The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

VI

There is but one economy of interests which furnishes the proper sphere of moral action, namely, the universal economy which embraces within one system all interests whatsoever, present, remote, and potential. The validity of this economy lies in the fact that the goodness of action cannot {113} be judged without reference to all the interests affected, whether directly or indirectly. To live well is to live for all life. The control of action by this motive is the virtue of good-will. It should be added that the good will must be not only compassionate, but just; offering to help, without failing to respect. And it must be not only devoted, but also enlightened; serving, but not without self-criticism and insight.

Such a programme need not seem bewildering or quixotic. If my action does not offend those most nearly concerned, it will scarcely offend those removed by space, time, or indirection. Charity begun at home is spread abroad without my further endeavor. Furthermore, it is good-will rather than a narrow complacency that inspires my assuming of the special tasks and responsibilities defined by proximity, descent, and special aptitude. Life as a whole is built out of individual opportunities and vocations. It is required only that while I live effectively and happily, as circumstance or choice may determine, I should conform myself to those principles which harmonize life with life, and bring an abundance on the whole out of the fruitfulness of individual effort.

Good-will is the moral condition of religion, where this is corrected by enlightenment. The religion of good-will is best illustrated, from the {114} European tradition, in the transition from paganism to Christianity. I have said that the Greeks were not without distrust of that natural and worldly happiness which they most praised. This, for example, is the testimony of Euripides:

Long ago
I looked upon man's days, and found a grey
Shadow. And this thing more I surely say,
That those of all men who are counted wise,
Strong wits, devisers of great policies,
Do pay the bitterest toll. Since life began;
Hath there in God's eye stood one happy man?
Fair days roll on, and bear more gifts or less
Of fortune, but to no man happiness.[26]

This note of pessimism grows more marked among the philosophers, and is at length taken up into the Christian renunciation of the world. The philosophers attempted to devise a way of happiness which the superior individual might follow through detaching himself from political society and cultivating his speculative powers.[27] But the Christian renunciation involved the abandonment of every claim to individual self-sufficiency, even the pride of reason. It expressed a sense of the general plight of humanity, and looked for relief only through a power with love and might enough to save all. Hence there is this fundamental difference between pagan and Christian pessimism: the pagan confesses his powerlessness to make himself impregnable {115} to fortune, while the Christian convicts himself of sin, confessing his worthlessness when measured by the task of universal salvation. The one pities and absolves himself; the other condemns himself.

Now the other-worldliness of Christianity was without doubt a grave error, which it found itself compelled to correct; but it was none the less the vehicle through which European civilization became possessed of the most important secrets of religious happiness. In the first place, all are made sharers, through sympathy, in the failure of the present; and, thus distributed, the burden is lightened. "It is an act within the power of charity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "to translate a passion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become insensible." [28] In the second place, it is understood that there is no such thing as a happiness that is enjoyed at the expense of others and by the special favor of fortune. There is no promise of individual salvation save in the salvation of all. A private and protected happiness is bound sooner or later to be destroyed by an increase of sensibility, by an enlightened awareness of the evil beyond. And to experience evil, to realize it, and yet to be content, lies not within {116} the power of any moral being; it is not merely difficult, it is self-contradictory. To any one who judges himself fairly, with a wide and vivid image of life as it is in all its ramifications and obscurities, the evil of the world is all one. It follows that, as there is no perfect happiness except in the annihilation of evil, so there can be no peace of mind, no self-respect, no sense of living truly and for the best, unless one's action can be conceived as wholly saving and up-building, as contributing in its place and in its way to the general forward movement. This, I think, is the deeper explanation of the buoyancy of devoted people, of that buoyancy which was a source of such great wonder to the disillusioned wise men of ancient times. And this, I think, is the meaning of the Christian teaching that it is more blessed to give than to receive; and that the love of one's God is to grow out of the love of one's neighbor.

