It is in this way that the practical man carries with him his ethical principles. He does not stop to reason out the relation of duty and virtue to reward, or of temptation and vice to penalty, before he decides to help the unfortunate, or to be faithful to a friend, or to vote on election day. This trained, habitual will, causing acts to be performed in conformity to duty and virtue, yet without conscious reference to the explicit principles that underlie them, is character.
It is chiefly in the formation of character that the explicit recognition of ethical principles has its value. Character is a storage battery in which the power acquired by our past acts is accumulated and preserved for future use.
It is through this power of character, this tendency of acts of a given nature to repeat and perpetuate themselves, that we give unity and consistency to our lives. This also is the secret of our power of growth. As soon as one virtue has become habitual and enters into our character, we can leave it, trusting it in the hands of this unconscious power of self-perpetuation; and then we can turn the energy thus freed toward the acquisition of new virtues.
Day by day we are turning over more and more of our lives to this domain of character. Hence it is of the utmost importance to allow nothing to enter this almost irrevocable state of unconscious, habitual character that has not first received the approval of conscience, the sanction of duty, and the stamp of virtue. Character, once formed in a wrong direction, may be corrected. But it can be done only with the greatest difficulty, and by a process as hard to resolve upon as the amputation of a limb or the plucking out of an eye.
The greater part of the principles of ethics we knew before we undertook this formal study. We learned them from our parents; we picked them up in contact with one another in the daily intercourse of life. The value of our study will not consist so much in new truths learned, as in the clearer and sharper outlines which it will have given to some of the features of the moral ideal. The definite results of such a study we cannot mark or measure. Just as sunshine and rain come to the plants and trees, and then seem to vanish, leaving no visible or tangible trace behind; yet the plants and trees are different from what they were before, and have the heat and moisture stored up within their structure to burst forth into fresher and larger life; in like manner, though we should forget every formal statement that we have read, yet we could not fail to be affected by the incorporation within ourselves in the form of character of some of these principles of duty and virtue which we have been considering. It has been said: "Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny."
Pleasure not a reliable guide to conduct.—The realization of capacity brings with it pleasure. The harmonious realization of all our powers would bring harmonious and permanent pleasure or happiness. Pleasure is always to be welcomed as a sign of health and activity. Other things being equal, the more pleasure we have the better. It is possible however to abstract the pleasure from the activity which gives rise to it, and make pleasure the end for which we act. This pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake is delusive and destructive. It is delusive, because the direct aim at pleasure turns us aside from the direct aim at objects. And when we cease to aim directly at objects, we begin to lose the pleasure and zest which only a direct pursuit of objects can produce. For instance, we all know that if we go to a picnic or a party thinking all the while about having a good time, and asking ourselves every now and then whether we are having a good time or not, we find the picnic or party a dreadful bore, and ourselves perfectly miserable. We know that the whole secret of having a good time on such occasions is to get interested in something else; a game, a boat-ride, anything that makes us forget ourselves and our pleasures, and helps us to lose ourselves in the eager, arduous, absorbing pursuit of something outside ourselves. Then we have a glorious time.
The direct pursuit of pleasure is destructive of character, because it judges things by the way they affect our personal feelings; which is a very shallow and selfish standard of judgment; and because it centers interest in the merely emotional side of our nature, which is peculiar to ourselves; instead of in the rational part of our nature which is common to all men, and unites us to our fellows.
Duty demands not the hap-hazard realization of this or that side of our nature. Yet this is what the pursuit of pleasure would lead to. Duty demands the realization of all our faculties, in harmony with each other, and in proportion to their worth. And to this proportioned and harmonious realization, pleasure, pure and simple, is no guide at all. Hence, as Aristotle remarks, "In all cases we must be specially on our guard against pleasant things and against pleasure: for we can scarce judge her impartially." "Again, as the exercises of our faculties differ in goodness and badness, and some are to be desired and some to be shunned, so do the several pleasures differ; for each exercise has its proper pleasure. The pleasure which is proper to a good activity, then, is good, and that which is proper to one that is not good is bad." "As the exercises of the faculties vary, so do their respective pleasures."
To the same effect John Stuart Mill says that the pleasures which result from the exercise of the higher faculties are to be preferred. "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." Whether it is possible to stretch, and qualify, and attenuate the conception of pleasure so as to make it cover the ideal of human life, without having it, like a soap-bubble, burst in the process, is a question foreign to the practical purpose of this book. That pleasure, as ordinarily understood by plain people, is a treacherous, dangerous, and ruinous guide to conduct, moralists of every school declare. Pleasure is the most subtle and universal form of temptation. Pleasure is the accompaniment of all exercise of power. When it comes rightly it is to be accepted with thankfulness. We must remember however that the quality of the act determines the worth of the pleasure; and that the amount of pleasure does not determine the quality of the act. A pleasant act may be right, and it may be wrong. Whether we ought to do it or not must in every case be decided on higher grounds.
