I do not wish to go to extremes and say that the moral codes now taught
in the world are made wholly in this evil way. As a matter of fact they
are a queer jumble of the two elements, the slave terrors of the past
and the common sense of the present. There is not one moral code in the
world today, there are many. There is one for the rich, and an entirely
different one for the poor, and the rich have had a great deal more to
do with shaping the code of the poor than the poor have had to do with
shaping the code of the rich. There is one code for governments, and an
entirely different one for the victims of governments. There is one code
for business, and an entirely different one, a far more human and decent
one, for friendship. Above all, there is one code for Sunday and another
code for the other six days of the week. Most of our idealisms and our
sentimental fine phrases we reserve for our Sunday code, while for our
every-day code we go back to the rule of the jungle: "Dog eat dog," or
"Do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first." When you
attempt to suggest a new moral code to our present day moral
authorities, it is the fine phrases of the Sunday code they bring out
for exhibition purposes; and perhaps you are impressed by their
arguments--until Monday morning, when you attempt to apply this code at
the office, and they stare at you in bewilderment, or burst out laughing
in your face.
What I am trying to do here is to outline a code that will not be a
matter of phrases but a matter of practice. It will apply to all men,
rich as well as poor, and to all seven days of the week. I am not so
much suggesting a code, as pointing out to you how you can work out your
own code for yourself. I am suggesting that you should adopt it, not
because I tell you to, but because you yourself have taken it and tested
it, precisely as you would test any other of the practical affairs of
your life--potatoes as an article of diet, or some particular sack of
potatoes that a peddler was trying to sell to you. It is not yet
possible for you to be as sure about everything in your life as you can
be about a sack of potatoes; human knowledge has not got that far; but
at least you can know what is to be known, and if anything is a matter
of uncertainty, you can know that. Such knowledge is often the most
important of all--just as the driver of an automobile wants to know if a
bridge is not to be depended on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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