Practical Ethics Part 11

THE REWARD.

+Forgiveness, rightly received, works the reformation of the offender.+--And to one who ardently loves righteousness there is no joy comparable to that of seeing a man who has been doing wrong, turn from it, renounce it, and determine that henceforth he will endeavor to do right. Contrast heightens our emotions. And there is "joy over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons that need no repentance." Deliverance from wrong is effected by the firm yet kindly presentation of the right as something still possible for us, and into which a friend stands ready to welcome us. Reformation is wrought by that blending of justice and forgiveness which at the same time holds the wrong abhorrent and the wrongdoer dear. Reformation is the end at which forgiveness aims, and its accomplishment is its own reward.

THE TEMPTATION.

+The sight of heinous offenses and outrageous deeds against ourselves or others tempts us to wreak our vengeance upon the offender.+--This impulse of revenge served a useful purpose in the primitive condition of human society. It still serves as the active support of righteous indignation. But it is blind and rough; and is not suited to the conditions of civilized life. Vengeance has no consideration for the true well-being of the offender. It confounds the person with the deed in wholesale condemnation. It renders evil for evil; it provokes still further retaliation; and erects a single fault into the occasion of a lasting feud. It is irrational, brutal, and inhuman; it is dangerous and degrading.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+The absence of forgiveness in dealing with wrongdoers leads to undue severity.+--The end of punishment being to bring the offender to realize the evil of his deed and to repent of it, punishment should not be carried beyond the point which is necessary to produce that result. To continue punishment after genuine penitence is manifested is to commit a fresh wrong ourselves. "If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." To ignore an unrepented wrong, and to continue to punish a repented wrong, are equally wide of the mark of that love for the offender which metes out to him both justice and forgiveness according to his needs. All punishment which is not tempered with forgiveness is brutal; and brutalizes both punisher and punished. It hardens the heart of the offender; and itself const.i.tutes a new offense against him.

These principles apply strictly to relations between individuals. In the case of punishment by the state, the necessity of self-protection; of warning others; and of approximate uniformity in procedure; added to the impossibility of getting at the exact state of mind of the offender by legal processes, render it necessary to inflict penalties in many cases which are more severe than the best interest of the individual offenders requires. To meet such cases, and to mitigate the undue severity of uniform penalties when they fall too heavily on individuals, all civilized nations give the power of pardon to the executive.

+Whether the penalty be in itself light or severe, it should always be administered in the endeavor to improve and reform the character of the offender.+--The period of confinement in jail or prison should be made a period of real privation and suffering; but it should be especially the privation of opportunity for indulgence in idleness and vice; and the painfulness of discipline in acquiring the knowledge and skill necessary to make the convict a self-respecting and self-supporting member of society, after his term of sentence expires.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Lenity ignores the wrong; and by ignoring it, becomes responsible for its repet.i.tion.+--Lenity is sentimentality bestowed on criminals. It treats them in the manner most congenial to its own feelings, instead of in the way most conducive to their good. Forgiveness is regard for the offender in view of his ability to renounce the offense and try to do better in the future. Lenity confounds offender and offense in a wholesale and promiscuous amnesty. The true att.i.tude toward the wrongdoer must preserve the balance set forth by the lawgiver of Israel as characteristic of Israel's G.o.d, "full of compa.s.sion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin: and _that will by no means clear the guilty_." Lenity which "clears the guilty" is neither mercy, nor graciousness, nor compa.s.sion, nor forgiveness. Such lenity obliterates moral distinctions; disintegrates society; corrupts and weakens the moral nature of the one who indulges in it; and confirms in perversity him on whom it is bestowed.

THE PENALTY.

+Severity and lenity alike increase the perversity of the offender.+--Severity drives the offender into fresh determination to do wrong; and intrenches him behind the conception that he has been treated unfairly. He is made to think that all the world is against him, and he sees no reason why he should not set himself against the world. Lenity leads him to think the world is on his side no matter what he does; and so he asks himself why he should take the trouble to mend his ways.

