An Ethical Philosophy of Life Presented in Its Main Outlines

BOOK II. Philosophical Theory

PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY

I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: CRITIQUE OF KANT 73

II. CRITIQUE OF KANT (Continued) 82

III. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON WORTH, AND ON THE REASONS WHY THE METHOD EMPLOYED BY ETHICS MUST BE THE OPPOSITE OF THAT EMPLOYED BY THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES 91

IV. THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 100

V. THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE AND THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 114

VI. THE IDEAL OF THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE AND THE GOD-IDEAL 125

BOOK III. Applications: the Three Shadows, Sickness,

APPLICATIONS: THE THREE SHADOWS, SICKNESS, SORROW AND SIN, AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE, PROPERTY AND REPUTATION

I. INTRODUCTION 147

II. THE THREE SHADOWS: SICKNESS, SORROW, SIN 154

III. BEREAVEMENT 162

IV. THE SHADOW OF SIN 171

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 179

VI. THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 202

VII. THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE: ACT SO AS TO ELICIT THE BEST IN OTHERS AND THEREBY IN THYSELF 208

VIII. THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE (Continued) 220

IX. HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL Numen IN OTHERS 223

BOOK IV. Applications: the Ethics of the Family, the

APPLICATIONS: THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY, THE STATE, THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ETC.

I. THE COLLECTIVE TASK OF MANKIND AND THE THREE-FOLD REVERENCE 241

II. THE FAMILY 249

III. THE VOCATIONS 260

IV. THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 270

V. THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST: OUTLINE OF A THEORY OF THE RELATION OF ART TO ETHICS 277

VI. EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS, OR VOCATIONS CONNECTED WITH THE STATE 289

VII. THE STATE 305

VIII. THE NATIONAL CHARACTER SPIRITUALLY TRANSFORMED: THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY, OR THE ORGANIZATION OF MANKIND 324

IX. RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP AS THE CULMINATING SOCIAL INSTITUTION 341

X. THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 354

APPENDIX

Appendix I: Spiritual Self-Discipline 365

APPENDIX II: THE EXERCISE OF FORCE IN THE INTEREST OF FREEDOM 369

INDEX 375

BOOK I

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

PRELUDE

What this book offers is a system of thought and of points of view as to conduct, as these have jointly grown out of personal experience. It will be useful to introduce them with an autobiographical statement. The ideas which follow are such as have been found by me, the author, to be fruitful. Certainly I claim for them objectivity; but I do so because of what I have found them to mean in my own life. He who has been scorched by lightning knows that the effects of the lightning will be felt by all who are exposed to the same experience. I narrate my experience; let others compare with it theirs.

There is, however, a serious, and most embarrassing difficulty in the way of discussing the phases and vicissitudes of one’s ethical development. Self-appraisement is necessarily involved in the narration. The outstanding subject of ethics is the self and its relations. The physicist, the chemist, the biologist, however the methods they use may differ in other respects, agree in the endeavor to eliminate the personal equation. The psychologist likewise does his best to see the procession that moves across the inner stage like an interested but detached spectator. In the case of ethics, however, the personal factor cannot be eliminated, because the personal factor is just the Alpha and the Omega of the whole matter; and if this be left out of account, the very object to be studied disappears.

Ethical standards are exacting, separated often from performance by the widest interval. To set up a standard, therefore, is to reflect upon oneself, to expose oneself to the backstroke of one’s own deliverances, to be plunged perhaps into deep pits of self-humiliation. How shall anyone have the courage to face so searching a test, or the hardihood to discuss with a lofty air, and to recommend to others ideals of conduct against which he knows that he daily offends? How can anyone teach ethics or write about it? The words of the Sermon on the Mount, “Judge not that ye be not judged,” seem to apply very closely. Do not judge others, do not lay down the law for others, because in so doing you will be judged in the inner forum, becoming a repulsive object in your own eyes, or standing forth a whited sepulcher. In brief, to touch the subject of ethics is to handle a knife that cuts both ways, to cast a weapon which returns upon him who sends it.

The difficulty then which confronts the ethical writer is that the attitude of detachment possible in other branches of investigation is found to be impossible when one attempts to sound the profundities of that kind of inner experience which is called ethical. The self obtrudes itself at every point, and it instinctively refuses to be humbled. What may be denominated the struggle for self-esteem has indeed played a leading rôle both in the outer and inner history of mankind. This struggle, whose immense importance is often overlooked, accounts for even more interesting facts than the biological struggle for existence. The desire to exercise power over others, often ruthless in the means adopted, is frequently nothing more than a miserable attempt to save self-esteem by covering up the inner sense of the weakness of the self. But the same struggle penetrates also into the realm of theoretical ethics with which we are concerned. Here it tampers with the standards which mortify self-esteem, by inventing such ethical theories as seem to make the problems of personality easy of solution, and by blinking the tragic facts of guilt, remorse, etc. Various ethical systems that are in vogue at the present time are, at least in part, exemplars of this process—the theory for instance that ethics is nothing more than a calculus of self-interest, or a matter of sympathetic feeling, or a balancing of the more refined against the grosser pleasures. The instinct of self-preservation, in the shape of the preservation of self-esteem, is quite incorrigible, and against its insidious suggestion we have reason to be particularly on our guard in the discussion which we are entering.

Are we then to refrain, out of sheer regard for decency, from touching on this subject at all? Is everyone who writes on ethics, or attempts to teach it, either a pedant or a hypocrite? But we cannot avoid discussing it, nor resist the impulse to teach and write about it, for it is the subject on which more than any other we and others sorely need help and enlightenment. And we shall get help in the endeavor to afford it to others. This, then, is my position: I do not presume to lay down the law for anyone. I find that I can set forth the better standards which in the course of trial and error I have come to recognize. I would not shamelessly expose mere private failures and failings after the manner of Rousseau in the “Confessions”; for there is a tract of the inner life which ought to be kept from publicity and prying intrusion. I shall then deal with deflections only in so far as they can be traced to false standards or principles, and as they tend to illustrate the flaw in those standards and principles.

What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth. A distinction, however, I wish to call attention to between the theory as expounded in the second part of this volume, and the practical applications to be found in the third and fourth parts. Persons who are not trained in metaphysical thinking or interested in it, may do well to omit the reading of the second part. To those who are competent in philosophical thinking, and who disagree with the positions there taken, I may perhaps be permitted to suggest that one can dissent from a philosophy and yet find help in the applications to which it leads. And, after all, it is the practice that counts.

With these preliminaries, I now proceed to delineate briefly the stages of inner development which have led me slowly and with much labor to the system of thought described in the following pages.

One of the leading principles to which I early gave assent, and to which I have ever since adhered as a correct fundamental insight, is expressed in the statement that every human being is an end per se, worth while on his own account.

Every human personality is to be safe against infringement and is, in this sense, sacred. There is a certain precinct which may not be invaded. The experience which served me especially as the matrix of this idea was the adolescent experience of sex-life,—the necessity felt of inhibiting, out of reverence for the personality of women, the powerful instincts then awakened.

The fact that I had lived abroad for three years in frequent contact with young men, especially students, who derided my scruples, and in the impure atmosphere of three capital cities of Europe, Berlin, Paris and Vienna, where the “primrose path” is easy, tended to make the retention of my point of view more difficult, and at the same time to give it greater fixity, also to drive me into a kind of inward solitude. I felt myself in opposition to my surroundings, and acquired a confidence, perhaps exaggerated, to persevere along my own lines against prevailing tendencies.

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