Democracy and Social Ethics | Page 4

farther, to know all
sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social
adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.
Doubtless one under the conviction of sin in regard to social ills finds a
vague consolation in reading about the lives of the poor, and derives a
sense of complicity in doing good. He likes to feel that he knows about
social wrongs even if he does not remedy them, and in a very genuine
sense there is a foundation for this belief.
Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a
new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world
before. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only
that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the
criminal. We have learned as common knowledge that much of the
insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination
which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people. Already
there is a conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing
our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately
determine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we
grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our
intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously
decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of
life, but limit the scope of our ethics.
We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one
common characteristic,--the conviction that they are different from
other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because
they are more sensitive or more refined. Such people "refuse to be
bound by any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and
admiration, or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." We
have learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not
for the will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest

which deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and
we say that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on
narrow and unprogressive issues.
We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and
democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression
is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the identification
with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes
the source and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted to
drink at the great wells of human experience, because we knew that a
daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the
journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd.
The six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who
are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an
acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line
of conduct. No attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer
advice beyond the assumption that the cure for the ills of Democracy is
more Democracy, but the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would
seem to indicate that while the strain and perplexity of the situation is
felt most keenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the
community, the tentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely
coming through those who are simpler and less analytical.

CHAPTER II
CHARITABLE EFFORT
All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy,
which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip
away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we
attempt to act upon them.
Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a
course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct,
which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing

moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from
the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon
another.
Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing
more rapidly than the charitable relation--that relation which obtains
between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point
of contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack
of that equality which democracy implies. We have reached the
moment when democracy has made such inroads upon this relationship,
that the complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone
forever; while, at the same time, the very need and existence of charity,
denies us the consolation and freedom which democracy will at last
give.
It is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined, and
we are continually obliged to