Everyday ethics

Preface

A SUCCESSFUL book on methods of teaching ethics will ■ improve in the schoolroom the art of instruction in the most difficult province of study and practice.

Ethics relates to all manner of deeds and habits of doing which concern one's fellow men, either as private individuals or as members of institutions — ^members of the social whole.

One may conduct himself in such a manner as to obstruct the actions of his fellow men and thereby reduce their labours and strivings to a nullity, more or less, according to his power and skill. Or, on the other hand, he may act in such a manner as to reenforce their labours and strivings and increase the net product of human endeavour.

The fact that there are rational objects to be achieved by humanity — name them collectively as the conquest of nature for man's use and the peaceful combination of man with men to the end that each individual may share in the experience of all individuals • — these objects ought to be the common aim of all rational beings : this fact furnishes the basis and norm of ethics. It makes evident the Source of Power. The individual who promotes the twofold end of civilisation increases the aggregate power of mankind and at the same time shares in that power. His own help vi Preface

of others is reflected back upon him. He gets in exchange for the mite that he contributes, the right to participate in the positive outcome of the labours of all. This is a true source of power and it can be approached in only one sure way — ^by the adoption of ethical action as a habit, and by continuous growth in ethical insight.

Human power consists in the control of nature and the ability to effect combinations with one's fellow men.

Ethics is in the first place a matter of the will; it concerns the form of doing.

Good breeding consists chiefly in correct habits of practice rather than in correct modes of thinking. And good behaviour is a bundle of good habits. All the habits that facilitate combination with one's fellow men in matters of common weal concern the will rather than the intellect.

Thus in the school, behaviour is the first consideration. For it makes possible the concerted work — work in classes. The class work of the school is of an altogether higher order than mere individual study under a private tutor. For in the class the pupil sees the failures and successes of his schoolmates who are of the same grade of progress as himself; he measures his work by their work and discovers from day to day other ways of looking at the subject of the lesson. He gradually learns to reenforce his own insight by the insights of others. But the individual pursuing his work by himself under a tutor is not aided in this salutary way. His teacher is in another orbit and does not help him by emulation or vicarious experience — • the sight of others in the same plight as himself and

Preface vii

yet achieving success by one or another device of industry and persistence.

In order that the school may perfect its method of teaching the individual by the class, there are certain ethical habits necessary, regularity of attendance, of study, of concerted action — all pupils intent on the same thing. Next there is punctuality ; readiness and alertness, even more necessary than regularity in making the school with its class work effective. Then, thirdly, there is silence, a self-repression of tendencies to disorder, a subjugation of the animal proclivity to prate and chatter. Silence on the part of pupils enables them all to concentrate their attention on the exposition of the teacher; its opposite has the effect of producing distraction.

The activity of each nullifies the activity of his fellows. The morbid desire to attract attention to one's self is repressed by the school virtue of silence; respect for the rights of others and for the triumph of the grand aim of the school takes its place.

A fourth schoolroom virtue is industry in the form of work at the assigned task. It takes on one of two forms: first the individual absorption of each by himself in the prescribed study or investigation of the topic for to-day's lesson. This is an absorption in which the pupil goes from the external, first aspects of a subject to the secondary ones, deeper and higher. He learns to test and discard the superficial and to seize essentials. He learns to strive for insight into profound principles.

The other side of school industry is the alert and viii Preface

critical attention to the work of one's fellows under the review of the teacher in the class exercise. In the former kind of industry the pupil is absorbed in his own work oblivious of the presence of teacher and fellow pupils. He is using his whole might to master his task. In the latter kind of industry the pupil is concentrating his attention on the work of others. Each form of attention is essential to culture.

In the lines of direct will-training the school is potent in building up good habits of cooperation with one's fellows. By effort and reiterated precept of the teacher good habits in respect to regularity, punctuality, silence and industry get formed and become a second nature, unconsciously a part of the personal make-up of each pupil.

But because these are unconscious habits they have sunk below the strictly moral plane of action, for they are more or less mechanical. The truly moral must be connected with a world-view — a. theory of a moral order of the universe.

