Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 37

There might be problems of how to attain satisfaction, but no sense of duty or moral obligation. Custom is the first great stage through which morality pa.s.ses, and the only form in which morality exists for many people. In civilized life there is, to be sure, considerable reflection and querying of custom, but for the vast majority of men "right" and "wrong" are determined by the standards to which their early education and environment have accustomed them. In primitive life, reflective criticism on the part of the individual is almost unknown, and custom remains the great arbiter of action, the outstanding source of social and moral control.

The values of custom as a moral force are, in both primitive and civilized life, notable and not to be despised. Custom is, in the first place, frequently rational in its origin. That is, in general, those acts are made habitual in the group which are a.s.sociated with the general welfare. The customary is the "right," but those activities most frequently come to be regarded as "right" which are favorable to the welfare of the group. In the literal struggle for existence which characterizes primitive life, those tribes may alone be expected to survive whose customs do promote the welfare of their members. Persistence by a group in customs like infanticide or excessive restriction of population will result in their extinction. Customs are, for the most part, standards of action established in the light of the conceptions of well-being as understood at the time of their origin. The intensity with which they are maintained, enforced, and transmitted is an indication of how supremely and practically important they are regarded by primitive groups.

Custom is valuable, if for nothing else, in the fact that it makes possible some accommodation or adjustment of competing individual interests--and on the basis of a widely considered social welfare. Customs are _social_, they are binding on all; they apply to all, and to the extent that they do promote welfare, they promote, within limits, the welfare of all. A man conforming to custom is thereby consulting something other than his arbitrary caprice or personal desire.

On the level of customary morality, action through conformity to custom is referred to a wider context than unconsidered individual impulse; it is, for better or worse, performed with reference to the group with whose standards it is in conformity. It is the beginning of the socialization of human interests. Though unconsciously, the man conforming to a custom is considering his fellows, and the values and traditions which have become current among them.

Customs, moreover, are the first invasion of moral chaos.

They establish enduring standards; they give common and permanent bases of action. It is only through the establishment and transmission of customary standards that one generation is in any way superior to its predecessors. Customs, in civilized life, include all the established effective ways of civilization, its arts, its sciences, its industries, and its useful modes of cooperation.

If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its const.i.tuent members is as certain as if a plague took them off all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric.

Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 4.]

In all levels of civilization, there is a conscious transmission of those social habits which are regarded as of importance.

If this transmission were suddenly to cease, not only would each generation have to start afresh, but it would be altogether impossible for it to grow to maturity.

THE DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY. While custom is thus valuable as a moral agent in establis.h.i.+ng standards of social life and rendering them continuous and enduring, a morality that is completely based upon it has serious defects. Though customs may start as allegedly or actually useful practices, they tend, so strong is the influence of habit over the individual, to outlive their usefulness, and may become, indeed, altogether disadvantageous conventions. "Dr. Arthur Smith tells of the advantage it would be in some 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."

We have but to examine our own civilization to see that there are many customs which are practiced not for any good a.s.signable reason, but simply because they have become fixed and traditional. This is not to say that everything that has become "merely conventional" is evil. It is to suggest how, even in civilized society, groups may fall into modes of action that are practiced simply because they _have been_ practiced, rather than from any reasoned consideration that they _should_ be. An ill.u.s.tration may be taken from the experience of civilians drawn into the military routine during the Great War. Men engaged in war work at Was.h.i.+ngton in civilian capacities reported repeatedly their impatience at the "red tape" of tradition with which certain cla.s.ses of business were conducted by the military establishment. In law also, progressive pract.i.tioners and students have pointed out the well-known fact of the immense and beclogging ritual which has come to surround legal procedure. It is the contention of critics of one or another of our contemporary social habits and inst.i.tutions that traditionalism, the persistence of custom simply because it _is_ custom, is responsible for many of the anachronisms in our social, political, and industrial life. s.p.a.ce does not permit here a detailed consideration of this question, but it must be noted that social habits, when they are acquired, as they are, unreflectively by the vast majority of people, will tend to be repeated and supported, apart from any consideration of their consequences. This tendency toward social inertia, earlier noted in connection with habit, can only be checked by reflective criticism and apprais.e.m.e.nt of our current accustomed ways of action.[1]

[Footnote 1: See chapter on "Cultural Continuity."]

