must be brought to bear in settling business affairs. Above the interest of the contending parties stands the interest of the public, of which the State is the natural guardian; and one way to realise the ethical purpose of society in business affairs is, by means of legislation, to bring the ethical sense of society to bear on business affairs." This means, of course, State-interference with the industrial life of society; by such interference, however, “society is not deprived of the advantages of competition, but the plane of competition is adjusted to the moral sense of the community.' "1 This maintenance by the State of the true relation of economic to ethical good, of material to spiritual wellbeing, may take many forms. The ultimate measure of well-being having been found in the perfection of the development of the total nature of the individual, his instrumental value as a producer of wealth will be subordinated to his essential and independent worth as a moral being; regard to the external and industrial criterion will be checked by regard to the internal and ethical. In this ultimate relation, all men will be seen to be equal; here, in the ethical sphere, will be found the true democracy. Class interests do not exist here; the capitalist and the day-labourer stand here on the same level, and the true State will regard the interests of each alike. And if, even here, the highest well-being of all implies a certain sacrifice of well-being on the part of the individual, the State will see that such sacrifice does not go too far, that no citizen loses the reality of citizenship and sinks to the status of a slave or of a mere instrument in the industrial machine, that for each there is reserved a sufficient sphere of complete ethical living. If the preservation and development of the highest manhood of its citizens is the supreme duty of the State and its ultimate raison d'être, an obvious case of this duty is the securing of a certain amount of leisure for all its 1 International Journal of Ethics, vol. ii. pp. 47-48. citizens. The lowest classes-those which are technically called the 'working classes '-need this leisure far more clamantly than the middle and higher classes. Their work is a far harder tyrant than the work of the latter, since it calls forth so much less of their true manhood; they are controlled far more largely by the needs of others than by their own. Yet they too have needs of their own, not less real and not less urgent than their 'betters'; they too have a manhood to develop, a moral inheritance to appropriate. How much more need have they of leisure to be with themselves, and to attend to their 'proper business'? Such a shortening of the hours of labour, such an extension of the area of the free individual life, as shall secure for them also their peculiar ethical opportunity-this surely is the duty of the State as the custodian of the higher justice. The case of the regulation of the industrial life of the community offers perhaps the best example of the via media in which the true view of the ethical function of the State is to be found. The socialistic extreme would place all industrial activities in the hands of the State, and would thus endanger, if not destroy, the proper life of the individual, by negating the principle of free competition. The individualistic extreme, on the other hand, would exclude the State from the industrial sphere, and leave economic law to operate unguided and unchecked by any ethical considerations,—a course equally fatal to the moral life of the community. The true view would seem to be that, while the industrial sphere is to be recognised as having a nature of its own, and economic law is not to be confused with ethical, yet the ethical sphere includes the industrial as it includes all others, and its law must therefore operate through the law of the latter. The State, accordingly, as the all-inclusive social unity, must guard and foster the ethical life of its citizens in the industrial as in the other spheres of that life. As regards the distribution of material wealth, the State has also a function assigned to it by its ethical constitution. In order that the struggle for mere bread and butter' may not consume all the energies of the masses of its citizens, but that each individual in these masses may have scope for the development of his higher ethical capacities, for his proper self-development, the State must see that the furniture of fortune' is not so unequally distributed that, in any individual, the activities of the moral life are rendered impossible, or so narrowly limited as to be practically frustrated. For though it may be true that the ethical good is in its essence spiritual, and that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, it is also true that the moral life, as we know it, has a physical basis, and that, without a certain measure of material well-being, the good will can find but little expression and realisation in activity. The potential manhood in each can be actualised only by an act of individual choice; yet, without certain conditions, such actualisation is impossible. It is for the State so to improve the conditions or environment of those against whom fortune-it may be in the shape of economic law-has discriminated, as to make a full ethical life for them also possible. In such ways 12. The permanence of the State. as these the State may serve the ethical end. tion may finally be raised, whether the State is itself a permanent ethical institution, or destined, after discharging a temporary function, to give place to some higher form of social organisation. Is the final form of society non-political, rather than political ? As the individual emancipates himself from political control by assuming the control of himself, may not society ultimately emancipate itself from the control of the State? And may not the narrower virtue of patriotism, or devotion to our country, give place to the larger virtue of a universal philanthropy and cosmopolitanism? This is, of course, a question on which we can only speculate; but our practical attitude towards the State will be to some extent affected by our disposition to answer it in the one way or the other. It seems to me that, while the form of the State may continue to change, the State itself must remain as the great institution of the moral life, unless that life undergoes a fundamental change. Peace may permanently supplant war, and harmony antagonism, in the relation of State to State. But the permanence of the State itself seems consistent with the highest development of the moral life. The concentration of patriotism is not necessarily identical with narrowness and limitation. "It is just the narrower ties that divide the allegiance which most surely foster the wider affections." 1 On the other hand, cosmopolitanism has proved a failure when subjected to the test of history. The Stoics were cosmopolitans; so also were the Cynics before them. But, in both cases, cosmopolitanism proved itself a negative rather than a positive principle: it resulted in individualism and social disintegration. We best serve humanity when we serve our country best, as our best service to our country is our service to our immediate community, and our best service to our community is the service of our family, and friends, and neighbours. For here, once more, we must be on our guard against the fallacy of the abstract universal. Humanity is only a vague abstraction until we particularise it in the nation, as the latter itself also is until we still further particularise and individualise it. The true universal is the concrete universal, or the universal in the particular; and we can well believe that in the life of domestic piety, of true neighbourliness, and of good citizenship, our best duty to humanity itself is abundantly fulfilled. The true philanthropy must always begin at home, and, as far as we can see, nationalism is as permanent a principle of the moral life as individualism. 1 J. MacCunn, Ethics of Citizenship, p. 46. NOTE. THE THEORY OF PUNISHMENT. A GROWING number of ethical thinkers, as well as of practical philanthropists, maintain the necessity of a radical change in our view of punishment. We must substitute, they contend, for the older or retributive theory the deterrent and reformative theories. The new science of criminology is founded upon the theory that crime is a pathological phenomenon, a form of insanity, an inherited or acquired degeneracy. It follows that the proper treatment of the criminal is that which seeks his cure, rather than his punishment. Prisons must be superseded by hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. An advance in human feeling, as well as in intelligence, is to be seen in this movement, both in its theoretical and in its practical aspects; an advance from the hard, blind desire for justice, and the unrelenting and unreasonable spirit of vindictiveness, to a gentler and wiser humanity. And society is now so securely organised that it can afford to be not merely just, but generous as well. The question, however, is, whether the newer and the older views of punishment are mutually exclusive, and, if not, what is their relation to one another; whether the substitution of the deterrent and reformative for the retributive view is ethically sound, or whether, in our recoil from the older view, we are not in danger of going to the opposite extreme and losing the element of truth contained in the retributive theory. We must acknowledge, to begin with, that the new theory can point to many facts for its basis. The general principle of heredity is operative in the sphere of crime and vice, no less than in that of virtue. We might almost say that the criminal is born, not made, or, rather, that he is more born than made. Crime seems to be almost as instinctive in some natures as goodness is in others. This instinctive tendency to evil, developed by favourable circumstances or environment, results in the criminal act and in the life of crime. There is a criminal class, a kind of caste, which propagates itself. Crime is a profession, with a code of honour and an 1 Cf. A. Macdonald, "Ethics as applied to Criminology" (Journal of Mental Science, Jan. 1891). |