Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(1) We may stimulate counter-enthusiasms to take the place of the
passion for war. After all, the great war of mankind is the war against
pain, disease, poverty, and sin; the real heroes are not those who
squander human strength and courage in fighting one another, but those
who fight for man against his eternal foes. The war of man against
man is dissension in the ranks. We must make it seem more glorious
to men to enlist in these humanitarian campaigns than in the miserable
civil wars that impede our common triumphs. [Footnote: Cf. Perry, Moral
Economy, p. 32; "War between man and man is an obsolescent form of
heroism. . . . The general battle of life, the first and last battle,
is still on; and it has that in it of danger and resistance, of
comradeship and of triumph, that can stir the blood." And cf. President
Eliot's fine eulogy of Dr. Lazear, who died of yellow fever after
voluntarily undergoing inoculation by a mosquito, in the attempt to
learn how to stay the disease: " With more than the courage and]
Further, we should awaken interest in innocent devotion of the soldier,
he risked and lost his life to show how a fearful pestilence is
communicated and how its ravages may be prevented."] excitements and
rivalries-in sports, in industrial competition, in missionary
enterprise. A world's series in baseball, or an intercollegiate
football season, can work off the restless energies of many thousands
who in earlier days would have lusted for war. The revival of the
Olympic games was definitely planned as a substitute for war. And men
must have not only excitements and rivalries, but real difficulties
and dangers-something to try their courage and endurance and train
them in hardihood. For this we have exploration and mountaineering,
the prosecution of difficult engineering undertakings, the attacking
of corruption and the achievement of political and social reforms.
[Footnote: Cf. W. James, "The Moral Equivalent of War" (in Memories
and Studies), p. 287: "We must make new energies and hardihood's continue
the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial
virtues must be the enduring cement, intrepidity, contempt of softness,
surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain
the rock upon which states are built. The martial type of character
can be bred without war. The only thing needed henceforward is
to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military
temper."]
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