Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(1) Dull or not, repressive or not, morality is absolutely necessary.
It is better than the pain, the insecurity, the relapse into barbarism,
that immorality implies. Our whole civilization, everything that makes
human life better than that of the beasts of prey, would collapse
without its foundation of moral obedience. The regime of slashing
individualism would kill off many of the weaker who are precious to
humanity-a Homer (if he was blind), a Keats, a Stevenson; nay, if
carried to extreme, it would put an end to the race. For who are the
weakest, the "hindmost," but the babies! Sympathy and love and self
sacrifice, at least in parents, are necessary if the race is to endure
a generation. But even for the individual, the penalties of immorality
are too obvious to need recapitulation. If morality is repression,
it is the minimal repression consistent with the maintenance of
successful and happy life. Its real aim is to bring life, and life
more abundantly.
(2) But if we are looking for something great, for adventure and
excitement and battle against odds, we can find it much better than
in brutally slashing at our fellows, or running amuck at the beck of
our impulses, by putting our valor at the service of some really great
human endeavor. If we want to get into the big game, the great
adventure, we must pit ourselves, with the leaders of mankind, against
the hostile universe. The men and women who set our blood tingling
and our hearts beating fastest are-Darwin, discoverer by patient labor
of a great cosmic law; Pasteur, conqueror at last over a terrible human
disease; Peary, first to plant foot upon the axis of the world; Goethals,
builder of a canal that links the oceans. The steady march of a
moralized civilization, presenting united front to the cosmos,
is infinitely more glorious than the futile, aimless, and petty struggles
of an anarchic immorality. Our half-disciplined life is already far richer
and more romantic than the life of Nietzsche's "supermen" could
be; and we are only a little way along the road of moral progress.
The real superman will be a BETTER man, a man of tenderness
and chivalry, of loyalty and self-control, a man of disciplined heart
and purified will; to attain to such a supermanliness is, indeed, a heroic
and splendid achievement, worthy of our utmost endeavor, and calling
into play all our noblest powers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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