A Handbook of Ethical Theory

by George Stuart Fullerton

But, as in the case of the individual, so in that of the community, the tendency to fall again into a rut is always apparent. Laws, once enacted, lend a passive resistance to change, even when they no longer serve well the ends they were intended to serve. The independence of thought and action revealed in the adoption of new constitutions are not conspicuous in their maintenance. Man collective, as well as man individual, falls into habits, and he commits to his unthinking self what was wrought out by himself as thinking and consciously choosing. Passive acceptance of the traditional again wins the day and becomes a ruling factor in action. [Footnote: "It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to them by their embodiment in some permanent record." MAINE, Ancient Law, chapter ii.]

This tendency to mechanization should not surprise us, for we meet with the phenomenon everywhere. The man who says, "Good-by" today does not mean "God be with thee," and the "Gruss Dich Gott" of the Bavarian peasant is very properly translated by the American child as "Hallo." The traditional tends to lose or to alter its meaning, but it continues to serve a purpose. A community without traditions, without settled ways of acting, followed, for the most part, without much reflection, would be in the position of a man without habits either good or bad. Human life as we know it could not go on upon such a basis. The rule has, at times, its inconveniences; but it leads somewhere, at least; whereas he who plunges into the unexplored forest may find every step a problem, and may come even to doubt whether any step is a step in advance.

62. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL HABITS.—Within the province of the social will fall what may not inaptly be called the habits of a community—ways of acting acquired largely without premeditation and followed to a great extent through mere inertia. The province of the social will is a broad one. Deliberate choices; those half-conscious choices analogous to the unheeded expressions of preference which fill the days of the individual; impulses and tendencies which scarcely emerge into the light—all are expressions of the social will.

In the next chapter I shall distinguish between customs proper and social habits in a broader sense. But, in discussing the general problem of the relation of habit to will, it is not necessary to mark the distinction.

Some habits rest upon us lightly; some are inveterate. Of some we are well aware; others have to be pointed out to us before we recognize that we have them. Some we approve, some we disapprove, to some we are indulgent or indifferent. All these peculiarities are found in the relation of the social will to social habits. It may recognize them, approve of them, encourage them. It may pay them little attention. It may disapprove them and strive to repress them. Will has brought them into being; it is will that maintains them; it is will that must modify or suppress them.

As a matter of fact, all communities do tend to change their habits, some more slowly, some more rapidly. And for its habits we hold a community responsible. Common sense refers them to its will, and exercises approval or disapproval. This it would not do were the practices upon which judgment is passed recognized as beyond the control of will altogether.

63. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.—Under the general heading of the habits of a society it is not out of place to discuss its social and political organization.

The fact that there never was an original social contract, made with each other by men solitary and unrelated, with the deliberate intent of putting an end to the war of all against all, does not signify that the social state in which men find themselves is a something with which the human will has had, and has, nothing to do.

Social and political organization are the result of a secular process, but behind that process, as moving and directing forces, stand the will and the intelligence of man. The social and political organization of a community is not the creation of any single generation of men. Each generation is born into a given social setting, as the individual is born into the setting furnished by the community. This social setting, the heritage of the community from the past, may be compared to a great estate brought together by the efforts of a man's ancestors, and transmitted to him to hold intact, to add to, to squander, as he may be inclined. It is a product attained by man's nature in its struggle with environment, and that product may be modified by the same forces that made it what it is.

Into this heritage the generation of men who compose a community at any given time may enter with little thought of its significance, with no information, or with false information, touching the manner of its coming into being, and with small inclination to do anything save to leave unchanged the institutions of which it finds itself possessed. Nevertheless, the forms under which societies are organized are subject to the social will, and, if disapproved, are modified or abolished. Some change is taking place even where there is apparent immobility, as becomes evident when the history of institutions is followed through long periods of time. The utmost that can be said is that, where intelligence is little developed and energy at a low ebb, the social will may bear the stamp of passive acceptance of the inherited, rather than exhibit a tendency to innovation. Will it remains, but we may hesitate to describe it as a free will.