Читать книгу Practical Ethics - William de Witt Hyde - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Ethics is the science of conduct, and the art of life.

Life consists in the maintenance of relations; it requires continual adjustment; it implies external objects, as well as internal forces. Conduct must have materials to work with; stuff to build character out of; resistance to overcome; objects to confront.

These objects nature has abundantly provided. They are countless as the sands of the seashore, or the stars of heaven. In order to bring them within the range of scientific treatment we must classify them, and select for study those classes of objects which are most essential to life and conduct. Each chapter of this book presents one of these fundamental objects with which life and conduct are immediately concerned.

A great many different relations are possible between ourselves and each one of these objects. Of these many possible relations some would be injurious to ourselves; some would be destructive of the object. Toward each object there is one relation, and one only, which at the same time best promotes the development of ourselves and best preserves the object's proper use and worth. The maintenance of this ideal union of self and object is our duty with reference to that object.

Which shall come first and count most in determining this right relation, self or object, depends on the character of the object.

In the case of inanimate objects, such as food, drink, dress, and property, the interests of the self are supreme. Toward these things it is our right and duty to be sagaciously and supremely selfish. When persons and mere things meet, persons have absolute right of way.

When we come to ideal objects, such as knowledge, art, Nature, this cool selfishness is out of place. The attempt to cram knowledge, appropriate nature, and "get up" art, defeats itself. These objects have a worth in themselves, and rights of their own which we must respect. They resent our attempts to bring them into subjection to ourselves. We must surrender to them, we must take the attitude of humble and self-forgetful suitors, if we would win the best gifts they have to give, and claim them as our own.

As we rise to personal relations, neither appropriation nor surrender, neither egoism nor altruism, nor indeed any precisely measured mechanical mixture of the two, will solve the problem. Here the recognition of a common good, a commonwealth in which each person has an equal worth with every other, is the only satisfactory solution. "Be a person, and respect the personality of others," is the duty in this sphere.

As we approach social institutions we enter the presence of objects which represent interests vastly wider, deeper, more enduring than the interests of our individual lives. The balance, which was evenly poised when we weighed ourselves against other individuals, now inclines toward the side of these social institutions, without which the individual life would be stripped of all its worth and dignity, apart from which man would be no longer man. Duty here demands devotion and self-sacrifice.

Finally, when we draw near to God, who is the author and sustainer of individuals, of science and art and nature, and of social institutions, then the true relation becomes one of reverence and worship.

In each case duty is the fullest realization of self and object. Whether self or the object shall be the determining factor in the relation depends on whether the object in question has less, equal, or greater worth than the individual self.

If we do our duty repeatedly and perseveringly in any direction, we form the habit of doing it, learn to enjoy it, and acquire a preference for it. This habitual preference for a duty is the virtue corresponding to it.

Virtue is manliness or womanliness. It is the steadfast assertion of what we see to be our duty against the solicitations of temptation. Virtue is mastery; first of self, and through self-mastery, the mastery of the objects with which we come in contact.

Since duty is the maintenance of self and its objects in highest realization, and virtue is constant and joyous fidelity to duty, it follows that duty and virtue cannot fail of that enlargement and enrichment of life which is their appropriate reward.

The reward of virtue will vary according to the duty done and the object toward which it is directed. The virtues which deal with mere things will bring as their rewards material prosperity. The virtues which deal with ideal objects will have their reward in increased capacities, intensified sensibilities, and elevated tastes. The virtues which deal with our fellow-men will be rewarded by enlargement of social sympathy, and deeper tenderness of feeling. The virtues which are directed toward family, state, and society, have their reward in that exalted sense of participation in great and glorious aims, which lift one up above the limitations of his private self, and can make even death sweet and beautiful—a glad and willing offering to that larger social self of which it is the individual's highest privilege to count himself a worthy and honorable member.

Life, however, is not this steady march to victory, with beating drums and flying banners, which, for the sake of continuity in description, we have thus far regarded it. There are hard battles to fight; and mighty foes to conquer. We must now return to those other possible relations which we left when we selected for immediate consideration that one right relation which we call duty.

Since there is only one right relation between self and an object, all others must be wrong. These other possible relations are temptations. Temptation is the appeal of an object to a single side of our nature as against the well-being of self as a whole. Each object gives rise to many temptations. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction."

Just as duty performed gives rise to virtue, so temptation, yielded to, begets vice. Vice is the habitual yielding to temptation.

Temptations fall into two classes. Either we are tempted to neglect an object, and so to give it too little influence over us; or else we are tempted to be carried away by an object, and to give it an excessive and disproportionate place in our life. Hence the resulting vices fall into two classes. Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation are vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter form of temptation are vices of excess. As one of these temptations is usually much stronger than the other, we will discuss simply the strongest and most characteristic temptation in connection with each object. Yet as both classes of vice exist with reference to every object, it will be best to consider both.

Vice carries its penalty in its own nature. Being a perversion of some object, it renders impossible that realization of ourselves through the object, or in the higher relations, that realization of the object through us, on which the harmony and completeness of our life depends. In the words of Plato: "Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul."

Each chapter will follow the order here developed. The outline on pp. vi, vii shows the logical framework on which the book is constructed. Under the limitations of such a table, confined to a single term in every case, it is of course impossible to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole of interrelated members: a conception it would be impossible to present in any other form without entering upon metaphysical inquiries altogether foreign to the practical purpose of the book.