A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical PrinciplesClapperton, Jane Hume
Philosophy
A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical Principles
Clapperton, Jane Hume
Ethics, Evolutionary; Social evolution
A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of
the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to
achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of
rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling
and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with
some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together,
present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual
custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern
principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is
pre-eminently a feature of the new order.
At present excessive labour on the part of the proletariat, and enforced
idleness on the part of many men and women within the classes, are fatal
to progress. Vital forces are exhausted on the one hand, repressed on
the other, while the sub-conscious feeling that craves unity and
solidarity is outraged and restrained. To restore _work_ to its
legitimate place in human life is a primary aim of the new domestic
system. That system must be built up on the principle that work for the
benefit of all is the duty and privilege of each, and without a due
share of social labour no normal man or woman in health can attain to
inward peace.
As regards religion, man’s abstract thought must purge itself from
materialized ideals, his concrete thought from selfish aims, for he is
essentially a religious being and psychical studies affirm that within
him there lie latent faculties that relate him to worlds unseen—worlds
as yet unrealizable in human consciousness.
In the visible world religious forces must be directed to the great work
of social reform. To unselfishly promote the welfare of generations
unborn is a profoundly religious course of action. The purest, noblest
feelings of man may be enlisted in the cause of progress through
union—for social reconstruction, scientific education, gentle training
of the young, associated domestic life, facilitation of happy
marriage—and for the comfort of all mankind, whether good or bad, clever
or dull, fortunate or unfortunate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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