Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
are especially punctilious, and undertake to love and cleave to a mortal,
not an angel. Friendship requires not only that we lend a hand when
help is needed; it implies patience and tact and the endeavor to
understand. Through common experiences, repeated interchange
of thought and observation, mutual enjoyment of beauty and fun,
particularly in expressing common ideals and working together for
common causes, there grows to maturity this wonderful relationship
"the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers
and many winters must ripen."
(4) Beyond the boundaries of blood and friendship lie a whole hierarchy
of lesser relationships-to neighbors, to employees, to fellow townsmen,
to human beings the world over. Mere proximity constitutes a claim that
is not commonly acknowledged when distance interposes;
most men would be mortally ashamed to let a next-door neighbor starve,
although they may feel no call to lessen their luxuries when thousands,
whom they could as easily succor, are perishing in the antipodes. And
there is a measure of necessity in this; to burden our minds with the
thought of the suffering in India, in Russia, in Japan, leads to a
paralyzing sense of impotence. If we confine our thought to the
dwellers on our street or in our town, it may not seem utterly hopeless
to try to remedy their distress; to improve the situation of the
laborers in one's own shop or factory lies within the limits of
practicability. But the Christian doctrine of the universal brotherhood
of man is becoming a working principle at last; and millions of dollars
and thousands of our ablest young men and women are crossing the
oceans to uplift and civilize the more backward nations, in deference
to the admonition that we are our brothers' keepers. At home this
recognition of the basic human relationship of living together on this
little sphere, that is plunging with us all through the great deeps of
space, should help to obliterate class lines and snobbishness and
bring about a real democracy of fellowship.
(5) Finally, we have a duty to those dumb brothers of ours, the animal
species that share with us the earth. For they, too, feel pain and
pleasure, and are much at our mercy. We must learn "Never to blend
our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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