A Handbook of Ethical Theory

by George Stuart Fullerton

It has not been characteristic of communities generally that all who find their place in them should be like sharers in the social will. The distinction has been made between the citizen, who enjoys the fullest rights and may, perhaps, directly take part in the government of the state, and those who, while in the state, are not of it, as they do not enjoy citizenship. Where slavery, in any of its forms, has prevailed, the distinction between those who are significant factors in determining the social will, and those who have not this prerogative, has been very marked. Social classes have often enjoyed, even before the law, privileges of great moment. Women have, as a rule, not been treated as citizens, and have been refused a share in the government of the community. Children are cared for and are protected, but political rights are denied them. Their status before the law is a peculiar one. The mentally defective, both in primitive communities and in developed ones, stand in a relation to the community peculiar to themselves. They are not excluded from it; they are accorded rights; but they are assigned in the community a place of their own. Wherever we look, we find inequality. The sharers in the social will do not share equally, nor do they share in the same way. This is true of communities of every description, but the differences are more marked in some than in others.

72. THE COMMUNITY AND THE DEAD.—It is not merely of the living human beings which compose a community that the social will takes cognizance. Other wills are made participants in the body of rights and duties peculiar to the community.

In many communities the dead are still counted among its members. They are conceived as affecting its welfare, and as demanding services from the living. Duties towards the dead are a well-recognized division of the sum of a man's obligations in communities the most diverse in their character. In some, they occupy a very prominent place; in no community are they wholly overlooked. A striking illustration of the recognition by the social will of the rights of the dead is to be found in the whole modern law of testamentary succession. The will expressed by a man while he is alive is given effect as though he were still in the flesh and insisted upon the fulfillment of his desire. It appears to work as a permanent factor in the community life, making its influence felt for generations. Witness its influence in charitable foundations, in the law of entail, and the like.

73. THE COMMUNITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL.—Nor is it merely in recognizing the wills of the dead that the social will extends its sphere beyond the community of living human beings. To primitive man, and to man far from primitive, his social environment has not seemed to be limited to the living and the dead who have, or who have had, an undeniable and unequivocal place in the community.

The part played in the life of man by supernatural beings of various orders has been a most significant one. Demons and gods, spirits of a lower or of a higher order, have occupied his mind and have influenced his actions. Such beings have been conceived to be, sometimes, malevolent and needing to be placated, sometimes, benevolent and fit objects of gratitude. Their wills man has regarded as forces to be taken into account, a something to which the individual and the community must adjust themselves.

Man's relation, or supposed relation, to such beings has been a source of classes of duties upon which great stress has been laid. The influence of this admission of supernatural beings into the circle of those directly concerned in the community life has found its expression in the organization of the state, in custom, in law, in public opinion. We know little of a community when we overlook this factor.

Between magic and religion it is not easy to draw a sharp line, especially when we view religion in the lower stages of its development. In both we have to do with what may be called the supernatural. Magic has been defined as the employment of mechanical means to attain the desired end. In religion, when it so far develops that its specific character seems clearly revealed, we have left the sphere of the mechanical.

The distinction between the mechanical and the spiritual is familiar to us in our dealings with our fellow-men. In such dealings we may employ physical force. On the other hand, we may appeal to their intelligence and their emotions, and thus influence their action. In so far as we do not make such an appeal, we deal with our fellows, not as though they belonged to our social environment, but to our physical.

At the lowest stages of his development, man does not distinguish clearly between persons and things. This means that he cannot distinguish clearly between his material environment and his social. But the distinction becomes gradually clearer, and it is, in the end, a marked one. Religion becomes differentiated from magic. To confound religion, in its higher developments, with magic is an inexcusable confusion.

74. RELIGION AND THE COMMUNITY.—The denotation of the term religion is a broad one, and there will probably always be dispute as to the justice of its extension to this or to that particular form of faith. But it seems clear that it is typical of religion to extend what may not unjustly be called the social environment of man.