craving desires in disregard of the affections, is abnormal, leading to a distraction of the affections from their proper objects, and to a subversion of their functions; also the exercise of the affections in disregard of the appetites and appetencies, is abnormal, leading to inefficiency from lack of resources supplying what affection would bestow; but, if both classes be exercised according to their constitutional relations, each with regard to the other, then the offices they are naturally fitted to fulfill are performed, their several and combined efficiency is attained, and their exercise is normal.1 Each is for the other.

The same principle is applicable to all the various mental powers both in particular and in general, thus showing the mind as a whole to be an organism consisting of minor or subsidiary organisms so delicately adjusted that an excess or deficiency or distortion in the action of any one disorders every other and the whole.

§ 107. Let us try for a moment to imagine what a man might be and become if he were somehow so separated from all objects of affection that it could have no play. We need not suppose him incapable of affection, but only that it be wholly dormant from lack of call. Allow that this solitary can provide the necessaries of life, and even many of its luxuries, and that he can successfully engage in self-culture. Prudently caring for his body, he is temperate, and enjoys physical health and strength. Under the impulse of craving propensities, he acquires a wealth of means to further enjoyment, and his cultured intellect gathers and delights in treasures of knowledge.

1 See supra, §§ 78, 79. It should be observed that the term affection is used here and heretofore in its popular sense of benevolence. In its wider generic and scientific sense affection is of two kinds, benevolent and malevolent. See Elements of Psychology, §§ 262, 263. In general the benevolent affections are normal, the malevolent abnormal.

Now we point out that, in this imaginary case, there is strictly nothing moral or immoral; for, it is the relation to rational beings, including Deity, or at least to sentient beings, and not merely the possession of a rational nature, that determines the existence of rights and obligation. No trespass is possible, in case of an absolute solitary, for there are no rights or counter rights. No duty is done, for there is no one to whom a debt is due. There is no virtue or

vice, for there is no law demanding conformity. There is no justice or injustice, for there is no claimant. Nor can there be loving service. Indeed, this isolated man is destitute of actual conscience, for no occasion would bring the potential to an actual discernment of moral law. He has no responsibility, is not a moral being, not human, not a man, unus homo, nullus homo, not a person, since he has no consciousness of obligation. With him nothing is either right or wrong; even suicide would not be a crime.1 Truly it is not good that the man should be alone. Pleasures we allow he may have, even the intellectual; otherwise they are less than brutal, for the brute enjoys at least instinctive affection. But the solitary can never be happy, certainly not with that happiness which ripens into blessedness.2

It appears, then, that man is essentially a moral being, and therefore essentially a social being. So let us change our supposition from one solitary to one in society, whose affections, however, are wholly dormant because of his entire selfishness. Guided by the counsels of prudence,3 negatively in avoiding harm, positively in securing personal benefit, he may accomplish the correct functioning of his physical organs, and maintain his body in wholesome condition. Also he may wisely discipline his intellectual powers, and regulate his passions and emotions, and so attain a high grade of efficiency. Moreover, by observing certain rules of art, using 1 See supra, § 85, note. 2 See supra, § 97. 8 See supra, § 44.

his fellows as means to secure his own ends,1 he may accumulate wealth, power, and fame. Such seem to have been the character and aims of the more refined peoples of antiquity, especially of the Greeks. Their self-culture, looking solely to the beautiful development of the individual man, was very sensitive to the aesthetic elements essential to excellence, while the ethical elements were more lightly esteemed and often disregarded. The tendency was strongly egoistic, seeking the enjoyment of a fair personality, and its secure tenure against infringement. And in modern times such self-culture is widely and highly approved, many moralists making it the basis of their systems.

