The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

III

The simplest moral economy is that in which two or more interests are reciprocally adjusted without being subordinated. The principle of organization which defines such an economy is prudence. Prudence becomes necessary at the moment when interests come into such contact with one another as provokes retaliation. Thus, for example, interests react on one another through being embodied in the same physical organism. Each bodily activity depends on the well-being of co-ordinate functions, and if its exercise be so immoderate as to injure these, it undermines itself. Moderation gains for special interests the support of a general bodily health.

But bodily health is not the only medium of interdependence among the interests of a single individual. His interests must draw not only upon a common source of vitality, but also upon a common stock of material resources. The limitation of interests that follows from this fact is frugality or thrift, the practical working of the principle that present waste is future lack, and that, therefore, to save now is to spend hereafter. Thrift involves also a special emphasis on {88} livelihood, since this is a source of supply for all particular interests.

The social relation makes interests externally interdependent in a great variety of ways. Interests must inhabit one space, exploit one physical environment, and employ a common mode of communication. If any interest so acts as unduly to divert one of these mediums to its own uses, it must suffer retaliation from the other interests that likewise depend on that medium. It is prudent to give even one's rival half the road, and to divide the spoils with him. There is a politic form of honesty; and veracity may be conceived only as a kind of caution. Thus Menander says: "It is always best to speak the truth in all circumstances. This is a precept which contributes most to safety of life." [4] Tact is only a more refined method of avoiding the antagonism of interests that operate within the same field of social intercourse.

The economy of prudence has its own characteristic value. Indeed, if this were not so there would be no possibility of that form of baseness known as being merely prudent. There is a prudential equilibrium; a condition of smooth and harmonious adjustment, within the personal life or the community. I propose that this equilibrium be termed health. In that admirable idealization of renaissance morality, Castiglione's {89} Book of the Courtier, the author refers to the immediate reward of self-control that comes both from inner harmony and the approbation of one's fellows. To instil goodness into the mind, "to teach continence, fortitude, justice, temperance," Castiglione would give his prince "a taste of how much sweetness is hidden by the little bitterness that at first sight appears to him, who withstands vice; which is always hurtful and displeasing, and accompanied by infamy and blame, just as virtue is profitable, blithe, and full of praise." [5]

Socially, the healthful equilibrium corresponds to that "peace" which Hobbes praised above all things;[6] and which is all that is asked for by those who wish to be let alone in order that they may pursue their own affairs. Although such peace may be ignominious, it need not be so; and a sense of security and reciprocal adjustment must remain among the surviving values, whatever higher achievements be added to it. But the inherent value of health is most clearly defined by a nice equilibration of activities within the medium of the individual organism. I borrow the following description of health in this sense from a recent book by H. G. Wells:

The balance as between asceticism and sensuality comes in, it seems to me, if we remember that to drink well one must not have drunken for some time, {90} that to see well one's eye must be clear, that to make love well one must be fit and gracious and sweet and disciplined from top to toe, that the finest sense of all—the joyous sense of bodily well-being—comes only with exercises and restraints and fine living.[7]

The temperance praised by the Greeks is of like quality, with a further reference to the reasonableness which it fosters. A prudence which is mastered, which has become a spontaneity, delivers reason from bondage, and makes the whole of life easily conformable to it. Thus Castiglione, who is so often reminiscent of Plato and Aristotle, draws a contrast between continence, as the "conquest" of prudence, and temperance as its "beneficent rule."

Thus this virtue does not compel the mind, but infusing it by very gentle means with a vehement belief that inclines it to righteousness, renders it calm and full of rest, in all things equal and well measured, and disposed on every side by a certain self-accord which adorns it with a tranquillity so serene that it is never ruffled, and becomes in all things very obedient to reason and ready to turn its every act thereto and to follow wherever reason may wish to lead it, without the least unwillingness.[8]

Such is that prudence which, though rich in its own right, is nevertheless subordinate to greater good.

