A Manual of Moral Philosophy Part 3

Except so far as there may have been direct communications from the Supreme Being, all *man's knowledge* of persons, objects, and relations *is derived*, in the last resort, *from observation*. Experience is merely remembered self-observation. Tradition, oral and written, is acc.u.mulated and condensed observation; and by means of this each new generation can avail itself of the experience of preceding generations, can thus find time to explore fresh departments of knowledge, and so transmit its own traditions to the generations that shall follow. Now what we observe in objects is chiefly their properties, or, what is the same thing, their _fitnesses_; for a property is that which fits an object for a specific place or use. What we observe in persons is their relations to other beings and objects, with the fitnesses that belong to those relations.

What we experience all resolves itself into the fitness or unfitness of persons and objects to one *another* or to ourselves. What is transmitted in history and in science is the record of fitnesses or unfitnesses that have been ascertained by observation, or tested by experience. The progress of knowledge is simply an enlarged acquaintance with the fitnesses of persons and things. He knows the most, who most fully comprehends the relations in which the beings and objects in the universe stand, have stood, and ought to stand toward one another. Moreover, as when we see a fitness within our sphere of action, we perceive intuitively that it is right to respect it, wrong to violate it, our knowledge of right and wrong is co-extensive with our knowledge of persons and things.

The more enlightened and cultivated a nation is, then, the more does it know as to right and wrong, whatever may be its standard of practical morality.

For instance, in the most savage condition, men know, with reference to certain articles of *food and drink*, that they are adapted to relieve the cravings of hunger and thirst, and they know nothing more about them. They are not acquainted with the laws of health, whether of body or of mind.

They therefore eat and drink whatever comes to hand, without imagining the possibility of wrong-doing in this matter. But, with the progress of civilization, they learn that various kinds of food and drink impair the health, cloud the brain, enfeeble the working power, and therefore are unfit for human use; and no sooner is this known, than the distinction of right and wrong begins to be recognized, as to what men eat and drink. The more thorough is the knowledge of the human body and of the action of various substances on its organs and tissues, the more minute and discriminating will be the perception of fitness or unfitness as to the objects that tempt the appet.i.tes, and the keener will be the sense of right or wrong in their use.

For another ill.u.s.tration of the same principle, we may take *the relation between parents and children*. In the ruder stages of society, and especially among a nomadic or migratory people, there is not a sufficient knowledge of the resources of nature or the possibilities of art, to render even healthy and vigorous life more than tolerable; while for the infirm and feeble, life is but a protracted burden and weariness. At the same time, there is no apprehension of the intellectual and moral worth of human life, still less, of the value even of its most painful experiences as a discipline of everlasting benefit. In fine, life is little more than a mere struggle for existence. What wonder then, that in some tribes filial piety has been wont to relieve superannuated parents from an existence devoid equally of joy and of hope; and that in others parental love may have even dictated the exposure-with a view to their peris.h.i.+ng-of feeble, sickly, and deformed children, incapable of being nurtured into self-sustaining and self-depending life? But increased conversance with nature and art constantly reveals new capacities of comfort and happiness in life, and that, not for the strong alone, but for the feeble, the suffering, the helpless, so that there are none to whom humanity knows not how to render continued life desirable. At the same time, a higher culture has made it manifest that the frailest body may be the seat of the loftiest mental activity, moral excellence, and spiritual aspiration, and that in such a body there is often only a surer and more finished education for a higher state of being. Filial piety and parental love, therefore, do all in their power to prolong the flickering existence of the age-worn and decrepit, and to cherish with tender care the life which seems born but to die. There is, then, to the limited view of the savage, an apparent fitness in practices which in their first aspect seem crimes against nature; while increased knowledge develops a real and essential fitness, in all the refinements and endearments of the most persevering and skilful love.

These examples, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show *the dependence of conscience on knowledge*, not for relatively right decisions, but for verdicts in accordance with the absolute right. There is no subject that can be presented for the action of conscience, on which, upon precisely the same principles, divergent and often opposite courses of conduct may not be dictated by more or less accurate knowledge of the subject and its relations.

