Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 13

Among the causes for this are the lessening of allegiance to religious authority, the loss of the older fears and restraints, the growing spirit of adventure and iconoclasm. With the breaking-up of traditions, the lure of freedom has been strong, especially upon the so-long- dominated and docile s.e.x. Women are becoming better educated and a.s.serting their rights everywhere; they are now able to earn their living in many independent ways, and are in a position to break loose; the era of the subjection of women is over, and it is natural that many, particularly of the idle and frivolous, should turn this new-won liberty into license.

But, indeed, human nature being as it is, there would inevitably arise, and have always arisen, many cases of strain and friction in marriage relations. As Chesterton says, a man and a woman are, in the nature of the case, incompatible; and that underlying incommensurability of viewpoint easily results in clash where a deep-rooted affection and a habit of self-control are absent. Innumerable couples have suffered and hated each other and made the best of it; nowadays they are deeming it better frankly to admit and end the discord. And the problem, Which solutionis better? is by no means an easy one. We can but make here a few general suggestions.

(1) Divorce must certainly not be so easy as to encourage hasty and unconsidered marriage, or to turn this most sacred of relationships into a mere experimental and provisional alliance. "Trial marriage"

is a palpably reprehensible scheme, involving an unwarrantable stimulus to the s.e.x appet.i.te; many men would enjoy taking one woman after another, until their pa.s.sion in each case had exhausted its force with the lapse of novelty; women, who are not so naturally promiscuous, would suffer most. What would become of the children is a question whose very posing condemns the proposal. But a lax divorce law provides practically for trial marriage; one or the other party may enter into the contract and p.r.o.nounce the solemn vows without any intention of keeping them when it shall cease to be for his or her pleasure. Not in this way is to be got the real worth of marriage; the conscious and earnest effort, at least, must be to keep to it for life. An easy short cut to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but n.o.bler way of compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination. If one is weak and erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection. There is a fine disciplinary value in these forbearances, and much opportunity for spiritual growth in the persevering endeavor toward harmony and mutual understanding. Many a man and woman who might have been lost if divorced, has been saved for a better life by the unwillingness of wife or husband to desert under grievous provocation. There comes an ebb to most conjugal disputes; men and women grow wiser, and often gentler, with age; while there is any hope for readjustment and revival of love it is wrong to break marital vows. Many a divorce has been as hasty and ill considered as the marriage it ended, and has left the couple in the end less happy and useful members of the community.

Particularly when there are children should the parents sacrifice much for the sake of giving them a real home, with both mother- and father-love.

(2) Yet there are cases where love is hopelessly killed and harmony is impossible; cases where much suffering, and even moral degeneration, would result from continuance of the married life. Where a man transfers his love to another or indulges in infidelity to his vows; where he crazes himself with liquor or some other narcotic, and will not give it up; where he treats his wife with cruelty or contempt, or through selfishness or laziness deserts or refuses to support her; where she refuses to perform her wifely duties, gives herself to other men, makes home intolerable for him--in short, in any case where mutual loyalty and cooperation are hopeless of attainment, it is surely best that there should be separation. It does not make for the welfare of the children, or for the sanct.i.ty of marriage, that such wretched travesties of it should continue. Moreover, for eugenic reasons, we must urge the freeing of wives from husbands who have transmissible diseases, inheritable defects, or chronic alcoholism. Nor should the fact of one mistake preclude the injured party from another opportunity for happiness and usefulness. Whether the guilty man or woman, the one wholly or chiefly to blame for the failure, should be permitted to remarry is another matter; but probably, on the whole, it is better than the alternative encouragement of immorality and illegitimacy.

(3) The community should exert its influence toward the remedying of the present anomalies and uncertainties by making both marriage laws and divorce laws more stringent, and uniform throughout the country.