Lenity to others leads us to be lenient toward ourselves; and we commit wrong in expectation of that lenient treatment which we are in the habit of according to others. Severity to others makes us ashamed to ask for mercy when we need it for ourselves. Furthermore, knowing there is no mercy in ourselves, we naturally infer that there is none in others. We disbelieve in forgiveness; and our disbelief hides from our eyes the forgiveness, which, if we had more faith in its presence, we might find. Hence the unforgiving man can find no forgiveness for himself in time of need; he sinks to that level of despair and confirmed perversity, to which his own unrelenting spirit has doomed so many of his erring brothers.

CHAPTER XVII.

Friends.

In addition to that bond of a common humanity which ought to bind us to all our fellow-men, there is a tie of special affinity between persons of congenial tastes, kindred pursuits, common interests, and mutually cherished ideals. Persons to whom we are drawn, and who are likewise drawn to us, by these cords of subtle sympathy we call our friends.

Friendship is regard for what our friend is; not for what he can do for us. "The perfect friendship," says Aristotle, "is that of good men who resemble one another in virtue. For they both alike wish well to one another as good men, and it is their essential character to be good men.

And those who wish well to their friends for the friends' sake are friends in the truest sense; for they have these sentiments toward each other as being what they are, and not in an accidental way; their friendship, therefore, lasts as long as their virtue, and that is a lasting thing. Such friendships are uncommon, for such people are rare.

Such friendship requires long and familiar intercourse. For they cannot be friends till each show and approve himself to the other as worthy to be loved. A wish to be friends may be of rapid growth, but not friendship. Those whose love for one another is based on the useful, do not love each other for what they are, but only in so far as each gets some good from the other. These friendships are accidental; for the object of affection is loved, not as being the person or character that he is, but as the source of some good or some pleasure. Friendships of this kind are easily dissolved, as the persons do not continue unchanged; for if they cease to be useful or pleasant to one another, their love ceases. On the disappearance of that which was the motive of their friendship, their friendship itself is dissolved, since it existed solely with a view to that. For pleasure then or profit it is possible even for bad men to be friends with one another; but it is evident that the friendship in which each loves the other for himself is only possible between good men; for bad men take no delight in each other unless some advantage is to be gained. The friendship whose motive is utility is the friendship of sordid souls. Friendship lies more in loving than in being loved; so that when people love each other in proportion to their worth, they are lasting friends, and theirs is lasting friendship."

THE DUTY.

+The interest of our friend should be our interest; his welfare, our welfare; his wish, our will; his good, our aim.+--If he prospers we rejoice; if he is overtaken by adversity, we must stand by him. If he is in want, we must share our goods with him. If he is unpopular, we must stand up for him. If he does wrong, we must be the first to tell him of his fault: and the first to bear with him the penalty of his offense. If he is unjustly accused we must believe in his innocence to the last.

Friends must have all things in common; not in the sense of legal ownership, which would be impracticable, and, as Epicurus pointed out, would imply mutual distrust; but in the sense of a willingness on the part of each to do for the other all that is in his power. Only on the high plane of such absolute, whole-souled devotion can pure friendship be maintained.

THE VIRTUE.

+The true friend is one we can rely upon.+--Our deepest secrets, our tenderest feelings, our frankest confessions, our inmost aspirations, our most cherished plans, our most sacred ideals are as safe in his keeping as in our own. Yes, they are safer; for the faithful friend will not hesitate to p.r.i.c.k the bubbles of our conceit; laugh us out of our sentimentality; expose the root of selfishness beneath our virtuous pretensions. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." To be sure the friend must do all this with due delicacy and tact. If he takes advantage of his position to exercise his censoriousness upon us we speedily vote him a bore, and take measures to get rid of him. But when done with gentleness and good nature, and with an eye single to our real good, this pruning of the tendrils of our inner life is one of the most precious offices of friendship.

THE REWARD.

+The chief blessing of friendship is the sense that we are not living our lives and fighting our battles alone; but that our lives are linked with the lives of others, and that the joys and sorrows of our united lives are felt by hearts that beat as one.+--The seer who laid down so severely the stern conditions which the highest friendship must fulfill, has also sung its praises so sweetly, that his poem at the beginning of his essay may serve as our description of the blessings which it is in the power of friendship to confer:

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs; The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays.