It will be seen, also, that *with the growth of knowledge, conscience has a constantly wider scope of action*. The number of indifferent acts is thus diminished; the number of positively right or wrong acts, increased.

An _indifferent_ act is one for the performance of which, rather than its opposite, no reason, involving a question of right or wrong, can be given.

Thus, if the performance or the omission of a specific act be equally fitted to the time, place, circ.u.mstances, and persons concerned, the act is an indifferent one; or, if two or more ways of accomplis.h.i.+ng a desired end be equally fitted to time, place, circ.u.mstances, and persons, the choice between these ways is, morally speaking, a matter of indifference.

But with a knowledge both more extensive and more minute of the nature, relations, and fitnesses of beings and objects, we find an increasing number of instances in which acts that seemed indifferent have a clearly perceptible fitness or unfitness, and thus acquire a distinct moral character as right or wrong.

Section III.

Sources Of Knowledge. 2. Law.

*Law is the result of the collective experience*, in part, of particular communities, in part, of the human race as a whole. It encourages, protects, or at least permits whatever acts or modes of conduct have been found or believed to be fitting, in accordance with the nature of things and the well-being of men, and therefore right; it forbids and punishes such acts or modes of conduct as have been found or believed to be unfitting, opposed to nature and to human well-being, and therefore wrong.

It is far from perfect; it is below the standard of the most advanced minds; but it represents the average knowledge or belief of the community to which it belongs. *The laws* of any particular state cannot rise far above this average; for laws unsustained by general opinion could not be executed, and if existing in the statute-book, they would not have the nature and force of law, and would remain on record simply because they had lapsed out of notice. Nor can they fall far below this average; for no government can sustain itself while its legislation fails to meet the demands of the people.

While *law* thus expresses the average knowledge of belief, it *tends to perpetuate its own moral standard*. The notions of right which it embodies form a part of the general education. The specific crimes, vices, and wrongs which the law marks out for punishment are regarded by young persons, from their earliest years, as worthy of the most emphatic censure and condemnation; while those which the law leaves unpunished are looked upon as comparatively slight and venial. Not only so, the degree of detestation in which a community learns to look on specific crimes and offences is not in proportion to their actual heinousness, but to the stress of overt ignominy attached to them by legal penalties. Instances of this effect of law on opinion will be readily called to mind. Thus a common thief loses, and can hardly regain his position in society; while the man who by dishonest bankruptcy commits a hundred thefts in one, can hold his place unchallenged, even in the Christian church, while it is known to every one that he is living-it may be in luxury-on the money he has stolen. The obvious reason is that from time immemorial simple theft has been punished with due, when not with undue, severity, while the comparatively recent crime of fraudulent bankruptcy has as yet been brought very imperfectly within the grasp of penal law. Again, no man of clear moral discernment can doubt that he who consciously and willingly imbrutes himself by intoxication is more blameworthy than he who sells alcoholic liquors without knowing whether they are to be used internally or externally, moderately or immoderately, for medicine or for luxury. Yet because the latter makes himself liable to fine and imprisonment, while the former-unless he belong to the unprivileged cla.s.ses-has legal protection, instead of the disgraceful punishment he deserves, there is a popular prejudice against the vender of strong drink, and a strange tenderness toward the intemperate consumer. Yet another instance. There are crimes worse than murder. There are modes of moral corruption and ruin, whose victims it were mercy to kill. But while the murderer, if he escape the gallows, is an outcast and an object of universal abhorrence, no social ban rests upon him whose crime has been the death of innocence and purity, yet, if reached at all by law, can be compounded by the payment of money.

But though law is in many respects an imperfect moral teacher, and its deficiencies are to be regretted, its *educational power* is strongly felt for good, especially in communities where the administration of justice is strict and impartial. It is of no little worth that a child grows up with some fixed beliefs as to the turpitude of certain forms of evil, especially as the positive enactments of the penal law almost always coincide with the wisest judgments of the best men in the community.

Moreover, law is progressive in every civilized community, and in proportion as it approaches the standard of absolute right, it tends to bring the moral beliefs of the people into closer conformity with the same standard. It is, then, a partial and narrow view of law to regard it only or chiefly as the instrument of society for the detection and punishment, or even for the direct prevention of crime. Its far more important function is so to train the greater part of each rising generation, that certain forms and modes of evil-doing shall never enter into their plans or purposes.

The *civil*, no less than the criminal *law is a source of knowledge as to the right*. The law does not create, but merely defines the rights appertaining to persons and property. The laws of different nations are, indeed, widely different; but there may be that in their respective histories which makes a difference in the actual rights of citizens, or their civil codes may present different stages of approach toward the right. Thus the laws as to the conveyance and inheritance of property are in some respects unlike in France, England, and the United States, and vary considerably in the several States of our Union; but there generally exist historical reasons for this variation, and it would be found that the ends of justice are best served, and the reasonable expectations of the people best met in each community, by its own methods of procedure. By the law of the land, then, we may learn civil rights and obligations, which we have not the means of ascertaining by our own independent research.

It remains for us to speak of the *fact.i.tious rights and wrongs*, supposed to be created by law. Of these there are many. Thus one mode of transacting a sale or transfer is in itself as good as another; and it might be plausibly maintained that, if the business be fairly and honorably conducted, it matters not whether the legally prescribed forms-sometimes burdensome and costly-be complied with or omitted. The law, it may be said, here creates an obligation for which there is no ground in nature or the fitness of things. This we deny. It is intrinsically fitting that all transactions which are liable to dispute or question should be performed in ways in which they can be attested; and this cannot be effected except by the establishment of uniform methods. He who departs from them performs not only an illegal, but an immoral act; and the legal provisions of the kind under discussion have an educational value in enlarging the knowledge of the individual as to the conditions and means of security, order, and good understanding in human society.

Similar considerations apply to the *crimes created by law*. Smuggling may serve as an instance. Undoubtedly there are smugglers who would not steal; and their apology is that they are but exercising the rights of owners.h.i.+p upon their own property. But the public must have property, else its community is dissolved; government must be able to avail itself of that property, else its functions are suspended. Men need to be taught that the rights of the state are inseparable from those of individuals, and no less sacred, and the laws that protect the revenue are among the most efficient means of teaching this lesson. Their only defect is that they attach less ignominy to frauds upon the revenue than to other modes of theft, and thus fail to declare the whole truth, that there is no moral difference between him who robs the public and him who robs any one of its individual members.

Section IV.

Sources Of Knowledge. 3. Christianity.

*Religion*, in its relation to ethics, may be regarded both as *a source of knowledge*, and as supplying motives for the performance of duty. We are now concerned with it in the former aspect; and it will be sufficient for our present purpose to ascertain how much *Christianity* adds to our knowledge of the fitnesses that underlie all questions of right and duty.

We by no means undervalue the beneficent ministry of natural religion in the department of ethics; but the most sceptical admit that Christianity includes all of natural religion, while its disciples claim that it not only teaches natural religion with a certainty, precision, and authority which else were wanting, but imparts a larger and profounder knowledge of G.o.d and the universe than is within the scope of man's unaided reason.

*Christianity covers the entire field of human duty*, and reveals many fitnesses, recognized when seen, but discovered by few or none independently of the teachings and example of its Founder; while it gives the emphasis and sanction of a Divine revelation to many other fitnesses, easily discoverable, but liable to be overlooked and neglected.

In defining *the relations of the individual human soul to G.o.d*, Christianity opens to our view a department of duty paramount to all others in importance and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral government and discipline, his retributive providence, define with unmistakable distinctness certain corresponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in still greater part, of action in that inward realm of thought whence the outward life receives its direction and impulse.