Statutes that will render impulsive marriage impossible, by requiring an interval to elapse after statement of intention to marry, and making a clean bill of health necessary; divorce laws that shall refuse to pander to caprice and willfulness, but shall make it easy, without scandal or needless publicity, to deliver a woman or a man from an intolerable and irremediable situation, and that shall not be appreciably more lenient in one State than in another, will go far toward curing contemporary evils. It may yet be that the Const.i.tution will be so amended as to permit the National Government to control these matters and thus replace our present chaos with order.

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XXVI. Scharlieb and Silby, Youth and s.e.x. C. Read, Natural and Social Morals, chap. VII. Anon, Life, Love, and Light (Macmillan), pp. 84-96. R. C. Cabot, What Men Live By, chaps.

XXIV-XXIX. W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chaps. XI, XII. C. F.

Dole, Ethics of Progress, part VII, chap. III. Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce, The Spiritual Meaning of Marriage. N. Smyth, Christian Ethics, pp. 405-15. B. P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, part III, chaps.

VIII, IX. W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, chap. XIV. Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque. G. E. C. Gray, Husband and Wife. J. Rus, The Peril and Preservation of the Home. Thompson and Geddes, Problems of s.e.x. H. Munsterberg, "s.e.x-Education" (in Psychology and Social Sanity).

H. G. Wells, "Divorce" (in Social Forces in England and America). C.

J. Hawkins, Will the Home Survive? Biblical World, vol. 43, p. 33.

International Journal of Ethics, vol. 17, p. 181. For the data: United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Reports on Marriage and Divorce. Publications of the National League for the Protection of the Family (Secretary S. W. Dike, Auburndale, Ma.s.sachusetts) and of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (105 West 40th Street, New York). Howard, MATRIMONIAL INSt.i.tUTIONS. Sutherland, ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE MORAL INSTINCT of the Moral Instinct, chaps. vii, ix. Lestourneaux, EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.

CHAPTER XVIII

FELLOWSHIP, LOYALTY, AND LUXURY

EVERY man has to solve the problem of how far he will live for his smaller, personal self, and how far for that larger self that includes the interests of others. The general principles involved we have discussed in chapter XI; we may now proceed to consider their application to the concrete situations in which we find ourselves.

What social relationships impose claims upon us?

(1) The relations of husband and wife and of parenthood are most sacred and exacting, because they are voluntarily a.s.sumed, and because the need and possibilities of help are here greatest. A man or woman may without odium remain free from these obligations; but once they have made the vows that initiate the dual life, once they have brought a helpless child into the world, neither may evade the consequent responsibilities. If undertaken at all, these duties must be conscientiously fulfilled; and whatever sacrifices are necessary must, as a matter of course, and ungrudgingly, be made.

(2) Next in inviolability to these claims are those of father and mother, brother and sister, and other near relatives. Involuntary as these relations are, the natural piety that accepts the burdens they entail must not be allowed to grow dim. Those nearest of kin are the natural supports and helpers of the weak and dependent; and though patience and resources be severely taxed, it is better to let blood ties continue to involve obligation than to permit the selfish irresponsibility of a freer and more individualistic society. Much provocation can be borne by remembering "She is my mother"; "He is my brother"; after all, their interests are ours, and our lives are impoverished, as well as theirs, if we ignore them.

(3) The voluntary bonds of friendship entail somewhat vaguer obligations, since the closeness of the tie is not clearly fixed, as it is in the case of blood relationship. But "once a friend always a friend" is the truehearted man's motto. "a.s.sure thee," says one of Shakespeare's heroines, "if I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it to the last article." No one who has won another's friendship, and, however tacitly, pledged his own, is thenceforth free to ignore the bond. Here are for most men the happiest opportunities for fellowship, for inward growth, and for service; for if the love of wife surpa.s.ses that of friends, it is not only on account of the fascination of s.e.x, but because marriage may be the supreme friendship. Emerson declared that "every man pa.s.ses his life in the search after friendship"; and the greatest of Stevenson's three desiderata for happiness was - "Ach, Du lieber Gott, friends!" Human beings, even when brought up in a similar environment, are so infinitely divergent in temperament and ideal, that the near of kin seldom meet a man's deepest needs, and he must wait and watch to find one here and there with whom he can clasp hands in real mutual comprehension and accord. Want of this spontaneous comradeship sadly limits a life; nothing pays more in joy than the circle of friends that a man can draw about him. Nothing, likewise, is more morally stimulating. "What a friend thinks me to be, that must I be." This linking of our lives to others draws us out of ourselves, corrects our cramped and distorted vision, and reinforces our wavering aspirations. Hence those who are so critical and fastidious as to make few friends ill serve their own interests. A certain heartiness and fearlessness of trust is necessary; reproaches and suspicions, accusations and demands for explanations, must not be indulged in, even if wrong is actually done. A presumption of good intentions must always be maintained, even if appearances are black.

