Might or Right
By John Grier Hibben.
President of Princeton University; author of works on logic and philosophy.
The address printed below was delivered by President Hibben at the opening of the Laymen's Efficiency Convention in New York City, Oct. 16, 1914.
We are all of us sadly conscious of our failure to realize in any adequate measure the standards of right conduct which we set for ourselves. Attainment falls far short of purpose and desire. Through want of courage, or it may be of inclination, or of sheer inertia, we fail to obey perfectly the law of duty which we recognize as imperatively binding upon us. There is, however, a more subtle kind of failure as regards our moral endeavor and achievement which is due to the unconscious shifting of these standards of right and wrong themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered. The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain elements of evil which we allow and accept without full realization of the significance of this moral alchemy to which the most fundamental of our ideas are often times subjected. The idea of right no longer stands in its integrity, but is compromised and even neutralized by conflicting thoughts and sentiments. The things which at one time held first place in our estimate of life become secondary. Our attitude toward men, and manners, and affairs experiences a radical change. This in most cases takes place unconsciously, or if conscious of it, we refrain from confessing it even to ourselves.
There are some, however, who are both frank enough and bold enough to announce their belief in the radical doctrine which demands a complete transformation of essential values. For them, good is evil and evil good, and they seem not ashamed to avow it. The conspicuous German philosopher of later years, Nietzsche, with a naïve simplicity insists that the great need of our modern civilization is that which he designates as "the transvaluation of all values." By this he means the complete transformation of certain ideas of supreme value into their direct opposites. He declares, for instance, that the central virtues of Christianity, such as those of self-sacrifice, pity, mercy, indicate an inherent weakness of the human race, and that the strong man dissipates his energies through the offices of kindness and helpfulness. Thus the law which commands us to bear one another's burdens must be regarded as obsolete. Every man should be strong enough to bear his own burdens. If not, he is a drag to the onward progress of humanity, and to assist him is to do evil and not good. If you help the weak, you so far forth assist in perpetuating an inferior type of manhood.
Nietzsche's "Moralic Acid."
From this point of view, the definition of religion given in the Old Testament should be revised, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy God." In doing justice we must first be just to self; in loving mercy it must not be at the expense of our own interests and advantage, and we must not walk so humbly before our God as to give to the world the appearance of weakness or lack of independence. As Nietzsche insists, "The man who loves his neighbor as himself must have an exceedingly poor opinion of himself." If the race is to be perfected, everything and every person must be sacrificed in order to produce and preserve the strong man at all hazards. There is a kind of "moralic acid," as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of humanity in our modern day. We have discoursed too much of character, too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might. Conscience not only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor limited by law, living his life "beyond good and evil."
The serious question which presents itself to our minds at this time is whether our modern world has not been unconsciously incorporating these ideas into its living beliefs—that is, those beliefs which reveal themselves in actual living and doing, in daily purpose, in the adaptation of means to ends, in the deeds which the world honors, and in the achievements which it crowns with glory. There are many persons who would not have the frankness of Nietzsche to say that might makes right, and that a moral sense is the great obstacle to progress, and that in "vigorous eras noble civilizations see something contemptible in sympathy, in brotherly love, in the lack of self-assertion and self-reliance." Our modern world may not explicitly subscribe to such doctrines in their extreme and exaggerated expression, but nevertheless may be unconsciously influenced by them. Our real opinions, however, are to be tested by our sense of values as revealed by the things which we crave, which we set our hearts upon, which we strive early and late to gain, and sacrifice all else in order to secure. Have we not offered our prayers to the God of might rather than the God of righteousness, to the God of power rather than the God of justice, the God of mercy and of love?
The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship. If we have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization. The need of our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the time of the coming of Christ. His message to the world as indicated by His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient régime as regards three crucial points.
The Brotherhood of Man.
