feeling. The mask cannot be so fitted to the face as not to betray its seams and sutures.

Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. Its spontaneous expressions may be rude and awkward; or they may take forms not readily understood and appreciated. There are conventional modes of polite demeanor no less than of courteous speech. These modes may have no intrinsic fitness, yet they acquire a fitness from their long and general use; and while the mere repet.i.tion of stereotyped formulas whether in word or deportment is justly offensive, he who would have his politeness recognized and enjoyed must beware lest he depart too widely from the established sign-language of society. There is a _brusquerie_ often underlying hearty kindness and good fellowship, which at the outset pains, wounds, and repels those brought within its sphere, and which the most intimate friends endure and excuse rather than approve.

*Politeness is to be regarded as an indispensable duty.* It is believed that from its neglect or violation more discomfort ensues than from any other single cause, and in some circles and conditions of society more than from all other causes combined. There are neighborhoods and communities that are seldom disturbed by grave offences against the criminal law, but none which can insure itself against the affronts, enmities, wounded sensibilities, rankling grievances, occasioned by incivility and rudeness. Moreover, there are persons entirely free from vice, perhaps ostentatious in the qualities which are the opposites of vices, and not deficient in charitable labors and gifts, who cultivate discourtesy, are acrid or bitter in their very deeds of charity, and carry into every society a certain porcupine selfhood, which makes their mere presence annoying and baneful. Such persons, besides the suffering they inflict on individuals, are of unspeakable injury to their respective circles or communities, by making their very virtues unlovely, and piety, if they profess it, hateful. On the other hand, there is no truer benefactor to society-if the creation of happiness be the measure of benefit-than the genuine gentleman or gentlewoman, who adds grace to virtue, politeness to kindness; who under the guidance of a sincere fellow-feeling, studies the fitnesses of speech and manner, in civility and courtesy endeavors to render to all their due, and in the least details that can affect another's happiness, does carefully and conscientiously all that the most fastidious sensibility could claim or desire.

Section V.

Government.

*The establishment and preservation of order is the prime and essential function of government*; the prevention and punishment of crime, its secondary, incidental, perhaps even temporary use. In a perfect state of society, government would still be necessary; for it would be only by the observance of common and mutual designations of time, place, and measure, that each individual member of society could enjoy the largest liberty and the fullest revenue from objects of desire, compatible with the just claims and rights of others. These benefits can, under no conceivable condition in which finite beings can be placed, be secured except by system, under a central administration, and with the submission of individual wills and judgments to const.i.tuted and established authority. A bad government, then, is better than none; for a bad government can exist only by doing a part of its appropriate work, while in a state of anarchy the whole of that work is left undone and unattempted.

*Obedience to government is*, then, fitting, and therefore a duty, independently of all considerations as to the wisdom, or even the justice of its decrees or statutes. If they are unwise, they yet are rules to which the community can conform itself, and by which its members can make their plans and govern their expectations, while lawlessness is the negation alike of guidance for the present and of confidence in the future. If they are unjust, they yet do less wrong and to fewer persons, than would be done by individual and sporadic attempts to evade or neutralize them. Nay, unwise and inequitable laws, to which the habits and the industrial relations of a people have adjusted themselves, are to be preferred to vacillating legislation, though in a generally right direction. Laws that affect important interests should be improved only with reference to the virtual pledges made by previous legislation, and so as to guard the interests involved against the injurious effects of new and revolutionary measures. The tariff regulations of our own country will ill.u.s.trate the bearing of this principle. It forms no part of our present plan to discuss the mooted questions of free trade and protection. But in the confession of even extreme partisans on either side, the capital and industry of our people could never have suffered so much from any one tariff of duties, however injudicious, as they suffered for a series of years from sudden changes of policy, by which investments that had been invited by the legislation of one Congress were made fruitless by the action of the next, and manufactures stimulated into rapid growth by high protective duties, were arrested and often ruined by their sudden repeal.

The stability of laws is obviously a higher good than their conformity to the theoretical views of the more enlightened citizens. Except under a despotism, laws are virtually an expression of the opinion or will of the majority; and laws which by any combination of favoring circ.u.mstances are enacted in advance of the general opinion, are always liable to speedy repeal, with a double series of the injurious consequences which can hardly fail to ensue immediately on any change.