It is more shameful, as La Rochefoucauld said, to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him. Indeed, these deceptions and disillusions are oftenest the result of our own mistaken idealization; we must expect neither perfection nor those particular virtues in which we ourselves are especially punctilious, and undertake to love and cleave to a mortal, not an angel. Friendship requires not only that we lend a hand when help is needed; it implies patience and tact and the endeavor to understand. Through common experiences, repeated interchange of thought and observation, mutual enjoyment of beauty and fun, particularly in expressing common ideals and working together for common causes, there grows to maturity this wonderful relationship "the slowest fruit in the whole garden of G.o.d, which many summers and many winters must ripen."

(4) Beyond the boundaries of blood and friendship lie a whole hierarchy of lesser relationships-to neighbors, to employees, to fellow townsmen, to human beings the world over. Mere proximity const.i.tutes a claim that is not commonly acknowledged when distance interposes; most men would be mortally ashamed to let a next-door neighbor starve, although they may feel no call to lessen their luxuries when thousands, whom they could as easily succor, are perishing in the antipodes. And there is a measure of necessity in this; to burden our minds with the thought of the suffering in India, in Russia, in j.a.pan, leads to a paralyzing sense of impotence. If we confine our thought to the dwellers on our street or in our town, it may not seem utterly hopeless to try to remedy their distress; to improve the situation of the laborers in one's own shop or factory lies within the limits of practicability. But the Christian doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man is becoming a working principle at last; and millions of dollars and thousands of our ablest young men and women are crossing the oceans to uplift and civilize the more backward nations, in deference to the admonition that we are our brothers' keepers. At home this recognition of the basic human relationship of living together on this little sphere, that is plunging with us all through the great deeps of s.p.a.ce, should help to obliterate cla.s.s lines and sn.o.bbishness and bring about a real democracy of fellowship.

(5) Finally, we have a duty to those dumb brothers of ours, the animal species that share with us the earth. For they, too, feel pain and pleasure, and are much at our mercy. We must learn "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

All needless hurting of sentient creatures is cruelty, whether of the boy who tortures frogs and flies, or of the grown man who takes his pleasure in hunting to death a frightened deer. Beasts of prey must, indeed, be ruthlessly put to death, just as we execute murderers; among them are to be counted flies, mosquitoes, rats, and the other pests so deadly to the human race and to other animals. But death should be inflicted as painlessly as possible; no humane man will prolong the suffering of the humblest creature for the sake of "sport" or take pleasure in the killing. We must say with Cowper "I would not enter on my list of friends, (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm."

This does not necessarily imply that we may not rear and kill animals for food. When properly slaughtered, they suffer inappreciably-no more, and probably less, than they would otherwise suffer before death; the fear of the hunted animal is not present, and there is no danger of leaving mate and offspring to suffer. Indeed, the animals that are bred for food would not have their chance to live at all but for serving that end; and their existence is ordinarily, without doubt, of some positive balance of worth to them. Certainly the rearing of cattle and sheep and chickens adds appreciably to the picturesqueness and richness of human life; and if dieticians are to be believed, their food value could hardly be replaced by subst.i.tutes.

The question of vivisection is not a difficult one. Certainly experimentation on living animals should be sharply controlled, anesthetics should be used whenever possible, and the needless repet.i.tion of operations for ill.u.s.trative purposes should be forbidden.

But it is far better for the general good that necessary experimentation should be performed upon animals than upon human beings; not at all as a partisan judgment, to shift suffering from ourselves to others, which would be unjustifiable, but because animals are less sensitive to pain, and unable to foresee and fear it as human beings would. The human lives saved have been of far greater worth not only to themselves but objectively than the animal lives sacrificed.

Moreover, except for a few glaring instances, vivisection has involved little cruelty; and the crusade against it, though actuated by a n.o.ble impulse, has rested upon misrepresentation of facts and exaggeration of evils.

What general duties do we owe our fellows?

(1) The abstract duty to refrain from hurting our fellows, and to give positive help, to whomever we can, will find constant application in connection with each specific problem we are to study. But a few general remarks may be pertinently made here. In the first place, we need to be reminded that to help requires insight and tact and ingenuity; it is not enough to respond to obvious needs or actual requests; we must learn to understand our fellows' wants, remember their tastes, seek out ways to add to their happiness or lighten their burdens. For another must realize the importance of manners, cultivate kindliness of voice and phrase, courtesy, cheerfulness, and good humor.

Surliness and ill temper, glumness, touchiness, are inexcusable; nor may we needlessly burden others with our troubles and disappointments - the motto, "Burn your own smoke," voices an important duty. Again, we must remember that people generally are lonely and in need of love; we must be generous in our affection. It is sometimes said that love given as a duty is a mockery; and doubtless spontaneous and irresistible love is best. But it is possible to cultivate love. If we think of others not as rivals or enemies, but as fellows whose interests we ourselves have at heart, if we try to put ourselves in their place, see through their eyes, and enjoy their pleasures and successes, we shall find ourselves coming to want happiness for them and then feeling some measure of affection. Men and women do not have to be perfect to be loved; all or nearly all are love worthy, if we have it in us to love.

(2) The question how far we should tolerate what we believe to be wrong in others, and how far we should work to reform them, is of the most difficult. Certainly moral evil must be fought; the counsel to "resist not evil" cannot be taken too sweepingly. No one can sit still while a big boy is bullying a smaller, while vice caterers are plying their trades, while cruelty and injustice of any sort are being perpetrated. In lesser matters, too, we must not be inactive, but use our influence and persuasion to call our fellows to better things.

They may well at some later day reproach us if we shirk our duty to help them see and correct their faults; still more may we be reproached by others who have been harmed by faults that we might have done something toward curing. Often a single gentle and tactful admonition has turned the whole current of a man's life. The truest friendship is not too easy- going; it stimulates and checks as well as comforts.

Emerson happily phrases this aspect of the matter: "I hate, when 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."

This is, however, only half the truth. What Stevenson calls the "pa.s.sion of interference with others" is one of the wretchedest poisoners of human happiness. People are, after all, hopelessly at variance in ideals, and we must be content to let others live in their own way and according to their own inner light, as we live by ours.

Probably neither is the light of perfect day. Parents are particularly at fault in this respect; rare is the father or mother who is willing that son and daughter should leave the parental paths and follow their own ideals. Incalculable is the amount of needless suffering caused by the conscientious attempt to make others over into our own image.

As Carlyle wrote, "The friendliest voice must speak from without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from within." We need not only a shrugging "tolerance," but a willingness to admit that those who differ from us may after all be in the right of it. It often happens that as we live our standards change, and we come to see that those whom we were anxious to reform were less in need of reformation than we; and very likely while we were blaming others, they in their hearts were blaming us. The older we grow the less we feel ourselves qualified for the office of censor.

Certain practical counsels may perhaps be not too impertinent: Be sure you can take advice yourself without offense or irritation before you proffer it to others; there may be beams in your own eyes as well as motes in your neighbors'. Be sure you see through the other's eyes, and get his point of view; only so can you feel reasonably confident that you are right in your advice or reproof.[Footnote: Cf. W. E. H.

