weight in butter and sugar, and delivery boys would be continually stealing from their employers and out of the packages they carry. Farmers would be under the necessity of guarding their fields and orchards day and night. Cheating on tests and examinations would be the rule among students all over the world—and nobody would think it dishonorable. In short, if people were naturally dishonest rather than honest, no bank would dare to lend money, nobody would deposit money in a bank, no merchant would sell on credit, and no goods would be shipped anywhere on approval. The great system of commercial credit that covers the earth is of itself conclusive proof that men are by preference honest rather than dishonest. Confidence-confidence in one's own kind-is one of the great foundations of business. Laws and penalties could not guarantee half the debts of the world; but human nature, as a rule, trusts human nature. If human nature were bad rather than good a child might be run over in a crowded street-it might cry out in pain or in piteous terror-but nobody would care. The driver of the fatal wagon would drive recklessly on, unless he were stopped by a policeman or an angry mob. But if human nature were fundamentally bad there would be no angry mob-nobody would bother. But what would actually be the case? The child's first cry would tingle in every ear; it would arrest every hurrying step. A thrill of sympathy would go through the crowd like an electric shock. No man, however rough, no woman, however low, can be quite dead to sympathy when nature speaks through childhood or motherhood. If human nature were bad rather than good no sailor would be ready to leap into the sea at the cry, "Man overboard!" If the passengers saw the poor unfortunate struggling in the waters, hardly one of them would make the effort necessary to cast him a life-preserver. Indifference would let him struggle alone; ill will, in fiendish glee, would watch him die; a devilish humor, perhaps, with refined cruelty, would turn the tragedy to a jest. If human nature were bad rather than good there would be no charity wards in hospitals. There would be no life-saving stations along our dangerous coasts. There would be no Red Cross on the battlefield, no standard lifted high for the rights of man. Sympathy and altruism would be unpracticed and unknown though taught from heaven. Of old thousands were butchered to make a Roman holiday, and in our own time millions have been sent to death to prop up tottering thrones; but the heart of the world has always sickened of such sport and the voices of time have cried out for better things. Neither stoicism nor despotism has been able to make humanity altogether inhuman. The very fact that law and order generally prevail or tend to prevail over anarchy and disorder is proof that human nature prefers the one to the other. If the great majority of persons were not naturally and essentially inclined toward peace, honesty, truthfulness, justice, no stable government could exist anywhere at any time. Civilization, toward which the race is ever striving, is itself the conclusive answer to the pessimist who maligns human nature. The sociologist knows that most men are truthful, honest, sympathetic; that hardly one in a thousand by deliberate choice prefers to be otherwise. The student of life knows that most women have the same qualities of veracity, honesty, sympathy, and are virtuous, courageous, and altruistic; that hardly one of them in a thousand desires or prefers a life of dishonor, shame, or idle failure. Many men, many women, go wrong; but as a rule they go the dark way sorrowfully, under the lash of hard circumstance, not by choice. Human nature is good rather than bad. The worst man wishes, as a rule, for better things. If we can thus or otherwise prove to our judgment that human nature is good rather than bad, in this our own age of the world, we may assume it as proved for all the ages past; for all the records tend to show that human nature has always been essentially the same. If human nature in its primitive stages of development had been essentially bad rather than good there would have been no development; it could never have emerged from savagery; for in their primitive stages the uncouth groups could not profit by elevated experiences, since to them experience in its age-long demonstrations was lacking. Neither could ignorant savages, preponderantly inclined to evil, be expected to hear or heed any articulate voice of divine revelation, even if such revelation were given them. If we should assume that they followed examples, we must supply the examples; if we attribute their evolution to fear-fear of physical nature in its terrifying aspects we must also posit a conscience. In the very nature of man, even from the beginning, there must have been an indestructible impulse toward the better things. It seems impossible to explain the origins and the growth of morality that have always been found in past ages, even under the most adverse conditions of primitive life, or the universal ethical predispositions of the present, except upon the hypothesis that such ethical predispositions are an essential part of human na ture. Thus far we have not made any appeal to authority; we have tried to apply only the cold tests of science and reason; but authority is not wanting in confirmation of our conclusions. For instance, one eminent Christian teacher asserts that man is the offspring of God; that all nations were made of one blood; and that in their creation it was determined that they should be seekers after God.1 It was the opinion of Socrates that all vice is ignorance and that no man is willingly bad. According to another great authority, of a still earlier time, man was created in the image and likeness of God and the breath of God became his life.2 Thus we have a 1. Saint Paul; Acts 17:26-29. remarkable concurrence of authority and common knowledge in our thesis that human nature is good rather than bad, and always has been so. Ethics may be a plant of slow growth, but the seed is hidden deep in the soul of every race. The essential humanity of man is an indestructible asset for civilization in every age. Just how we ought to classify the ethical sense or what we ought to name it may be a question. It may be an instinct; it may be an intuition; it may be a feeling. One learned writer fixes upon sympathy as the fundamental principle. Upon sympathy as a basis he discerns the growth of parental care, chastity, benevolence, the sense of duty, and the prevalence of law. He also finds sympathy a productive principle of good in the relations of birds and animals as well as in human relations.3 Not improbably, we may believe, instincts, intuitions, and feelings all unite in making us conscious of obligation and in quickening our preference for the better things. (2) SOCIAL EXPERIENCE It is certainly easy to see how the ethical impulses of human nature have been seconded, beginning very early in the history of mankind, by social experience. The arguments of experience have been added to the impulses of instinct. So 3. Alexander Sutherland: The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. |