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
We have seen that in the domain of feeling the stirrings of socialism
have for years been agitating the bosom of society, and although the
outcome in philanthropic action issues usually in failure, none the less
does it spring from the highest and holiest motives of man. But while
philanthropy chiefly represents love’s labour lost, there are other and
more virile forces in action that are indicative of a coming organic
democracy. Observe, for instance, the constant efforts of the people to
alter the political and economic strain by State interference. This
agitation is a very significant fact. It betrays a hunger for social
justice which will certainly increase with the growth of knowledge,
public spirit and sensitiveness to personal rights. This hunger can
never be fully appeased under any system that permits wealth to flow to
the lucky, the clever, the cunning, the greedy, and be handed down by
inheritance and bequest from generation to generation. No modification
of individualism and not even socialism will banish all popular
agitation. Communism is the far-distant goal to which it points, for
communism alone sets forth as attainable a satisfying equality in all
the comforts of life, and since evolution must eventuate in social
justice, whatever falls short of this will inevitably contain some
conditions of discontent.
But whilst a craving for justice among the masses cries out for State
interference, from whence comes the modern view of what justice means?
Among the classes it has been considered that the man who is clever,
i.e. mentally strong, has a right to a greater reward for labour than
the man who is stupid. The origin of this notion is simply the fact that
in a competitive system he is able to obtain that superior reward.
Power, and not any ethical idea, is the foundation of the notion. The
notions of justice prevailing throughout society have all arisen
naturally in the past amid the strong and privileged few, and readily
have they been accepted by the docile and oppressed many. The clever,
not the stupid, have formed public opinion, and that under a purely
egoistic impulse. Nevertheless, as evolution passes from the unconscious
to the self-conscious stage, reason unites with altruistic feeling to
give birth to new conceptions that are moulding public opinion to a
higher and truer form, and working out on the plane of practical action.
The conception of justice involved in socialism is naturally unpalatable
to the privileged few, but it goes far to prove the truth of socialism,
that the conception is the fruit of the most advanced study of our
social organism _as a whole_, while it coincides precisely with the
blindly instinctive pulsations of the central mass of the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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