Lecky, The Map of Life, p. 68: "Few men have enough imagination to realize types of excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible."] Be sure that you are saying what you are saying for the other's good, and not to give vent to your own irritability or selfishness or sense of superiority; say what must be said sweetly or gravely, never patronizingly or sharply, with resentfulness or petulance. Be sure you choose your occasion tactfully, and above all things do not nag; it is better to have it out once and for all than to be forever hinting and complaining and reproving. Praise when you can, temper advice with compliments, make it apparent that your spirit is friendly and your mood good-tempered. Talk and think as little as possible of others' faults; he who is above doing a low act is above talking about another's failings. The only right gossip is that which dwells upon the pleasant side of our neighbors' doings.

Avoid all impatience, contempt, and anger; they poison no one so much as him who feels them. Cultivate kindliness and sympathy; love opens blind eyes, helps us to understand our neighbor, and to help him in the best way. Are the rich justified in living in luxury? Of all the problems that loyalty to our fellows involves, none is acuter, to the conscientious man, than that concerning the degree of luxury he may allow himself. It is strictly things in the world is limited; the more I have, the less others have. How can a good man be content to spend unnecessary sums upon himself and his own family, when within arm's reach men and women and children are being stunted mentally and morally, are living in dirt and squalor, are succ.u.mbing to disease, are actually dying, for lack of the comfort and opportunity that his superfluous wealth could give? "Wherever we may live, if we draw a circle around us of a hundred thousand [sic], or a thousand, or even of ten miles'

circ.u.mference, and look at the lives of those men and women who are inside our circle, we shall find half- starved children, old people, pregnant women, sick and weak persons, all working beyond their strength, with neither food nor rest enough to support them, and so dying before their time."[Footnote: Tolstoy, What Shall We Do Then? chap. xxvi.]

It is only a lack of imagination and sympathy, or an actual ignorance of conditions, that can permit so many really kind-hearted people to spend so much money upon clothes, amus.e.m.e.nts, elaborate dinners, and a lot of other superfluities, in a world so full of desperate need.

It would be well if every citizen could be compelled to do a little charity-visiting, or something of the sort, that he might see with his own eyes the cramping and demoralizing conditions under which, for sheer lack of money, so many worthy poor, under the present crude social organization, must live. It is the segregation of the well to do in their separate quarters that fosters their shameless callousness, and leads, in the rich, "to that flagrant exhibition of great wealth which almost frightens those who know the dest.i.tution of the poor."

There is, however, a growing uneasiness among those who have, an increasing sense of responsibility toward those who have not; there are hopeful signs of a return to the sane ideal of the Greeks, who deemed it vulgar and barbaric to spend money lavishly on self. The compunctions of the rich are indicated, on the one hand, by generous donations made to all sorts of causes, and on the other hand, by the arguments which are now thought necessary to justify the selfish use of money. These arguments we may cursorily discuss.

(1) A clever writer in a recent magazine [Footnote: Katherine Fullerton Gerould, in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 135.] speaks of "fact.i.tious altruism"; with this "altruism of the Procrusteans" who would reduce every one to the simple life-she has "little patience."

"Thousands of people seem to be infected with the idea that by doing more themselves they bestow leisure on others; that by wearing shabby clothes they somehow make it possible for others to dress better- though they thus admit tacitly that leisure and elegance are not evil things. Or perhaps-though Heaven forbid they should be right!-they merely think that by refusing nightingales' tongues they make every one more content with porridge. Let us be gallant about the porridge that we must eat; but let us never forget that there are better things to eat than porridge."

