CHAPTER V

THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE TO BE OBSERVED TOWARDS FELLOW-MEN IN GENERAL, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONS WHICH CONNECT US MORE CLOSELY WITH SOME THAN OTHERS

_The Right to Life_

The thoughts presented above on the subject of sin naturally lead over to the next topic, the obligations we are under regarding the life, the property and the reputation of others. The ancient moral laws unquestionably remain: “Thou shalt not kill”; “Thou shalt not steal”; “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” But their application is extended and their significance intensified by the positive definition which has been given to the term _Spiritual_.

So long as the mere inviolateness of the human personality is emphasized, without any defined conception of what it is that is inviolate (the inviolateness without the infinite preciousness), there is danger that the physical part of man will be invested with the sacred character that belongs to the spiritual, that the two, the spiritual and the physical parts, will be identified.

The result will be mischievous in two ways: First, while the act of killing will be reprobated, a kind of tabu being attached to bloodshed, the taking of the life of fellow-beings in more indirect ways, or what may be called constructive murder, will be lightly regarded. The following case is mentioned by a recent writer. The directors of a railroad refused to vote the sum of five thousand dollars to provide a certain safety appliance for their cars. Soon after an accident occurred, in which a number of men were killed. The accident might have been prevented had the five thousand dollars required for the installation of the safety appliance been voted. Now the men were undoubtedly killed by the directors of the company. As to the difference in the degree of guilt in the case of direct and indirect murder, there is room for casuistical debate. The consequences it is true were not present to the directors’ minds. But are they not responsible for the very fact that the consequences were excluded from their view? They were intent on their dividends, and ignored the endangered lives. But is not this the substance of their guilt? Does not moral progress lie in the direction of extending the sense of responsibility so as to cover the indirect taking of life? Similarly the use of poisonous substances in industry, bad sanitation, inadequate fire protection, must be stigmatized as indirect murder. The Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” must extend over a far wider area than it has covered in the past.[53]

Secondly, the positive definition of the spiritual nature enables us to perceive more distinctly that the physical part is the means and the spiritual part the end, and to draw the necessary consequences. That which is means is not to be cherished if to do so would defeat the end itself; hence the physical life is _not_ to be preserved if by preserving it we deny or defeat the very purpose which the physical part is to serve. So long as men have the tabu feeling about bloodshed, the fact that life ought of right to be taken in certain instances will seem a hopeless contradiction of the general rule against killing. Keeping in mind the spiritual end of existence on the other hand, we affirm unhesitatingly that it is better that a man should die than commit a heinous crime. It was better for the young girl mentioned in a well-known tale, threatened with outrage, and seeing no other possible way of escape, to strangle herself with her own hair rather than submit. According to the opinion of certain scholastic writers on ethics, dishonor resides solely in the consent of the soul, and where this is absent the mere physical infringement cannot leave a moral stain. This is a helpful point of view in regard to the victims of the atrocities of war, the inmates of certain Belgian nunneries, and the hapless objects of unspeakable brutality in certain Polish villages. The anguish of a pure-minded woman who becomes a mother under such circumstances is hardly conceivable. And to discriminate between the infamy done to her and her own unpolluted soul is a plain duty, as well as to relieve the innocent offspring of outrage from any participation in the guilt to which it owes its existence. But the case to which I refer is different. It is one in which the choice remains between voluntary death and submission to intended violation. Submission in such a situation argues a kind of consent, or at least the absence of a sufficient revulsion.

