Problems of Conduct | Page 5

and may always be making
way towards its goal."]
(2) In addition to the fact that we all have unavoidable problems which
we must solve one way or another, a little familiarity with life, an
acquaintance with the biographies of great and good men, should lead
us to suspect that beyond the horizon of these immediate needs lie
whole ranges of beautiful and happy living to which comparatively few
ever attain. There are better ways of doing things than most of us have
dreamed. The study of ethics should reveal these vistas and stimulate us
to a noble discontent with our inferior morals. [Footnote: Cf. Emerson,
in a letter to Fraulein Gisela von Arnim: "In reading your letter, I felt,
as when I read rarely a good novel, rebuked that I do not use in my life
these delicious relations; or that I accept anything inferior or ugly."]
Such a forward look and development of ideals not only adds greatly to
the worth of life but prepares a man to meet perplexities and
temptations which may some day arise. It pays to educate one's self for
future emergencies by meditating not only upon present problems but
upon the further potentialities of conduct, right and wrong, that may lie
ahead, and building up a code for one's self that will make life not only
richer but steadier and more secure.
(3) Another advantage of a systematic study of ethics is that it can
make clearer to us WHY one act is better than another; why duty is
justified in thwarting our inclinations and conscience is to be obeyed.
Not only is this an intellectual gain, but it is an immense fortification to

the will. There comes a time in the experience of every thinking man
when a command not reinforced by a reason breeds distrust, and when
until he can intelligently defend an ideal he will hesitate to give it his
allegiance. Morality, to be depended upon, must be not a mere matter
of breeding and convention, or of impulse and emotion, but the result
of rational insight and conscious resolve. To many people morality
seems nothing but convention, or an arbitrary tyranny, or a mysterious
and awful necessity, something extraneous to their own desires, from
which they would like to escape. To be able to refute these skeptics,
expose the sophisms and specious arguments by which they support
their wrongdoing, and show that they have chosen the lesser good, is a
valuable help to the community and to one's own integrity of conduct.
Too often the people perish for lack of vision; an understanding of the
naturalness and enormous desirability of morality, together with an
appreciation of its main injunctions, would enlist upon its side many
restless spirits who now chafe under a sense of needless restraint and
seek some delusory freedom which leads to pain and death. Morality is
simply the best way of living; and the more fully men realize that, the
more readily will they submit themselves to the sacrifices it requires.
(4) Finally, a study of ethics should help us to see what are the
prevalent sins and moral dangers of our day, and thus arouse us to put
the weight of our blame and praise where they are needed. Widespread
public opinion is a force of incalculable power, which is largely unused.
Politics and business, and to a far greater extent than now private life,
will become clean and honest and kind just so soon as a sufficient
number of people wake up and demand it. We have the power to make
sins which are now generally tolerated and respectable, so odious, so
infamous, that they will practically disappear. There are certain of the
older forms of sin which the race in its long struggle upward has so
effectually blacklisted that only a few perverts now lapse into them; we
have execrated out of existence whole classes of cruelty and vice. But
with the changing and ever more complex relations of society new
forms of sin continually creep in; these we have not yet come to brand
with the odium they deserve. Leaders of society and pillars of the
church are often, and usually without disturbance of conscience, guilty
of wrongdoing as grave in its effects, or graver, than many of the faults

we relentlessly chastise. On the other hand, many really useful reforms
are blocked because they awaken old prejudices or cross silly and
meaningless conventions. The air is full of proposals, invectives, causes,
movements; how shall we know which to espouse and which to reject,
or where best to lend a hand? We need a consistent and well-founded
point of view from which to judge. To get such a sane and far-sighted
moral perspective; to see the acts of our fellow men with a proper