This philosophy, less gracefully expressed, is not uncommon. Luxury is, other things equal, better than simplicity. But other things are not equal when our neighbors are cold and sick and hungry. What self- respecting man can eat "caviar on principle" when another has not even bread? By wearing plainer clothes we can make it possible for others to dress better, by denying ourselves nightingales' tongues we can buy porridge for the poor. It surely betokens a low moral stage of civilization that so many, nevertheless, choose the Paquin gowns and the six-course dinners. Luxury is better than simplicity if it can be the luxury of all. If not, it means selfishness, callousness, and broken bonds of brotherhood. Moreover, it has personal dangers; it tends to breed softness and laziness, an inability to endure hardship, what Agnes Repplier calls "loss of nerve." It tends to choke the soul, to crush it by the weight of worldly things, as Tarpeia was crushed by the Sabine shields. "Hardly can a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven." Simple living, with occasional luxuries, far more appreciated for their rarity, is healthier and safer, and in the end perhaps as happy. Certainly the luxury of the upper cla.s.ses has usually portended the downfall of nations. "It is luxury which upholds states?"

asks Laveleye; "yes, just as the executioner upholds the hanged man."

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates and men decay."

(2) There is a patrician illusion prevalent among the rich, to the effect that they are more sensitive than the poor, have higher natures which demand more to satisfy them; that the lower cla.s.ses do not need and would not appreciate the luxuries which are necessary to their existence. To this the reply is, "Go and get acquainted with them; you will find that they are just the same sort of people that you and your friends are"-not so educated, very likely, nor so refined of speech and manner, but with the same longings and capacities for enjoyment.

Of course, they become used to discomfort and deprivation, seared by suffering; so would you in their place. Human nature has a fortunate ability to adjust itself to its environment. But even if the poor do not realize what they are missing, that is scant excuse for not bringing to them, as we can, new comforts and opportunities.

(3) The commonest fallacy lies in the argument that by lavish consumption the rich provide employment for the poor. They provide employment, yes, in serving them. They create needless work, where there is so much work crying to be done. If that money is put into the bank, instead, or into stocks and bonds, it will employ men and women in really useful tasks. If it is given to some of the worthy "causes" which are always handicapped for lack of funds, it will employ men in caring for the sick, in educating the ignorant, in feeding the hungry, or in bringing recreation and relief to the worn. Every man or woman whose time and strength we buy for our personal service-valet, maid, gardener, dressmaker, chef, or what not-is taken away from the other work of the world.

(4) A certain hopelessness of effecting any good often paralyzes good will. The help a little money can give seems like a drop in the bucket; its a.s.sistance is but for a day, and the need remains as great as ever.

It may even be worse than wasted; it may encourage shiftlessness, it may pauperize. There is no doubt that indiscriminate and thoughtless charity is dangerous; the crude largesse of a few rich Romans of the Empire bred vast corruption and pauperism. But there is much that can safely be done; there are many wise and cautious agencies at work for aid and uplift; and every little, if given to one of them, is of real help.

(5) It is sometimes said that if society discountenances luxury, the motive for hard and efficient work will be too much reduced; we need this extra spur to exertion. But the earning of what may permissibly be spent on self is spur enough; there is no need of inordinate luxury to foster faithfulness and exertion. The praise of superiors and equals, a moderate rise in scale of living, the shame of shirking, the instinctive glory in achievement, and the joy of helping others, are stimuli enough.

(6) Finally, the last argument of the selfish man is that "he has earned his money; it is his; he has a right to do with it as he pleases" This we cannot admit. Legally he is as yet free so backward is our social order-to acc.u.mulate and spend upon himself vast sums.

But it is not best for society that he should, and so he is not morally justified therein. We must agree with Carnegie that "whatever surplus wealth comes to him (beyond his needs and those of his family) is to be regarded as a social trust, which he is bound to administer for the good of his fellows"; and with Professor Sager, that "the general interest requires acceptance of the maxim: the consumption of luxuries should be deferred until all are provided with necessaries." This does not mean that we need live like peasants, as Tolstoy advised, make our own shoes, and till our own plot of ground; nor that we must come down to the level of the lowest. By doing that we should lose the great advantages of our material progress, which rests upon the high specialization of labor and reciprocal service. We should lose the charm and picturesqueness of highly differentiated lives, and sink into the dull, monotonous democracy which Matthew Arnold so dreaded.

