An Essay on Professional Ethics | Page 3

the subjects for the
purpose of advancing or securing the general good, and not of
restraining or altering them for any purpose whatever, and much less
for no purpose at all." There are, therefore, no arbitrary laws which
fulfil the end of law. Doubtless the true objects of society and

government may be mistaken by him who sets up to be law-maker, or if
those objects are properly appreciated, the means for advancing them
may be mistaken. It is not wonderful that in a matter which demands
the highest wisdom, many should try and fail.
It becomes important to inquire what are the true ends of society and
government? Man is a gregarious animal--a social being. He may exist
in solitude, but he cannot enjoy life: he cannot perfect his nature. Those
who have watched and studied closely the habits of those irrational
animals, who live in communities, as the ant, the bee, and the beaver,
have observed not only a settled system and subordination, but the
existence of some wonderful faculty, like articulate speech, by which
communication takes place from one to another; a power essential to
order. Man, the highest social animal in the scale of earthly being, has
also the noblest faculty of communication.
The final cause--the reason why man was made a social being--is that
society was necessary to the perfection of his physical, intellectual, and
moral powers, in order to give the fullest return to the labor of his
hands and to secure the greatest advances in knowledge and wisdom. It
is for no vain national power or glory, for no experimental abstraction,
that governments are instituted among men. It is for man as an
individual. It is to promote his development; and in that consists his
true happiness. The proposition would be still more accurate were it
said, society is constituted that men may be free--free to develop
themselves--free to seek their own happiness, following their own
instincts or conclusions. Without society--and government, which of
course results from it--men would not be free. An individual in a state
of isolation might defend himself from savage beasts, and more savage
men, as long as his strength lasted, but when sickness or age came on,
the product of the labor of his hands, accumulated by a wise foresight
to meet such a contingency, would become the prey of the stronger.
The comparatively weak-minded and ignorant would be constantly
subject to the frauds of the more cunning.
It is enough to look at the effects of the division of employments and
the invention of labor-saving machinery, to recognize the invaluable

results of society in the development of wealth and power. In a state of
isolation a man's entire time and strength would be needed for the
supply of his physical wants. As men advance in knowledge and
wisdom the standard of their mere physical wants is elevated. They
demand more spacious and comfortable dwellings, more delicate
viands and finer clothing.
"Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as
beasts'."
It is not true that men would be morally better or happier, if their style
of living were reduced to the greatest plainness consistent with bare
comfort. Our taste in this respect, as for the fine arts, as it becomes
more refined, becomes more susceptible of high enjoyment. When
large fortunes are suddenly made by gambling, or what is equivalent
thereto, then it is that baleful luxury is introduced--a style of living
beyond the means of those who adopt it, and spreading through all
classes. Taste, cultivated and enjoyed at the expense of morals,
degrades and debases instead of purifying and elevating character. Men,
who have accumulated wealth slowly by labor of mind or body, do not
spend it extravagantly. If they use it liberally, that creates no envy in
their poorer neighbor, no ruinous effort to equal what is recognized to
be the due reward of industry and economy. The luxury, which
corrupted and destroyed the republic of Rome, was the result of large
fortunes suddenly acquired by the plunder of provinces, the conquests
of unjust wars. The most fruitful source of it, in our own day, is what
has been well termed class legislation--laws which either directly or
indirectly are meant to favor particular classes of the community. They
are supported by popular reasons and specious arguments, yet there is
one test of the true character of such laws, an experimentum crucis, of
which, in general, they cannot bear the application. Legislation, which
requires or which will pay to be bored or bought, is unequal legislation;
and therefore unwise and unjust. Bentham's rule, though false as the
standard of right and wrong, is in general the true rule of practical
legislation, the greatest good of the greatest number. It is expressed
with the most