The supposition of a cultured man in society without natural affection is monstrous. Unlike the solitary, he is a morally responsible person, for conscience in him is actual, the law is upon him, and in his disregard of all save his own interests, he is a law-breaker, thoroughly immoral. Yet, strange to say, he may be a good neighbor and citizen; for, if one selfishly serve his own interest with far-sighted prudence and wide-reaching wisdom, this works out for society very much the same result as if his energies were wholly devoted to thoroughly unselfish, disinterested, loving service. Such is the economical ordering of human affairs. But it does not so work for the man himself. Though far from criminal or even disorderly, though he do not sin with his lips, and though he practice, for his own ends, a large beneficence, yet, without benevolence, he is a whited sepulcher, a hypocrite, a moral monster. More likely, however, the inward corruption breaks forth, poisoning the air and multiplying ills. This has usually been the historical result.2 These considerations illustrate the fact that men are social

1 See supra, § 84.

2 See the catalogues in Romans, 1: 28-32, and 2 Timothy, 3:1–5. Cf. Colossians, 3: 5-8.

beings in the sense of interdependence, not merely for the common needs of pleasurable living, but also for moral development by the exercise of mutual affection, through which alone the dignity of complete manhood is attainable.

§ 108. But in real human life there is not and cannot be thorough seclusion. A solitary is a mere negation, a metaphysical abstraction, a logical ghost. We find ourselves in a world of fellow beings from whom it is impossible to be completely absolved. Even a Selkirk on his desert isle not only remembers his former associations, but contemplates the possibility of a return to the world, and hence is bound to comport himself with reference to it, to care for and cultivate his powers as far as may be in view of that possibility. But should he reasonably despair of a return among men, still he may not neglect his personal dignity, or ever, even under the greatest suffering, take his own life; for he cannot know his future here, and one relation, the chiefest of all, persists. He is bound by indissoluble obligations to his maker, law-giver and judge, whose claims are never released, and whose honor is involved.

Also let it be remarked that the individual owes his existence, as well as the possibility of its continuance and of all moral culture, so much to the human society in which he is ordinarily included, that it is rare to find one so totally depraved as to be entirely destitute of all natural affection. A mother gives birth to her child; therein and thereafter the moral tie binds. No distance of place or time can attenuate it to nothingness, no violence can sever it, even death spares a bond in dutiful memories rendered more precious and sacred by loss. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Hardly is it possible. Can a son forget the mother who bore him, that he should not have compassion for her

pains, her nurture, her watchings, her tender caresses? Hardly, yet perhaps less rare. Shall he not, even in mature years, honor his father and mother with kindly watch-care and grateful memories? Surely, even amid a godless civilization, or even amid a barbarous heathenism, Nature will enforce in some measure her claims for loving service.1

§ 109. If we view each man, then, as an organism of organized organs, these standing to each other and to the whole in a relation of interdependence, and if we observe that he has the power of self-direction and control, it is clear that it is within him to conserve and cultivate his natural powers by regulating their organic relations, and that the bringing of all the corporeal and spiritual powers with which he is endowed by nature into full activity and harmonious coöperation, is the discharge of obligation and the perfection of manhood. But also it is clear that the constitution of the man, apart from his affections, furnishes no ethical element, no basis for an ethical system. His subsidiary powers of body and mind are not persons, and there is no moral element that does not involve a personal relation.2

1 "We could not live in society unless we had some of the qualities of the moral character. We should be what Hobbes supposed us to be, mere brutes with intelligence enough to see that it is best to give up something in order to attain a greater good. Honesty then were honesty only because it is the best policy."

2 "The trifling of comparing society with a living organism, that is to say, that of a man or an animal, and of making the functions of the latter the pattern for its regulation, is altogether fruitless. The essential difference is overlooked, that every such living organism serves a single individual soul with very many wholly impersonal parts; while in society many individual persons unite themselves into a community which does not exist apart from them as a distinct being."—LOTZE, Practical Philosophy, § 49. Plato committed this "trifling" in taking the organization of the individual man as the pattern for the constitution of his ideal republic. Also Frederick II : "As men are born and live for a certain period, and at last die of age or infirmity, so also States are constituted; they flourish for some centuries and then at last cease to exist."— Antimacchiavelli, ch. 9. So also