We must work where we can best serve; we must try to make our lives and their surroundings beautiful, so far as beauty does not require too great cost. We must save up for a rainy day, for insurance against illness and old age, for wife and children. We may properly invest money, where it will be used to good ends - so that we beware of spendthrift or lazy heirs. We must keep up a reasonably comfortable and beautiful standard of living, such a standard as the majority could hope to attain to by hard work and abstinence and thrift. But all the money one can earn beyond this ought to be used for service. The extravagance and ostentation and waste of many even moderately well to do are a blot upon our civilization. The insane ideal of lavish adornment, of fashionable clothes and costly furnishings, of mere vain display and wanton luxury, infects rich and poor alike, isolating the former from the great universal current of life, and provoking in the latter bitterness and anarchism. Let us ask in every case, Does this expenditure bring use, health, joy commensurate with the labor it represents? A great deal of current expense in dressing, in entertaining, in eating, could be saved by a sensible economy, with no appreciable loss in enjoyment. We must not forget that everything we consume has been produced by the labor and time of others. What fortune, or our own cleverness, has put into our hands that we do not need for making fair and free our own lives, and the lives of those dependent upon us, we should pa.s.s on to those whose need is greater than ours. Is it wrong to gamble, bet, or speculate? A corollary to our discussion of the duties appertaining to the use of money must be a condemnation of gambling. Its most obvious evil is the danger of loss of needed money; most gamblers cannot rightly afford to throw away what ought to be used for their real needs and those of their families. Notably is this the case with college students, supported by their parents, who heedlessly waste the money that others have worked hard to save. But even if a man be rich, he should steward his wealth for purposes useful to society. And he must remember that if he can afford to lose, perhaps his opponent cannot. Moreover, if many cannot afford to lose, no one can afford to win. Insidiously this getting of unearned money promotes laziness, and the desire to acquire more money without work. It makes against loving relations with others, since one always gains at another's expense. It quickly becomes a morbid pa.s.sion, an unhealthy excitement, which absorbs too much energy and kills more natural enjoyments. The gambling mania, like any other reckless dissipation, easily leads to other dissipations, such as drinking and s.e.x indulgence. These disastrous consequences are, of course, by no means always incurred. But in order that the weaker may be saved from them, it behooves the stronger to abstain. All betting, all playing games for money, all gambling in stocks is wrong in principle, liable to bring needless unhappiness. The honorable man will hate to take money which has not been fairly earned; he will wish to help protect those who are p.r.o.ne to run useless risks against themselves. The safest place to draw the line is on the near side of all gambling, however trivial.[Footnote: See H. Jeffs, Concerning Conscience, Appendix. R. E. Speer, A Young Man's Questions, chap. xi B. S. Rowntree, Betting and Gambling. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 18, p. 76.] General relations to others: F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book III, chap. IX, sec. 6; chap. X, secs. 3, 4, 5. G. Santayana, Reason in Society. J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 2d ed, chap.

IX. Emerson, Society and Solitude t.i.tle essay. P. G. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, part IX. Friendship: Aristotle, Ethics, books. VIII, IX. Emerson, "Friendship" (in Essays, vol. I). H. C. Trumbull, Friendship the Master Pa.s.sion. Randolph Bourne, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 795. Luxury: E. de Laveleye, Luxury. E. J. Urwick, Luxury and Waste of Life. Tolstoy, What Shall We Do Then? (or, What To Do?) Maeterlinck, "Our Social Duty" (in Measure of the Hours). F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book III, chap. IV, secs. 3, 4. T. W. Higginson, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 107, p. 301. H. Sidgwick, Practical Ethics, chap. VII.

Hibbert Journal, vol. II, p. 39. H. R. Seager, Introduction to Economics, chap. IV, secs. 43-45.

CHAPTER XIX