It is proper to regard prudence as inferior in principle to purpose and good-will, or even as ignoble when confirmed in its narrowness. It {91} denotes an organization of life in which as yet no interest has risen above the rest; it bespeaks the common populace of interests, disciplined, but not moved to any eminent achievement. The fact that the validity of the principle of prudence is so readily granted is significant of this. Prudence requires no interest to be other than itself, but meets it on its own ground. There is no elevation of motive.

But prudence is the first and most instructive lesson in morality. It has a peculiar impressiveness, not only because it is so promptly and unmistakably verified, but because it is so close to life. Its meaning is unlikely to be obscured through being abstracted from the real interests whose saving is the proof of its virtue. Furthermore, although prudence is not the highest principle in life, it is a mistake to suppose that it is therefore unnecessary in the highest spheres of life. There is a problem of prudence that underlies every practical problem whatsoever. If interests are to be organized they must be not only subordinated but also co-ordinated, that is, adjusted within every medium in which they meet. Without moderation, caution, self-control, thrift, and tact there is no serving man or God. As life increases in complexity it is easy to forget these basal precepts. Nature has provided a model, both simple and fundamental, in physical health. {92} "The body," says Burke, "is wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly than the mind with all its boasted subtilty." [9]

The prudential organization of life furnishes the first type of formalism. Prudence requires that the interest shall be limited in order that it may not antagonize other interests and thus indirectly defeat itself. Discipline is justified, in other words, by its fruits. But discipline involves an initial moment of negation, in which the movement of the interest is resisted. It must be checked, and its headway overcome, if it is to be redirected. The exaggeration of this moment of negation, or a steady persistence in it, is asceticism. Its fault lies in its emptiness, in its destruction or perversion of that which it was designed only to protect against itself.

Asceticism appears most frequently as a subordinate motive in some general condemnation of the world on religious grounds, and must receive further consideration in that connection. Its proper meaning as a purely prudential formalism is best exhibited in the Greek Cynics. These philosophers were moved to mortify the flesh, and to deny their social interests, by extreme caution. They discovered that the safest method of adjustment was simplification. If one permits one's self no desires, one need not suffer {93} from their conflict, nor need one treat with the desires of others. Now this would be a very perfect solution of the problem of adjustment, if only there were something left to adjust. If a Cynic can attain to a state of renunciation in which he wants nothing, he will be sure of having what he wants; only, unfortunately, it will be nothing. Epictetus has thus represented the Cynic's boast:

Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free?

Now it is clear that the sum of the Cynics' attainments is not large. It consists, indeed, almost wholly in a certain hardened complacency, and a freedom to make faces at the world. To the onlooker, whose comment Epictetus also records, their aspect is mean:

No: but their characteristic is the little wallet, and staff, and great jaws; the devouring of all that you give them, or storing it up, or the abusing unseasonably all whom they meet, or displaying their shoulder as a fine thing.[10]

In other words, since the Cynic continues to live after having rejected the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness. {94} And asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is not really denied, but only perverted and awkwardly obstructed.

There is a materialistic evil corresponding to the prudential organization of life which is known as meanness, vulgarity, or sordidness. It denotes a failure to recognize anything better than the fulfilment of the simple interests in their severalty. Although guarded and adjusted these still determine the general tone of life. The controlling motive, the standard of attainment, is never anything higher than the elementary desire with its attendant satisfaction. In its negative aspect this is termed aimlessness, and is identical with the Christian vice of idleness, so graphically described by Jeremy Taylor:

Idleness is called the sin of Sodom and her daughters, and indeed is the burial of a living man, an idle person being so useless to any purposes of God and man, that he is like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth: like a vermin or a wolf, when their time comes they die and perish, and in the meantime do no good; they neither plough nor carry burdens; all they do is either unprofitable or mischievous.[11]

Thus aimlessness denotes a failure to attain anything of worth; a lack of consecutiveness and {95} unity. The correction of this fault lies in a new principle of organization.