No one can possibly estimate how much of the obnoxious materialism and
brutality of our economic life is due to the fact that economic ends
have been regarded as _merely_ instrumental. When they are recognized to
be as intrinsic and final in their place as any others, then it will be
seen that they are capable of idealization, and that if life is to be
worth while, they must acquire ideal and intrinsic value. Esthetic,
religious and other "ideal" ends are now thin and meagre or else idle
and luxurious because of the separation from "instrumental" or economic
ends. Only in connection with the latter can they be woven into the
texture of daily life and made substantial and pervasive. The vanity and
irresponsibility of values that are merely final and not also in turn
means to the enrichment of other occupations of life ought to be
obvious. But now the doctrine of "higher" ends gives aid, comfort and
support to every socially isolated and socially irresponsible scholar,
specialist, esthete and religionist. It protects the vanity and
irresponsibility of his calling from observation by others and by
himself. The moral deficiency of the calling is transformed into a cause
of admiration and gratulation.
The other generic change lies in doing away once for all with the
traditional distinction between moral goods, like the virtues, and
natural goods like health, economic security, art, science and the like.
The point of view under discussion is not the only one which has
deplored this rigid distinction and endeavored to abolish it. Some
schools have even gone so far as to regard moral excellencies, qualities
of character as of value only because they promote natural goods. But
the experimental logic when carried into morals makes every quality that
is judged to be good according as it contributes to amelioration of
existing ills. And in so doing, it enforces the moral meaning of
natural science. When all is said and done in criticism of present
social deficiencies, one may well wonder whether the root difficulty
does not lie in the separation of natural and moral science. When
physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, contribute to the detection of
concrete human woes and to the development of plans for remedying them
and relieving the human estate, they become moral; they become part of
the apparatus of moral inquiry or science. The latter then loses its
peculiar flavor of the didactic and pedantic; its ultra-moralistic and
hortatory tone. It loses its thinness and shrillness as well as its
vagueness. It gains agencies that are efficacious. But the gain is not
confined to the side of moral science. Natural science loses its divorce
from humanity; it becomes itself humanistic in quality. It is something
to be pursued not in a technical and specialized way for what is called
truth for its own sake, but with the sense of its social bearing, its
intellectual indispensableness. It is technical only in the sense that
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