The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

VI

But the bankruptcy of metaphysical idealism does not end the matter. There is another idealism in which religious faith both confirms moral endeavor and gives it the incentive of hope. This {249} idealism establishes itself upon an unequivocal acceptance of moral truth. It calls good good and evil evil, with all the finality which attaches to the human experience of these things, leaving no room for compromise. Its faith lies in the expectation that the world shall become good through the elimination of evil; it manifests itself in the resolution to hasten that time. God is loved for the enemies he has made. Evil is hated without reservation as none of his doing, and man is free to reverence the Lord his God with all his heart.

From the stand-point of moral idealism the universe resumes something of its pristine ruggedness and grandeur. If, as James says, "the world appears as something more epic than dramatic," the dignity of life is enhanced and not diminished on that account.[19] Life is not a spiritual exercise the results of which are discounted in advance; but is actually creative, fashioning and perfecting a good that has never been. And the moment evil is conceived as the necessary but diminishing complement to partial success, the sting of it is gone. Evil as a temporary and accidental necessity is tolerable; but not so an evil which is absolutely necessary, and which must be construed with some hypothetical divine satisfaction.

This in no way contradicts the fact that the {250} fullest life under present conditions involves contact with evil. Innocence must be tragic if it is not to be weak. Jesus without the cross would possess something of that quality of unreality which attaches to Aristotle's high-minded man. But this does not prove that life involves evil; it proves only that life will be narrow and complacent when it is out of touch with things as they are. Since evil is now real, he who altogether escapes it is ignorant and idle, taking no hand in the real work to be done. Not to feel pain when pain abounds, not to bear some share of the burden, is indeed cause for shame. In that remarkable allegory, "The Man Who Was Thursday," Chesterton has most vividly presented this truth. In the last confrontation, the real anarchist, the spokesman of Satan, accuses the friends of order of being happy, of having been protected from suffering. But the philosopher, who has hitherto been unable to understand the despair to which he and his companions have been driven, repels this slander.

'I see everything,' he cried, 'everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? . . . So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be {251} flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, "You lie!" No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, "We also have suffered."

'It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. . . . We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy.'[20]

But the charge of happiness is to be repelled as a slander only because there are real sufferers in the world to make the charge. It is, after all, not happiness but insensibility which is the real disgrace. If the suffering is real, not to see it, not to feel it, not to heal it, is intolerable. To say, however, that suffering is wilfully caused in order that it may eventually contribute to an ultimate reconciliation, is to charge God with something worse than complacency. If life is a real tragedy it can be endured, and to enter into it will bring the deep satisfaction which every form of heroism affords. But if the tragedy of life be preconceived and wilfully perpetrated, it must be resented for the sake of self-respect. Even man possesses a dignity which is not consistent with puppetry and mock heroics.

Moral idealism means to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth. It endeavors to justify the maximum of {252} hope, without compromising or confusing any enlightened judgment of truth. In this it is, I think, not only consistent with the spirit of a liberal and rational age, but also with the primary motive of religion. There can be no religion with reservations, fearful of increasing light. No man can do the work of religion without an open and candid mind as well as an indomitable purpose.

I can not here elaborate the evidence upon which moral idealism is grounded; but it might be broadly classified as ethical, cosmological, and historical. The ethical ground of moral idealism is the virtual unity of life, the working therein of one eventual purpose sustained by the good-will of all moral beings. The cosmological proof lies in the moral fruitfulness and plasticity of nature. The historical proof lies in the fact of moral progress, in the advent and steady betterment of life.