The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

There is a second source of overindulgence, in the ever-increasing complexity of the moral economy. The more numerous the interests; the more difficult the task of attending to their connections and managing their adjustment. Not only is the need of prudence never outgrown; it steadily acquires both a greater urgency and a greater difficulty.

If incapacity may be said to be the metaphysical evil, the taint of the cosmos at large, overindulgence may be said to be the original sin, the taint of life itself. It is life's offence against itself, the denial of greater life for the sake of the little in hand. It is the perennial failure of the {87} individual interest to unite itself with that universal enterprise of which it is the microcosmic image.

III

The simplest moral economy is that in which two or more interests are reciprocally adjusted without being subordinated. The principle of organization which defines such an economy is prudence. Prudence becomes necessary at the moment when interests come into such contact with one another as provokes retaliation. Thus, for example, interests react on one another through being embodied in the same physical organism. Each bodily activity depends on the well-being of co-ordinate functions, and if its exercise be so immoderate as to injure these, it undermines itself. Moderation gains for special interests the support of a general bodily health.

But bodily health is not the only medium of interdependence among the interests of a single individual. His interests must draw not only upon a common source of vitality, but also upon a common stock of material resources. The limitation of interests that follows from this fact is frugality or thrift, the practical working of the principle that present waste is future lack, and that, therefore, to save now is to spend hereafter. Thrift involves also a special emphasis on {88} livelihood, since this is a source of supply for all particular interests.

The social relation makes interests externally interdependent in a great variety of ways. Interests must inhabit one space, exploit one physical environment, and employ a common mode of communication. If any interest so acts as unduly to divert one of these mediums to its own uses, it must suffer retaliation from the other interests that likewise depend on that medium. It is prudent to give even one's rival half the road, and to divide the spoils with him. There is a politic form of honesty; and veracity may be conceived only as a kind of caution. Thus Menander says: "It is always best to speak the truth in all circumstances. This is a precept which contributes most to safety of life." [4] Tact is only a more refined method of avoiding the antagonism of interests that operate within the same field of social intercourse.

The economy of prudence has its own characteristic value. Indeed, if this were not so there would be no possibility of that form of baseness known as being merely prudent. There is a prudential equilibrium; a condition of smooth and harmonious adjustment, within the personal life or the community. I propose that this equilibrium be termed health. In that admirable idealization of renaissance morality, Castiglione's {89} Book of the Courtier, the author refers to the immediate reward of self-control that comes both from inner harmony and the approbation of one's fellows. To instil goodness into the mind, "to teach continence, fortitude, justice, temperance," Castiglione would give his prince "a taste of how much sweetness is hidden by the little bitterness that at first sight appears to him, who withstands vice; which is always hurtful and displeasing, and accompanied by infamy and blame, just as virtue is profitable, blithe, and full of praise." [5]

Socially, the healthful equilibrium corresponds to that "peace" which Hobbes praised above all things;[6] and which is all that is asked for by those who wish to be let alone in order that they may pursue their own affairs. Although such peace may be ignominious, it need not be so; and a sense of security and reciprocal adjustment must remain among the surviving values, whatever higher achievements be added to it. But the inherent value of health is most clearly defined by a nice equilibration of activities within the medium of the individual organism. I borrow the following description of health in this sense from a recent book by H. G. Wells:

The balance as between asceticism and sensuality comes in, it seems to me, if we remember that to drink well one must not have drunken for some time, {90} that to see well one's eye must be clear, that to make love well one must be fit and gracious and sweet and disciplined from top to toe, that the finest sense of all—the joyous sense of bodily well-being—comes only with exercises and restraints and fine living.[7]

The temperance praised by the Greeks is of like quality, with a further reference to the reasonableness which it fosters. A prudence which is mastered, which has become a spontaneity, delivers reason from bondage, and makes the whole of life easily conformable to it. Thus Castiglione, who is so often reminiscent of Plato and Aristotle, draws a contrast between continence, as the "conquest" of prudence, and temperance as its "beneficent rule."