*The brotherhood of the whole human race*, also, reveals obligations which would exist on no other ground; and for the clear and self-evidencing statement of this truth we are indebted solely to Christianity. The visible differences of race, color, culture, religion, and customs, are in themselves dissociating influences. Universal charity is impossible while these differences occupy the foreground. Slavery was a natural and congenial inst.i.tution under Pagan auspices; nor have we in all ancient extra-Christian literature, unless it be in Seneca (in whom such sentiments may have had indirectly(3) a Christian origin), a single expression of a fellows.h.i.+p broad enough to embrace all diversities of condition, much less, of race. But the Christian, so far as he consents to receive the obvious and undoubted import of Christ's mission and teachings, must regard all men as, in nature, in the paternal care of the Divine Providence, in religious privileges, rights, and capacities, on an equal footing. With this view, he cannot but perceive the fitness, and therefore the obligation, of many forms of social duty, of enlarged beneficence, of unlimited philanthropy, which on any restricted theory of human brotherhood would be neither fitting nor reasonable.

*The immortality of the soul*, in the next place, casts a light at once broad and penetrating upon and into every department of duty; for it is obvious, without detailed statement, that the fitnesses, needs, and obligations of a terrestrial being of brief duration, and those of a being in the nursery and first stage of an endless existence, are very wide apart,-that the latter may find it fitting, and therefore may deem it right, to do, seek, shun, omit, endure, resign, many things which to the former are very properly matters of indifference. Immortality was, in a certain sense, believed before the advent of Christ, but not with sufficient definiteness and a.s.surance to occupy a prominent place in any ethical system, or to furnish the point of view from which all things in the earthly life were to be regarded. Indeed, some of the most virtuous of the ancients, among others Epictetus, than whom there was no better man, expressly denied the life after death, and, of course, could have had no conception of the aspects of human and earthly affairs as seen in the light of eternity.

Christianity makes yet another contribution to ethical knowledge in *the person and character of its Founder*, exhibiting in him the very fitnesses it prescribes, showing us, as it could not in mere precept, the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,(4) which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments in morals that had not been tried before within the memory of man, and evinced, in his own person and by the success of his religion, the superior worth and efficacy of qualities which had not previously borne the name of virtues.

Christianity still further enlarges our ethical knowledge by declaring the *universality of moral laws*. There are many cases, in which it might seem to us not only expedient, but even right, to set aside some principle acknowledged to be valid in the greater number of instances, to violate justice or truth for some urgent claim of charity, or to consent to the performance of a little evil for the accomplishment of a great good. But in all such cases Christianity interposes its peremptory precepts, a.s.suring us on authority which the Christian regards as supreme and infallible, that there are no exceptions or qualifications to any rule of right; that the moral law, in all its parts, is of inalienable obligation, and that the greatest good cannot but be the ultimate result of inflexible obedience.

That *Christianity gives a fuller knowledge of the right* than can be attained independently of its teachings, is shown by the review of all extra-Christian ethical systems. There is not one of these which does not confessedly omit essential portions of the right, and hardly one which does not sanction dispositions and modes of conduct confessedly wrong and evil; while even those who disclaim Christianity as a Divine revelation, fail to detect like omissions and blemishes in the ethics of the New Testament. Thus, though there is hardly a precept of Jesus Christ, the like of which cannot be found in the ethical writings of Greece, China, India, or Persia, the faultlessness and completeness of his teachings give them a position by themselves, and are among the strongest internal evidences of their divinity. They are also distinguished from the ethical systems of other teachers by their positiveness. Others say, "Thou shalt not;" Jesus Christ says, "Thou shalt." They forbid and prohibit; He commands. They prescribe abstinence from evil; He, a constant approach to perfection. Buddhism is, in our time, often referred to as occupying a higher plane than Christianity; but its precepts are all negative, its virtues are negative, and its disciple is deemed most nearly perfect, when in body, mind, and soul he has made himself utterly quiescent and inert.

Christianity, on the other hand, enjoins the unresting activity of all the powers and faculties in pursuit of the highest ends.

Chapter VI.

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS.