But are there no *limits to obedience*? Undoubtedly there are. A bad law is to be obeyed for the sake of order; an immoral law is to be disobeyed for the sake of the individual conscience; and of the moral character of a particular law, or of action under it, the individual conscience is the only legitimate judge. Where the law of the land and absolute right are at variance, the citizen is bound, not only to withhold obedience, but to avow his belief, and to give it full expression in every legitimate form and way, by voice and pen, by private influence and through the ballot-box. But in the interest of the public order, it is his duty to confine his opposition to legal and const.i.tutional methods, to refrain from factious and seditious resistance, to avoid, if possible, the emergency in which disobedience would become his duty, and in case his conscience constrains him to disobedience, still to show his respect for the majesty of law by quietly submitting to its penalty. The still recent history of our country furnishes a case in point. By the Fugitive-Slave Law-which the Divine providence, indeed, repealed without waiting for the action of Congress-the private citizen who gave shelter, sustenance, or comfort to a fugitive slave; who, knowing his hiding-place, omitted to divulge it, or who, when called upon to a.s.sist in arresting him, refused his aid, was made liable to a heavy fine and a long imprisonment. Now as to this law, it was obviously the duty of a citizen who regarded the slave as ent.i.tled to the rights of a man, to seek its repeal by all const.i.tutional methods within his power. It was equally his duty to refrain from all violent interference with the functionaries charged with its execution, and to avoid, if possible, all collision with the government. But if, without his seeking, a fugitive slave had been cast upon his humane offices, the question then would have arisen whether he should obey G.o.d or man; and to this question he could have had but one answer. Yet his obedience to G.o.d would have lacked its crowning grace, if he had not meekly yielded to the penalty for his disobedience to the law of the land. It was by this course that the primitive Christians attested their loyalty at once to G.o.d and to "the powers that be," which were "ordained of G.o.d." They refused obedience to the civil authorities in matters in which their religious duty was compromised; but they neither resisted nor evaded the penalty for their disobedience. Similar was the course of the Quakers in England and America almost down to our own time.

They were quiet and useful citizens, performing the same functions with their fellow-citizens, so far as their consciences permitted, and, where conscience interposed its veto, taking patiently the distraining of their goods, and the imprisonment of their bodies, until, by their blameless lives and their meek endurance, they won from the governments both of the mother country and of the United States, amnesty for their conscientious scruples.

There may be a state of society in which it becomes *the duty of good citizens to a.s.sume an illegal att.i.tude, and to perform illegal acts, in the interest of law and order*. If those who are legally intrusted with executive and judicial offices are openly, notoriously, and persistently false to their trusts, to such a degree as to derange and subvert the social order which it is their function to maintain, good citizens, if they have the power, have undoubtedly the right to displace them, and to inst.i.tute a provisional government for the temporary emergency. A case of this kind occurred a few years ago in San Francisco. The entire government of the city had for a series of years been under the control of ruffians and miscreants, and force and fraud had rendered the ballot-box an ineffectual remedy. No law-abiding citizen deemed his life or property safe; gross outrages were committed with impunity; and thieves and murderers alone had the protection of the munic.i.p.al authorities.

Despairing of legal remedy, the best citizens of all parties organized themselves under the direction of a Committee of Safety, forcibly deposed the munic.i.p.al magistrates and judges, brought well-known criminals to trial, conviction, and punishment, reestablished the integrity of suffrage, and resigned their power to functionaries lawfully elected, under whom and their successors the city has enjoyed a degree of order, tranquillity, and safety at least equal to that of any other great city on the continent.

*The right of revolution* undoubtedly is inherent in a national body politic; but it is an extreme right, and is to be exercised only under the most urgent necessity. Its conditions cannot be strictly defined, and its exercise can, perhaps, be justified only by its results. A const.i.tutional government can seldom furnish occasion for violent revolutionary measures; for every const.i.tution has its own provisions for legal amendment, and the public sentiment ripe for revolution can hardly fail to be strong enough to carry the amendments which it craves, through the legal processes, which, if slow and c.u.mbrous, are immeasurably preferable to the employment of force and the evils of civil war. On the other hand, a despotic or arbitrary government may admit of abrogation only by force; and if its administration violates private rights, imposes unrighteous burdens and disabilities, suppresses the development of the national resources, and supersedes the administration of justice or the existence of equitable relations between cla.s.s and cla.s.s or between man and man, the people-the rightful source and arbiter of government-has manifestly the right to a.s.sert its own authority, and to subst.i.tute a const.i.tution and rulers of its own choice for the sovereignty which has betrayed its trust. Under similar oppression, the same right unquestionably exists in a remote colony, or in a nation subject by conquest to a foreign power. If that power refuses the rights and privileges of subjects to a people over which it exercises sovereignty, and governs it in its own imagined interests, with a systematic and persistent disregard to the well-being of the people thus governed, resistance is a right, and may become a duty. In fine, the function of government is the maintenance of just and beneficent order; a government forfeits its rights when it is false to this function; and the rights thus forfeited revert to the misgoverned people.