There should be formed a habit of looking for the rational ground of each action — ^a habit of ethical thinking that amounts to conscientiousness. The bundle of practical habits results from mechanical obedience to the school order and although it serves great ends in that it makes possible cooperation with one's fellows, the pupil may not understand the rationale of his practical habits and they may have merely a conservative influence preserving the traditional use and wont that stands in the way of readjustment to higher ideals.

Preface ix

Thus it happens that the second way to ethical life belongs to the intellect rather than to the will directly. It concerns a competent discussion of the grounds of conduct — the standards of morality. Along this second line of ethical theory and practice — ^which is that chosen by Mrs. Cabot in this book — the somewhat advanced student is called away from ethical habit to the consideration of the moral grounds of all habit. It is especially the consideration to which the future leader of public opinion should give attention in his own preparatory studies. It is moreover specially the line of ethical training needed by tht school teacher, although not to the exclusion of a careful study of the rationale of the discipline of school order and of unconscious habit in the elements of gootl breeding.

The teacher should know the application of the highest ethical principles and be able to bring them to the aid of the immature mind struggling to free itself in the presence of a conflict of duties.

A careful training of the teacher in discriminating the motives of conduct is useful, not merely in the practical settlement of cases of discipline that arise, but — what is of even more importance — useful in getting an insight into all the studies of the school which have human nature as their content or subject; for example, literature, history, biography, economics, commerce, politics, and the like.

Great stress is laid by the author on the choice o£ a special calling in life and on the moral support it ^ives to character. In fact it is made a ver^ impor^

X Preface

tant norm for the decision of one's course in the presence of conflicting duties.

Each activity of the soul, memory, imagination, courage, feeling, the sense of honour, has its moral aspect. It contributes to strengthen or to weaken the moral character. The discussion of details under this head forms one of the most valuable features of the present treatise and cannot fail to aid the teacher who gives it careful study.

Care is taken by the author to avoid sentimentalism on the one hand and on the other hand the approach to unintelligible abstractions. The composition of the book is such that live questions are everywhere introduced and the interest of the reader is aroused at the outset and held firmly to the end.

[William T. Harris.

Washington, 1905.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Diffusion of Ethics

I. Rise and Spread of Ethical Questions . . . . i

II

We come next to a point of special interest. It turns out that if one is to succeed in playing golf, he must acquire and exercise patience, industry, concentration, perseverance, pluck, and self-sacrifice. In fact to do what he wants to do really well he must develop a group of powers which are really virtues. But this is not peculiar to athletics. The successful musician must be energetic, persevering, industrious, must overcome fear, and resist allurements, must control himself under provocation ; so also must the sailor, the motorman, the washerwoman, the nurse, the doctor, and the soldier.

This means that it is our chosen work that is the best moral teacher. Though we aim only to be efficient, to make a success of what we undertake, no matter what it is, we find that in the process we develop what people call " virtues." This point seems to me so important as to need further illustration.

The Freshman who aspires to play football next autumn has no intention of being virtuous. What he wants is to get on the team, but if he succeeds it will be because he has or acquires a set of powers which are just those which his best friends would want him to have.

" If Jack would only put the same determination, the same perseverance, the same self-restraint and ambition into other things that he does into football, he would be perfect."

In this part of his life he is all that they want him to be, and it is there that he is happiest, least constrained, most expressed and on his mettle. The qualities he shows in football are as truly virtues as when they are displayed in war or engineering.

It is true that a boy may show great self-control in the way he plays football and none at all in the way he spends his money, just as the sailor may show great courage in a storm and none in resisting the temptation to drink. A politician is often very unselfish in making sacrifices for his children, but utterly selfish toward the citizens whom he defrauds by putting in as superintendent of streets a personal friend who is unfit. There are many people who show their good qualities only in a small fraction of their life, the part where their keen interest is aroused. Here they are fully alive and so are " good." When we study, as we do in ethics, the core of good action, we find it wherever anyone is doing his work well, whether he knows

The Dififusion of Ethics 5

it to be his duty and calls it so, or whether he only feels it to be worth doing. The laws of ethics are the principles which anyone must follow to attain success in any pursuit, and what are called virtues are the powers developed by and necessary to any efficient work.

