There are virtues—I use the word here broadly
to cover approved habits— which seem to
have a very direct reference to chronology and geography.
They are conventional virtues; they suit a given
society, and satisfy its actual social will.
A Vermont housekeeper in an igloo would be
an intolerable nuisance. Imagine an unbroken succession
of New England house-cleanings with the inhabitants
of the house sitting in despair in the snow outside.
Those who live north of the Alps are sometimes criticized
for dipping Zwieback into their tea. Those who
live south of the Alps eat macaroni in ways revolting
to other nations. A very pretty Frenchwoman, devouring
snails after the approved fashion of the locality,
has driven me out of an excellent restaurant.
And the world opens its eyes in wonder when it sees
the well-bred Anglo-Saxon dispose of his asparagus.
There is a little-recognized virtue called toleration.
St. Ambrose was a wise man when he advised St. Augustine
to do, when in Rome, as the Romans do. Of course,
he did not mean this to apply to robbery or to murder.
He was giving an involuntary recognition to the doctrine
that there are conventional virtues, worthy of our
notice, as well as virtues of heavier caliber and
wider range.
THE ETHICS OF THE STATE
154. THE AIM OF THE STATE.—He who
has resolved to devote but a single chapter to the
Ethics of the State must deliberately sacrifice nine-tenths,
at least, of the material—some of it very
good material, and some of it most curious and interesting—which
has heaped itself together on his hands in the course
of his reading and thinking. I have resolved
to write only the one chapter. The State is the
background of the individual, the scaffold which supports
his moral life. Without it, he may be a being;
but he is scarcely recognizable as a human being.
It has made the individual what he is, and it is the
medium in which he can give expression to the nature
which he now possesses.
Plato maintains that the object of the constitution
of the state is the happiness of the whole, not of
any part. [Footnote: Republic, II.
It must be borne in mind that both Plato and Aristotle
had the Greek prejudice touching citizenship.
Their “citizenship” was enjoyed by a strictly
limited class.] Aristotle, in his “Politics,”
maintains that it is the aim of the state to enable
men to live well. Sidgwick defines politics as
“the theory of what ought to be (in human affairs)
as far as this depends on the common action of societies
of men.” [Footnote: The Methods of Ethics,
chapter ii.] We may agree with all three, and yet
leave ourselves much latitude in determining the nature
of the organization of, and the limits properly to
be set to the activities of, the State as such.
Shall the State only strive to repress grave disorders?
or shall it take a paternal interest in its citizens,
making them virtuous and happy in spite of themselves?