In the case of the group, too complete a domination by custom is dangerous in that it sanctions and promotes the continuance of habits that have become useless or harmful.

In the case of the individual, the determination of action by custom alone has its specific dangers and defects. Even though the individual happens to conform to useful customs, his conformity is purely mechanical. It involves no intelligent discrimination. Merely to conform places one at the disposition of the environment in which one chances to be. There is not necessary any intelligent a.n.a.lysis on the part of the agent, of the bearings and consequences of his actions. He takes on with fatal facility the color of his environment. To all men, however critical and reflective, a certain degree of conformity to custom is both necessary and useful. There must, in any social enterprise, be some common basis of action. Because taking the right-hand side of the road is a convention, it is none the less a useful one. But reflective acquiescence in a custom differs from merely mechanical conformity. It transforms a custom from a blind mechanism into a consciously chosen instrument for achieving good.

The trivial and the important in a morality based upon custom receive the same unconsidered support. "t.i.thing mint, anise, and c.u.mmin are quite likely to involve the neglect of weightier matters of the law." Physical, emotional, and moral energies that should be devoted to matters genuinely affecting human welfare are lavished upon the trivial and the incidental. We may come to be concerned more with manners than with morals; with ritual, than with right. Customary morality tends to emphasize, moreover, the letter rather than the spirit of the law. It implies complete and punctilious obedience, meticulous conformity. It emphasizes form rather than content. Since conformity is the only criterion, the appearance of conformity is all that is required.

The individual may fear to dissent openly rather than actually.

This is seen frequently in the ritualistic performance or fulfillment of a duty in all its external details, rather than the actual and positive performance of its content. It is just such Pharisaism that is protested against in the Sermon on the Mount:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward....

But when ye pray, use not vain repet.i.tions as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Formalism in morality has periodically roused protest from the Prophets down, and formalism is the result of an unconsidered mechanical acquiescence in custom, or deliberate insistence on traditional details when the spirit and motive are forgotten.

CUSTOM AND PROGRESS. Emphasis upon customs as already established tends to promote fixity and repet.i.tion, and to discourage change regardless of the benefits to be derived from specific changes. Custom is supported by the group merely because it is custom; and the ineffective modes of life are maintained along with those which are more useful. Progress comes about through individual variation, and conformity and individual variation are frequently in diametrical collision.

It is only when, in Bagehot's phrase, "the cake of custom" is broken, that changes making for good have a possibility of introduction and support. Where the only moral sanctions are the sanctions of custom, change of whatever sort is at a discount. For change implies deviation from the ways of life sanctioned by the group, and deviation is itself, in a custom-bound morality, regarded with suspicion.

It is clear that complete conformity is impossible save in a society of automata. There will be some individuals who will not be able to curb their desires to fit the inhibitions fixed by the group; there will be some who will deliberately stand out against the group commands and prohibitions, and a.s.sert their own imperious impulses against their fellows.

Where such men are powerful or persuasive they may indeed bring about a transvaluation of all values; they may create a new morality. There are geniuses of the moral as well as the intellectual life, whose sudden insight becomes a standard for succeeding generations.

There may, again, be more infringement of the moral code than is overtly noticeable. Frequently, as in a Puritanical regime, there may be, along with fanatic public professions and practice of virtue, private violation of the conventional moral codes. Our civilization is unpleasantly decorated with countless examples of this discrepancy between professed and practiced codes. The desire for praise and the fear of blame and its consequences, the desire, as we say, for the "good-will" and "respect of others," will lead to all the public manifestations of virtue, "with a private vice or two to appease the wayward flesh." The utterance of conventional moral formulas by men in public, and the infringement of those high doctrines in private, needs unfortunately not to be ill.u.s.trated. Moliere drew Tartuffe from real life.

