Handbook of Ethical Theory | Page 6

and in war today highly civilized nations find deceptions of
many sorts profitable to them, nor are such generally condemned.
[Footnote: WESTERMARCK, II, chapters xxx and xxxi.]
What modern government does not employ secret service agents, and
value them in proportion to the degree of skill with which they manage
to deceive their fellows, while limiting the exercise of professional
good faith to their intercourse with their paymaster? The secret service
agent of transparent frankness, who could not bear to deceive his
neighbor, would not hold his post for a day. He would be a subject for
Homeric laughter.
Moreover, if the question may be raised: what constitutes justice? may
one not equally well ask: what constitutes veracity or its opposite?
Where does the silence of indifference shade into purposed
concealment, and the latter into what is unequivocally deception? At
what point does deception blossom out into the unmistakable lie? One
may take advantage of an accidental misunderstanding of what one has
said; one may use ambiguous language; one may point instead of
speaking. Between going about with a head of glass, with all one's
thoughts displayed as in a show-case to every comer, and the settled

purpose to deceive by the direct verbal falsification, there is a long
series of intermediate positions. The commercial maxim that one is not
bound to teach the man with whom one is dealing how to conduct his
business, and the lawyer's dictum that the advocate is under no
obligation to put himself in the position of the judge, obviously, will
bear much stretching.
6. THE CODES OF COMMUNITIES: THE COMMON GOOD.--Nor
are the facts which confront us less perplexing when we turn to that
"regard to the common good" which Butler finds to be acknowledged
and enforced by the primary and fundamental laws of all civil
constitutions. Whether we look at the past or view the present, whether
we study primitive communities or confine ourselves to civilized
nations, we see that common good is not, apparently, conceived as the
good of all men, however much the words "justice" and "humanity"
may be upon men's lips.
Has any modern state as yet succeeded in incorporating in its civil
constitution such provisions as will ensure to all classes of its subjects
any considerable share in the common good? Slaves and animals, said
Aristotle, have no share in happiness, nor do they live after their own
choice. [Footnote: Politics, iii, 9.] The pervading unrest of the modern
economic community is due to the widespread conviction that the
existing organization of society does not sufficiently make for the
happiness of all. Some states with a high degree of culture have not
even made a pretence of having any such aim. They have deliberately
legislated for the few. [Footnote: The "citizens" of the ancient Greek
state were a privileged class who legislated in their own interest. Let
the reader look into Plato's Laws and Aristotle's Politics and see how
inconceivable the cultivated Greek found what is now the ideal of a
modern democracy. "Citizens" should own landed property, and work it
by slaves, barbarians and servants. They should not be "ignoble"
mechanics or petty traders. Compare the spirit of Froissart's Chronicles,
in the Middle Ages. See what Bryce (South America, New York, 1918,
chapters xi and xv) says about the position of the Negro in our
Southern states, and of the Indians in South American republics.]

Even where the avowed aim is the common good of all, states have
assumed that some must be sacrificed for others. Certain individuals
are selected to die in the trenches in the face of the enemy, that others
may be guaranteed liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Grotius, the
famous jurist of the seventeenth century, has been criticized for holding
that a beleaguered town might justly deliver up to the enemy a small
number of its citizens in order to purchase immunity for the rest. How
far do the cases differ in principle? "Among persons variously
endowed," wrote Hegel, "inequality must occur, and equality would be
wrong." [Footnote: Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, translated by Dyde,
London, 1896, p. 56.] Commonwealths of many degrees of
development have recognized inequalities of many sorts, and have
treated their subjects accordingly.
"For diet," said Bentham with repellent frankness, "nothing but self-
regarding affection will serve." Benevolence he considered a valuable
addition "for a dessert." He had in mind the individual, and he did
injustice to individuals in certain of their relations. But how do things
look when we turn our attention to the relations between states? Does
any state actually make it a practice to treat its neighbor as itself?
Would its citizens approve of its doing so?
The Roman was compelled to formulate a jus gentium, a law of nations,
to deal with those who held,