I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness Like daily sunrise there.

My careful heart was free again,-- Oh, friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take n.o.bler form And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth.

Me too thy n.o.bleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

THE TEMPTATION.

+A relation so intimate as that of friendship offers constant opportunity for betrayal.+--Friends understand each other perfectly.

Friend utters to friend many things which he would not for all the world let others know. And more than that, the intimate a.s.sociation of friendship cannot fail to give the friend an opportunity to perceive the deep secrets of the other's heart which he would not speak even to a friend, and which he has scarcely dared to acknowledge even to himself.

This intimate knowledge of another appeals strangely to our vanity and pride; and we are often tempted to show it off by disclosing some of these secrets which have been revealed to us in the confidence of friendship. This is the meanest thing one person can do to another. The person who yields to this basest of temptations is utterly unworthy ever again to have a friend. Betrayal of friends is the unpardonable social sin.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+We cannot find people who in every respect are exactly to our liking.+--And, what is more to the point, we never can make ourselves exactly what we should like to have other people intimately know and understand. Friendship calls for courage enough to show ourselves in spite of our frailties and imperfections; and to take others in spite of the possible shortcomings which close acquaintance may reveal in them.

Friendship requires a readiness to give and take, for better or for worse; and that exclusiveness which shrinks from the risks involved is simply a combination of selfishness and cowardice. Refusal to make friends is a sure sign that a man either is ashamed of himself, or else lacks faith in his fellow-men. And these two states of mind are not so different as they might at first appear. For we judge others chiefly by ourselves. And the man who distrusts his fellow-men, generally bases his distrust of them on the consciousness that he himself is not worthy of the trust of others. So that the real root of exclusiveness is the dread of letting other people get near to us, for fear of what they might discover. Exclusiveness puts on the airs of pride. But pride is only a game of bluff, by which a man who is ashamed to have other people get near enough to see him as he is pretends that he is terribly afraid of getting near enough to others to see what they are.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Effusiveness.+--Some people can keep nothing to themselves. As soon as they get an experience, or feel an emotion, or have an ache or pain, they must straightway run and pour it into the ear of some sympathetic listener. The result is that experiences do not gain sufficient hold upon the nature to make any deep and lasting impression. No independence, no self-reliance, no strength of character is developed.

Such people are superficial and unreal. They ask everything and have nothing to give. The stream is so large and constant that there is nothing left in the reservoir. Friendship must rest on solid foundations of independence and mutual respect. With great clearness and force Emerson proclaims this law in his Essay on Friendship: "We must be our own before we can be another's. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep ident.i.ty, which, beneath these disparities, unites them."

THE PENALTY.

+If we refuse to go in company there is nothing left for us but to trudge along the dreary way alone.+--If we will not bear one another's burdens, we must bear our own when they are heaviest in our unaided strength; and fall beneath their weight. Here as everywhere penalty is simply the inevitable consequence of conduct. The loveless heart is doomed to drag out its term of years in the cheerless isolation of a life from which the light of love has been withdrawn.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Family.

Thus far we have considered our fellow-men as units, with whom it is our privilege and duty to come into external relations. These external relations after all do not reach the deepest center of our lives. They indeed bind man to man in bonds of helpfulness and service. But the two who are thus united remain two separate selves after all. Even friendship leaves unsatisfied yearnings, undeveloped possibilities in human hearts. However subtle and tender the bond may be, it remains to the last physical rather than chemical; mechanical rather than vital; the outward attachment of mutually exclusive wholes, rather than the inner blending of complemental elements which lose their separate selfhood in the unity of a new and higher life. The beginning of this true spiritual life, in which the individual loses his separate self to find a larger and n.o.bler self in a common good in which each individual shares, and which none may monopolize;--the birthplace of the soul as of the body is in the family. The nursery of virtue, the inspirer of devotion, the teacher of self-sacrifice, the inst.i.tutor of love, the family is the foundation of all those higher and n.o.bler qualities of mind and heart which lift man above the level of sagacious brutes.