ORIGIN AND NATURE OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. If the customs current were adequate to adjust men to their environment, reflection upon them might never arise. Reflection does arise precisely because customs are not, or do not remain, adequate. An individual is brought up to believe that certain actions are good, and that their performance promotes human happiness. He discovers, by an alert and unclouded insight, that in specific cases the virtues highly regarded by his group do not bring the felicitous results which they are commonly and proverbially held to produce. He observes, let us say, that meekness, humility, honesty are not modes of adaptation that bring happy results. He observes, as Job observed, that the wicked prosper; he notes that those who follow the path called righteous bring unhappiness to themselves and to others.

Or the individual's first reflection upon moral standards may arise in his discovery that moral standards are not absolute, that what is virtue in the Occident is vice in the Orient, and _vice versa_. He discovers that those actions which he regards as virtuous are so regarded by him simply because he has been trained to their acceptance. Given another environment, his moral revulsions and approvals might be diametrically reversed. He makes the discovery that Protagoras made two thousand years ago: "Man is the measure of all things"; standards of good and evil depend on the accidents of time, s.p.a.ce, and circ.u.mstance. In such a discovery an individual may well query, What _is_ the good? Not what pa.s.ses for good, but what is the essence of goodness?

What is justice? Not what is accredited justice in the courts of law, or in the market-place, or in the easy generalizations of common opinion. But what const.i.tutes _justice_ essentially?

What is the _standard_ by which actions may be rated just and unjust?

Where individuals are habituated to one single tradition or set of customs, such questions may not arise. But where one, through personal experience or acquaintance with history and literature, discovers the multiplicity of standards which have been current with regard to the just and the good in human conduct, the search for some reasonable standard arises. The great historical instance of the discovery of the relativity and irrationality of customary morality and the emergence of reflective standards of moral value is the Athenian period of Greek philosophy. The Sophists pointed out with merciless perspicuity the welter, the confusion, the essential irrationality of current social and religious traditions and beliefs. They went no further in moral a.n.a.lysis than destructive criticism. They pointed out the want of authenticity or reason in the traditional morality by which men lived.

Socrates went a step further. If current customs are not authoritative, he said, let us find those that have and _ought_ to have enduring authority over men. If the traditional standards are proved to be futile and inefficacious, let us find the unfaltering standards authenticated by reason. Let us subst.i.tute relevant and adequate codes and creeds for those which have by reason been shown to be unreasonable. Beneath the multiplicity of contradictory and often vicious customs, reason must be able to discover ways of life, which, if followed, will lead men to eventual happiness.

There are thus two stages in the process of reflection upon morals. In the first stage reflection does no more than to point out the essential discrepancies and absurdities of the current moral codes. Reflection upon morals begins by being critical and querying. It starts when an individual, a little more thoughtful and perspicacious than his fellows, notes the discrepancies between the customs of different men, and notes also the discrepancies between the threatened results of the violation of traditional codes and the actual results. He may then come to the cynic's conclusion that morality is a myth and a delusion, and, in the words of the Sophist in Plato's _Republic_, "justice is merely the right of the stronger." Men in whom reflection or social sympathy extends not very far may, as they frequently do, stop at this point. These are the worldly wise; they are interested not in goodness, truth, and justice, but in those effective representations of those things publicly accounted good, true, and just which will win them public approval and increase their own wealth or power and position. Plato, in the _Republic_, pictures the type with magnificent irony:

All those mercenary adventurers who, as we know, are called sophist by the mult.i.tude, and regarded as rivals, really teach nothing but the opinions of the majority to which expression is given when large ma.s.ses are collected, and dignify them with the t.i.tle of wisdom.

