Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

brilliant criticism of democracy that has much in common with the animadversions of DeTocqueville. Mr. Faguet of the French Academy insists that a democracy, because it vests its court of last appeal in the average man, places a premium upon both intellectual and moral incompetence. "The people favors incompetence, not only because it is no judge of intellectual competence and because it looks on moral competence from a wrong point of view, but because it desires before everything, as indeed is very natural, that its representatives should resemble itself." 1

There are, thinks Faguet, two reasons for this attitude. In the first place, it is thoroughly human that the average man, schooled by democratic institutions to think that his will is ultimate law, should wish to see reproduced in his representatives his sentiments and prejudices. The average man, therefore, instinctively chooses men with education, mental attitudes and manners similar to his own. In the second place, moral progress is hindered by a vicious interpretation of the great democratic principle of equality. The average man tends "to exclude the competent precisely because they are competent, or if the phrase pleases better and as the popular advocate would put it, not because they are competent but because they are unequal, or as he would probably go on to say, if he wished to excuse such action, not because they are unequal, but because being unequal they are suspected of being opponents of equality ".

This militates against moral progress in two ways. It places a premium upon herd morality with its glorification of mere conventional goodness besides condemning the moral experience of men to a vicious circle that makes progress impossible. Of course such a measure of moral values automatically eliminates the expert who to-day must lead the way to the solution of our problems. The only sort of specialist who thrives under such a régime is the professional politician whom Faguet characterizes as "a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education, a medi1 The Cult of Incompetence, p. 29.

ocrity, he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowd, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him, would die of starvation". Such, in brief, is the statement of the case by Faguet to show that there are elements in democracy inherently opposed to moral progress.

That the average member of a democratic order should be inclined to magnify the conventional moral excellencies common to the masses is, as Faguet says, entirely natural. It is but another form of the fundamental impulse to group selfpreservation. There is, after all, no other way for democracy to secure that continuity of tradition that will insure its persistence.

It is inevitable, furthermore, that democracy should exhibit the defects of its qualities. This is all the more to be expected in view of the fact that democracy is still in the tentative and experimental stage. If it be true, as Montesquieu suggests, that governments err quite as frequently through the overemphasis of the principles for which they stand as through the neglect of them, it may very well be that there is such a thing as defeating democracy through overmuch democracy. Certainly it is true that the over-democratization of the conventional ideals of goodness represented by the average man will tend to defeat the ends of democracy. This is a matter of such importance that it demands a more detailed analysis.

5. THE FALLACY OF MERE GOODNESS

Democracies are especially prone to magnify conventional goodness. "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever," comes nearer than we are aware to expressing the ethical ideal of the average American or Englishman. This is strikingly illustrated in the masterpieces of English literature. If we call the roll of Shakespeare's characters, we find the great sinners, Iago, Richard, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Goneril, keenly intellectual, while Bassanio, Lear, Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, and Miranda, the heroes and heroines, must be content with mere goodness. It is not different with the novel. In Dickens inevitably the meed of intellect goes to Quilp, Tulkinghorn, or

Uriah Heep, while Dick Swiveller, David Copperfield, and Mr. Pickwick exude honest, unenlightened goodness. It has been said that "Milton makes his Satan so thoughtful, so persistent and liberty-loving, so magnanimous, and God so illogical, so heartless and repressive, that many perfectly moral readers fear lest Milton, like the modern novelists, may have known good and evil, but could not tell them apart ".1

We are not concerned here to trace this curious idiosyncrasy of Anglo-Saxon ethics to its roots in national psychology. It may very well be, as often asserted, that the stern struggle of our ancestors with an inhospitable climate has tended to emphasize will and character rather than intelligence, though it is difficult to see why. Montesquieu was doubtless nearer right when he asserted that the discipline of a popular government tends to place a premium upon virtue in the sense of conventionalized democratic moral excellence. What interests us more is the vicious reasoning that underlies this fallacy of mere goodness. Professor Erskine has well stated it. "Here is the causal assumption that a choice must be made between goodness and intelligence; that stupidity is first cousin to moral conduct, and cleverness the first step into mischief; that reason and God are not on good terms with each other; that the mind and the heart are rival buckets in the well of truth, inexorably balanced-full mind, starved heart-stout heart, weak head." Science is doing much to deliver us from the fallacy of mere goodness. Most of us now no longer insist that the dentist who extracts an aching tooth shall be a saint.

It has been said, "Scarcely for a righteous man will one. die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die". Why this willingness to die for the good man? The answer is found in the relation of the good man to the conventional moral sentiment embodied in the social conscience. The good man is the moral beau ideal of his generation and age. It goes without saying that good men for whom the world is willing to die vary immensely from age to age. The

1 Erskine, "The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. XII, p. 175.

good man in every case, however, is one who in his character embodies to the highest degree those types of sentiment that are deemed praiseworthy. In other words, the enthusiasm for the good man is merely the enthusiasm for the most concrete embodiment of those things that an age esteems supremely worth while. To die for the good man is in a certain sense to die for the eternal and universal human values as a given age interprets them. In sacrificing oneself for him we are in reality sacrificing ourselves for the best there is in the race.

This enthusiasm, however, is often difficult to harmonize with the critical point of view. When dealing with universal emotional loyalties, with deeply implanted mental attitudes, we often find that they defy reason. Their very universality is confusing. We are like the mariner adrift without compass or landmark on the bosom of the Gulf Stream. This enthusiasm functions in an atmosphere that is so comprehensive and subtle that we cannot free ourselves from it. We are unable to set ourselves over against it as we must do in the critical exercise of the intellect. The situation is similar to that of the man of the middle ages with his uncritical enthusiasm for holiness. It incapacitated him for passing a trustworthy judgment upon the character of the saint and his acts, as is illustrated in the story of Saint Crispin stealing shoes for the poor. How often do movements for reform shipwreck against this pervasive, conventional, and uncritical ideal of the good man? The city "boss" who judiciously distributes fat turkeys among the poor of his precinct and manages to intermingle genuine sympathy with his acts of kindness, is shrewdly enlisting in his behalf the conventional moral sentiments of the average man. Against this no amount of moral harangues or abstract appeals to civic righteousness on the part of the reformer can ever avail. "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die."

This worship of conventional goodness is primarily responsible for the mistake of confusing the enthusiasm of the political, religious, or moral reformer with the moral excellence of

his own character or of the cause he represents. The passionate eulogy of Lincoln by the political leader is often but a clever way of convincing.the hearer of the essential similarity between the orator's own character and the principles of his party with the character and ideals of the great emancipator. This sort of moral camouflage is made all the easier because for the average American ideals of social justice or of political righteousness float in an opalescent and ill-defined sea of uncritical enthusiasms and glittering generalities. We are not accustomed to associate our moral enthusiasms with concrete political problems and situations. The very remoteness of habitual loyalties of the higher sort, therefore, makes it all the easier to play upon them in the interest of unrighteous or doubtful causes.

We must seek the explanation of the force of conventional goodness in the "sets" of the emotional life of the average man. The logic of the emotions is very simple and unequivocal. Every emotion or sentiment is its own justification. It insists that whatever is is right. For it is a familiar fact that powerful and highly organized systems of sentiments tend to create their own measure of values, their own virtues and vices. So long as fixed traditional systems of sentiment are permitted to flourish without let or hindrance in the social conscience of a community real moral progress is impossible. The selfpreservative impulses of these systems will insure the per-. sistence of conventional and artificial moral values that do not connect in any vital fashion with the needs of society. Men are prone to identify truth or moral worth with the satisfaction of habitual ways of feeling and thinking. Hence, in many passionate appeals to religious or moral ideals both speaker and hearer are merely marking time. The emotional glow of the enthusiasm aroused by traversing the beaten path of ancient loyalties is mistaken for progress and the triumph of the right.

It would appear, therefore, that the problem of democ-. racy is twofold. It is concerned with the organization and maintenance of an authoritative body of sentiment and its

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »