To the boy who says, "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a great deal of pleasure"—George Eliot represents "Romola" as replying, "That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as for ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say—It would have been better for me if I had never been born."
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The unscrupulous man acts as he happens to feel like acting.—Whatever course of conduct presents itself as pleasant, or profitable, or easy, he adopts. Anything is good enough for him. He seeks to embody no ideal, aims consistently at no worthy end, acknowledges no duty, but simply yields himself a passive instrument for lust, or avarice, or cowardice, or falsehood to play upon. Refusing to be the servant of virtue he becomes the slave of vice. Disowning the authority of duty and the ideal, he becomes the tool of appetite, the football of circumstance. Unscrupulousness is the form of all the vices of defect, when viewed in relation to that absence of regard for realization of self, which is their common characteristic.
The exclusive regard for self, in abstraction from those objects and social relationships through which alone the self can be truly realized, leads to formalism.—Formalism keeps the law simply for the sake of keeping it. Conscientiousness, if it is wise and well-balanced, reverences the duties and requirements of the moral life, because these duties are the essential conditions of individual and social well-being. The law is a means to well-being, which is the end. Formalism makes the law an end in itself; and will even sacrifice well-being to law, when the two squarely conflict.
Extreme cases in which moral laws may be suspended.—The particular duties, virtues, and laws which society has established and recognized are the expressions of reason and experience declaring the conditions of human well-being. As such they deserve our profoundest respect; our unswerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules to cover every case. There are legitimate, though very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties. For instance it is a duty to respect the property of others. Yet to save the life of a person who is starving, we are justified in taking the property of another without asking his consent. To save a person from drowning, we may seize a boat belonging to another. To spread the news of a fire, we may take the first horse we find, without inquiring who is the owner. To save a sick person from a fatal shock, we may withhold facts in violation of the strict duty of truthfulness. To promote an important public measure, we may deliberately break down our health, spend our private fortune, and reduce ourselves to helpless beggary. Such acts violate particular duties. They break moral laws. And yet they all are justified in these extreme cases by the higher law of love; by the greater duty of devotion to the highest good of our fellow-men. The doctrine that "the end justifies the means" is a mischievous and dangerous doctrine. Stated in that unqualified form, it is easily made the excuse for all sorts of immorality. The true solution of the seeming conflict of duties lies in the recognition that the larger social good justifies the sacrifice of the lesser social good when the two conflict. One must remember, however, that the universal recognition of established duties and laws is itself the greatest social good; and only the most extreme cases can justify a departure from the path of generally recognized and established moral law.
These extreme cases when they occur, however, must be dealt with bravely. The form of law and rule must be sacrificed to the substance of righteousness and love when the two conflict. As Professor Marshall remarks in the chapter of his "History of Greek Philosophy" which deals with Socrates, "The highest activity does not always take the form of conformity to rule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact, obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of which rules and formulæ are at best only an adumbration."
There is nothing more contemptible than that timid, self-seeking virtue which will sacrifice the obvious well-being of others to save itself the pain of breaking a rule. There is nothing more pitiful than that self-righteous virtue which does right, not because it loves the right, still less because it loves the person who is affected by its action, but simply because it wants to keep its own sweet sense of self-righteousness unimpaired. Mrs. Browning gives us a clear example of this "harmless life, she called a virtuous life," in the case of the frigid aunt of "Aurora Leigh":
From that day, she did
Her duty to me (I appreciate it
In her own word as spoken to herself),
Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,
But measured always. She was generous, bland,
More courteous than was tender, gave me still
The first place,—as if fearful that God's saints
Would look down suddenly and say, 'Herein
You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.'
THE PENALTY.