What erring human nature deserves or merits, it is just it should have. But in the end, a moral agent deserves to be a moral agent; and hence deserves that punishments inflicted should be corrective, not merely retributive. Every wrongdoer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone; or is it due every one to regard him as a man with a future as well? as having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad? Those who are responsible for the infliction of punishment have, as well as those punished, to meet the requirements of justice; and failure to employ the means and instrumentalities of punishment in a way to lead, so far as possible, the wrongdoer to reconsideration of conduct and re-formation of disposition, cannot shelter itself under the plea that it vindicates law. Such failure comes rather from thoughtless custom; from a lazy unwillingness to find better means; from an admixture of pride with lack of sympathy for others; from a desire to maintain things as they are rather than go to the causes which generate criminals.
§ 4. WISDOM OR CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
As we have repeatedly noted, the heart of a voluntary act is its intelligent or deliberate character. The individual's intelligent concern for the good is implied in his sincerity, his faithfulness, and his integrity. Of all the habits which constitute the character of an individual, the habit of judging moral situations is the most important, for this is the key to the direction and to the remaking of all other habits. When an act is overt, it is irretrievably launched. The agent has no more control. The moral life has its center in the periods of suspended and postponed action, when the energy of the individual is spent in recollection and foresight, in severe inquiry and serious consideration of alternative aims. Only through reflection can habits, however good in their origin and past exercise, be readapted to the needs of the present; only through reflection can impulses, not yet having found direction, be guided into the haven of a reasonable happiness.
Greek Emphasis upon Insight or Wisdom.—It is not surprising that the Greeks, the first seriously to inquire into the nature of behavior and its end or good, should have eulogized wisdom, insight, as the supreme virtue and the source of all the virtues. Now, indeed, it seems paradoxical to say with Socrates that ignorance is the only vice; that man is bad not voluntarily, from deliberate choice, but only from ignorance. But this is largely because we discriminate between different kinds of knowledge as the Greek did not, and as they had no occasion for doing. We have a second-hand knowledge, a knowledge from books, newspapers, etc., which was practically non-existent even in the best days of Athens. Knowledge meant to them something more personal; something like what we call a "realizing sense"; an intimate and well-founded conviction. To us knowledge suggests information about what others have found out, and hence is more remote in its meaning. Greek knowledge was mostly directly connected with the affairs of their common associated life. The very words for knowledge and art, understanding and skill, were hardly separated. Knowledge was knowledge about the city, its traditions, literature, history, customs, purposes, etc. Their astronomy was connected with their civic religion; their geography with their own topography; their mathematics with their civil and military pursuits. Now we have immense bodies of impersonal knowledge, remote from direct bearing upon affairs. Knowledge has accordingly subdivided itself into theoretical or scientific and practical or moral. We use the term knowledge usually only for the first kind; hence the Socratic position seems gratuitously paradoxical. But under the titles of conscience and conscientiousness we preserve the meaning which was attached to the term knowledge. It is not paradoxical to say that unconscientiousness is the fundamental vice, and genuine conscientiousness is guarantee of all virtue.
Conscientiousness.—In this change from Greek wisdom to modern conscientiousness there have been some loss and some gain. The loss lies in a certain hardening of the idea of insight and deliberation, due to the isolation of the moral good from the other goods of life. The good man and the bad man have been endowed with the same faculty; and this faculty has been treated as automatically delivering correct conclusions. On the other hand, modern conscientiousness contains less of the idea of intellectual accomplishment, and more of the idea of interest in finding out the good in conduct. "Wisdom" tended to emphasize achieved insight; knowledge which was proved, guaranteed, and unchangeable. "Conscientiousness" tends rather to fix attention upon that voluntary attitude which is interested in discovery.
This implies a pretty radical change in wisdom as virtue. In the older sense it is an attainment; something possessed. In the modern, it resides in the active desire and effort, in pursuit rather than in possession. The attainment of knowledge varies with original intellectual endowment; with opportunity for leisurely reflection; with all sorts of external conditions. Possession is a class idea and tends to mark off a moral aristocracy from a common herd. Since the activities of the latter must be directed, on this assumption, by attained knowledge, its practical outcome is the necessity of the regulation of their conduct by the wisdom possessed by the superior class. When, however, the morally important thing is the desire and effort to discover the good, every one is on the same plane, in spite of differences in intellectual endowment and in learning.
Moral knowing, as a fundamental or cardinal aspect of virtue, is then the completeness of the interest in good exhibited in effort to discover the good. Since knowing involves two factors, a direct and an indirect, conscientiousness involves both sensitiveness and reflectiveness.[195]
(1) Moral Sensitiveness.—The individual who is not directly aware of the presence of values needing to be perpetuated or achieved, in the things and persons about him, is hard and callous or tough. A "tender" conscience is one which is immediately responsive to the presentation of good and evil. The modern counterpart to the Socratic doctrine that ignorance is the root of vice, is that being morally "cold" or "dead," being indifferent to moral distinctions, is the most hopeless of all conditions. One who cares, even if he cares in the wrong way, has at least a spring that may be touched; the one who is just irresponsive offers no leverage for correction or improvement.
(2) Thoughtfulness.—While the possession of such an immediate, unreflective responsiveness to elements of good and bad must be the mainstay of moral wisdom, the character which lies back of these intuitive apprehensions must be thoughtful and serious-minded. There is no individual who, however morally sensitive, can dispense with cool, calm reflection, or whose intuitive judgments, if reliable, are not largely the funded outcome of prior thinking. Every voluntary act is intelligent: i.e., includes an idea of the end to be reached or the consequences to accrue. Such ends are ideal in the sense that they are present to thought, not to sense. But special ends, because they are limited, are not what we mean by ideals. They are specific. With the growth of the habit of reflection, agents become conscious that the values of their particular ends are not circumscribed, but extend far beyond the special case in question; so far indeed that their range of influence cannot be foreseen or defined. A kindly act may not only have the particular consequence of relieving present suffering, but may make a difference in the entire life of its recipient, or may set in radically different directions the interest and attention of the one who performs it. These larger and remoter values in any moral act transcend the end which was consciously present to its doer. The person has always to aim at something definite, but as he becomes aware of this penumbra or atmosphere of far-reaching ulterior values the meaning of his special act is thereby deepened and widened. An act is outwardly temporary and circumstantial, but its meaning is permanent and expansive. The act passes away; but its significance abides in the increment of meaning given to further growth. To live in the recognition of this deeper meaning of acts is to live in the ideal, in the only sense in which it is profitable for man to dwell in the ideal.