Chapter XIII.

CASUISTRY.

Casuistry is the application of the general principles of morality to individual _cases_ in which there is room for question as to duty. The question may be as to the obligation or the rightfulness of a particular act, as to the choice between two alternative courses, as to the measure or limit of a recognized duty, or as to the grounds of preference when there seems to be a conflict of duties. A large proportion of these cases disappear under any just view of moral obligation. Most questions of conscience have their origin in deficient conscientiousness. He who is determined to do the right, the whole right, and nothing but the right, is seldom at a loss to know what he ought to do. But when the aim is to evade all difficult duties which can be omitted without shame or the clear consciousness of wrong, and to go as close as possible to the boundary line between good and evil without crossing it, the questions that arise are often perplexing and complicated, and they are such as, in the interest of virtue, may fittingly remain unanswered. There are always those whose aim is, not to attain any definite, still less any indefinitely high, standard of goodness, but to be saved from the penal consequences of wrong-doing; and there are even (so-called) religious persons, and teachers too, with whom this negative indemnity from punishment fills out the whole meaning of the sacred and significant term _salvation_. It must be confessed that questions which could emanate only from such minds, furnish a very large part of the often voluminous and unwieldy treatises on casuistry that have come down to us from earlier times, especially of those of the Jesuit moralists, whose chief endeavor is to lay out a border-path just outside the confines of acknowledged wrong and evil.

Yet there are *cases in which the most conscientious persons may be in doubt as to the right*. We can here indicate only the general principles on which such cases are to be decided, with a very few specific ill.u.s.trations.

*The question of duty is often a question*, not of principle, but *of fact*. It is the _case_, the position and relations of the persons or objects concerned, that we do not fully understand. For instance, when a new appeal is made for our charitable aid, in labor or money, the question is not whether it is our duty to a.s.sist in a work of real beneficence, but whether for the proposed object, and under the direction of those who make the appeal, our labor or money will be lucratively invested in the service of humanity. There are, certainly, benevolent a.s.sociations and enterprises for the very n.o.blest ends, whose actual utility is open to the gravest doubt. It is sometimes difficult even to determine a question of justice or equity, simply because the circ.u.mstances of the case, so far as we can understand them, do not define the right. Instances of this cla.s.s might be multiplied; but they are all instances in which there is no obscurity as to our obligation or duty, and therefore no question for moral casuistry.

We are, however, obviously bound, by considerations of fitness, to seek the fullest information within our power in every case in which we are compelled to act, or see fit to act; nor can we regard action without knowledge, even though the motive be virtuous, as either safe or blameless.

*The measure or limit of duty* is with many conscientious persons a serious question. Here an exact definition is hardly possible, and a generous liberty may be given to individual taste or judgment; yet considerations of fitness set bounds to that liberty. Thus direct and express self-culture is a duty inc.u.mbent on all, yet in which diversity of inclination may render very different degrees of diligence equally fitting and right; but all self-centred industry is fittingly limited by domestic, social, and civic obligations. Thus, also, direct acts of beneficence are obviously inc.u.mbent on all; but the degree of self-sacrifice for beneficent ends need not, nay, ought not to be the same for every one; and while we hold in the highest admiration those who make the entire surrender of all that they have and are to the service of mankind, we have no reason to scant our esteem for those who are simply kind and generous, while they at the same time labor, spend, or save for their own benefit.

Indeed, the world has fully as much need of the latter as of the former.

Were the number of self-devoting philanthropists over-large, a great deal of the necessary business and work of life would be left undone; and did self-denying givers const.i.tute a very numerous body, the dependent and mendicant cla.s.ses would be much more numerous than they are; while the withdrawal of expenditure for personal objects would paralyze industrial enterprise, and arrest the creation of that general wealth which contributes to the general comfort and happiness, and the acc.u.mulation of those large fortunes which are invaluable as safety-funds and movement-funds for the whole community.

There are cases in which there is manifestly a *conflict of duties*. This most frequently occurs between prudence and beneficence. Up to a certain point they coincide. No prudent man will suffer himself to contract unsocial, or selfish, or miserly habits, or to neglect the ordinary good offices and common charities of life. But is one bound to transcend the limits of prudence, and, without any specific grounds of personal obligation, to incur loss, hardship, or peril, in behalf of another person? One is no doubt bound to do all that he could reasonably expect from another, were their positions reversed; but is it his duty to do more than this? In answer, it must be admitted that he who in such a case suffers prudence to limit his beneficence has done all that duty absolutely requires; but, in proportion to the warmth of his benevolence and the loftiness of his spirit and character, he will find himself constrained to transcend this limit, and to sacrifice prudence to beneficence. Thus-to take an instance from a cla.s.s of events by no means infrequent-if I see a man in danger of drowning, it is obviously my duty to do all that I can do for his rescue without putting my own life in jeopardy. But I owe him no more than this. My own life is precious to me and to my family, and I have a right so to regard it. I shall not deserve censure or self-reproach, if I decline exposing myself to imminent peril.

