Practical Ethics Part 12

THE DUTY.

+The family a common good.+--Membership in the family involves the recognition that the true life of the individual is to be found only in union with other members; in regard for their rights; in deference to their wishes; and in devotion to that common interest in which each member shares. Each member must live for the sake of the whole family.

Children owe to their parents obedience, and such service as they are able to render. Parents, on the other hand, owe to children support, training, and an education sufficient to give them a fair start in life.

Brothers and sisters owe to each other mutual helpfulness and protection. All joys and sorrows, all hopes and fears, all plans and purposes should be talked over, and carried out in common. No parent should have a plan or ambition or enthusiasm into which he does not invite the confidence and sympathy of his child. No child should cherish a thought or purpose or imagination which he cannot share with father or mother. It is the duty of the parent to enter sympathetically into the sports and recreations and studies and curiosities of the child. It is the duty of the child to interest himself in whatever the father and mother are doing to support the family and promote its welfare. Between parent and child, brother and sister, there should be no secrets; no ground on which one member lives in selfish isolation from the rest.

+The basis of right marriage.+--These relations come by nature, and we grow into them so gradually that we are scarcely conscious of their existence, unless we stop on purpose to think of them. Marriage, or the foundation of a new family, however, is a step which we take for ourselves, once for all, in the maturity of our conscious powers. To know in advance the true from the false, the real from the artificial, the genuine from the counterfeit, the blessed from the wretched basis of marriage is the most important piece of information a young man or woman can acquire. The test is simple but searching. Do you find in another, one to whose well-being you can devote your life; one to whom you can confide the deepest interests of your mind and heart; one whose principles and purposes you can appreciate and respect: one in whose image you wish your children to be born, and on the model of whose character you wish their characters to be formed; one whose love will be the best part of whatever prosperity, and the sufficient shield against whatever adversity may be your common lot? Then, provided this other soul sees a like worth in you, and cherishes a like devotion for what you are and aim to be, marriage is not merely a duty: it is the open door into the purest and n.o.blest life possible to man and woman.

Complete identification and devotion, entire surrender of each to each in mutual affection is the condition of true marriage. As "John Halifax" says in refusing the hand of a n.o.bleman for his daughter, "In marriage there must be unity--one aim, one faith, one love--or the marriage is imperfect, unholy, a mere civil contract, and no more." This necessity of complete, undivided devotion of each to each is, as Hegel points out, the spiritual necessity on which monogamy rests. There can be but one complete and perfect and supreme merging of one's whole self in the life and love of another. Marriage with two would be of necessity marriage with none. If we apprehend the spiritual essence of marriage we see that marriage with more than one is a contradiction in terms. It is possible to cut one's self up into fragments, and bestow a part here and a part there; but that is not marriage; it is mere alliance. It brings not love and joy and peace, but hate and wretchedness and strife.

+A true marriage never can be dissolved.+--If love be present at the beginning it will grow stronger and richer with every added year of wedded life. How far a loveless marriage should be enforced upon unwilling parties by the state for the benefit of society is a question which it is foreign to our present purpose to discuss. The duty of the individual who finds himself or herself in this dreadful condition is, however, clear. There is generally a good deal of self-seeking on both sides at the basis of such marriages. Getting rather than giving was the real though often unsuspected hope that brought them together. If either husband or wife will resolutely strive to correct the fault that is in him or her, ceasing to demand and beginning to give unselfish affection and genuine devotion, in almost every case, where the man is not a brute or a sot, and the woman is not a fashion-plate or a fiend, the life of mutual love may be awakened, and a true marriage may supersede the empty form. Not until faithful and prolonged efforts to establish a true marriage within the legal bonds have proved unavailing; and only where adultery, desertion, habitual drunkenness, or gross brutality and cruelty demonstrate the utter impossibility of a true marriage, is husband or wife justified in seeking to escape the bond, and to revert to the lower, individualistic type of life.

THE VIRTUE.