It is right to kill an intending murderer supposing that there is no other way of preventing him from committing his crime, whether the intended victim be oneself or someone else. It is not only the life thus protected from attack that is saved, but the murderer in a sense is saved as well, so far as he can be saved, by the intervention. Also the members of his family are saved, humanity is saved from moral disgrace in his person. The same reasoning applies to the position of the extreme non-resistants. They will not, they tell us, do a wrong to prevent a wrong. In their eyes to take the physical life of another is in every possible instance an absolute wrong. They fail to take account of the instrumental relation between the physical and the spiritual parts. And on the same grounds, a defensive war, a war to ward off aggression, may be theoretically justified. But here the application of the theory is dubious as well as dangerous. Exceptional cases of high-handed aggression that ought to be resisted occur, but aggression is rarely, if ever, one-sided. As a rule, there is more or less wrong on both sides, and the tangle of accusations and mutual recriminations is almost impossible to unravel. Very rarely, indeed, if ever, is right altogether on one side, and wrong on the other, though predominant right may be on one side and predominant wrong on the other. And aside from this, the instruments of destruction in modern warfare have become so monstrous, the efficiency notion applied to war has led to such ruthlessness, the attempt to distinguish between the civilian population and the armed forces has so nearly broken down, that right-thinking persons everywhere are now eagerly intent on how to prevent aggression before it can take effect, rather than to resist it after it has occurred.

NOTE

The casuistical question may be raised whether from this point of view we are not all murderers. The amount I spend on my house, food, recreation, might if divided prolong the life of many a child in the slums. Am I not then actually a parasite, that is, a murderer? It is this shocking scruple that has led fine people to live among the poor, and to try to equalize their mode of living with that prevailing in the environment. The motive is noble, though as a matter of fact they may never succeed in doing what they set out to do because they never actually touch bottom. There are always depths of poverty to which they can not descend. They may spend comparatively little, yet that little is far in excess of the spending of the most indigent. And had they stripped themselves of everything they would have been face to face with the _reductio ad absurdum_ of their method, for they would have abandoned civilization and degraded their human life to the level of the wayside tramp.

What is inspiring in their example is just the immense compassion, the willingness to give up so much. But the method itself is not a solution.

Are we then murderers, all of us? Perhaps a distinction may be drawn between acts which in themselves are hostile to the life of fellowmen, like overtaxing the worker, and acts which tend positively to maintain the higher values of life,—such as the providing of decent shelter, support and education, for the members of one’s family. It is true that, as Tolstoy warns us, we easily slip into indefensible luxury under the pretence of maintaining the higher values. But this does not affect the validity of the distinction itself.

And yet the distinction does not relieve us of what may be called our share of the social or collective guilt. The exploiter is chargeable with individual guilt. I who am trying to keep up the standard of civilized living within my little sphere am nevertheless conscious of participating in the social guilt, the guilt of a society that has permitted and still permits such misery to exist. Well, it does exist, and I can do but a very little to change it. Can I then endure the contrast between my own lot and that of the greater number. Is it not true after all that if I give up the comforts, or let me say the helps to the maintenance of the higher values, I should be saving the lives of many children? Those children are dying because I am not dividing my possessions among the poor. Can I stand up and look at that fact, at those deaths?

The only answer which it is possible to give at the point we have thus far reached in our exposition is: push on, perfect civilization, a way will eventually be found to uplift the masses and make them partakers of the future civilization. The other alternative, that of Tolstoy, is stagnation. Yet I cannot disguise from myself the fact that in the meanwhile, while we are trying to push on, millions are perishing. This is the true “burden of world pain,” not the sentimental world pain due to the fact that one is not having oneself the best kind of a time in the world, but the pain caused by the fact that while we are reaching forward to help the suffering masses, those masses, though composed of individuals morally as worth while as ourselves, and many of them doubtless better, if we only knew it, are perishing before our very eyes, and that we stand by and cannot save them. I have said that in the meanwhile while we are trying to push on, millions are perishing. The actual moral problem so often overlooked is underlined in the words “in the meanwhile.”

There is one pathetic consolation. Envy is not the widespread vice which it is sometimes represented to be. Those who are in trouble take the will very largely for the deed. People in the worst conditions are grateful to anyone who shows a real desire to help, even if his actual performance does not go very far. And there is a still finer trait in ordinary human nature, namely, the tendency to find a certain vicarious relief in the joy of the few, provided that their joy be pure.