Of the things that are fitting and right, there are some which, though they may be described in general terms, cannot be defined and limited with entire accuracy; there are others which are *so obvious and manifest, or so easily ascertained*, that, in precise form and measure, *they may be claimed* by those to whom they are due, *and required* of those from whom they are due. These last are rights, and the duties which result from them are *obligations*. Thus it is right that a poor man should be relieved; and it is my duty, so far as I can, to relieve the poor. But this or that individual poor man cannot claim that it is my duty rather than that of my neighbor to minister to his needs, or that I am bound to give him what I might otherwise give to his equally needy neighbor. He has no specific right to any portion of my money or goods; I have no specific obligation to give him anything. But if a man has lent me money, he has a right to as much of my money or goods as will repay him with interest; and I am under an obligation thus to repay him. Again, it is right that in the public highway there should be, among those who make it their thoroughfare, mutual accommodation, courtesy, and kindness; but no one man can prescribe the precise distance within which he shall not be approached, or the precise amount of pressure which may be allowable to his ab.u.t.ters in a crowd. Nor yet can the individual citizen occupy the street in such a way as to obstruct those who make use of it. He has no exclusive rights in the street; nor are others under obligation to yield to him any peculiar privileges. But he has a right to exclude whom he will from his own garden, and to occupy it in whatever way may please him best; and his fellow-citizens are under obligation to keep their feet from his alleys and flower-beds, their hands from his fruit, and to abstain from all acts that may annoy or injure him in the use and enjoyment of his garden.

*Rights*-with the corresponding obligations-might be divided into *natural* and *legal*. But the division is nominal rather than real; for, in the first place, there are no natural rights, capable of being defined, which are not in civilized countries under the sanction and protection of law; secondly, it is an open question whether some generally recognized rights-as, for instance, that of property-exist independently of law; and, thirdly, it may be maintained, on the other hand, that law is powerless to create, competent only to declare rights.

One chief agency of law as to rights is exercised in limiting *natural rights*. Considered simply in his relation to outward nature, a man has a manifest right to whatever he can make tributary to his enjoyment or well-being. But his fellow-men have the same right. If, then, there be a restricted supply of what he and they may claim by equal right, the alternative is, on the one hand, usurpation or perpetual strife, or, on the other, an adjustment by which each shall yield a part of what he might claim were there no fellow-claimant, and thus each shall have his proportion of what belongs equally to all. To make this adjustment equitably is the province of law. The problem which it attempts to solve is, How may each individual citizen secure the fullest amount of liberty and of material well-being, consistent with the admitted or established rights of others? Under republican inst.i.tutions, this problem presents itself in the simplest form, society being in principle an equal partners.h.i.+p, in which no one man can claim a larger dividend than another.

But where birth or condition confers certain peculiar rights, the problem must be so modified, that the rights conceded to the common citizens shall not interfere with these inherited or vested rights. In either case, the rights of each member of the community are bounded only by the conterminous rights of others. Obligations correspond to rights. Each member of the community is under obligation, always to refrain from encroachment on the rights of others, and in many cases to aid in securing or defending those rights, he on like occasions and in similar ways having his own rights protected by others.

We will consider separately *rights appertaining to the person, to property, and to reputation*.

1. *Rights appertaining to the person.* The most essential of these is the right to life, on which of course all else that can be enjoyed is contingent. This right is invaded, not only by direct violence, but by whatever may impair or endanger health. The corresponding obligation of the individual member of society is to refrain from all acts, employments, or recreations that may imperil life or health, and of society collectively, to furnish a police-force adequate to the protection of its members, to forbid and punish all crimes of violence, to enact and maintain proper sanitary regulations, and to suppress such nuisances as may be not only annoying, but harmful.

But the citizen is ent.i.tled to protection, only so long as he refrains from acts by which he puts other lives in peril. If he a.s.sault another man with a deadly weapon, and his own life be taken in the encounter, the slayer has violated no right, nay, so far as moral considerations are concerned, he is not even the slayer; for the man who wrongfully puts himself in a position in which another life can be protected only at the peril of his own, if his own be forfeited, has virtually committed suicide. Nor is the case materially altered, if a man in performing an unlawful act puts himself in a position in which he may be reasonably supposed to intend violence. Thus, while both law and conscience would condemn me if I killed a thief in broad daylight, in order to protect my property,-if a burglar enter my house by night with no intention of violence, and yet in the surprise and darkness of the hour I have reason to suppose my life and the lives of my family in danger from him, the law regards my slaying of such a person as justifiable homicide; and my conscience would acquit me in defending the right to life appertaining to my family and myself, against one whose intention or willingness to commit violence was to be reasonably inferred from his own unlawful act.