As well might a person investigate the caprices and desires of some huge and powerful monster in his keeping, studying how it is to be approached, and how handled,--at what times and under what circ.u.mstances it becomes most dangerous, or most gentle--on what occasions it is in the habit of uttering its various cries, and further, what sounds uttered by another person soothe or exasperate it,--and when he has mastered all these particulars, by long-continued intercourse, as well might he call his results wisdom, systematize them into an art, and open a school, though in reality he is wholly ignorant which of these humours and desires is fair, and which foul, which good and which evil, which just and which unjust; and therefore is content to affix all these names to the fancies of the huge animal, calling what it likes good, and what it dislikes evil, without being able to render any other account of them,--nay, giving the t.i.tles of "just" and "fair" to things done under compulsion, because he has not discerned himself, and therefore cannot point out to others, that wide distinction which really holds between the nature of the compulsory and the good.[1]

[Footnote 1: Plato: _Republic_ (Golden Treasury edition), pp. 209-10.]

Throughout human history, there have been periods of individualism, of self-a.s.sertion against the traditional morality, which have been marked by loss of moral restraints, by a breakdown of the old standards without a subst.i.tution of new and sounder ones. There has been, in the beginning of almost every advance toward a new stage of moral valuation, the accompaniment of liberty by license.

Reflection upon morals is not likely to produce immediately good results. The established morality is at least established.

In so far as it is controlling in men's actions, it keeps those actions ordered and regular. The traditional code by which a man's life is governed may be a poor code, but it is more satisfactory than no code at all. On discovering the inadequacy of the morality by which he has lived, a man may reject morality altogether. From that time forth he may have no other standard than his own selfish desires. When a whole society, as at the time of the Renaissance, throws its traditional morality to the winds, it may make havoc of its freedom.

In place of a bad moral order it may cease to have any moral order at all.

The discovery that the codes by which we have lived are misleading and delusive may lead us to have nothing whatsoever to do with morals. The individual may decide simply to employ his superior insight in the exploitation of other people.

It is something of this point of view that is expressed in the rampant individualism of Nietzsche and Max Stirner.

The customary morality is meant for slaves; the Superman must stride above the signs and s.h.i.+bboleths by which men are led, and create himself a morality more adequate to his own superb and insolent welfare.

For the reconstruction of a morality more adequate than the prevailing codes, more is demanded than merely a reflective criticism of prevailing standards. Where reflection goes no further than this, the net result is merely cynicism and libertinism. For moral progress there is needed "a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good, in his sympathies and in his purposes."

REFLECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION OF MORAL STANDARDS. The second stage of reflection upon morals consists in the reconstruction of moral standards, in a deliberate discovery of codes by which men can live together happily. It attempts to establish standards of action which are enforced and recommended not because they have been current and are currently approved, but because they give promise, upon critical examination, of contributing to human happiness. It must be recalled here that reflective morality is not a subst.i.tute for action based upon instinct or custom. It merely modifies these types of action in the light of the desirable consequences which would result from such modification.

The establishment of reflective standards is limited by two general conditions. The first, previously mentioned, is that human beings come into the world with certain fixed tendencies to act. These original impulses may be obscured, but cannot be abolished. Secondly, reflection upon morals always must occur in a given social situation, that is, in a situation where certain habits of mind, emotion and action, are already in operation. Moral standards are not fresh constructions; they are _reconstructions_. We may want to _change_ current customs and traditions; but that is simply another way of iterating the fact that they _are there to be changed_. The moral reformer who would improve society must take into account the fact that there exist among the adult members of a generation, powerful habits, which may be improved or amended, but which cannot be ignored. Any attempt to improve men's ways of action starts within processes of action already going on. It is not as if we could hold up the processes of human life, and say, "Let us begin afresh." The generation whose habits are to be changed consists of living men, who are acting on the basis of customs which have become intimately and powerfully controlling in their lives. These customs, though they may not be altogether satisfactory, are yet great social economies.

They give men certain determinate and efficacious modes of action. Reflection must start with them and from them.

Unless men, furthermore, did act according to custom, they would have to reflect in detail about every step of their conduct. The aim of reflection is simply to transform existing customs into more effective methods for achieving the good.

Reflection, indeed, must move within certain limits; it must take certain things for granted. We have already seen that reflection arises in a crisis of greater or lesser degree; it settles ambiguities, resolves the obscure and doubtful phases of situations. It is designed to secure adjustments where instinct and habit are inadequate to adapt the individual to his environment.

But unless there were certain fixed, determined points to start with, certain limits within which reflection could operate, and which it could use as points of reference or departure, all would be chaos, and reflection would be impossible.

It is precisely because we do take certain things as settled, because, as the phrase runs, "they go without saying," that we can think to any purpose whatsoever. Useful customs once established provide precisely these fixed points. If arbitration of labor disputes has become a fixed social habit, for example, attention can be turned to ways and means. If education has become a generally approved social habit, we can spend our time on instruments and methods. Every useful custom firmly established gives a basis of operations.

That much is settled; that much does not demand our alert attention and inquiry. A society without any fixed habits would be sheer anarchy. The aim of intelligent consideration of morals is not to abolish customs, but to bring about their modification so that they will be the most effective adjustment of the individual and the group to their environment.

Indeed, in advanced societies, reflection may itself become a custom, and the most highly valued of all. For where alert and conscious criticism of existing folkways is habitual among all the members of a society, that society is saved from subjection through inertia to disserviceable habits. It acts as a continual check and control; it prevents social and moral stagnation. The habit of reflection upon conduct, if it could be made generally current, would insure social progress.

For customs would be regarded merely as tools, as instruments to be modified and adapted to new circ.u.mstances, as provisional modes of attaining the good. Fixity and rigidity in social life would give place to flexibility and wise continual adaptation.

THE VALUES OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. Some of these have already been noted. We may briefly summarize the foregoing discussion, and call attention to some additional values of a morality based upon reason, as contrasted with a morality of mere mechanical conformity to custom. It has already been pointed out that intellectual preferences and valuations are rooted in primary impulses; that is, our desires are anterior to reflection. What we intellectually value and prefer has its roots in primary impulses. Reason can discover how man may attain the good; but what _is_ good is determined by the desires with which man is, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, endowed. Our preferences are, within limits, fixed for us. As Santayana writes:

Reason was born, as it has since discovered, into a world already wonderfully organized, in which it found its precursor in what is called life, its seat in an animal body of unusual plasticity, and its function in rendering that body's volatile instincts and sensations harmonious with one another and with the outer world on which they depend.[1]

[Footnote 1: Santayana: _Life of Reason_, vol. I, p. 40.]

Our chief aim in reflective behavior is to discover ways and means by which a harmony may be achieved, a harmony of those very instincts which, left to themselves, would be in perpetual collision, frustrating and checking each other.

Reflection not only seeks to find a way of life in which no natural impulse shall be frustrated, but it is through reflection that desires are broadened, and that new desires arise. Out of reflection upon social relations, which is in the first instance prompted by man's innate gregariousness, arise the conception of ideal friends.h.i.+p and the thirst for and movement toward ideal society. Out of reflection upon the animal pa.s.sion of s.e.x may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice.

Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it trans.m.u.tes animal desires into ideal values.

REFLECTION TRANSFORMS CUSTOMS INTO PRINCIPLES. In reflective behavior, as contrasted with that which is controlled by instinct and custom, there are established standards of action to which the individual consciously conforms. That is, instead of merely conforming to custom, an individual comes to act upon principles, consciously avowed and maintained. A man who sets up a standard of action in his professional or business relations is not conforming to an arbitrary code; he is living according to a way of life which he has deliberately and consciously chosen. When a man acts upon principles because he has consciously adopted them in view of the consequences which he believes to be a.s.sociated with them, he will not make his standard an idol. Reflection establishes standards, but it is not mastered by them. It is persistently critical.

Standards are tools, instruments toward the achievement of the good. They are merely general rules, derived from experience and retained so long as they bear desirable fruits in experience. Moral laws are not regarded as arbitrary and eternal, but as good only in so far as they produce good. A virtue is a virtue because it is conducive to human well-being.