_The Right to Property_[54]

“Property,” according to Blackstone, “is the sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.”

Orthodox jurisprudence, like orthodox religion, is characterized by the absoluteness of its formula. It ignores the genesis of its concepts in the long line of antecedent historical development, and it disdains to entertain the demand for modification, though the circumstances of the time loudly call for it.

“The sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises,” etc., may be a fact, but it is not a right. Property can only be regarded as a right if shown to be subservient to the ethical end,—the maintenance and development of personality. Orthodox jurisprudence effaces the end, and treats that which is or has been at one time a means as if it possessed a sanctity of its own. On the other hand, the empirical treatment of jurisprudence, in dismissing the supposedly absolute means, tends to leave out of sight the ethical end, and to treat the social institutions as subservient to mere convenience.

The following propositions will indicate the changes in the conception of the right of property required by our ethical theory.

1. Property is a relation between a person or persons and things. There can be no property right in persons, but only in things.[55]

2. The right of property faces in two directions: Toward outside nature and toward fellow human beings. We have a right over the external things of nature. We have a right to the services, though not to the personality, of fellow human beings. These two aspects of the right of property must be kept apart and defined.

It is sometimes held that the human race as a whole, as over against nature, has the right of dominion. Nature, it is said, is our quarry, we can take out of it the stones we need to construct the edifice of civilization. Nature is our tool. The laws of nature, as science discovers them, become our servants. Nature offers the raw material which we consume. Nature has no rights as against man. But I hold that neither has man rights as against nature, except in so far as he rightly defines the end in the interest of which he makes use of nature—the maintenance and development of personality.

To suppose that the right of property as the extension of personality over things is tenable without regard to its instrumental use, to suppose that bare appropriation of nature as of “treasure trove” is a prerogative of man, is to lend countenance to the false notion of occupation, or first appropriation, which has confused the ethics of the subject in the literature of jurisprudence, and prevented a right understanding of it. If bare appropriation be the foundation, then the first comer has a right against his successors, since the extension of personality over the thing has been actually accomplished by him, and that is all there is to be said about it. Again, on this view, a case may be made out for vested interests, that is to say, for those who have successfully appropriated the earth, yes, and the fullness thereof, and who having thus effectually extended their personality over things without regard to the uses they make of their possessions, are then to be entitled to remain indefinitely in secure ownership of them.

Without an ethical standard, without the notion of an end to be subserved, stubborn possession will always be able to resist modification, and on the other hand attempts at modification will be haphazard. Neither the human species collectively nor the individual has a right simply to appropriate the things of the external world. Neither the first occupier nor the last is entitled to his goods unless he can make out a greater good in the interest of which he should be allowed to possess them.

But the case of primary occupation is academic. It occurs on Robinson Crusoe’s island and in legal fiction. Even when the white race invades Africa, it does not commonly take possession of unoccupied land, but dispossesses the natives. On what ground does it dispossess them? Is there an ethical standard by which the dealings of the civilized nations with the populations of Africa can be measured? Is the introduction of the appliances of modern civilization, the opening up to trade, a sufficient ground for the subjection or the extermination of the inhabitants? In this connection it becomes clear how urgent a more clarified conception of property rights is. False ideas of this so-called right are to no small extent responsible for the massacre of the inferior races, and the mutual slaughter of those who covet their lands. A proclamation of the Queen of England or of the Emperor of Germany, or the signature of an irresponsible chief to a treaty the meaning of which he scarcely understands, transfers millions of subjects and their territory to one or other of the European powers. What right of property have these European powers in the territory and the peoples acquired by them in this fashion?

