Handbook of Ethical Theory, George Stuart Fullerton [best book reader .txt] 📗
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64. THE SOCIAL WILL AND IDEAL ENDS.—The social will, like the wall of the individual, may manifest itself in decisions which it is obviously impossible to carry out to a completely successful issue. A community has a power of control over its members, but that control has its limits. Even a man’s actions cannot be completely controlled by the community of which he is a part. There are always individuals who violate rules, and to whom, as it would seem, no motive can be presented which is adequate to keep them in the rut prescribed by society.
Still less can the social will exercise full control over men’s thoughts and feelings. Influenced to some degree they may be. A man may be kept in ignorance, or furnished with information calculated to determine his thought in a given direction. His emotions may be played upon; he may be exhorted, rewarded, punished. But thoughts and feelings are not open to direct inspection; they may be concealed or simulated. Much more readily than actions can they withdraw themselves from control.
Nevertheless, the social will may, and does, ignore all such limitations to its powers. Laws are not passed to regulate the changes of the weather, which palpably fall outside the province of the law; but they are passed to regulate the actions of men, which normally fall within it; that is, which can, to a very significant degree, be influenced by the attitude of the social will. For the same reason laws may even take cognizance of men’s thoughts. Of the accidental limitations of its power of control within the general sphere in which it has a meaning to speak of control, the social will is not compelled to take cognizance. It may set itself to encourage or repress certain types of character and conduct, and take measures to attain the end it has selected. That the measures taken should sometimes prove inadequate does not alter the fact of the choice of an end, nor does it obscure the revelation of the trend of the social will.
Thus, a community may be said to will that its members shall not be guilty of violence; it may will to live at peace with other communities; it may will to conquer and subjugate. Whether, in each case, the will shall be completely realized or not, may not be determined by the mere fact of its willing. Nevertheless, the permanent volitional attitude may be unmistakably present, and may reveal itself in strivings toward the chosen goal. To describe this attitude as no more than wishing is manifestly to do it an injustice.
65. THE PERMANENT SOCIAL WILL.—The social will may be regarded as something permanent. Its existence is not confined to those moments in which collective decisions are being made. The will to be one which constitutes a group of human beings a nation is not at all times actively exercised, but the settled disposition to action looking toward that end may be always present and ready to be called into action. An autocracy remains such when its irresponsible head is making no decisions; and a democracy is not such only while elections are being held or the legislature is sitting. The organization of a society, the whole body of the usages which it accepts and approves, are revelations of the social will. That will does, it is true, give expression to itself in a series of actual decisions more or less conscious and deliberate, but it is far more than any such series of decisions. It is a disposition, rooted in the past and reaching into the future. It is a guarantee of decisions to come, of whose nature we may make some forecast.
The permanent social will constitutes the character of a community. Our study of the will of the individual prepares us for the recognition of the fact that communities may be but dimly aware of their own character, and may be quite unable to give an unbiased account of the ideals which animate them.
66. CUSTOM.—We have seen above that even the forms of political and social organization may justly be regarded as an expression of the social will. Such forms are the result of past choices, and their acceptance in the present is evidence of present choice.
Between the organization of a society and its customs proper we may distinguish by comparing the former to structure and the latter to function in the case of any organism. But we must bear in mind that, here, structure has been built up by, and is in process of modification by, the same forces that exhibit themselves in function. It would not be wholly out of place to describe a people as having the custom of being ruled by hereditary chiefs, of choosing their monarchs, or of governing themselves through elected representatives. Forms of organization are handed down to successive generations by the same social tradition that transmits customs of every description.
Customs are public habits which are, on the whole, approved by a community. They are ways of acting which are regarded as normal and proper. Where the authority of custom is evoked, pressure is brought to bear upon the individual to adjust himself to the will of the community.
A community, like an individual, may have habits which it does not approve. Such may be tolerated, although disapproved; or active efforts may be made to set them aside. Some habits may be regarded with comparative indifference, although professedly held in condemnation. The individual, in following such habits, may claim that they are not unequivocally condemned by the community, and he is not conscious of the weight of displeasure which visits the violation of the will of the community when unequivocally expressed.
