To decide that any of his capacities shall be allowed
to remain dormant may threaten future development.
To cut off certain arts and sciences as not palpably
serving the interests of man is a dangerous thing.
To ignore the actual history of man’s efforts
to become a rational being, and to place, hence, all
wills upon the one level, is to frustrate the desired
end. It is not thus that the reign of reason can
be established.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL WILL
87. MAN’S MULTIPLE ALLEGIANCE.—We
have seen that each man has his place in a social
order. This order is the expression and the embodiment
of the social will, which accepts him, protects him,
gives him a share in the goods the community has so
far attained, recognizes his individual will in that
it accords to him rights, and prescribes his course
of conduct, that is, defines his duties or obligations.
The social will is authoritative; it issues commands
and enforces obedience. With its commands the
individual may be in sympathy or he may not.
But upon obedience the social will insists, and it
compasses its ends by the bestowal of rewards or the
infliction of punishment. The moral law to which
man thus finds himself subject is something not wholly
foreign to the nature of the individual. It has
come into being as an expression of the nature of
man. That nature the individual shares with his
fellows.
Obedience to the social will would be a relatively
simple matter were that will always unequivocally
and unmistakably expressed, and did all the members
of a community feel the pressure of the social will
in the same manner and to the same degree. But
the whole matter is indefinitely complicated by what
may be called man’s multiple allegiance.
Organized societies do not consist of undifferentiated
units. They are not mere aggregates, both are
highly complex in their internal constitution.
A conscientious man may feel that he owes duties to
himself, to his immediate family, to his kindred, to
his neighborhood, to his social class, to his political
party, to his church, to his country, to its allies,
to humanity. The social will does not bring its
pressure to bear upon the man who holds one place
in the social order just as it does upon him who holds
another.
Nor are the injunctions laid upon a man always in
harmony. The demands of family may seem to conflict
with those of neighborhood or of profession; duties
to the church may seem to conflict with duties to the
state; patriotism may appear to be more or less in
conflict with an interest in humanity taken broadly.
That the individual should often approach in doubt
and hesitation the decision as to what it is, on the
whole, his duty to do, is not surprising. Nor
is it surprising that individuals the most conscientious
should find it impossible to be at one on the subject
of rights and duties. Two men may agree perfectly
that it is right to “do good,” and be
quite unable to agree just what good it is right to
do now, or with whom one should make a beginning.