The last example shows that the right of ownership, except in very rare instances, is not in question in respect to the dealings of man with nature, but comes into play chiefly in the relation of man to his fellows. There are competitors to be outstripped, thwarted. There are weaker fellow-beings to be subdued. The use of force and cunning in acquiring property is well nigh the general rule. Are there any ethical ideals which, if they could be realized, might disclose a better way, might bring order into this frightful chaos, and abate the conflicts? From the ethical ideal as outlined in previous chapters this follows:

The extension of personality over things is a right in so far as things are employed to maintain and develop potential personality. The use of the services of a fellowman is a right in so far as his services are used in such a manner as to preserve and develop his personality as well as that of the user.

In speaking of the use of the services of others we touch upon the social aspect of the property relation, and here is the crux of the whole matter. It is coming to be affirmed more and more that property is a “social” concept, that it cannot be explained either as implying a relation of the individual to outside nature, save exceptionally, nor as a relation of the individual considered atomistically to other atomic individuals. The social tie, it is held, is intrinsic. The nature of man as such is social, but the word “social” in current discussion is very ill-defined, and is commonly understood to denote merely the fact of the interdependence of men upon one another, without conveying the idea of a rule or standard by which the system of interdependence may be regulated. Vague notions, such as that of social happiness, are believed sufficient to take the place of such a standard.

Let me then consider first the bare fact of interdependence, and see what follows from it, and how far it will take us.

Every man has manifold wants for the satisfaction of which he depends on others. His wants are legion; his ability and opportunity to satisfy them exceedingly limited. It is this cross relation that expresses the so-called social nature of man. But the reciprocal dependence of men upon one another for the satisfaction of their wants by no means constitutes an ethical tie. The tie between the Greek master and the Greek slave, as described by Aristotle, was social, but not ethical. The same is true of the tie that united the Southern planter to his negro slaves. The relation was indeed far more social than that between the modern mill-owner and the operatives in his factory, but still it was not ethical. The reason is clearly stated by Aristotle himself. According to him the slave is a living tool: the purpose of his existence is not realized in himself but in his master. He fulfils the end of his being by setting free the higher functions exercised by his master. But from the ethical point of view no man may be regarded as the tool of another. Each human being is an end _per se_, and the highest object of his existence is to be fulfilled, not in others, but jointly in them and in himself.

I have just said that the social and the ethical views are not synonymous or coincident, as the loose use of language in current literature would imply. I go farther and say that the social and the ethical point of view are even on their face contradictory. It cannot be denied that the natural system of interdependence resembles that of the body and its members. A hierarchy of organs and of functions is apparent in the human body, and likewise in the social body. Some men do the lowest kind of work. Their function appears to be to produce food, clothing and shelter, to satisfy the mere physical wants. Some are the hands, so to speak, of society, while only a very few effectually represent the brain. The simile has been carried out in detail by well-known writers, in both ancient and modern times. It is quite true that the artist and the scientist are dependent on the manual laborer, just as he in turn is dependent on them. But then, consider the difference in the dignity of the services they render one another. Was not the Greek, who saw things dispassionately as they are, right in asserting that, taking society in the large, the purpose of human life is fulfilled in the few, and that the greater number exist in order that by their inferior services they may enable these few to express humanity in its highest terms?

It seems to me that the kind of social arrangement contemplated by the great Greek philosophers, and by some of the mediæval publicists, as well as by certain modern thinkers, is unquestionably social. The fact of interdependence is stressed by them. The ethical note of equality, or, as I should prefer to put it, equivalence, is left out.

I have endeavored in a recent book to indicate how the ethical system may be superinduced over the social system.[56] Here I am concerned chiefly to mark as strictly as possible the distinction between the two terms social and ethical. And I must, therefore, at once amend my previous statement that property is a social concept by saying that it is the concept of a social relation considered as the substratum in which is to be worked out the ethical relation.