In simple and primitive societies custom prescribes to the individual his course of life in the minutest detail. It possesses the authority of the dictator. In societies upon a higher level it may leave to him some discretion in deciding upon the details of his daily life, while still exercising a paramount control over the general trend of his actions.
Thus the will of the community, expressed in custom, determines what the members of the community ought to do, and it takes measures to enforce obedience to its decisions. Is it surprising that the names which have been given to the science which treats of man’s rights and duties, morals, ethics (_mores, ethica, Sitten_), should reflect this truth? It would be an inadequate statement to maintain that the science of morals is no more than a systematic exposition of the customary in human societies. It is not an inadequate statement to assert that, in many societies, custom has, in fact, furnished the ultimate and complete standard of obligation, and that in all societies it is of enormous significance in moulding men’s notions of right and wrong.
67. THE GROUND FOR THE AUTHORITY OF CUSTOM.—Habits are as essential to a society as they are to an individual human being. Without them, society could not live. In any social state—and no man can live except in a social state—there must be cooperation. How can there be cooperation if there are no social habits upon which men may count in their dealings with one another?
Try to conceive all the tacit mutual conventions, the unconscious adaptations to custom, which guide our daily lives, suspended for twenty-four hours. When should one rise in the morning? How should one dress? What and how should one eat? Of business there could be no question, nor could there be cooperation in pleasures. Public order there could not be, for there would be no public worthy of the name. Protection of life and limb would be the creature of accident. Between civility and insult there would be no recognizable distinction. In short, men could not behave either well or ill, for there would be no rule to follow or to violate, nothing to expect, and, hence, no ground for disappointment.
In such a chaotic condition no society of men has ever lived. No actual state of anarchy has ever been complete, nor could it be, and endure. A “reign of terror” is a reign of law in comparison with such a dissolution of all the bonds which knit man to man. When we pass from one community to another, we find one set of public habits exchanged for another. Some sets impress us as better, some as worse. But there is no set which is not better than none. It makes it possible for men to live, if not to live well.
Customs are, then, a necessity. It is equally necessary that they should, in general, have binding force for the individual. But there are customs good and bad. The individual may fall into habits which he, upon reflection, concludes to be injurious to him, and which others see clearly to be injurious. A community sufficiently enlightened to criticize itself at all, may come to disapprove some of its customs and may endeavor to abolish them.
This means that a new act of the social will may set itself in opposition to the social will already crystallized into custom. In a given instance, and where there are differences of opinion, it may be a nice question whether the new or the old should be regarded as the authoritative expression of the social will.
68. THE ORIGIN AND THE PERSISTENCE OF CUSTOMS.—From the fact that customs are, in general, to be regarded as expressions of the social will, it might be assumed that their purposive character and social utility should be a sufficient explanation of their coming into being. But the matter is not so simple. A man may fall into habits which are no indication of what he regards as useful to him. Such habits have not been formed independently of his will, and yet they may appear to be purposeless, or even detrimental. Who wishes to have the inveterate habit of cracking the joints of his fingers or of biting his finger-nails? What purpose do such habits serve?
Although the social utility of customs, taken generally, is easily apparent, yet there are many customs which seem inexplicable upon such a principle. Why, for example, should the king of a primitive community be prohibited from sleeping lying down? or why should it be forbidden that he gaze upon the sea? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh edition, article “Taboo.”] The origin of such customs is hidden in obscurity. That their adoption was not without its reason, we may assume. That the reason was a reasonable one cannot be maintained. It seems probable, however, that it at some time seemed reasonable to some one. The persistence of habit, social as well as individual, would account for the perpetuation of the custom long after the occasion which gave rise to it had been forgotten.
69. LAW.—Between custom and law, taken generally, it is by no means easy to draw a sharp distinction, although, in some instances, the distinction, may be clearly marked. In primitive communities, laws reduced to writing, and administered by persons deliberately chosen for that end, may be wholly lacking; and yet who would say that such communities do not live under the reign of law in a broad sense of the term? A course of life is prescribed to the individual; failure to come up to the standard meets with punishment.
Nevertheless, as social life rises in the scale and as communities become developed,
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