It is worth noticing here that it is through activity and efficiency that goodness is reached, not through avoidance of actions that might possibly be dangerous or disturbing. It is impressed upon us from childhood up that being good is the same as keeping quiet, sitting still, not getting dirty, and avoiding breakage of china.

" Do as you're told.

Come when you're bid.

Shut the door softly And you'll never be chid."

Now it is true that shutting the door softly and sitiing still may at times and for some special reason be good acts, but in themselves they tend to stifle and dishearten the moral life which grows through activity. When the good characters in books are, like Owen Wister's Virginian, men of unquenchable purpose, the identification of good with stupid, and bad with interesting will lose its meaning. This fallacy still haunts many who are but half aware of it.

So far I have taken up only the large, far-reaching decisions as to one's work — decisions such as are made only a few times in one's life, but no matter how small or great the decision, ethics is always concerned with what to do and how to do it. Making a moral decision always means trying to think fearlessly, sensibly, and sympathetically about whatever we propose to do.

At the opening of the Spanish War, Commodore Dewey was confronted with the question whether or not he should enter Manila Bay and bombard the city. The weight of great responsibility hung over him. He had time to think carefully, as he was bound to think, without flinching from the consequences and without self-deceit. What did he need to consider in order to make the best decision?

First of all he needed to reenforce in his memory the sense of his obligation — his contract to fulfil the duties of a commodore of the United States. Next he had to decide the question : Will it further the purpose for which I am here if I enter Manila Bay and bombard the city ? What will be the gain to the United States in case of success and the loss in case of failure ? He had to consider the danger, not as it affected himself or his friends, but as it concerned the effectiveness of his fleet and the prestige of his country. The decision to take all necessary risks for himself and his men was made long before ; but he still needed to consider the fitness of his squadron for the task before it and to " size up " the whole situation. He needed, that is, to know all the relevant circumstances and the capacity of the group of men under his command.

The decision what to do once made, his next question was how to do it. " Shall the attack be made by night or by day ? How shall I best avoid the torpedoes in the harbour? At what point is the weakest defence

The 7?if5fusion of Ethics 7

of the city? Is it an advantage or an added danger to cooperate with the insurgent Filipinos?"

All pursuits have something in common, and the same principles are applicable to every one. A friend of mine, in doubt about his choice of a profession, visited many people who were following different lines of work — lawyers, doctors, business men, politicians, musicians— and asked of each : " What qualities do you need to succeed in your profession ? " Much to his surprise, each answered in almost the same words: " You need energy, perseverance, resource, good judgment, interest in your work, concentration, imagination." This is what we have found out in thinking about different pursuits, and it is what makes the study of ethics, which deals with what is common to all aims, all work, all achievement, universally interesting and important.'

Ill

If you'are undertaking any work whatsoever, you are in so far interested in ethics. We can picture ethics as like a sun shooting out rays in eveiy direction. If you are interested in anything, the rays from ethics hit you.

As it is only when you are a tramp without ties or aims that your citizenship becomes unreal, so it is only as you are a moral tramp with no stake in life anywhere that ethics cannot touch you. The tramp, as his name suggests, is always on the move, but yet going nowhere in particular. He will not settle down nor yet travel with any definite purpose. The moral tramp is outwardly respectable and usually covers less ground than his ragged brother of the road, but like all tramps he will not stick to anything, accumulate anything, or commit himself to anything. We may like or dislike him and he may like or dislike his beat; but duties he has none. He must first take a hand somewhere in the game of life ; hold some property, get a job, marry, or become an anarchist. As soon as he commits himself in any of these ways he is bound by duties on every side.

Ethics is a real and living study only because it deals with the myriad interests of all who are taking a hand in the game of life, as citizenship is significant because it includes the myriad activities of all citizens. Wipe out all the pursuits and interests of its citizens and you have not the United States, but an absolute blank. So it is with ethics. Wipe out all the interests toward which ethics radiates, and ethics is nothing; it too is an absolute blank. This point is so important that we need to consider it carefully. Here is our Country to which we owe everything. What should we be without it ? Yet on the other hand without us, that is, without all the lives of its inhabitants, our country would be utterly meaningless. This does not mean that citizenship in the United States is but a name. No, it is the greatness of the country that it at the same time moulds and is moulded by the lives of all its citizens. So it is the strength, not the weakness, of ethics that, while concerned with all interests yet identical with none, it draws its life from the eager pursuits of which the Avprld is fijll. Wherever a human being strikes a job,

The Diffusion of Ethics 9'

there is ethical life, just as when the runner from a vine strikes the earth, there grows a root. Only those who are unrooted are outside of the grip of moral issues.

