Instead of recognizing this contrast, most readers will be inclined to
identify a moral life with a life little varied in its activities. But
here we come upon a defect in the current conception of morality. This
comparative uniformity in the aggregate of motions, which goes along
with morality as commonly conceived, is not only not moral but is the
reverse of moral. The better a man fulfills every requirement of life,
alike as regards his own body and mind, as regards the bodies and minds
of those dependent on him, and as regards the bodies and minds of his
fellow-citizens, the more varied do his activities become. The more
fully he does all these things, the more heterogeneous must be his
movements.
One who satisfies personal needs only, goes through other things equal,
less multiform processes than one who also administers to the needs
of wife and children. Supposing there are no other differences, the
addition of family relations necessarily renders the actions of the
man who fulfills the duties of husband and parent, more heterogeneous
than those of the man who has no such duties to fulfill, or, having
them, does not fulfill them; and to say that his actions are more
heterogeneous is to say that there is a greater heterogeneity in
the combined motions he goes through. The like holds of social
obligations. These, in proportion as a citizen duly performs them,
complicate his movements considerably. If he is helpful to inferiors
dependent on him, if he takes a part in political agitation, if he aids
in diffusing knowledge, he, in each of these ways, adds to his kinds of
activity--makes his sets of movements more multiform; so differing from
the man who is the slave of one desire or group of desires.
Though it is unusual to consider as having a moral aspect, those
activities which culture involves, yet to the few who hold that due
exercise of all the higher faculties, intellectual and æsthetic,
must be included in the conception of complete life, here identified
with the ideally moral life, it will be manifest that a further
heterogeneity is implied by them. For each of such activities,
constituted by that play of these faculties which is eventually
added to their life-subserving uses, adds to the multiformity of the
aggregated motions.
Briefly, then, if the conduct is the best possible on every occasion,
it follows that as the occasions are endlessly varied the acts will
be endlessly varied to suit--the heterogeneity in the combinations of
motions will be extreme.
§ 28. Evolution in conduct considered under its moral aspect, is, like
all other evolution, toward equilibrium. I do not mean that it is
toward the equilibrium reached at death, though this is, of course, the
final state which the evolution of the highest man has in common with
all lower evolution; but I mean that it is toward a moving equilibrium.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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