Читать книгу Ethics - Джон Дьюи - Страница 26

Coöperation and Mutual Aid.[19]—Aside from their effects in promoting intelligence, courage, and ideality of life, industry, art, and war have a common factor by which they all contribute powerfully to the social basis of morality. They all require coöperation. They are socializing as well as rationalizing agencies. Mutual aid is the foundation of success. "Woe to him who stands alone, e'en though his platter be never so full," runs the Slav proverb. "He that belongs to no community is like unto one without a hand." Those clans or groups which can work together, and fight together, are stronger in the struggle against nature and other men. The common activities of art have value in making this community of action more possible. Coöperation implies a common end. It means that each is interested in the success of all. This common end forms then a controlling rule of action, and the mutual interest means sympathy. Coöperation is therefore one of nature's most effective agencies for a social standard and a social feeling.

1. Coöperation in Industry.—In industry, while there was not in primitive life the extensive exchange of goods which expresses the interdependence of modern men, there was yet much concerted work, and there was a great degree of community of property. In groups which lived by hunting or fishing, for instance, although certain kinds of game might be pursued by the individual hunter, the great buffalo and deer hunts were organized by the tribe as a whole. "A hunting bonfire was kindled every morning at daybreak at which each brave must appear and report. The man who failed to do this before the party set out on the day's hunt was harassed by ridicule."[20] Salmon fishery was also conducted as a joint undertaking. Large game in Africa is hunted in a similar fashion, and the product of the chase is not for the individual but for the group. In the pastoral life the care of the flocks and herds necessitates at least some sort of coöperation to protect these flocks from the attacks of wild beasts and from the more dreaded forays of human robbers. This requires a considerable body of men, and the journeying about in company, the sharing together of watch and ward, the common interest in the increase of flocks and herds, continually strengthens the bonds between the dwellers in tents.

In the agricultural stage there are still certain forces at work which promote the family or tribal unity, although here we begin to find the forces which make for individuality at work until they result in individual ownership and individual property. Just as at the pastoral stage, so in this, the cattle and the growing grain must be protected from attacks by man and beast. It is only the group which can afford such protection, and accordingly we find the Lowland farmer always at the mercy of the Highland clan.

2. Coöperation in War.—War and the blood feud, however divisive between groups, were none the less potent as uniting factors within the several groups. The members must not only unite or be wiped out, when the actual contest was on, but the whole scheme of mutual help in defense or in avenging injuries and insults made constant demand upon fellow feeling, and sacrifice for the good of all. To gain more land for the group, to acquire booty for the group, to revenge a slight done to some member of the group, were constant causes for war. Now although any individual might be the gainer, yet the chances were that he would himself suffer even though the group should win. In the case of blood revenge particularly, most of the group were not individually interested. Their resentment was a "sympathetic resentment," and one author has regarded this as perhaps the most fundamental of the sources of moral emotion. It was because the tribal blood had been shed, or the women of the clan insulted, that the group as a whole reacted, and in the clash of battle with opposing groups, was closer knit together.

"Ally thyself with whom thou wilt in peace, yet know

In war must every man be foe who is not kin."

"Comrades in arms" by the very act of fighting together have a common cause, and by the mutual help and protection given and received become, for the time at least, one in will and one in heart. Ulysses counsels Agamemnon to marshal his Greeks, clan by clan and "brotherhood (phratry) by brotherhood," that thus brother may support and stimulate brother more effectively; but the effect is reciprocal, and it is indeed very probable that the unity of blood which is believed to be the tie binding together the members of the group, is often an afterthought or pious fiction designed to account for the unity which was really due originally to the stress of common struggle.

3. Art as Socializing Agency.—Coöperation and sympathy are fostered by the activities of art. Some of these activities are spontaneous, but most of them serve some definite social end and are frequently organized for the definite purpose of increasing the unity and sympathy of the group. The hunting dance or the war dance represents, in dramatic form, all the processes of the hunt or fight, but it would be a mistake to suppose that this takes place purely for dramatic purposes. The dance and celebration after the chase or battle may give to the whole tribe the opportunity to repeat in vivid imagination the triumphs of the successful hunter or warrior, and thus to feel the thrill of victory and exult in common over the fallen prey. The dance which takes place before the event is designed to give magical power to the hunter or warrior. Every detail is performed with the most exact care and the whole tribe is thus enabled to share in the work of preparation.

In the act of song the same uniting force is present. To sing with another involves a contagious sympathy, in perhaps a higher degree than is the case with any other art. There is, in the first place, as in the dance, a unity of rhythm. Rhythm is based upon coöperation and, in turn, immensely strengthens the possibility of coöperation. In the bas-reliefs upon the Egyptian monuments representing the work of a large number of men who are moving a stone, we find the sculptured figure of a man who is beating the time for the combined efforts. Whether all rhythm has come from the necessities of common action or whether it has a physiological basis sufficient to account for the effect which rhythmic action produces, in any case when a company of people begin to work or dance or sing in rhythmic movement, their efficiency and their pleasure are immensely increased. In addition to the effect of rhythm we have also in the case of song the effect of unity of pitch and of melody, and the members of the tribe or clan, like those who to-day sing the Marseillaise or chant the great anthems of the church, feel in the strongest degree their mutual sympathy and support. For this reason, the Corroborees of the Australian, the sacred festivals of Israel, the Mysteries and public festivals of the Greeks, in short, among all peoples, the common gatherings of the tribe for patriotic or religious purposes, have been attended with dance and song. In many cases these carry the members on to a pitch of enthusiasm where they are ready to die for the common cause.

Melodic and rhythmic sound is a unifying force simply by reason of form, and some of the simpler songs seem to have little else to commend them, but at very early periods there is not merely the song but the recital, in more or less rhythmic or literary form, of the history of the tribe and the deeds of the ancestors. This adds still another to the unifying forces of the dance and song. The kindred group, as they hear the recital, live over together the history of the group, thrill with pride at its glories, suffer at its defeats; every member feels that the clan's history is his history and the clan's blood his blood.