Social ethics; Social sciences; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
But we all know that each generation has its own test, the
contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately
judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately
use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed
include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no
more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have
"arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.
To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to
pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands
social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.
It is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us
that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of
the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are
not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the
poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?
All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to
their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round
of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite,
the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food
which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their
fellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge
raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered,
others who are denied the relief which sturdy action brings are even
seeking an escape, but all are increasingly anxious concerning their
actual relations to the basic organization of society.
The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They
fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal
obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand
involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another
requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of
social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet
expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a
mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between
their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer
definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a
part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality.
In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is
becoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a
social morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be
brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to
procure an adequate social motive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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