Nor does partially developed industrialism fail to furnish a root.
With social evolution, which implies transition from the life of
wandering hunters to the life of settled peoples engaged in labor,
and which therefore entails activities widely unlike those to which
the aboriginal constitution is adapted, there comes an under-exercise
of faculties for which the social state affords no scope, and an
overtaxing of faculties required for the social state; the one implying
denial of certain pleasures and the other submission to certain pains.
Hence, along with that growth of population which makes the struggle
for existence intense, bearing of pains and sacrifice of pleasures is
daily necessitated.
Now always and everywhere, there arises among men a theory conforming
to their practice. The savage nature, originating the conception of a
savage deity, evolves a theory of supernatural control sufficiently
stringent and cruel to influence his conduct. With submission to
despotic government severe enough in its restraints to keep in order
barbarous natures, there grows up a theory of divine right to rule, and
the duty of absolute submission. Where war is made the business of life
by the existence of warlike neighbors, virtues which are required for
war come to be regarded as supreme virtues; while, contrariwise, when
industrialism has grown predominant, the violence and the deception
which warriors glory in come to be held criminal. In like manner,
then, there arises a tolerable adjustment of the actually accepted
(not the nominally accepted) theory of right living, to living as it
is daily carried on. If the life is one that necessitates habitual
denial of pleasures and bearing of pains, there grows up an answering
ethical system under which the receipt of pleasures is tacitly
disapproved and the bearing of pains avowedly approved. The mischiefs
entailed by pleasures in excess are dwelt on, while the benefits which
normal pleasures bring are ignored; and the good results achieved by
submission to pains are fully set forth, while the evils are overlooked.
But while recognizing the desirableness of, and indeed the necessity
for, systems of ethics adapted, like religious systems and political
systems, to their respective times and places, we have here to regard
the first as, like the others, transitional. We must infer that like a
purer creed and a better government, a truer ethics belongs to a more
advanced social state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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