IV

It may easily seem that I am making ethics so central and all-pervasive a subject that it monopolises the world. The scientist may say : " You claim that ethics penetrates all human life, but science penetrates everything, human and non-human. Make room for science." The artist, too, and the lawyer finds material everywhere and will not be crowded out by ethics. There is no need that they should be. Ethics is one point of view from which to look at everything in the world, and science, art, and law are other points of view. The subject of marriage, for example, can be looked at from an ethical point of view. Ought any girl to marry a man who has consumption ? It can be looked at from an artistic point of view, as, in the love scenes of Romeo and Juliet. It can be looked at from a scientific point of view, as it is when the statistics of marriage and divorce are stated impartially and without reference to right and wrong or to the happiness and tragedy involved. Marriage can be looked at from a legal point of view. The law decides at what age a girl can marry without her parents' consent, what are the rights of a woman to her husband's property, what degree of ill-treatment is ground for annulling a marriage.

Every subject may have these aspects and countless

■others. I was once driving to a much-anticipated ball with a friend who, though also invited to the ball, had decided to go to a lecture which I thought very dull. As we drove along we had a hot discussion about the relative value and interest of these two ways of spending the evening. As I was getting out at the house where the ball was to take place, our driver asked a question which brought home to us with a wholesome shock the difference between our point of view and his : " Where did you say," he inquired with a jerk of his head toward my friend in the carriage, " the other freight was to be unloaded ? "

Everything in the world may be considered on its physical side, its aesthetic side, its legal side, and in countless other aspects. We are interested here in considering everything from its ethical side.

If we cut off from our present stu3y these other points of view and turn our undivided attention toward ethics we find at the outset an important question. Can the study of ethics make us good or show us what we ought to do? Only indirectly. A doctor can tell a young man that the use of opium is ruining his health. He can make this vivid by describing what the effect on his brain and his character will be. As a result the man may give up taking opium, but the doctor cannot make him give it up. Nevertheless it is the duty of the doctor to open the patient's eyes; then, if he chooses to go on, it is with his eyes open.

The Diffusion of Ethics ill

Ethics is like the doctor. It cannot force anyone to be good, but it can make us recognise that, just as small doses of opium gradually kill the body, so selfishness, indolence, falsehood, are suicide of the spiritual nature.

It is important to realise, also, that ethics cannot touch us at all if we stand aloof from every aim and every interest. The great stream of active life, brimful of questions of right and wrong, flows along continually, but we may sit on the bank and refuse to enter; we may dabble our hands in it and draw them out and let the shining drops slip through our fingers. " If you take small doses of morphine every day you will gradually ruin your health and character," says the doctor. " Let them go," the infatuated man may answer. " If you want to go to college, you must study every evening." " I don't care whether I do or not," may be the baffling reply, baffling because the binding force of all these counsels depends on the word if, with which each begins, and if anyone denies his part in each and all of them, moral rules slip ofif him like water off a slanting roof. He is left to vegetate or become a brute as he will.

Ethics cannot help us against our will ; it cannot help us when we have no will ; neither can it tell us the particular steps we are to take. If you ask : " Does ethics show me what I ought to do?" the answer is again: " No." No book on ethics can tell you what you ought to do, because each life, and so the right choice in any life, is different from any that has been made before.

A girl is trying to decide whether she ought to go to college or not. No book on ethics can say that she ought to go to college, nor can it go so far as to say that all girls ought to go to college. She may be in duty bound to stay at home and take care of her blind father, and if it would be wrong for her to go, then it cannot be true that all girls should go, nor even that all girls who can afford it should go. It is the whole significance and joy of our lives that each one is different and each decision new, like the first step in a field of unbroken snow. Ethics cannot direct the steps because no book or theory can anticipate our advance into the untrodden future.