The general consequences of the property concept as defined are these:

1. He who will not work, neither shall he eat; or better, he who will not work if able-bodied shall be disciplined and trained in such a manner that he will work. The fruits of nature do not fall into the lap of mankind. We are not living in a state of Paradise. The human race is engaged in the arduous labor of constantly renewing the capital on which it subsists. As a member of the race, everyone is bound to do his part.

2. No one has a property right in harmful or superfluous luxuries, since property is the control of external things for the maintenance and development of personality; and luxury, so far from maintaining, undermines personality, and hinders its development.

No one has ethically a right of property in great fortunes like those accumulated under the modern system of industry. Whatever is in excess of one’s needs, rightly estimated, is not appropriate to one, not proper to one, not his property. Since the present system of ownership cannot be changed abruptly, the idea of the stewardship of wealth has been suggested to quiet the consciences of those who have come to realize that they have no moral right to excessive wealth. But the idea of stewardship should be held with fear and trembling. It is at best a makeshift, a bridge leading over to something more sound. It may be so taught and received as to seem to justify by philanthropic use the possession of great fortunes. But the power to dispose of vast funds for philanthropic uses may come to be itself a badge of superiority. And even if this be not so, if surplus wealth be used modestly, and with a sincere intention to apply it in the best possible way, there is yet no surety that any individual owner will have the breadth of vision, the experience, the insight, to discharge adequately the function of distributor. The defects of his early education, habits ingrained in him in the course of his business career, may lead him to bestow lavishly in one direction while turning a deaf ear to the appeal of other needs even more urgent and fundamental. Nothing short of the collective wisdom of the community, the collaboration of the best, can safely direct the surplus wealth available for social benefaction.

3. Everyone is ethically entitled to a share of the products furnished by nature and worked up into usable shape by his fellows, and also to the direct services of fellow human beings, in so far as that share and those services are necessary in order to enable him to perform in the best possible way the specific service which he in turn is capable of rendering. Our ethical theory here supplies us with a principle which takes the place of remuneration. There is no such thing as a just remuneration of labor, there is no such thing as a fair wage, if the wage be considered as the equivalent of, or the reward for the work done. It is not possible by any process of calculation to construct an equation between labor and reward. The laborer is assuredly not entitled to the product of his labor, as the current formula awkwardly puts it, for it is an entirely hopeless undertaking to try to ascertain what the product of any man’s labor is. In the modern forms of industry, the contributions of the different factors engaged in production are intimately intermingled, play into one another, and are inseparable. Neither the so-called workers alone are the producers of wealth, nor the employers and capitalists, nor yet both together irrespective of the labors of past generations of which they enjoy the usufruct. The question, what is a fair wage, or a fair profit, is badly posed. There is no such thing as a fair wage or profit in the sense of a fair compensation for the work performed.

The proper payment of the human factors engaged in production is unascertainable genetically, _i.e._, if one goes back to the origin of the product. It can only be approximately determined by fixing attention on the end to be served. And the end in each case is the maintenance and development of personality. In other words, that is a fair wage which suffices to enable the different functionaries coöperating in production each to perform his function, or render his service, in the most efficient possible manner. The solution of the labor question must be along teleological not genetic lines. Adequate nourishment as to quantity and quality, suitable dwellings, educational opportunities, etc., are all indispensable to the rendering of service, even by “common laborers.” Specific requirements come up for consideration with respect to the different special functions, and those who perform them.

My intention in this chapter is to indicate the bearings of the ethical theory on living questions of the day. Nothing is more emphatic in the programmes of the working-class than this demand for social justice. Nothing is more discouraging than to see the futile efforts made to define social justice by extemporizing a notion of fair adjustment which goes to pieces in every serious labor controversy.

