[55] Animals, for the purpose now in hand, may be regarded as things, being devoid of personality, though certain modifications in the treatment of animals are prescribed by the fact that they are sentient creatures. But there is no moral interdiction of the involuntary servitude of animals.
[56] See Chapter VII on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in The World Crisis, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1915.
[57] A remark may here be in place regarding the erudition expended in determining which of the writings attributed to some great philosopher like Plato are spurious, and which genuine. Is the time and labor spent on such researches worth while? The object in this case is not so much to clear or vindicate the reputation of the philosopher, or to give him his due, as to rescue for posterity, free from corruptions, a living and quickening thing to which he has given birth, and which the world cannot afford to lose. For the work of a great philosopher like Plato is alive, and is valuable because it is still quickening. And it is quickening, not because of any positive formulation of truth (like a scientific law), but because of the élan of the human spirit with which it is vibrant in attacking the eternal problems of life and destiny. The same applies to the industry of modern critics in collecting material wherewith to facilitate the deeper understanding of some great poet like Dante or Goethe.
[58] I mean that it is usually considered sufficient, for purposes of reformation, to bring the wrongdoer up to the average standard of law-abiding citizenship, to restore him to the bosom of society as a safe and industrious member. Whereas a person who has had the searching experience of deep guilt is a candidate for a higher station in the moral scale. Humanity having fallen in him, he should be helped to rise to a higher than the average altitude. This at least should be the aim. Consider the fact that Jesus selected some of his most spiritual companions from among publicans and harlots.
[59] Compare the words addressed by Sir Thomas More to his judges when sentence of death had been pronounced upon him—“For though you have been my judges to condemnation, may we meet merrily hereafter in everlasting salvation.”
[60] Everyone admires a disinterested prison reformer, one who is able to see and to call out the good in a so-called bad man; but it is one thing to be disinterested and generous towards men who have acted badly towards others, and quite another thing to take the ethical attitude towards those who have acted wickedly towards oneself. Hence the touchstone of the character of the prison-reformer is to be found in the way in which he behaves and feels towards his personal enemies, for instance, towards those who malignantly attack him and interfere with the business of prison reform on which he has set his heart.
[61] Perhaps I may add a word as to the forgiveness of those who, by an extension of meaning, may be called our intellectual enemies. By intellectual enemies I understand those whose point of view is radically opposed to our own, whose principles and premises, if accepted, would render the entire theory of life on which we act, and on which we found our convictions, untenable. We are apt to be exasperated in listening to them, or in reading the works in which they express their opinions. We are apt to feel that there is no room in the world in which we live for such ideas as theirs, that we and they cannot exist side by side. The bitter feuds of rival religious factions, the notorious odium theologicum, and in more recent times the thinly veiled animus shown in the controversies of philosophical schools are all alike traceable to this source. Racial antagonisms, too, are partly to be accounted for on the same ground. There are certain primary attitudes of mind, modes of feeling and directions of impulse, the correctness of which we cannot demonstrate just because they are primary, and which we all the more vehemently assert when we find them disputed. Love your intellectual enemies, may usefully be added to the stock of moral commandments; keep an open and hospitable mind to opinions and ways of acting, thinking and feeling which naturally repel you. And it will help us to discipline ourselves in this difficult behavior if we reflect that the views most contrary to our own are nevertheless sure to contain some element of truth which we cannot afford to disregard, and which will serve the purpose of correcting and supplementing such truth as we may ourselves possess.
[62] Or more exactly act so as to elicit the sense of unique distinctive selfhood, as interconnected with all other distinctive spiritual beings in the infinite universe.
[63] The conception underlying Robert L. Stevenson’s sketch of Jekyl and Hyde is to be taken seriously, and applied without exception mutatis mutandis to every human being whatsoever (but see footnote p. 76). It is not original with Stevenson. The French, who are perhaps the keenest psychologists, long ago invented the apercu that everyone has the defects of his qualities.
[64] The use of the term duality is not intended to exclude the possibility of multiplicity, but only to call attention to one striking bifurcation of human character.