I said that ethics is the study of what to do and how to do it. I need to add at once that it gives the principles or general rules for any act and never the particular decision. We all follow the same principles when we carry out any plan, but we apply them differently.

A glance at various careers will make this clearer. We have already seen that if you want to succeed in golf, medicine, society, or anything else you must know your subject thoroughly, know your own capacities, and apply steadily all your powers. The particular rule, however, is different in each case. The golfer says: Keep your eye on the ball. The doctor says: Keep your eye on the patient's lips. The politician says : Keep your eye on the State of New York. The music teacher says : Keep your eye on the notes.

Ethics is concerned with what is called for in all these different directions, and that is among other things, attention, concentration, intentness. If you are going to do anything well you must look sharp. That

The Diffusion of Ethics 13

is a universal rule of successful action, and so it is a law of ethics. The particular choice is unique, however, your own and not another's, and so there can be no specific rule.

Let us turn to the positive side. We already have had glimpses of what it is that ethics can do for us ; it is time to see more fully. Ethics helps us by giving us principles of action as tools for clearing away underbrush. Living is always making our way through an unexplored country, sometimes with dense woods to penetrate, sometimes with rushing rivers to navigate, and sometimes with open green fields where we are tempted to linger. The help ethics can give is very much like the help of having an axe with us on such a journey. The axe does not cut until we swing it, nor unless we keep it sharp ; nor does the axe decide for us what to cut. There are times when we hardly use it because our way is clear, but any day we may meet difficulties in which we should be utterly baffled without it. Many a moral question is as baffling and tangled as dense underbrush, and even where the decision is not in itself important it is often puzzling.

My father and mother are away for a week when I wake up one morning with an uncomfortable cold. Ought I to go to school or not ? Of course, my mother would not want me to make my cold worse, nor, on the other hand, to miss school unnecessarily. At this stage of the question we have a deadlock. Either decision seems wrong. The first way in which the study of ethics would help me is to suggest that I must know the circumstances and my own nature better. How bad is my cold? Am I feverish? Am I naturally strong? Have I had similar colds which vsrere not increased by going out? Is the schoolroom likely to be close or hot?

If I dislike school, I am likely to find myself saying, " I may be feverish, and I might make my cold wrorse by going to school. Mamma would never want me to do that, and besides there is an examination in algebra to-day and if I go to-morrow I shall not have to take it."

Ethics clears up this tangle in three ways. It helps us to see which facts are really relevant ; it helps us to clear away self-deceit; and it helps us to put in order our reasons, pro and con, so that instead of a jumble of mixed ideas we have a number of clear arguments on each side and can weigh and balance fairly. It is true that I have a cold, but I am naturally strong; I take my temperature and find I am not feverish; the sky is grey, but it hardly looks like a bad storm, and as for the examination, that has absolutely nothing to do with the question. It ought not to have the slightest weight. On the whole it is fairly clear that I ought to go, and if my cold is made worse I will take that into account another time.

This last sentence suggests still further the help that careful thought about moral questions gives. It teaches us to glean from our past and from the past of others help that prevents our stumbling over recurring decisions or repeating old blunders. What should we think of a captain who went to sea in a ship whose seaworthiness he had never investigated? Yet our

The Diffusion of Ethics 15

lives with their critical moral decisions are far more important than any boat, and we are the sole commanders in them. We know it is blameworthy and foolhardy to sign papers whose contents we have not read. Is it not far more blameworthy and foolhardy to take upon ourselves the responsibilities of marriage or of the choice of a profession without all the foresight we can gain ?

I A general of long experience can look over a bewildering battle scene, see what is happening, and give the command for the best thing to be done. The smoke, the deafening noise, the masses of wounded, the scattered troops whose colours are so blurred that it is hard to tell friend from foe, are still there for him as for you ; but he has learned to see the important and put aside the irrelevant. He has a plan of battle which gives him a clue to guide his decision, he knows the principles of attack, he has gathered up the experience of other generals and of other battles. So in moral life if we are to be ready for experience we must learn to make our plan of battle and to formulate our principles of attack through study, through practice, and through watching the career of others among us or before us on the field.