so often from a deliberate hardening of the heart as from a lack of contact with the needy or imagination to picture their destitution. But blame must rest upon all comfortable citizens who do not bestir themselves to help in social betterment because it is too much trouble or requires a sacrifice they are not willing to make.

(2) Another serious obstacle lies in the distrust with which many people regard any duty which they have not been accustomed to regard as a duty. This may take the form of an overdeveloped loyalty, that bows before the sacredness of existing institutions and labels any reform as "unconstitutional," a departure from the ways that were good enough for our fathers. It may wear the guise of a lazy piety that would leave everything with God, accepting social ills as manifestations of his will, and interference as a sort of arrogant presumption! It may be a mere mental apathy, an inertia of habit, that sees no call for a better water-supply or bothersome laws about the purity of milk. Or it may defend itself by pointing out the uncertainties that attend untried ways and warning against the danger of experimentation. To these warnings we may reply that our altruistic zeal must, indeed, be coupled with accurate thinking; unless we have based our proposals on wide observation and cautious inference we may find unexpected and baneful results in the place of our sanguine expectations. But we may point out that it is "nothing venture nothing have"; we cannot work out our social salvation without experimenting; and, after all, ways that do not work well can readily be discontinued. What is vital is to keep alive an intolerance of apathy and contentment, to realize that we are hardly more than on the threshold of a rational civilization, to recognize evils, cherish ideals, and maintain our determination in some way to actualize them.

(3) A further steady damper upon our altruistic zeal is the

dread of raising the taxes. Humanitarian movements are well enough, but they cost so much! What is needful is to point out that poverty, unemployment, disease, and the other social ills are also costly; indeed, they cost the public in the long run far more than the expenditure necessary for their abolition or alleviation. It pays in dollars and cents, within a generation or two at least, to make and keep the social organism sound. A wise altruism is not merely a matter of philanthropy; it is also a matter of economy; a means of saving individuals from suffering, but at the same time a means of safeguarding the public treasury. If the community does not pay for the curing of these evils it will have to pay for their results. "It seems to me essentially fallacious to look upon such expenditures as indulgences to be allowed rather sparingly to such communities as are rich enough to afford them. They are literally a husbanding of resources, a safeguard against later unprofitable but compulsory expenditure, a repair in the social organism which, like the repair of a leaky roof, may avert disaster." The public must be educated to see the wisdom of investing heavily in long-neglected social repairs and reconstruction, which in the end will far more than pay for itself in the lowering of expenses for police, courts, prisons, hospitals, asylums, and almshouses, in the lowered death-rate, immunity from costly disease, and increased working capacity of the people.

(4) Finally, a hopelessness of accomplishing anything often paralyzes our zeal. This sometimes takes the form of a more or less honest conviction that poverty, unemployment, and other maladjustments are simply the result of moral degeneration — of the laziness, extravagance, drinking, or other wrongdoing of the poor; their suffering is their own fault, and they must be left to endure it. Of course such factors often though by no means always - enter 1 E. T. Devine, Misery and its Causes, p. 272.

in. One may well say, "Who are we of the upper classes to throw the first stone?" Under like conditions most of us would have become as discouraged or demoralized, yielded to the consolation of some vice, or balked at the monotonous grind of factory labor. But however that may be, in so far as social evils are due to these faults, the faults must be attacked, not accepted as inevitable and incurable. The pressure that pushes men into them must be eased, the ignorance and foolishness that foster them must be dissipated by education and moral training. And for all the social maladjustments that are not due to vice and sin, other remedies must be found. The road to social salvation is long and beset with many difficulties, but the goal is not hopeless of attainment; and every step toward the goal is so much gain. Because we cannot now see how to remedy all evils must not be a pretext for refusing to lend a hand to movements that are of proved value.

How can we reconcile egoism and altruism?

Although altruism is usually wise from the individual's own standpoint, it does not always seem so. The commonest moral clash is between the individual's apparent good and that of others; the cases in which one man's position, wealth, success precludes another's are everyday occurrences. Must this conflict be eternal? Is there any way of reconciling these opposing interests except by an unhappy and regrettable sacrifice? Must life be a perpetual compromise, a "social contract," a treaty to make reciprocal concessions, with every one's real interests at war with every one else's? Certainly the altruistic summons cannot be ignored; we cannot all follow our egoistic impulses; in the common disaster we should be individually involved. And, indeed, the altruistic impulses have become so deeply rooted in our natures that, turn away from them as we might, they would

yet persist in the form of an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and remorse. The only possible solution of the deadlock lies in the killing-off of the selfish impulses.

This is not a fantastic dream. We see in the ideal mother, father, husband, wife, in the ardent patriot and religious devotee, this sloughing-off of the egoistic nature already accomplished. Love, and joy in service, are not alien to us; they are as instinctive as self-seeking; the hope of ultimate peace lies in the strengthening of these impulses till they so dominate us that we no longer care for the selfish and narrow aims. We must cultivate the masculine aspect of unselfishness, the loyalty of the Greeks, the impulse to stand by and fight for others; and we must cultivate its more feminine side, the caritas of I Corinthians XIII, the love that suffereth long and is kind, the sympathy and tenderness infused into a rough and rugged world by Christianity. In this highest developed life there will then be no dualism of motive; at the top of the ladder of moral progress individual and social goods coincide. It is joy to the righteous to do righteousness; it is the keenest delight in life for the lover of men to serve.

The unselfish impulse has thus a double value; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. It is more blessed to give than to receive, when the giver has reached the moral level where giving is his greatest joy. The development of sympathy and the spirit of service in modern times gives great hope that the time will come when men will universally find a rich and satisfying life in ways which bring no harm but only good to others.

H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps. XI-XIV. R. B. Perry, Moral Economy, chap. II, secs. IV, V.; chap. III., secs. v, VI. F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. 11, chap. 1, sec. 6; chap. VI; bk. III, chap. x, sec. 1. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XVIII, sec. e. W. K. Clifford, Right and Wrong, On the Scientific Basis of Morals, in Lectures and Essays, vol. 11. R. M. McConnell, Duty of Altruism. B. Russell, Philosophical Essays, chap. I, sec. v. J. Royce, Problem of Christianity, vol. 1, chap. II.

CHAPTER XII

OBJECTIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

HAVING now outlined the eudæmonistic account of morality, we may note certain objections that are commonly raised to it, and certain misunderstandings that constantly

recur.

Do men always act for pleasure or to avoid pain?

Many of the earlier theorists, not content with showing that the good consists ultimately in a quality of conscious states, asserted that all of men's actions are actually directed toward the attainment of agreeable states of experience or avoidance of disagreeable states. There is no act but is aimed for pleasure of some sort or away from pain; men differ, then, only in their wisdom in selecting the more important pleasures and their skill in attaining what they aim for. This assertion, easily refuted, has seemed to some opponents of the eudæmonistic account of morality so bound up with it as to involve its downfall.

The classic statement of this erroneous psychology, which has been the source of much satisfaction to anti-eudæmonistic philosophers, is to be found in the fourth chapter of Mill's Utilitarianism. "There is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so. . . . Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means to happiness. . . ." A careful reading