Moral conduct differs from immoral conduct in the same manner and in a
like degree. The conscientious man is exact in all his transactions.
He supplies a precise weight for a specified sum; he gives a definite
quality in fulfillment of understanding; he pays the full amount he
bargained to do. In times as well as in quantities, his acts answer
completely to anticipations. If he has made a business contract he
is to the day; if an appointment he is to the minute. Similarly in
respect of truth: his statements correspond accurately with the facts.
It is thus too in his family life. He maintains marital relations that
are definite in contrast with the relations that result from breach
of the marriage contract; and as a father, fitting his behavior with
care to the nature of each child and to the occasion; he avoids the
too much and the too little of praise or blame, reward or penalty.
Nor is it otherwise in his miscellaneous acts. To say that he deals
equitably with those he employs, whether they behave well or ill, is
to say that he adjusts his acts to their deserts; and to say that he
is judicious in his charities, is to say that he portions out his aid
with discrimination instead of distributing it indiscriminately to
good and bad, as do those who have no adequate sense of their social
responsibilities.
That progress toward rectitude of conduct is progress toward
duly-proportioned conduct, and that duly-proportioned conduct is
relatively definite, we may see from another point of view. One of
the traits of conduct we call immoral, is excess; while moderation
habitually characterizes moral conduct. Now excesses imply extreme
divergences of actions from some medium, while maintenance of the
medium is implied by moderation; whence it follows that actions of the
last kind can be defined more nearly than those of the first. Clearly
conduct which, being unrestrained, runs into great and incalculable
oscillations, therein differs from restrained conduct of which, by
implication, the oscillations fall within narrower limits. And falling
within narrower limits necessitates relative definiteness of movements.
§ 27. That throughout the ascending forms of life, along with
increasing heterogeneity of structure and function, there goes
increasing heterogeneity of conduct--increasing diversity in the sets
of external motions and combined sets of such motions--needs not be
shown in detail. Nor need it be shown that becoming relatively great
in the motions constituting the conduct of the uncivilized man, this
heterogeneity has become still greater in those which the civilized man
goes through. We may pass at once to that further degree of the like
contrast which we see on ascending from the conduct of the immoral to
that of the moral.
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