+In the family we are members one of another.+--The parent shows his loyalty to the child by protecting him when he gets into trouble. The loyal brother defends his brothers and sisters against all attacks and insults. The loyal child refuses to do anything contrary to the known wishes of father and mother, or anything that will reflect discredit upon them. The loyal child cares for his parents and kindred in misfortune and old age; ministering tenderly to their wants, and bearing patiently their infirmities of body and of mind which are incidental to declining powers. The loyal husband and wife trust each other implicitly in everything; and refuse to have any confidences with others more intimate than they have with each other. Not that the family is narrow and exclusive. Husband and wife should each have their outside interests, friendships, and enthusiasms. Each should rejoice in everything which broadens, deepens, and sweetens the life of the other.

Jealousy of each other is the most deadly poison that can be introduced into a home. It is sure and instant death to the peace and joy of married life.

+Other relations should always be secondary and external to the primary and inner relation of husband and wife to each other.+--It should be the married self; the self which includes in its inmost love and confidence husband or wife; not a detached and independent self, which goes out to form connections and attachments in the outer world. Where this mutual trust and confidence are loyally maintained there can be the greatest social freedom toward other men and women and at the same time perfect trust and devotion to each other. This, however, is a nice adjustment, which nothing short of perfect love can make. Love makes it easily, and as a matter of course. Loyalty is love exposed to strain, and overcoming strain and temptation by the power which love alone can give.

THE REWARD.

+Loyalty to the family preserves and perpetuates the home.+--Home is a place where we can rest; where we can breathe freely; where we can have perfect trust in one another; where we can be perfectly simple, perfectly natural, perfectly frank; where we can be ourselves; where peace and love are supreme. "This," says John Ruskin, "is the true nature of home--it is the place of peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of the outer world which you have roofed over and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by household G.o.ds, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,--so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a n.o.bler shade and light,--shade as of a rock in a weary land, and light as of a Pharos on a stormy sea; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the praise of home."

THE TEMPTATION.

+The individual must drop his extreme individualism when he crosses the threshold of the home.+--The years between youth and marriage are years of comparative independence. The young man and woman learn in these years to take their affairs into their own hands; to direct their own course, to do what seems right in their own eyes, and take the consequences of wisdom or folly upon their own shoulders. This period of independence is a valuable discipline. It develops strength and self-reliance; it compels the youth to face the stern realities of life, and to measure himself against the world. It helps him to appreciate what his parents have done for him in the past, and prepares him to appreciate a home of his own when he comes to have one. The man and woman who have never known what it is to make their own way in the world can never be fully confident of their own powers, and are seldom able to appreciate fully what is done for them.

Many an exacting husband and complaining wife would have had their querulousness and ingrat.i.tude taken out of them once for all if they could have had a year or two of single-handed conflict with real hardship. Independence and self-reliance are the basis of self-respect and self-control.

At the same time this habit of independence, especially if it is ingrained by years of single life, tends to perpetuate itself in ways that are injurious to the highest domestic and family life. Independence is a magnificent foundation for marriage; to carry it up above the foundation, and build the main structure out of it, is fatal. The insistence on rights, the urging of claims, the enforcement of private whims and fancies, are the death of love and the destruction of the family. Unless one is ready to give everything, asking nothing save what love gives freely in return, marriage will prove a fountain of bitterness rather than of sweetness; a region of storm and tempest rather than a haven of repose. Within a bond so close and all-embracing there is no room for the independent life of separated selves. Each must lose self in the other; both must merge themselves in devotion to a common good; or the bond becomes a fetter, and the home a prison. Unless one is prepared to give all to the object of his love, duty to self, to the object of his affections, and to the blessed state of marriage demands that he should offer nothing, and remain outside a relation which his whole self cannot enter. Independence outside of marriage is respectable and honorable. Independence and self-a.s.sertion in marriage toward husband or wife is mean and cruel. It is the attempt to partake of that in which we refuse to partic.i.p.ate; to claim the advantages of an organism in which we refuse to comply with the conditions of membership.

