Handbook of Ethical Theory - George Stuart Fullerton (chrome ebook reader txt) 📗

doctrine, taken generally, does seem in harmony with the test of rationality developed above. [Footnote: Chapter xvi.] It aims at the satisfaction of many desires—at what may be termed satisfaction on the whole.

Nevertheless, it is possible to question whether the vote of the majority represents, in a given instance, the actual will of the community.

No one knows better than the practical politician how the votes of the majority are obtained. No one knows better than he that, in the most democratic of communities, it is the wills of the few that count. The organization of a party, clever leadership, the command of the press, the catching phrases of the popular orator, the street procession, the brass band, the possession of the ability to cajole and to threaten—these play no mean role in the outcome, which may be the adoption of a state policy of which a large proportion of the majority voting may be quite unable to comprehend the significance. Shall we say, in such a case, that the will of the majority was for the ultimate end? Or shall we say that the vote was in pursuance of a multitude of minor ends, many of which had but an accidental connection with the ultimate end?

78. IGNORANCE AND ERROR AND THE SOCIAL WILL.—The apparent will of the community appears to be, in large measure, an accidental thing. That is to say, men will what they would not will were they not hampered by ignorance and error, and were they not incapable of taking long views of their own interests.

The decisions of the social will may be the outcome of ignorance and superstition.

Where it is thought necessary to punish the accidental homicide in order to appease the ghost of the dead man, which might otherwise become a cause of harm, the course of justice, if one may call it such, deviates from what the enlightened man must regard as normal. The belief that sin is an infection, communicable by heredity or even by contact, must lead to similar aberrations of primitive justice. Animals, and even material things, have, and not by peoples the most primitive, been treated as rational, responsible and amenable to law. This seems to do the brutes more than justice. On the other hand, the philosophical tenet of the Cartesians, which denied a mind to the brutes, resulted in no little cruelty. The treatment of drunkards, and of the mentally defective, has, at times, been based upon the notion that they are possessed by god or demon, and, hence, have a right to peculiar consideration, or may be treated with extreme rigor.

It is worth while to follow up the above reference to the Cartesians by a reference to St. Augustine. Trains of reasoning based upon theological or philosophical tenets have more than once given rise to aberrations of the moral judgment.

The intellectual subtlety of Augustine betrays him into magnifying to enormous proportions the guilt of the boyish prank of stealing green pears from the garden of a neighbor, inspired by the agreeable thought of the irritation which would be caused by the theft. The pears were not edible, and were thrown to the pigs, which circumstance seduces this father of the Church into the reflection that the sin must have been committed for no other end than for the sake of sinning. A greater crime than this he cannot conceive.

Many years after the event, in writing his Confessions, he expresses in unmeasured terms his horror of the deed, filling seven chapters [Footnote: Confessions, chapters iv-x.] with his reflections and lamentations: “Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, upon which thou hadst mercy when in the depths of this bottomless pit.” “O corruption! O monster of life and depth of death! Is it possible that I liked to do what I might not, simply and for no other reason than because I might not?”

Saint as he was, Augustine would have made a sorry schoolmaster. It is evident that the enlightened mind cannot regard schoolboys as unique monsters of iniquity for making a raid on an orchard.

The community whose decisions are made under the influence of erroneous preconceptions undoubtedly wills, but its will is determined by the accident of ignorance. It is to be likened to the man who, in unfamiliar surroundings, takes the wrong road in his desire to get home. He chooses, but he does not choose what he would if he knew what he was about.

79. HEEDLESSNESS AND THE SOCIAL WILL.—Numberless illustrations might be given of the fact that, not merely ignorance and error, but also a short-sighted heedlessness plays no small part in introducing elements of the accidental and irrational into the social will. The man who spends freely with no thought for the morrow is not more irrational than the state that permits a squandering of its resources, and wakes up too late only to discover that it has lost what cannot easily be replaced.

The life of the community is a long one, and calls for long views of the interests of the community. These are too often lacking. Heedlessness and indifference are a fertile source of abuses. In which case, the will of the community resembles that of the impulsive and erratic man, who has too little foresight and self-control to consult consistently his own interests. We may say that he desires his own good on the whole, but we cannot say that he desires it at all times. Future goods disappear from his view. His choices clash. His actual will at any given moment appears to be the creature of accident. So it may be with the community.

80. RATIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE IRRATIONAL WILL.—The actual social will, as revealed in custom, law and public opinion, often appears, thus, highly irrational, and we may be justified in distinguishing between it and the real will which we conceive of as struggling to get itself expressed. Nevertheless, in justice to custom, law and public opinion, we must look below the surface of things. Even where the decisions of the community seem most irrational, and where there appears to be little consciousness of the ends pursued by the real will, the discriminating observer may see that pure irrationality does not prevail. The individual may show by his actions that he has comprehensive ends, and may yet not be distinctly aware of them. So may a community of men.

“The true meaning of ethical obligations,” says Hobhouse, [Footnote: Morals in Evolution, New York, 1906, p. 30.] “—their bearing on human purposes, their function in social life—only emerges by slow degrees. The onlooker, investigating a primitive custom, can see that moral elements have helped to build it up, so that it embodies something of moral truth. Yet these elements of moral truth were perhaps never present to the minds of those who built it. Instead thereof we are likely to find some obscure reference to magic or to the world of spirits. The custom which we can see, perhaps, to be excellently devised in the interests of social order or for the promotion of mutual aid is by those who practice it based on some taboo, or preserved from violation from fear of the resentment of somebody’s ghost.” It is not wholly irrational that, in the laws of various peoples, an allowance should be made for the sudden resentment which flames up when wrong has been suffered, and that an offence grown cold should be treated more leniently than one which is fresh and the smart caused by which has not had time to suffer diminution. Society has to do with men as they are. It is its task to bend the will of the individual into conformity with the social will. That resentment for wrongs suffered is an important element in the establishment of order in the community can scarcely be denied, nor is it wholly unreasonable, men being what they are, for the community to make some concessions to the natural feeling of the individual. Moreover, the offender caught in the act is indubitably the real offender; and settled animosities are more injurious to the social order than are fugitive gusts of passion.

And if it is true that the arbitrary laws of hospitality, as recognized by some primitive and half-civilized communities, are reinforced by the superstitious fear of the stranger’s curse, it is none the less true that they serve certain social needs. The fact that hospitality tends to decline when it becomes superfluous is sufficient to indicate its social significance.

Again, collective responsibility—the making of a man responsible for the delinquencies of those connected with him, even when he could in no way have prevented the evils in question—appears to modern civilized man, in most instances, [Footnote: Only under normal conditions. We have recently had abundant opportunity to see that in time of war civilized nations have no scruples in making the innocent suffer with the guilty, or even for the guilty.] an irrational thing. Yet men are actually knit into groups with common interests and accustomed to cooperation. To treat them as wholly independent units, responsible only to some higher organization such as the state, is to overlook actual relationships which have no small influence in determining the course of their lives. Within each lesser group the members can and do encourage or repress given types of action beneficial or the reverse. Is it irrational for the larger group to set such influences to work by holding the lesser group responsible in its collective capacity? In China the principle has worked with some measure of success as an instrument of order for many centuries. In an enlightened society some better method of attaining order may obtain, but it would be a mistake to assume that there is nothing behind the principle of collective responsibility save the unintelligent attempt to satisfy resentment by striking indirectly at the offender through those connected with him, or the mental confusion that identifies the culprit, through mere association of ideas, with other members of the group to which he belongs.

81. THE SOCIAL WILL AND THE SELFISHNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.—There is, then, often some reason to be discovered even in what appears at first sight to be wholly irrational. But no small part of the irrationality of the actual social will must be set down, in the last instance, to that peculiar form of irrationality in the individual or in groups of individuals which we call selfishness.

That some degree of inequality should be necessary in communities of men, in view of the differentiation of function implied in cooperative effort, may be admitted. How far the inherited organization or the existing environment of a given community may make it necessary, in the interests of all, to grant a large measure of power or prerogative to a single individual, or to the few, is fair matter for investigation. But the most cursory glance at the pages of history, the most superficial survey of the present condition of mankind, must make it evident that a far-seeing and enlightened social will has not been the determining factor in bringing into existence many of the institutions which are accepted by the actual social will of a given epoch.

Neither Alexander the Great nor Napoleon can be regarded as true exponents of the social will. The rule of the oligarchy is based upon selfish considerations. The institution of slavery overrides the will of the bondsman in the interests of his possessor. The perennial struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots”—the rich and the poor—is, unfortunately, carried on by those engaged in it with a view to their own interests and not with a view to the good of society as a whole.

That those to whom especial opportunities are, by the accident of their position, open, or by whom special rights are inherited, should accept the situation as right and proper is not to be wondered