Yet if I have the generosity and the courage which belong to a truly n.o.ble nature, I shall not content myself with doing no more than this,-I shall hazard my own safety if there is reason to hope that my efforts may have a successful issue; and in so doing I shall perform an act of heroic virtue.

The same principle will apply to exposure, danger, and sacrifice of every kind, incurred for the safety, relief, or benefit of others. We transgress no positive law of right, when we omit doing for others more than we could rightfully expect were we in their place. Prudence in such a case is our right. But it is a right which it is more n.o.ble to surrender than to retain; and the readiness with which and the degree in which we are willing to surrender it, may be taken as a fair criterion of our moral growth and strength.

Under the t.i.tle of *Justice*, with the broad scope which we have given to it, there may be an apparent conflict of duties, and there are certain obvious laws of precedence which may cover all such cases. We should first say that our obligations to the Supreme Being have a paramount claim above all duties to inferior beings, had we not reason to believe that G.o.d is in no way so truly worshipped and served as by acts of justice and mercy to his children. The Divine Teacher has given us to understand, not that there is no time or place too sacred for charity, but that holy times and places have their highest consecration in the love to man which love to G.o.d inspires.

Toward men, it hardly needs to be said that justice (in the limited and ordinary acceptation of the word) *has the precedence of charity*. Indeed, were it not for the prevalence of injustice-individual, social, and civic-there would hardly be any scope for the active exercise of charity.

Want comes almost wholly from wrong. Were justice universal, that is, were the rights and privileges which fitly belong to men as men, extended to and made available by all cla.s.ses and conditions of men, there would still be great inequalities of wealth and of social condition; but abject and squalid poverty could hardly exist. In almost every individual instance, the withholding or delay of justice tends more or less directly toward the creation of the very evils which charity relieves. No amount of generosity, then, can palliate injustice, or stand as a subst.i.tute for justice.

As regards the persons to whom we owe offices of kindness or charity, it is obvious that *those related to us by consanguinity or affinity have the first ** claim*. These relations have all the elements of a natural alliance for mutual defence and help; and it is impossible that their essential duties should be faithfully discharged and their fitnesses duly observed, without creating sympathies that in stress of need will find expression in active charity. In the next rank we may fittingly place our benefactors, if their condition be such as to demand a return for their kind offices in our behalf. Nearness in place may be next considered; for the very fact that the needs of our neighbors are or may be within our cognizance, commends them especially to our charity, and enables us to be the more judicious and effective in their relief. Indeed, in smaller communities, where the dwellings of the rich and of the poor are interspersed, a general recognition of the claims of neighborhood on charity would cover the field of active beneficence with an efficiency attainable in no other way, and at a greatly diminished cost of time and substance. There is yet another type of neighborhood, consecrated to our reverent observance by the parable of the Good Samaritan. There are from time to time cases of want and suffering brought, without our seeking, under our immediate regard,-cast, as it were, directly upon our kind offices. The person thus commended to us is, for the time, our nearest neighbor, nay, our nearest kinsman, and the very circ.u.mstances which have placed him in this relation to us, make him fittingly the foremost object of our charity.

The question sometimes presents itself *whether ** we shall bestow an immediate, yet transient benefit, or a more remote, but permanent good*.

If the two are incompatible, and the former is not a matter of absolute necessity, the latter is to be preferred. Thus remunerative employment is much more beneficial than alms to an able-bodied man, and it is better that he suffer some degree of straitness till he can earn a more comfortable condition, than that he be first made to feel the dependence of pauperism. Yet if his want be entire and urgent, the delay of immediate relief is the part of cruelty. On similar grounds, beneficence which embraces a cla.s.s of cases or persons is to be preferred to particular acts of kindness to individuals. Thus it seems harsh to refuse alms to an unknown street beggar; but as such relief gives shelter to a vast amount of fraud, idleness, and vice, it is much better that we should sustain, by contributions proportioned to our ability, some system by which cases of actual need, and such only, can be promptly and adequately cared for, and that we then-however reluctantly-refuse our alms to applicants of doubtful merit.

Chapter XIV.

ANCIENT HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.