Not admiration, nor fascination, nor sentimentality, nor flattered vanity can bind two hearts together in life-long married happiness. For these are all forms of self-seeking in disguise. Love alone, love that loses self in its object; love that accepts service with gladness and trans.m.u.tes sacrifice into a joy; simple, honest, self-forgetful love must be the light and life of marriage, or else it will speedily go out in darkness and expire in death.

Of the deliberate seeking of external ends in marriage, such as money, position, family connections, and the like, it ought not to be necessary to say a word to any thoughtful person. It is the basest act of which man or woman is capable. It is an insult to marriage; it is a mockery of love; it is treachery and falsehood and robbery toward the person married. It subordinates the lifelong welfare of a person to the acquisition of material things. It introduces fraud and injustice into the inmost center of one's life, and makes respect of self, happiness in marriage, faith in human nature forever impossible. The deliberate formation of a loveless marriage is a blasphemy against G.o.d, a crime against society, a wrong to a fellow being, and a bitter and lasting curse to one's own soul.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Self-sufficiency fatal to the family.+--The shortcoming which most frequently keeps individuals outside of the family, and keeps them incomplete and imperfect members of the family after they enter it, is the self-sufficiency which is induced by a life of protracted independence. Marriage is from one point of view a sacrifice, a giving-up. The bachelor can spend more money on himself than can the married man who must provide for wife and children. The single woman can give to study and music and travel an amount of time and attention which is impossible to the wife and mother. Such a view of marriage is supremely mean and selfish. Only a very little and sordid soul could entertain it. There are often the best and n.o.blest of reasons why man or woman should remain single. It is a duty to do so rather than to marry from any motive save purest love. Marriage, however, should be regarded as the ideal state for every man and woman. To refuse to marry for merely selfish reasons; or to carry over into marriage the selfish individualistic temper, which clings so tenaciously to the little individual self that it can never attain the larger self which comes from real union and devotion to another--this is to sin against human nature, and to prove one's self unworthy of membership in society's most fundamental and sacred inst.i.tution.

The child who sets his own will against his parent's, the mother who thrusts her child out of her presence in order to pursue pleasures more congenial than the nurture of her own offspring, the man who leaves his family night after night to spend his evenings in the club or the saloon, the woman who spends on dress and society the money that is needed to relieve her husband from overwork and anxiety, and to bring up her children in health and intelligence, do an irreparable wrong to the family, and deal a death blow to the home.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Self-obliteration robs the family of the best we have to give it.+--The man who makes himself a slave; goes beyond his strength; denies himself needed rest and recreation; grows prematurely old, cuts himself off from intercourse with his fellow-men in order to secure for his family a position or a fortune: the woman who works early and late; forgets her music, and forsakes her favorite books; gives up friends and society; grows anxious and careworn in order to give her sons and daughters a better start in life than she had, are making a fatal mistake. In the effort to provide their children with material things and intellectual advantages they are depriving them of what even to the children is of far more consequence--healthy, happy, cheerful, interesting, enthusiastic parents. To their children as well as to themselves parents owe it to be the brightest, cheeriest, heartiest, wisest, completest persons that they are capable of being. Children also when they have reached maturity, although they owe to their parents a reverent regard for all reasonable desires and wishes, ought not to sacrifice opportunities for gaining a desired education or an advantageous start in business, merely to gratify a capricious whim or groundless foreboding of an arbitrary and unreasoning parent. Devotion to the family does not imply withdrawal from the world outside. The larger and fuller one's relations to the world without, the deeper and richer ought to be one's contribution to the family of which he is a member.

THE PENALTY.