I have endeavored to show that the highest good is the greatest good; that it may not only be inferred from the present good, but that it actually consists of the present good, with more like it, and with the present evil eliminated. By mysticism I mean that species of formalism in which the highest good, out of respect for its exaltation, is divorced from the present good, and so emptied of content. Professor James has said that it is {117} characteristic of rationalists and sentimentalists, to "extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so pure when extracted that they contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and higher, nature." [29] There is a peculiar liability to such abstraction in religion, for religion involves a judgment of insufficiency against every limited achievement. A longing after unqualified good is the very breath of enlightened religion; and in order that that ideal may be kept pure, it must not be identified with any partial good. Indeed, the office of religion requires it to condemn as only partial, good that is commonly taken to be sufficient. Now there is only one way of defining a good that shall be universal without being merely formal, and that is by defining perfection quantitatively rather than qualitatively; substituting for the Platonic Absolute Good, in which the present good is refined away into a phrase or symbol, the maximum good, in which the present good is saved and multiplied. He who believes that he conceives goodness otherwise than as the good which he already possesses, deceives himself; as does the author of the Religio Medici, when he says:

That wherein God Himself is happy, the holy Angels are happy, in whose defect the Devils are unhappy, that dare I call happiness; whatsoever {118} conduceth unto this may with an easy Metaphor deserve that name; whatsoever else the World terms Happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny, a tale of Boccace or Malizspini, an apparition, or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of Happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but peace of my Conscience, command of my affections, the love of Thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Caesar.[30]

Now it is safe to say that Sir Thomas Browne was in fact unable to attribute to God and the angels any other happiness than these same blessings which he covets for himself, saving only that they shall be without stint, and joined with others like them.

Formalism, as we have seen, is never merely negative in its consequences; for any moral untruth, since it replaces a truth, cannot fail to pervert life. Thus one may be persuaded with the author whom I have just quoted to count the world, "not an Inn, but an Hospital; and a place not to live, but to dye in." [31] I do not suppose that any one ever succeeded in wholly resisting the hospitality of this world, and one suspects that Thomas Browne partook not a little of its good cheer; but the opinion is false notwithstanding, and if false, then confusing and misleading. This world is not a place to suffer in, nor even a place to be mended in, but the only opportunity of achievement and service that can be certainly {119} counted on. The good is in the making here, if it is in the making anywhere. To neglect life here is equivalent to forfeiting it altogether.

Religious formalism may induce not only a default of present opportunity and responsibility, but also a substitution for good living of an emotional improvisation on the theme of absolute perfection, like that in the Book of the Courtier:

If, then, the beauties which with these dim eyes of ours we daily see in corruptible bodies, . . . seem to us so fair and gracious that they often kindle most ardent fire in us, . . . what happy wonder, what blessed awe, shall we think is that which fills the souls that attain to the vision of divine beauty! What sweet flame, what delightful burning, must that be thought which springs from the fountain of supreme and true beauty!—which is the source of every other beauty, which never waxes nor wanes: ever fair, and of its own self most simple in every part alike; like only to itself, and partaking of none other; but fair in such wise that all other fair things are fair because they derive their beauty from it. This is that beauty identical with highest good.[32]

Now I do not want to be understood as condemning this mysticism out of hand. I mean only that while it is eloquent and purifying, it is, nevertheless, not illuminating; and that if it be mistaken for illumination, it does in fact hide the light. It has no meaning whatsoever except the general idea of the superlative, and if it be not attached to some definite content drawn from {120} experience of acts and their consequences, it does but substitute a phrase for the proper objects of action and an emotion for provident conduct.

There is a further moral danger in mysticism, which I need only mention here, because I propose to discuss it more fully in the chapter on religion. Since mysticism opposes a formal perfection to the concrete good of experience, it tends to obscure the distinction between good and evil. That distinction lies within experience, and if experience as a whole be discredited, the distinction is discredited with it. If the common, familiar good is not to be taken as valid, then finality no longer attaches to that common, familiar evil which the moral will has been trained to condemn and resist. If the good lie "beyond good and evil," then neither is the good good nor the evil evil. The result is to leave the moral will without justification, supported only by habit and custom.

The virtue of piety lies in its completing, not in its replacing, secular efficiency. It gives to a life that is provident and fruitful as it goes, the stimulus of a momentous project, and reverence for a good that shall embrace unlimited possibilities.

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