The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

And I say that the English reliance on our religious organisations and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth—mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a more complete, a harmonious perfection.[25]

In other words, both humanism and humanitarianism may be lacking in humanity: humanism, on account of its insensibility to pain and hunger and poverty when these lie outside a narrow radius of bright intensive living; humanitarianism, on account of its failure to honor the highest type of attainment and to prefigure a perfection not yet realized.

VI

There is but one economy of interests which furnishes the proper sphere of moral action, namely, the universal economy which embraces within one system all interests whatsoever, present, remote, and potential. The validity of this economy lies in the fact that the goodness of action cannot {113} be judged without reference to all the interests affected, whether directly or indirectly. To live well is to live for all life. The control of action by this motive is the virtue of good-will. It should be added that the good will must be not only compassionate, but just; offering to help, without failing to respect. And it must be not only devoted, but also enlightened; serving, but not without self-criticism and insight.

Such a programme need not seem bewildering or quixotic. If my action does not offend those most nearly concerned, it will scarcely offend those removed by space, time, or indirection. Charity begun at home is spread abroad without my further endeavor. Furthermore, it is good-will rather than a narrow complacency that inspires my assuming of the special tasks and responsibilities defined by proximity, descent, and special aptitude. Life as a whole is built out of individual opportunities and vocations. It is required only that while I live effectively and happily, as circumstance or choice may determine, I should conform myself to those principles which harmonize life with life, and bring an abundance on the whole out of the fruitfulness of individual effort.

Good-will is the moral condition of religion, where this is corrected by enlightenment. The religion of good-will is best illustrated, from the {114} European tradition, in the transition from paganism to Christianity. I have said that the Greeks were not without distrust of that natural and worldly happiness which they most praised. This, for example, is the testimony of Euripides:

Long ago
I looked upon man's days, and found a grey
Shadow. And this thing more I surely say,
That those of all men who are counted wise,
Strong wits, devisers of great policies,
Do pay the bitterest toll. Since life began;
Hath there in God's eye stood one happy man?
Fair days roll on, and bear more gifts or less
Of fortune, but to no man happiness.[26]

This note of pessimism grows more marked among the philosophers, and is at length taken up into the Christian renunciation of the world. The philosophers attempted to devise a way of happiness which the superior individual might follow through detaching himself from political society and cultivating his speculative powers.[27] But the Christian renunciation involved the abandonment of every claim to individual self-sufficiency, even the pride of reason. It expressed a sense of the general plight of humanity, and looked for relief only through a power with love and might enough to save all. Hence there is this fundamental difference between pagan and Christian pessimism: the pagan confesses his powerlessness to make himself impregnable {115} to fortune, while the Christian convicts himself of sin, confessing his worthlessness when measured by the task of universal salvation. The one pities and absolves himself; the other condemns himself.

Now the other-worldliness of Christianity was without doubt a grave error, which it found itself compelled to correct; but it was none the less the vehicle through which European civilization became possessed of the most important secrets of religious happiness. In the first place, all are made sharers, through sympathy, in the failure of the present; and, thus distributed, the burden is lightened. "It is an act within the power of charity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "to translate a passion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become insensible." [28] In the second place, it is understood that there is no such thing as a happiness that is enjoyed at the expense of others and by the special favor of fortune. There is no promise of individual salvation save in the salvation of all. A private and protected happiness is bound sooner or later to be destroyed by an increase of sensibility, by an enlightened awareness of the evil beyond. And to experience evil, to realize it, and yet to be content, lies not within {116} the power of any moral being; it is not merely difficult, it is self-contradictory. To any one who judges himself fairly, with a wide and vivid image of life as it is in all its ramifications and obscurities, the evil of the world is all one. It follows that, as there is no perfect happiness except in the annihilation of evil, so there can be no peace of mind, no self-respect, no sense of living truly and for the best, unless one's action can be conceived as wholly saving and up-building, as contributing in its place and in its way to the general forward movement. This, I think, is the deeper explanation of the buoyancy of devoted people, of that buoyancy which was a source of such great wonder to the disillusioned wise men of ancient times. And this, I think, is the meaning of the Christian teaching that it is more blessed to give than to receive; and that the love of one's God is to grow out of the love of one's neighbor.

I have endeavored to show that the highest good is the greatest good; that it may not only be inferred from the present good, but that it actually consists of the present good, with more like it, and with the present evil eliminated. By mysticism I mean that species of formalism in which the highest good, out of respect for its exaltation, is divorced from the present good, and so emptied of content. Professor James has said that it is {117} characteristic of rationalists and sentimentalists, to "extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so pure when extracted that they contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and higher, nature." [29] There is a peculiar liability to such abstraction in religion, for religion involves a judgment of insufficiency against every limited achievement. A longing after unqualified good is the very breath of enlightened religion; and in order that that ideal may be kept pure, it must not be identified with any partial good. Indeed, the office of religion requires it to condemn as only partial, good that is commonly taken to be sufficient. Now there is only one way of defining a good that shall be universal without being merely formal, and that is by defining perfection quantitatively rather than qualitatively; substituting for the Platonic Absolute Good, in which the present good is refined away into a phrase or symbol, the maximum good, in which the present good is saved and multiplied. He who believes that he conceives goodness otherwise than as the good which he already possesses, deceives himself; as does the author of the Religio Medici, when he says: