Practical Ethics Part 9

+Subjection to animals degrading.+--The animals are vastly inferior to man in dignity and worth. Many of them have strong wills of their own, and if we will allow it, will run over us, and have their own way in spite of us. Such subjection of a man or woman to an animal is a most shameful sight. To have dominion over them is man's prerogative; and to surrender that prerogative is to abrogate our humanity.

This subjection of a person to an animal may come about through a morbid and sentimental affection for an animal. When a man or a woman makes an animal so much of a pet that every caprice of the cat or dog is law; when the whole arrangements of the household are made to yield to its whims; when affections that are withheld from earnest work and human service are lavished in profusion on a pug or a canary; there again we see the order of rank in the scale of dignity and worth inverted, and the human bowing to the beast.

THE PENALTY.

+Inhumanity to brutes brutalizes humanity.+--If we refuse by consideration and kindness to lift the brute up into our human sympathy, and recognize in it the rights and feelings which it has in common with us, then we sink to the unfeeling and brutal level to which our cruelty seeks to consign the brutes. Every cruel blow inflicted on an animal leaves an ugly scar in our own hardened hearts, which mars and destroys our capacity for the gentlest and sweetest sympathy with our fellow-men.

CHAPTER XIV.

Fellow-men.

"_Unus h.o.m.o, nullus h.o.m.o_" is a Latin proverb which means that one man alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. Apart from society man would not be man. "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a G.o.d." To take out of a man all that he gets from his relations to other men would be to take out of him kindness, compa.s.sion, sympathy, love, loyalty, devotion, grat.i.tude, and heroism.

It would reduce him to the level of the brutes. What water is to the fish, what air is to the bird, that a.s.sociation with his fellow-men is to a man. It is as necessary to the soul as food and raiment are to the body. Only as we see ourselves reflected in the praise or blame, the love or hate of others do we become conscious of ourselves.

THE DUTY.

+Since our fellow-men are so essential to us and we to them, it is our duty to live in as intimate fellowship with them as possible.+--The fundamental form of fellowship is hospitality. By the fireside and around the family table we feel most free, and come nearest to one another. Without hospitality, such intercourse is impossible.

Hospitality, in order to fulfill its mission of fellowship, must be genuine, sincere, and simple. True hospitality welcomes the guest to our hearts as well as to our homes; and the invitation to our homes when our hearts are withheld is a hollow mockery. It is a dangerous thing to have our bodies where our hearts are not. For we acquire the habit of concealing our real selves, and showing only the surface of our natures to others. We become hollow, unreal, hypocritical. We live and move

Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men and alien to ourselves--and yet The same heart beats in every human breast.

Fellowship requires not only that we shall be hospitable and ask others to our homes, but that we shall go out of our way to meet others in their homes, and wherever they may be.

+The deepest fellowship cannot be made to order. It comes of itself along lines of common interests and common aims.+--The harder we try to force people together, and to make them like each other, the farther they fly apart. Give them some interest or enthusiasm in common, whether it be practical, or scientific, or literary, or artistic, or musical, or religious, and this interest, which draws both toward itself at the same time draws them toward each other. Hence a person, who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept from intimate fellowship with others, will often find the best way to approach them, not to force himself into their companionship, against his will and probably against theirs; but to acquire skill as a musician, or reader, or student of science or letters, or philanthropy or social problems. Then along these lines of common interest he will meet men in ways that will be at once helpful and natural.

THE VIRTUE.

+Love is not soft, sentimental self-indulgence. It is going out of ourselves, and taking others into our hearts and lives.+--Love calls for hard service and severe self-sacrifice, when the needs of others make service possible and self-sacrifice necessary. Love binds us to others and others to ourselves in bonds of mutual fidelity and helpfulness. A Latin poet sums up the spirit of love in the famous line:

h.o.m.o sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

[I am a man: and I count nothing human foreign to myself.]

Kant has expressed the principle of love in the form of a maxim: "Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as an end, never as a means." We have seen that the temptation to treat others merely as tools to minister to our gratification, or as obstacles to be pushed out of our pathway, is very strong. What makes us treat people in that way is our failure to enter into their lives, to see things as they see them, and to feel things as they feel them. Kant tells us that we should always act with a view to the way others will be affected by it. We must treat men as men, not as things. This sympathy and appreciation for another is the first step in love. If we think of our neighbor as he thinks of himself we cannot help wishing him well. As Professor Royce says, "If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee; his will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems, of fateful decisions; his pains are as hateful, his joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and then with clear certainty add: Such as that is for me, so it is for him, nothing less. Then thou hast known what he truly is, a Self like thy present self."

The Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is the best summary of duty. And the keeping of that rule is possible only in so far as we love others. We must put ourselves in their place, before we can know how to treat them as we would like to be treated. And this putting self in the place of another is the very essence of love. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself includes all social law. Love is the fulfilling of the law.

Love takes different forms in different circ.u.mstances and in different relations. To the hungry love gives food; to the thirsty drink; to the naked clothes; to the sick nursing; to the ignorant instruction; to the blind guidance; to the erring reproof; to the penitent forgiveness.

Indeed, the social virtues which will occupy the remainder of this book are simply applications of love in differing relations and toward different groups and inst.i.tutions.

THE REWARD.

+Love the only true bond of union between persons.+--The desire to be in unity with our fellow-men is, as John Stuart Mill tells us, "already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become more strong, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilization. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures." The life of love is in itself a constant realization of this deepest and strongest desire of our nature. Love is the essence of social and spiritual life; and that life of unity with our fellow-men which love creates is in itself love's own reward. "Life is energy of love."

Oneness with those we love is the only goal in which love could rest satisfied. For love is "the greatest thing in the world," and any reward other than union with its object would be a loss rather than a gain.

THE TEMPTATION.

+Kant remarks that a dove, realizing that the resistance of the air is the sole obstacle to its progress, might imagine that if it could only get away from the air altogether, it would fly with infinite rapidity and ease.+--But in fact, if the air were withdrawn for an instant it would fall helpless to the ground. Friction is the only thing the locomotive has to overcome. And if the locomotive could reason it might think how fast it could travel if only friction were removed. But without friction the locomotive could not stir a hair's breadth from the station.

In like manner, inasmuch as the greater part of our annoyances and trials and sufferings come from contact with our fellow-men, it often seems to us that if we could only get away from them altogether, and live in utter indifference to them, our lives would move on with utmost smoothness and serenity. In fact, if these relations were withdrawn, if we could attain to perfect indifference to our fellows, our life as human and spiritual beings would that instant cease.

The temptation to treat our fellow-men with indifference, like all temptations, is a delusion and leads to our destruction. Yet it is a very strong temptation to us all at times. When people do not appreciate us, and do not treat us with due kindness and consideration, it is so easy to draw into our sh.e.l.l and say, "I don't care a straw for them or their good opinion anyway." This device is an old one. The Stoics made much of it; and boasted of the completeness of their indifference. But it is essentially weak and cowardly. It avoids certain evils, to be sure. It does so, however, not by overcoming them in brave, manly fashion; but by running and hiding away from them--an easy and a disgraceful thing to do. Intimate fellowship and close contact with others does bring pains as well as pleasures. It is the condition of completeness and fullness of moral and spiritual life; and the man who will live at his best must accept these pains with courage and resolution.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+The outcome of indifference and lack of sympathy and fellowship is selfishness.+--Unless we first feel another's interests as he feels them, we cannot help being more interested in our own affairs than we are in his, and consequently sacrificing his interests to our own when the two conflict. As George Eliot tells us in "Adam Bede," "Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling companions in the long, changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong, determined soul can learn it, by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson."

+It is impossible to overcome selfishness directly.+--As long as our poor, private interests are the only objects vividly present to our imagination and feeling, we must be selfish. The only remedy is the indirect one of entering into fellowship with others, interesting ourselves in what interests them, sharing their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears. When we have done that, then there is something besides our petty and narrow personal interests before our minds and thoughts; and so we are in a way to get something besides mean and selfish actions from our wills and hands. We act out what is in us. If there is nothing but ourselves present to our thoughts, we shall be selfish of necessity; and without even knowing that we are selfish. If our thoughts and feelings are full of the welfare and interests of others we shall do loving and unselfish deeds, without ever stopping to think that they are loving and unselfish. Hence the precept, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." A heart and mind full of sympathy and fellow-feeling is the secret of a loving life; and an idle mind and an empty heart, to which no thrill of sympathy with others is ever admitted, is the barren and desolate region from which loveless looks and cruel words and selfish deeds come forth.