+To have no one for whom we supremely care, and no one who cares much for us; to have no place where we can shield ourselves from outward opposition and inward despair; to have no larger life in which we can merge the littleness of our solitary selves; to touch other lives only on the surface, and to take no one to our heart;--this is the sad estate of the man or woman who refuses to enter with whole-souled devotion into union with another in the building of a family and a home.+--The sense that this loneliness is chosen in fidelity to duty makes it endurable for mult.i.tudes of n.o.ble men and women. But for the man or woman who chooses such a life in proud self-sufficiency, for the sake of fancied freedom and independence, it is hard to conceive what consolation can be found. Thomas Carlyle, speaking of the joys of living in close union with those who love us, and whom we love, says: "It is beautiful; it is human! Man lives not otherwise, nor can live contented, anywhere or anywhen. Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedness to man. To be cut off, to be left solitary; to have a world alien, not your world; all a hostile camp for you; not a home at all, of hearts and faces who are yours, whose you are! It is the frightfullest enchantment; too truly a work of the Evil One. To have neither superior, nor inferior, nor equal, united manlike to you. Without father, without child, without brother.

Man knows no sadder destiny."

CHAPTER XIX.

The State.

Out of the family grew the state. The primitive state was an enlarged family, of which the father was the head. Citizenship meant kinship, real or fict.i.tious. The house or gens was a composite family. Houses united into tribes, and the authority of the chieftain over his fellow-tribesmen was still based on the fact that they were, either by birthright or adoption, his children. The ancient state was the union of tribes under one priest and king who was regarded as the father of the whole people.

Disputes about the right of succession, and the disadvantage and danger of having a tyrant or a weakling rule, just because he happened to be the son of the previous ruler, led men to elect their rulers. There are to-day states like Russia where the hereditary monarch is the ruler: states like the United States where all rulers are elected by the people; and states like England where the nominal ruler is an hereditary monarch, and the real rulers are chosen by the people.

THE DUTY.

+The function of the state is the organization of the life of the people.+--Men can live together in peace and happiness only on condition that they a.s.sert for themselves and respect in others certain rights to life, liberty, property, reputation, and opinion. My right it is my neighbor's duty to observe. His right it is my duty to respect. These mutual rights and duties are grounded in the nature of things and the const.i.tution of man. They are the conditions which must be observed if man is to live in unity with his fellow-men. It is the business of the state to define, declare, and enforce these rights and duties. And as citizens it is our duty to the state to do all in our power to frame just laws; to see that they are impartially and effectively administered; to obey these laws ourselves; to contribute our share of the funds necessary to maintain the government; and to render military service when force is needed to protect the government from overthrow.

To law and government we owe all that makes life endurable or even possible: the security of property; the sanct.i.ty of home; the opportunity of education; the stability of inst.i.tutions; the blessings of peace; protection against violence and bloodshed. Since the state and its laws are essential to the well-being of all men, and consequently of ourselves; we owe to it the devotion of our time, our knowledge, our influence, yes, our life itself if need be. If it comes to a choice between living but a brief time, and that n.o.bly, in devotion to country, and living a long time basely, in betrayal of our country's good, no true, brave man will hesitate to choose the former. In times of war and revolution that choice has been presented to men in every age and country: and men have always been found ready to choose the better part; death for country, rather than life apart from her. So deep was the conviction in the mind of Socrates that the laws of the state should be obeyed at all costs, that when he had been sentenced to death unjustly, and had an opportunity to escape the penalty by running away, he refused to do it on the ground that it was his duty to obey those laws which had made him what he was and whose protection he had enjoyed so many years.

To the friend who tried to induce him to escape he replied that he seemed to hear the laws saying to him, "Our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than father or mother. And when we are punished by her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence; and if she sends us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right; neither may anyone yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any other place, he must do what his city and his country order him; or he must change their view of what is just; and if he may do no violence to his father or mother, much less may he do violence to his country." To do and bear whatever is necessary to maintain that organization of life which the state represents is the imperative duty of every citizen. This duty to serve the country is correlative to the right to be a citizen. No man can be in truth and spirit a citizen on any other terms. And not to be a citizen is not to be, in any true and worthy meaning of the term, a man.

THE VIRTUE.

+Love of country, or patriotism, like all love places the object loved first and self second.+--In all public action the patriot asks not, "What is best for me?" but, "What is best for my country?" Patriotism a.s.sumes as many forms as there are circ.u.mstances and ways in which the welfare of the country may be promoted. In time of war the patriot shoulders his gun and marches to fight the enemy. In time of election he goes to the caucus and the polls, and expresses his opinion and casts his vote for what he believes to be just measures and honest men. When taxes are to be levied, he gives the a.s.sessor a full account of his property, and pays his fair share of the expense of government. When one party proposes measures and nominates men whom he considers better than those of the opposite party, he votes with that party, whether it is for his private interest to do so or not. The patriot will not stand apart from all parties, because none is good enough for him. He will choose the best, knowing that no political party is perfect. He will act with that party as long as it continues to seem to him the best; for he must recognize that one man standing alone can accomplish no practical political result. The moment he is convinced that the party with which he has been acting has become more corrupt, and less faithful to the interests of the country than the opposite party, he will change his vote. Self first, personal friends second, party third, and country fourth, is the order of considerations in the mind of the office-seeker, the wire-puller, the corrupt politician. Country first, party second, personal friends third, and self last is the order in the mind of the true citizen, the courageous statesman, the unselfish patriot.

THE REWARD.

+In return for serving our country we receive a country to serve.+--The state makes possible for us all those pursuits, interests, aims, and aspirations which lift our lives above the level of the brutes. Through the inst.i.tutions which the state maintains, schools, almshouses, courts, prisons, roads, bridges, harbors, laws, armies, police, there is secured to the individual the right and opportunity to acquire property, engage in business, travel wherever he pleases, share in the products of the whole earth, read the books of all nations, reap the fruits of scholarly investigation in all countries, take an interest in the welfare and progress of mankind. This power of the individual to live a universal life, this partic.i.p.ation of each in a common and world-wide good, is the product of civilization. And civilization is impossible without that subordination of each to the just claims of all, which law requires and which it is the business of the state to enforce.

THE TEMPTATION.

+Organization involves a mult.i.tude of offices and public servants. Many of these offices are less onerous and more lucrative than the average man can find elsewhere. Many offices give a man an opportunity to acquire dishonest gains.+--Hence arises the great political temptation which is to seek office, not as a means of rendering useful and honorable service to the country, but as a means to getting an easy living out of the country, and at the public expense. The "spoils system," which consists in rewarding service to party by opportunity to plunder the country: which pays public servants first for their service to party, and secondly for service to the country: which makes usefulness to party rather than serviceableness to the country the basis of appointment and promotion, is the worst evil of our political life.

"Public office is a public trust." Men who so regard it are the only men fit for it. Office so held is one of the most honorable forms of service which a man can render to his fellow-men. Office secured and held by the methods of the spoils system is a disgrace to the nation that is corrupt enough to permit it, and to the man who is base enough to profit by it.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Betrayal of one's country and disregard of its interests is treason.+--In time of war and revolution treason consists in giving information to the enemy, surrendering forts, ships, arms, or ammunition into his hands; or fighting in such a half-hearted way as to invite defeat. Treason under such circ.u.mstances is the unpardonable sin against country. The traitor is the most despicable person in the state; for he takes advantage of the protection the state gives to him and the confidence it places in him to stab and murder his benefactor and protector.

The essential quality of treason is manifested in many forms in time of peace. Whoever sacrifices the known interests of his country to the interests of himself, or of his friends, or of his party, is therein guilty of the essential crime of treason. Whoever votes for an appropriation in order to secure for another man lucrative employment or a profitable contract; whoever gives or takes money for a vote; whoever increases or diminishes a tax with a view to the business interests, not of the country as a whole, but of a few interested parties; whoever accepts or bestows a public office on any grounds other than the efficiency of service which the office-holder is to render to the country; whoever evades his just taxes; whoever suffers bad men to be elected and bad measures to become laws through his own negligence to vote himself and to influence others to vote for better men and better measures, is guilty of treason. For in these, which are the only ways possible to him, he has sacrificed the good of his country to the personal and private interests of himself and of his friends.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.