One more remark should be made in regard to what is meant by property as a relation between persons and things considered as a means of developing personality. A convenient illustration is the use of a block of stone by a sculptor. The sculptor’s attempt at self-expression is an effort to combine two things in themselves uncongenial, an ideal image, and an external tangible thing, the block of stone. The mental image does not leap from the mind upon the stone and transform it magically into its own likeness. The external thing, the stone, offers resistance, and the resistance limits the artist’s effort. But the limitation itself becomes in time an indispensable aid. For the ideal image as at first it started up in the artist’s mind was vague, and the limitations imposed by the intractable nature of the material compel him to articulate the image, to grasp more firmly its complex details, and thus to become more surely possessed of it. The same is true of the mental thing which we call the relation of cause and effect in the mind of the scientist, and of his endeavor to impose this mental relation on the sequence of phenomena observed by him. And the same is again true of that supreme thing which we call the ethical ideal, and of the effort to embody it in the social relations. The attempt to express the ethical ideal in human society inevitably hits on limitations, and leads to frustrations. We have in our heads fine schemes of universal regeneration. We find elements in human nature that resent and resist our Socialisms, our communisms. We desire to enlarge men’s moral horizon, the field of their moral interest, to lead out from the family to the nation, to fraternity in general. We presently discover that we are losing the benefit of the closer ties. In the very process of building we seem to be in danger of destroying the foundations, and to be building in the air. In this way our formulations of the ethical ideal are tested. We are compelled to recast them, and the frustrations which we meet with become the means of clarifying and articulating the ideal itself, and of enabling us to experience more vividly the coercive impulses that go out from it.

_The Right to Reputation_

The ethical rule is to show a sacred respect for the reputation of others. In the present discussion intellectual and moral reputation may be considered separately.

Under the first head of intellectual reputation, certain points suggest themselves, one of them in regard to controversies concerning priority of scientific discovery. What is the sense of such controversies? What difference does it make whether the law of the conservation of energy was first enunciated by Helmholtz or by Robert Mayer, or whether the method of fluxions was invented by Newton or Leibnitz,—not to mention lesser contrarieties of claims? Would it not argue, on the part of the scientists and their friends, a more entire devotion to objective truth if they showed themselves indifferent to personal credit? The discovery, the invention, it may be said, is important, not the reputation of the discoverer or the inventor. Nevertheless, such controversies are carried on in a lively spirit. And it is usually felt that something more than vanity is at stake, that a man is entitled to be named in connection with the productions of his mind.

Such controversies resemble a suit at law undertaken to determine a disputed title to some valuable property. Plagiarism is different. It is barefaced intellectual theft. The title to the property in this case is not disputed. The plagiarist just steals an idea or a form of words in which an idea has been happily expressed, and palms it off as his own, hoping to escape with his stolen goods undetected. In this case too, it seems, one might say the idea is important, not the authorship. Nevertheless, a profound resentment is felt, not only by the author, but by the general public, against a plagiarist.

A rule is ethical when the conduct prescribed is instrumental to the development of personality. Respect for reputation is ethical because reputation is a help to the development of personality. A man projects his mind outward, so to speak, into the productions of his mind. As a thinking being he anchors himself in outside reality. He transfers himself, as it were, into an external thing,—a discovery, an invention, the expression of an idea in apt language,—each a thing that goes on existing independently of himself. To deny his connection with it is to infringe upon his personality, to efface his personality in so far as his personality is enshrined in his mental product.

Again, a man’s reputation as a scientist or scholar is a prop to his personality as a thinker. A man can never be quite certain of the validity of his thinking until it is approved by the consensus of the competent. To win that approbation is to know that as far as he has gone he is on sure ground. He can thence proceed, can turn toward new problems with a sense of power and a measure of self-confidence not previously attained. To rob him of his reputation is to deprive him of this invaluable aid to further mental development.[57]

