Читать книгу Ethics - Джон Дьюи - Страница 35

These have been suggested, in the main, in the description of the nature of custom and its regulation of conduct. We may, however, summarize them as a preparation for the next stage of morality.

1. The Forming of Standards.—There is a standard, a "good," a "right," which is to some degree rational and to some degree social. We have seen that custom rests in part on rational conceptions of welfare. It is really nothing against this that a large element of luck enters into the idea of welfare. For this means merely that the actual conditions of welfare are not understood. The next generation may be able to point out as equally absurd our present ignorance about health and disease. The members of the group embodied in custom what they thought to be important; they were approving some acts and forbidding or condemning others; they were using the elders, and the wisdom of all the past, in order to govern life. So far, then, they were acting morally. They were also, to a degree, using a rational and social standard when they made custom binding on all, and conceived its origin as immemorial. When further they conceived it as approved by the gods, they gave it all the value they knew how to put into it.

The standards and valuations of custom are, however, only partly rational. Many customs are irrational; some are injurious. But in them all the habitual is a large, if not the largest, factor. And this is often strong enough to resist any attempt at rational testing. Dr. Arthur Smith tells us of the advantage it would be in certain parts of China to build a door on the south side of the house in order to get the breeze in hot weather. The simple and sufficient answer to such a suggestion is, "We don't build doors on the south side."

An additional weakness in the character of such irrational, or partly rational standards, is the misplaced energy they involve. What is merely trivial is made as important and impressive as what has real significance. Tithing mint, anise, and cummin is quite likely to involve neglect of the weightier matters of the law. Moral life requires men to estimate the value of acts. If the irrelevant or the petty is made important, it not only prevents a high level of value for the really important act, it loads up conduct with burdens which keep it back; it introduces elements which must be got rid of later, often with heavy loss of what is genuinely valuable. When there are so many ways of offending the gods and when these turn so often upon mere observance of routine or formula, it may require much subsequent time and energy to make amends. The morals get an expiatory character.

2. The Motives.—In the motives to which it appeals, custom is able to make a far better showing than earlier writers, like Herbert Spencer, gave it credit for. It doubtless employs fear in its taboos; it doubtless enlists the passion of resentment in its blood feuds. Even these are modified by a social environment. For the fear of violating a taboo is in part the fear of bringing bad luck on the whole group, and not merely on the violator. We have, therefore, a quasi-social fear, not a purely instinctive reaction. The same is true in perhaps a stronger degree of the resentments. The blood revenge is in a majority of cases not a personal but a group affair. It is undertaken at personal risk and for others' interest—or rather for a common interest. The resentment is thus a "sympathetic resentment."[42] Regarded as a mere reaction for self-preservation this instinctive-emotional process is unmoral. As a mere desire to produce pain it would be immoral. But so far as it implies an attitude of reacting from a general point of view and to aid others, it is moral. Aside from the passions of fear and resentment, however, there is a wide range of motives enlisted. Filial and parental affection, some degree of affection between the sexes over and above sex passion, respect for the aged and the beings who embody ideals however crude, loyalty to fellow clansmen—all these are not only fostered but actually secured by the primitive group. But the motives which imply reflection—reverence for duty as the imperious law of a larger life, sincere love of what is good for its own sake—cannot be brought to full consciousness until there is a more definite conception of a moral authority, a more definite contrast between the one great good and the partial or temporary satisfactions. The development of these conceptions requires a growth in individuality; it requires conflicts between authority and liberty, and those collisions between private interests and the public welfare which a higher civilization affords.

3. The Content.—When we consider the "what" of group and customary morality we note at once that the factors which make for the idealizing and expansion of interests are less in evidence than those which make for a common and social interest and satisfaction. There is indeed, as we have noted, opportunity for memory and fancy. The traditions of the past, the myths, the cultus, the folk songs—these keep up a mental life which is as genuinely valued as the more physical activities. But as the mode of life in question does not evoke the more abstractly rational activities—reasoning, selecting, choosing—in the highest degree, the ideals lack reach and power. It needs the incentives described in the following chapters to call out a true life of the spirit. The social aspects of the "what," on the other hand, are well rooted in group morality. It is unnecessary to repeat what has been dwelt upon in the present and preceding chapters so fully. We point out now that while the standard is social, it is unconsciously rather than consciously social. Or perhaps better: it is a standard of society but not a standard which each member deliberately makes his own. He takes it as a matter of course. He is in the clan, "with the gang"; he thinks and acts accordingly. He cannot begin to be as selfish as a modern individualist; he simply hasn't the imagery to conceive such an exclusive good, nor the tools with which to carry it out. But he cannot be as broadly social either. He may not be able to sink so low as the civilized miser, or debauchee, or criminal, but neither can he conceive or build up the character which implies facing opposition. The moral hero achieves full stature only when he pits himself against others, when he recognizes evil and fights it, when he "overcomes the world."

4. Organization of Character.—In the organization of stable character the morality of custom is strong on one side. The group trains its members to act in the ways it approves and afterwards holds them by all the agencies in its power. It forms habits and enforces them. Its weakness is that the element of habit is so large, that of freedom so small. It holds up the average man; it holds back the man who might forge ahead. It is an anchor, and a drag.