First, the religious and moral beliefs of that age had become purely formal. There was the letter of conviction, but not the spirit of it. The creed, the ritual, the ceremony were there, but the life had departed. And so today our beliefs have lost vitality to a large extent because we have been content to indulge in formulas oft repeated, which have ceased to have significance for our thoughts or for our feelings. We have allowed ourselves to be betrayed by words which are mere sounds without substance. We have verbalized our beliefs, and have depotentialed them of vital significance. Take, for instance, the phrases, "The fatherhood of God" and "The brotherhood of man." They have been so often upon our lips as to become trite; their real meaning has disappeared. It is easy to repeat the words, and to be satisfied with the repetition, and nevertheless remain wholly insensible to their profound import, and under no compulsion whatsoever to obey their sublime command. We assent to the formula: but it does not become a determining factor in our purposes and plans. There is perhaps no age in the history of the world which has so emphasized the idea of the brotherhood of man as our own, and never in all history has there been such a denial of this idea as by the present European war. If the brotherhood of man had been the living, dominant idea of our civilization, could this present tragedy of the nations have occurred? If the world had believed profoundly in the idea of God, would we now be daily reading of the ghastly scenes where human life is no longer sacred, where love gives place to hate, where the constructive forces of the world are superseded by the destructive, and all the passions of man's brute inheritance are given full play and scope?
Second—In the teachings of Christ there was a remarkable expansion of the idea of God. Instead of the tribal God worshipped as the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He substituted the idea of God, as the God of all peoples and all races, the God of the Jew and Gentile, of the Greek and barbarian, of the bond and the free. It was the great apostle of the Gentiles who at the centre of Greek civilization announced this fundamental conception of Christianity to the old world:
God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
This was the sublime idea of the God of a united humanity. The God of the tribe had given place to the God of the whole world. That conception was very foreign to the popular religious notions current at the time of Christ, and it seems still further away from our ideas of the present day. It is a very narrow and circumscribed view of God to regard Him as concerned merely for our little insular affairs, to regard Him simply as a God of the individual or of the home, or even one's nation. He transcends all these limitations of particular interests and particular needs. He is not merely our God but the God of all mankind. The children of Israel called Him the God of battle, the God of hosts, that is, the one who would give victory to them in their battles, and who would prove the leader of their hosts. But Christ came to the world in God's name to universalize this narrow tribal idea of God, proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men. It was the dawn of a new era, the Christian era. That light which shone upon the old world is darkened by the cloud hanging low over Europe at the present time. We cannot think, however, that it is permanently extinguished. To that light the nations of the earth must again return.
The Area of Moral Obligation.
Third—Christ gave to the world of His day an enlarged idea of the area of moral obligation. He insisted most stoutly upon the expansion of the scope of individual responsibility. This freeing of the idea of duty from the limitations of race prejudice is a natural corollary to the idea of the universality of God's relation to the world. Corresponding to the tribal view of God there is always an accompanying idea of the restricted obligation of the individual. To care for one's own family or one's own clan or tribe and present a hostile front to the rest of mankind has always been the characteristic feature of primitive morality. It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the complete universalizing of our moral obligations—stripping our sense of duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated. The natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only those who are our kin or our own kind. The time has certainly come for us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.
After the great calamity of this present war is passed there must necessarily follow a period of reconstruction. It will not be merely the reconstruction of national resources and international relations, but it must be also a reconstruction of our fundamental conceptions of man and of the relation of man to man the world over, and of the relation also of man to God. We must ask anew the question, Who is our neighbor? In this great moral enterprise you will naturally play a large and significant part, for you belong to the class of men who are expected to have strong and decided opinions in the face of a great world crisis, and are capable of leading others toward the goal of a regenerated humanity. To know the right and to maintain it, to fight against the wrong, to impart courage to the timid, strength to the weak, and hope to the faint-hearted; to forget self in the service of others and extend a human sympathy to the ends of the earth, this is your vocation. It is the call of the world, it is the voice of one calling to you out of a distant past across the nineteen Christian centuries; it is the "spirit of the years to come," summoning you to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth.