Thrasymachus

by C. E. M. Joad

Realizing that any fool can be good intellectuals have always made light of morality for the same reasons as those which have caused the herd to set store by it. If the herd has been ready to censure the eccentrics, the eccentrics have been even readier to provide materials for censure. Despising the mob, they flout their standards and laugh at their scruples. The good are so harsh to the clever, the clever so rude to the good, that one might almost be tempted to believe in a fundamental antipathy between virtue and brains. Whether this be so or not, it seems probable that there is a permanent necessity in our natures requiring us to exalt the common qualities we share and understand, and to condemn rare gifts. Thus morality represents the average man’s attempt to console himself in the face of the insulting superiority of the few, by proving that the superiority is achieved only at the cost of loss of virtue. Certainly we must take it out of these fellows somehow! It tortures our self-respect to admire those who have qualities we cannot possess. That is why we love to think of the philosopher as an absent-minded fool, incapable of feeding himself, writing cheques or catching trains, and listen so greedily to the legends of vice and voluptuousness in men of genius.

Wickedness in high places is so much more appetizing than wickedness in low; it enables us to prove that those who are inconsiderate enough to rise above us in place and power, only do so at the cost of falling below us in simplicity and virtue. The public lips have recently been smacking over the details of a case in which it was alleged that a wife endeavoured to advance the career of her husband by a liaison with the Quarter Master General of H.M. Forces. It was further alleged that the husband condoned and even encouraged her conduct. The Quarter Master General was a man of marked ability. His organizing and administrative capacity were justly famous; he was, in fact, one of the few brilliant successes of the War. When the rumour spread that this man, one of the most powerful as well as the ablest in the land, had been willing to advance a subordinate because he desired his wife, the outburst of public indignation in the press was tremendous. Wickedness in high places was a glorious theme: there had been nothing like it since the Armistice. Labour bodies met to insist on the superior purity of the lives of working-people, and parsons thundered in their pulpits against the luxury of the rich. For several weeks the Dennistoun case was the chief subject of conversation in trains, ’buses, and bar-parlours, and those whose lips smacked the most greedily over the luscious scandal were the most severe in their condemnation of the vices of society.

Why was it that this case attracted so much attention? Why was the wickedness involved considered so shocking? Why did those who would not have looked twice at the six-line paragraph describing a similar occurrence in the remoter suburbs, follow every detail of the case with the most avid curiosity? Because the woman was unusually beautiful, the man unusually powerful and talented. The beauty of the woman aroused the envy of other women; the power and talents of the man excited the envy of other men.

We all of us have an impulse to blame those whom life has more generously gifted or more fortunately bestowed than ourselves. We make a virtue of our deficiencies, argue that only the dull and lowly are good, and call the feeling of envy which we experience for those who are neither dull nor lowly moral indignation.

In addition to the envy of the old for the young and of the herd for the exceptional, the impulse to blame, which men call morality, owns another source. This is the desire for uniformity. The desire for uniformity springs in its turn from the fear of insecurity. Society, said Schopenhauer, is like a collection of hedgehogs driven together for the sake of warmth. The object of social observances is to put felt upon the spikes in order that the proximity of the hedgehogs may not cause them to injure one another. The risk of friction will be reduced to a minimum if all the hedgehogs behave in the same way. Identical behaviour in all circumstances is, no doubt, an unattainable ideal; but this makes it doubly important that the herd as a whole should know within limits in what way each of its members will behave. Those who react unexpectedly to familiar situations, or differ markedly in their conduct from others are a danger to the herd, causing social friction and a sense of insecurity. For this reason reformers like Christ or Ibsen, who violently question the standards of thought and conduct prevalent in their herd, and refuse to conform to them, are regarded with bitter hostility.

The method by which the herd secures the uniformity of conduct upon which its comfort and security depend is the exercise of social approval and disapproval. In extreme cases this method is forcibly employed. The soldier who shows a tendency to run away under the enemy’s fire endangers the safety of his fellows. Steps are accordingly taken to check this tendency by the pressure of social disapproval in the form of discipline. Discipline is a device for substituting the certainty of being shot for those who do not go over the top for the probability of being shot for those who do. The result is that most soldiers go over the top. This is conduct conducive to the safety of the herd, and is rewarded with social approval under the name of courage.

More usually social approval and disapproval find expression in the sphere of manners and modes. In Japan under the old laws the term for a rude man is “other-than-expected fellow”, and a noble is not to be interfered with in cutting down a fellow who has behaved to him in a manner other than is expected. In general, thought or conduct calculated to surprise or disturb the herd incurs disapproval and is called immoral; thought and conduct which mirrors the beliefs and habits of the herd is regarded with approval and is called moral. Thus virtue is the habit of acting in a manner of which other people approve; vice in a manner of which they disapprove.

Summing up, therefore, we may say that social morality in a democracy springs from the envy of the average man for the talents of the able man which cause him to feel inferior, and from the dislike of the herd for the conduct of the eccentric which makes it feel unsafe.

These are general principles and are more or less applicable in any state of society which is not a tyranny or a close oligarchy. What I wish to emphasize is their special application to a modern western democracy.

In a community of this type the herd is at once more congested and more powerful than it has been in any other period of history. Its congestion causes it to place a hitherto unparalleled emphasis upon the necessity for felting the spikes of the hedgehogs, that is to say, upon the importance of uniformity; its power enables it to vent its disapproval upon those who offend its prejudices with the maximum effect. This can be seen most clearly in the case of America which has produced the most congested[3] and the most powerful herd on record. America is a melting pot in which all the races of the earth are fused. The natural diversity of its elements produces a special need for artificial uniformity in its citizens. A civilization with its roots in the earth can allow its members to spread outwards, like the branches of a tree; a civilization, whose seeds are planted in shallow soil, must hedge them about lest they be scattered by the wind. The first is centrifugal: it can tolerate individuality because it has a centre. The second is centripetal: it must enforce uniformity because it has none.