Coming next to moral reputation, we find that the ethical rule requiring respect for the moral character of others is even more exacting, and that any contravention of it deserves an even more strenuous reprobation. The Decalogue prohibits the bearing of false witness and this rule is extensible from courts of law to ordinary conversation, since the principle involved is the same. The Sermon on the Mount menacingly warns against judging others: “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Buddha enjoins his followers to refrain from malicious gossip, and includes a prohibition to this effect among the principal pronouncements of his religion. All the great teachers of ethics and religion insist on this point, perhaps because the natural propensities of men constantly tend in the opposite direction, and are so hard to restrain. To stab one’s neighbor in the back, morally speaking, to insinuate base motives, to spread damaging reports about him, to suggest as possibly and then as probably true rumors which one does not positively know to be untrue, to allow private repugnance to take the place of evidence,—are infringements of the moral reputation of others with some of which notoriously many even of the so-called best people are chargeable. I do not here speak of the grosser attacks, attacks on character inspired by envy, rivalry, and greed. The soundness of the rule is generally admitted, though its violations are past belief and without number.

But is the rule itself as to moral reputation tenable? There is a difference between intellectual and moral reputation at which we must at least cast a glance. Intellectual reputation is a fairly safe index of merit; moral reputation is not. A man’s mind is reflected in his intellectual performances. Is the same true of his moral character? Is not the moral character an interior, elusive thing? The real character escapes the eye of the outside spectator and judge; and if this be so, why should it be so important a matter to safeguard a man’s moral reputation, seeing that the reputation he deserves is past finding out? A public official, for instance, is accused of corrupt practices. He is innocent, and his friends and he are indignant at the damaging accusations brought against him. But if not guilty of the palpable derelictions with which he is charged, yet, in view of his opportunities and education, he may not be less blameworthy for other acts with which he has not been charged, and in his heart of hearts he knows that this is so. Why then, this outcry?

Other examples might be adduced. The honor of a young woman is attacked by the circulation of atrocious rumors, and the reaction at this most sensitive point is certain to be extreme when the falseness of the accusation is exposed. But is outward decorum, correct behavior, always a sure sign of inward purity?

There is this difference then between the intellectual and the moral character. The one can be measured, the other cannot. But the reply to these sophistical objections is still the same as before. The purpose of the ethical rule is to furnish aids in the development of personality. The aim in view is not genetic, but teleological, not to determine how far in analyzing a man’s character down to the bottom he may be found to be already admirable, but to help him in attaining excellence, by progressively advancing toward strength and virtue. And moral reputation is a great help to this end. It is a prop on which he can lean. He who does right acts and has the credit for them, is thereby encouraged to do other right acts. And if the inner voice whispers, as it is sure to do in the finer natures, that the good opinion of his fellows, founded on his correct deportment, is undeserved, the shame of it may lead him to more determined efforts to merit the character which, on however insufficient evidence, is attributed to him.

Reputation is sacred because it is an almost indispensable means to further mental and moral progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] _Vide_ note at the end of the Chapter.

[54] A right is a claim of one person upon another or others, and the justification consists in its relation to personality. Rights exist between persons for the sake of the maintenance and development of personality.

[55] Animals, for the purpose now in hand, may be regarded as things, being devoid of personality, though certain modifications in the treatment of animals are prescribed by the fact that they are sentient creatures. But there is no moral interdiction of the involuntary servitude of animals.

[56] See Chapter VII on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in _The World Crisis_, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1915.

[57] A remark may here be in place regarding the erudition expended in determining which of the writings attributed to some great philosopher like Plato are spurious, and which genuine. Is the time and labor spent on such researches worth while? The object in this case is not so much to clear or vindicate the reputation of the philosopher, or to give him his due, as to rescue for posterity, free from corruptions, a living and quickening thing to which he has given birth, and which the world cannot afford to lose. For the work of a great philosopher like Plato is alive, and is valuable because it is still quickening. And it is quickening, not because of any positive formulation of truth (like a scientific law), but because of the élan of the human spirit with which it is vibrant in attacking the eternal problems of life and destiny. The same applies to the industry of modern critics in collecting material wherewith to facilitate the deeper understanding of some great poet like Dante or Goethe.