Society, through the agency of law, in some cases and directions limits the right of the individual citizen to life, and this *to the contingent benefit of each,-to the absolute benefit of all*. So long as men are less than perfect in character and condition, there must of necessity be some sacrifice of life; but this sacrifice may be reduced to its _minimum_ by judicious legislation. Now, if without such legislation the percentage of deaths would be numerically much higher than under well-framed laws, the lives sacrificed under these laws are simply cases in which the right of the individual is made to yield to the paramount rights of the community.

Thus, there can be no doubt, that contagious disease of the most malignant type could, in many cases, be more successfully treated at the homes of the patients than in public hospitals. But if by the removal of patients to hospitals the number of cases may be greatly diminished, and the contagion speedily arrested, this removal is the right of the community,-yet not under circ.u.mstances of needless privation and hards.h.i.+p, not without the best appliances of comfort, care, and skill which money can procure; for the public can be justified in the exercise of such a right, only by the extension of the most generous offices of humanity to those who are imperilled for the public good.

It is only on similar grounds that the *death-penalty for murder* can be justified. The life of the very worst of men should be sacrificed only for the preservation of life; for if it be unsafe to leave them at liberty, they may be kept under restraint and duress, without being wholly cut off from the means of enjoyment and improvement. The primeval custom of the earlier nations required the nearest kinsman of the murdered man to kill the murderer with his own hand, and in so doing to shed his blood, which was believed to have a mysterious efficacy in expiating the crime. This form of revenge was greatly checked and restricted by the inst.i.tutions of Moses; it fell into disuse among the Jews, with their growth in civilization; and was certainly included in the entire repeal of the law of retaliation by Jesus Christ.(5)

But if with the dangerous cla.s.ses of men the dread of capital punishment is a dissuasive from crimes of violence, so that the number of murders is less, and the lives of peaceable citizens are safer, than were murder liable to some milder penalty, then it is the undoubted right of the public to confiscate the murderer's right to life, and thus to sacrifice the smaller number of comparatively worthless lives for the security of the larger number of lives that may be valuable to the community. Or again if, by the profligate use of the pardoning power, the murderer sentenced to perpetual imprisonment will probably be let loose upon society unreformed, and with pa.s.sions which may lead to the repet.i.tion of his crime, it is immeasurably more fitting that he be killed, than that he be preserved to do farther mischief. Yet again, if there be in the death-penalty for murder an educational force,-if by means of it each new generation is trained in the greater reverence for human life, and the greater detestation and horror of the crime by which it is destroyed,-then is capital punishment to be retained as a means of preserving an incalculably greater number of lives than it sacrifices. On these grounds, though in opposition to early and strong conviction, we are constrained to express the belief that, in our time and country, the capital punishment of the murderer is needed for the security of the public, and is justified as a life-saving measure.

In *enforced military service*, also, legal authority exposes the lives of a portion of the citizens for the security of the greater number. It is an unquestionable truth that, in its moral affinities, war is generated by evil, is allied to numberless forms of evil, and has a countless progeny of evil. But it is equally true that war will recur at not unfrequent intervals, so long as the moral evils from which it springs remain unreformed. Such are the complications of international affairs, that the most righteous and pacific policy may not always s.h.i.+eld a people from hostile aggressions; while insurrection, sedition, and civil war may result not only from governmental oppression, but from the most salutary measures of reform and progress. In such cases, self-defence on the part of the nation or the government a.s.sailed, is a right and an obligation, due even in the interest of human life, and still more, in behalf of interests more precious than life. Moreover, even in a war of unprovoked aggression, the aggressive nation does not forfeit the right of self-defence by the unprincipled ambition of its rulers, and, war once declared, its vigorous pursuit may be the only mode of averting disaster or ruin. Thus war, though always involving atrocious wrong on the part of its promoters and abettors, becomes to the nations involved in it a necessity for which they are compelled to provide.