The second type of reverence, towards those who are unlike ourselves but none the less our equals, can be inculcated in an elementary way in the family through the relations of brothers and sisters. Fraternal feeling is an empirical means whereby to produce or at least prepare the way for a very notable spiritual result—the willingness not only to respect difference in others, but to welcome it. In current teaching the emphasis in fraternity is placed on likeness. It should rather be placed on the unlikeness. These exist, and are sometimes very marked between brothers, and often cause discord and separation. The novices in life should therefore be taught betimes to overcome their repugnance to those who are unlike themselves, and the common relation of the brothers to their parents will be helpful to this end. Naturally we dislike the unlike. Alienness is ever productive of disharmony. The fact, however, that the unlike person in the case of a brother is the child of the same parents draws us powerfully toward him despite the tendency to recoil.
I must not omit to mention that the triple reverence is most naturally and easily learned in the family, because of the simplicity of the relations, and the limited number of persons involved.
The question may be raised whether the single family should remain the primary social unit, or whether a group of families united in close coöperation would better fulfil the purposes for which the family exists. The privacy and separateness of each family would not need to be disturbed, coöperation might be limited to specific objects, such as simplifying the work of the household, providing kindergarten education for the young children, better play facilities, separate study rooms for adolescents, common entertainments for all, and a service of song at the beginning or close of the day. One obvious difficulty in constituting such a group would be: the diversities of tastes and opinions, particularly such as are not perceived at the outset, but emerge on nearer acquaintance, and as the younger members grow up and develop their idiosyncrasies. One great advantage, however, would result if care were taken to include in the group persons belonging to different vocations—scientist, scholar, architect, lawyer, artist. Young persons as they mature would then have the benefit of contact with those who are intimately familiar with different lines of vocational activity, and would be helped to know their own mind as to their future career better than they commonly do now. Personal contact with one who is engaged in a certain line of work is a far better instruction as to the nature of the work than reading about it or observation from a distance.
The ethical theory of marriage has been developed in my published addresses.[73] But certain topics not there treated I would at least allude to here in passing, and among them the need of a more careful study of the causes that lead to infelicity in marriage. Kant mentions, as an instance of the discrepancy between the natural and the moral order, the fact that the sex passion is often at its height before the period when marriage may be wisely entered into. There are other seemingly radical incongruities, for instance, that between the face, the features of a person and his real character. The one may be borrowed so to speak from some ancestor, while the real nature is quite at variance with the impression created by the face, so that one who thinks he marries A really marries B. There are diversities also between partners in marriage that only show themselves in the latter part of life, when the outlines of character are apt to stand forth bare. Besides, there is assumed to be, by some modern writers, a certain fundamental sex antagonism.
The whole question of the characteristics of sex requires to be far more carefully investigated than it has been. And here let me take the opportunity to express my positive appreciation of empirical science in connection with ethical theory. The chief object of this volume is to work out the general plan of the ethical relations, or the regulative principle in ethics, and this I am deeply convinced is supersensible and non-empirical. Applied ethics, however, is dependent not only on the regulative principle but on empirical science, that is, on an extended and ever-increasing knowledge of physiology, psychology, and of the environmental conditions that influence human beings, and I am keenly desirous to ward off the possible misunderstanding that the ethical theory here proposed is intended to replace the empirical science of man, individual or social
Without the way there is no going.
Without the truth there is no knowing;
says Thomas à Kempis. The way is the empirical knowledge, the truth is the regulative principle. The way itself, as we proceed along it, will shed additional light on the truth. Nevertheless, without the outlines of the truth, without a goal in view, we should but be wandering blindly.
It is likely that the relations between persons in marriage will in future become more complex, and the difficulties of adjustment more serious, in proportion as under the influence of the new education the individualities of men and women become more developed. Problems hardly as yet envisaged will then become pressing. But whatever the difficulties, they can be overcome if the ideal purpose of marriage be kept in view, namely, that two beings of opposite sexes shall spend their lives in the spiritual reproduction of offspring. The relation is triangular. Husband and wife are each to elicit the distinctive best in the other, incited, impelled to do so in order jointly to evoke the distinctive best in the young. And the young represent posterity. What the parents do for their own children they do for posterity, since children are that portion of posterity which comes under their immediate influence. And in this sense it may be said that marriage is an organ for the spiritual reproduction and advancement of the human race.