+Love is not a virtue which we can cultivate in ourselves by direct effort of will, and then take credit for afterward.+--Love comes to us of itself; it springs up spontaneously within our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. We can prepare our hearts for its entrance; we can welcome and cherish it when it comes. We cannot boast of it, for we could not help it. Love is the welling up within us of our true social nature; which nothing but our indifference and lack of sympathy could have kept so long repressed.

"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own." Love "seeketh not its own" because it has no own to seek.

+Selfishness on the contrary knows all about itself; has a good opinion of itself; never gets its own interests mixed up with those of anybody else; can always give a perfectly satisfactory account of itself.+

Hence when we know exactly how we came to do a thing, and appreciate keenly how good it was of us to do it; and think how very much obliged the other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may be pretty sure that it was not love, but some more or less subtle form of selfishness that prompted it. Love and selfishness may do precisely the same things.

Under the influence of either love or selfishness I may "bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned," but love alone profiteth; while all the subtle forms of selfishness and self-seeking are "sounding bra.s.s and clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does a service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward it is to gain. In so doing it forfeits merit and reward both. Selfishness never succeeds in getting outside of itself. From all the joys and graces of the social life it remains in perpetual banishment. Love loses itself in the object loved, and so finds a larger and better self. Selfishness tries to use the object of its so-called love as a means to its own gratification, and so remains to the end in loveless isolation. Many manifestations of selfishness look very much like love. To know the real difference is the most fundamental moral insight. On it depend the issues of life and death.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+The most flagrant mockery of love is sentimentality.+--The sentimentalist is on hand wherever there is a chance either to mourn or to rejoice. He is never so happy as when he is pouring forth a gush of feeling; and it matters little whether it be laughter or tears, sorrow or joy, to which he is permitted to give vent. On the surface he seems to be overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He strikes us at first sight as the very incarnation of tenderness and love.

And yet we soon discover that he cares nothing for us, or for our joys and sorrows in themselves. Anybody else, or any other occasion, would serve his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copiousness of sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel, with its suffering heroine, or a good play with its pathetic scenes, would answer his purpose quite as well as any living person or actual situation. What he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's delights; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sympathetic mood; not helpfulness, but the sense of self-importance which comes from being around when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions are to be made; not devotion to others, but the complacency with self which intimate connection with others gives: these are the objects at which the sentimentalist really aims.

+The sentimentalist makes himself a nuisance to others and soon becomes disgusted with himself.+--He cannot be relied upon for any serious service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks selfishness in protestations of affection; pays compliments to show off its own ability to say pretty things; and undertakes responsibilities to make the impression of being of some consequence in the world. The man or woman is extremely fortunate who has never fallen a victim to this hollow mockery of love, either in self or others. The worst effect of sentimentality is that when we have detected it a few times, either in ourselves or in others, we are tempted to conclude that fellowship itself is a farce, love a delusion, and all sympathy and tenderness a weakness and a sham. Every good thing has its counterfeit. By all means let this counterfeit be driven from circulation as fast as possible. But let us not lose faith in human fellowship and human love because this base imitation is so hollow and disgusting:

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend,-- Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been indeed, and is; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world, And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all.

THE PENALTY.

+The penalty of selfishness is strife.+--The selfish man can neither leave men entirely alone, nor can he live at peace and in unity with them. Hence come strife and division. Being unwilling to make the interests of others his own, the selfish man's interests must clash with the interests of others. His hand is against every man; and every man's hand, unless it is stayed by generosity and pity, is against him. This clashing of outside interests is reflected in his own consciousness; and the war of his generous impulses with his selfish instincts makes his own breast a perpetual battlefield. The lack of harmony with his fellows in the outward world makes peace within his own soul impossible. The selfish man, by cutting himself off from his true relations with his fellow-men, cuts up the roots of the only principles which could give to his own life dignity and harmony and peace. Selfishness defeats itself.

By refusing to go out of self into the lives of others, the selfish man renders it impossible for the great life of human sympathy and fellowship and love to enter his own life, and fill it with its own largeness and sweetness and serenity. The selfish man remains to the last an alien, an outcast and an enemy, banished from all that is best in the life of his fellows by the insuperable obstacle of his own unwillingness to be one with them in mutual helpfulness and service.

CHAPTER XV.

The Poor.