Elements of Morals: With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the StateJanet, Paul
Philosophy
Elements of Morals: With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State
Janet, Paul
Ethics
=100. Workmen and farmers.=--Having considered workmen in their relations
with their masters, let us consider them now on a line with farmers; for,
according as one lives in the city or in the country, there is a great
difference in manners, and consequently in duties. The workmen who live in
the city are for that very reason more apt to acquire new ideas and
general information; they have many more means of educating themselves;
the very pleasures of the city afford them opportunities to cultivate
their mind. Besides, living nearer to each other, they are more disposed
to consider their common interests and turn them to account. Hence
advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are, the superiority of
intellectual culture, the greater aptitude in conceiving general ideas, a
stronger interest in public affairs; in all these respects, city-life
presents advantages over country-life. But hence also arise great dangers.
The workingmen, quite ready to admit general ideas, but without sufficient
information and political experience to control them, abandon themselves
readily to utopian preachings and instigations to revolt. Further, very
much preoccupied with their common interests, they are too much disposed
to think only of their own class, and to form, as it were, a class apart
in society and in the nation. Hence for the workmen a double duty: 1, to
obtain enough information not to blindly follow all demagogues; 2, to
learn to consider their interests as connected with all those of the other
classes and professions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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