Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(1) With the growth of large cities and the development of individual
interests we come to live less and less in one another's eyes. In
primitive life it is almost impossible for a man to indulge in any
vice or sin without its being immediately known to his fellows; but
today millions live such isolated lives in the midst of crowded
communities that all sorts of immorality may flourish without detection.
Under early conditions foodstuffs or other goods were consumed if not
by the producer, at least by his neighbors; and any adulteration or
sham was a dangerous matter. Today we seldom know who slaughtered the
meat or canned the fruit we eat, who made the clothing or utensils
we use; shoddy articles and unwholesome food can be sold in quantity
with little fear of the consumer's anger. All sorts of intangible and
hardly traceable injuries can be wrought today by malicious or careless
men injuries to reputation, to credit, to success. In a city the criminal
can hide and escape far more easily, can associate with his own kind,
have a certain code of his own (cf. "honor among thieves"), and more
completely escape the pangs of conscience, than under the surveillance
of village life. In a hundred ways there are increased opportunities
for doing evil with impunity. [Footnote: Cf. E. A. Ross, Sin and
Society, pp. 32: "The popular symbol for the criminal is a ravening
wolf; but alas, few latter day crimes can be dramatized with a wolf
and a lamb as the cast! Your up-to-date criminal presses the button
of a social mechanism, and at the other end of the land or the year
innocent lives are snuffed out. As society grows complex, it can be
harmed in more ways. Each advance to higher organization runs us into
a fresh zone of danger, so there is more than ever need to be quick
to detect and foil the new public enemies that present themselves.
The public needs a victim to harrow up its feelings. The injury that
is problematic, or general, or that falls in undefined ways upon unknown
persons, is resented feebly, or not at all. The fiend who should rack
his victim with torments such as typhoid inflicts would be torn to
pieces. The villain who should taint his enemy's cup with fever germs
would stretch] [Footnote continued from previous page: hemp. But think
of it!-the corrupt boss who, in order to extort fat contracts for
his firm, holds up for a year the building of a filtration plant designed
to deliver his city from the typhoid scourge, and thereby dooms twelve
hundred of his townspeople to sink to the tomb through the flaming
abyss of fever, comes off scatheless."]
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