Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
What remedy does mind discover for the third class of evils, those
resulting from its own activity for other members of society, and those
resulting from the restlessness, the protestation of the latter? The
remedy is essentially a social phenomenon, and can be discussed here
only very briefly with respect to the individual mind.
Mind learns to appreciate and to train itself for activities
contributing directly to the welfare of society as a whole by actually
working for the good of others rather than for its own good. When the
social group increases in size, the more experienced and provident
members recognize, not by logical reasoning but as the immediate result
of experience, that brutally egotistic acts give rise to quarrel and
distrust, weaken the ties which hold together the members, and make the
group the prey of its enemies. Altruistic acts, on the other hand, are
found to strengthen the group. These influential members then endeavor
to further the latter and to suppress the former kind of actions. There
are two possible ways of bringing this about.
First, compulsion. Acts destructive to society are punished. He who
commits them thus suffers a disadvantage much greater than the immediate
advantage, and the consciousness of this probability of suffering
inhibits the act. The total concept of activities or inactivities
enforced by punishment is the law. But the law is not far-reaching
enough. A society of wholly wicked beings cannot be held together by
law. Faith and loyalty cannot be enforced.
Willing may consist in a consciousness of the immediate act or in a
consciousness of the remotest purpose to the realization of which this
act contributes. If in consequence of threatened punishment I will the
required act, but not its ultimate purpose, I can frustrate the latter
in a hundred different ways. To punishment, therefore, must be added a
second means of furthering the welfare of society, through actions of
free will. The performance of acts of this kind is called morality.
The special form of morality anywhere at any time depends obviously on
many circumstances. It is conceivable that in a tribe sparingly endowed
with natural resources and pressed by enemies, morality may demand the
killing of the aged and of female children. On a higher level of culture
such actions must be immoral, because they do not harmonize with other
moral commandments, or because, when food is plentiful, an increase in
numbers is highly desirable. The Catholic church regards divorce as
immoral, but in Japan public opinion regards the enforced continuation
of the matrimonial tie as immoral. It is obvious that morality is a
growth. But it grows very slowly, remaining nearly constant for long
stretches of time; and so we often meet moral commandments which no
longer fit the people upon whom they are imposed.
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