Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

That morals have a bearing upon the welfare and character not only of the individual and of the family, but of the whole body politic, was however early recognized. Theognis, for instance, who lived in the sixth century B. C., stigmatized in the most energetic terms the evil influence exercised upon the destiny of nations by the immorality of the upper classes.

In the earlier schemes of civilization, where worship played a dominant political rôle, morals were regarded as under the protection of the sacred law. Worship and law were closely united in the government, and morals were included in these and governed by motives of expediency.

Man’s obligation to the Deity was then mainly confined to material offerings and propitiatory rites, whilst the law dealt with conduct in so far as order must be enforced, authority respected, and certain mutual rights recognized, if the welfare of the nation was to be maintained.

That the moral standards of these early societies were high cannot be doubted. Those which prevailed in ancient Egypt, as preserved to us in the maxims of sages, as well as in certain chapters of the sacred books, prove that the rule of conduct which was to insure to the subjects of the Pharaohs respect and popularity in this world and happiness in the world to come was in no way inferior to our own. The men who taught their contemporaries “Do not save thy life at the cost of another” had little to learn from the high-bred Parisians who recently escaped unhurt from the burning walls of the French Charity Bazaar.

For the Greek thinkers, however, who first systematically dealt with the subject, Ethics was a branch of Politics, i. e., the Science of Government. Aristotle, like Socrates and Plato, took for the starting point of his argument the sovereign good, or the idea of absolute well-being. All that man undertakes has an aim which, under analysis, is found to be the greatest advantage to him who is acting. Accordingly all knowledge tends to this end; and as all its elements are more or less connected, there must be one, the final end of which is essential; this is the political science which aims at the highest well-being not only of each man, but of man collectively, i. e., of society.

The nature of this highest “well-being,” which is generally termed “happiness,” gave rise among Greek philosophers to discussions which have been revived by modern thinkers.

It may therefore be stated that in ancient thought, at least until the time of the Stoics, morals and virtue were studied, whether in connection with religion or with politics, under the light of expediency rather than under that of abstract right, and that “they were discussed as functions more than as moral obligations.”

The fullness of significance which at present is conveyed in the word “Duty” is mainly due to the gradual and complex development of religious, legal, and philosophical modes of thought, in which certain human acts are regarded as enjoined and others as forbidden by a higher power, and in which conscience enters as an important and ever increasing factor. A sense of duty is the legitimate product of human nature under cultivation. But although we should look in vain among the ancients for the abstract notions which the words “Conscience, Duty, and Right” evoke in the modern mind, we find in groping our way up the stream of time that germs of these concepts had long lain concealed in the precepts of ancient moralists. The fact of virtue existed long before it was made the subject of theoretical systems, and if with the development of the reasoning faculty our moral code has been elaborated and our ethical terminology enriched, broadly speaking, the rules of conduct laid down by civilized men in the remote past and those which govern us to-day are, in kind, virtually the same. Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife; Thou shalt not bear false witness, are coeval with the beginnings of communities. It is in the scope and degree of their application—not in their nature—that mainly lies the difference existing in this respect between the past and the present.

In the highest stage of our moral development the unselfishness which seeks gratification in the welfare of others and in duty accomplished, at the cost of self, may in final analysis be reduced to a refined egoism. The motive held up to man by most moralists is still expediency. The reward, whether it is promised on this earth or in the world to come, is still a reward, and to the “greatest advantage of him who is acting.”

Moreover, moral standards to-day, as in the past, have a strong bearing upon political government, and it is in studying the development of democratic ideas that we may best follow the evolution of modern ethics as characteristic of our epoch; for to this development is due a higher sense of justice, the recognition of the rights of men and of the unimportance of the ego as compared with the race, all of which form distinctive features of the modern creed for which the words “altruism” and “humanitarianism” have been coined. It may also be said, to the honor of the present century, that there exists a growing tendency to accept abstract truth and right outside of expediency as standards of conduct, and to apply these regardless of sex, class, or persons according to the inflexible logic of a trained reason.