Flannery, M. Jay

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TOe ©pen CourtA MONTHLY MAGAZINEDevotefc to tbe Science of TReligion, tbe "Religion of Science, an& tbeExtension ot tbe "Religious parliament IbeaFounded by Edward C. HegelerVOL. XXXIII (No. 2) FEBRUARY, 1919 NO. 753CONTENTS:FACTFrontispiece. Henry Lord Brougham.Truth and Conduct. M. Jay Flannery 65The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. James Carlile 70Savage Life and Custom. Illustrated. (Continued.) Edward Lawrence. 77Was David an Aryan? (Concluded.) Paul Haupt 85The Development of Japanese Buddhism. Wm. Montgomery McGovern ..97Jesus in the Koran. Bernhard Pick 113An Eighth-Century Anglian Account of Purgatory and Hell. A. G. Witting 123Book Reviews 125Gbe ©pen Court publishing Company122 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IllinoisPer copy, 10 cents (sixpence). Yearly, $1.00 (in the U.P.U., 5s. 6d.).Entered as Second-Class Matter March 26, 1897. at the Post Office at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Company, 1919."BEST BOOK ON BUDDHISM"THE GOSPEL OF BUDDHABy DR. PAUL CARUS.New illustrated pocket edition. Cloth, $1.00."This very attractive volume should serve a good purpose in making the worldacquainted with the traditions and stories concerning the founder of one of thegreatest religions of the world."—The Princeton Theological Review."This present little volume will be acceptable to the best American spirit. It isa book of the highest ethics and morals expressed in noble language. It is food forthe soul starving in a wilderness of materialism."—Detroit Times.THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY122 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVKNUKCHICAGO ILLINOISOiI COHENRY LORD BROUGHAM (1778-1868).After K. Bowyer./•lontispiece to The Open Court.The Open CourtA MONTHLY MAGAZINEDevoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, andthe Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea.VOL. XXXIII (No. 2) FEBRUARY, 1919 NO. 753Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Company, 1919.TRUTH AND CONDUCT.BY M. JAY FLANNERY.THE bulletin-board of a church which I pass every day on myway down-town has held for several months the legend, "Truthis given to us to translate into conduct." This may be the sayingof some prophet or seer whose, words are the commonplace knowl-edge of every person with any pretensions to literacy, but in methey awaken no response of literary memory or association. So faras I know they may be original with this particular pastor as theexpression of his moral philosophy.But the philosophy expressed in these words is not original;in fact, it is the philosophy of common sense, the thought of prac-tically every man who has made any effort whatever to render ex-plicit his vague ideas of ethics, and the implicit thought of all whohave made no such effort. The idea that truth, a fixed law of ethics,is first given, and that conduct slowly brings itself into conformitywith this law, is all but universally accepted. Does not the wholeof history teach this lesson? Were not ethical systems, the biblesof the world, works containing the highest expressions of ethicaltruth couched in language the most apposite and beautiful, amongthe earliest productions of man? Do not the old prophets, of al 1nations and races, express conceptions of moral duty of a characterso high that the prophets of to-day find it impossible to improveon what their predecessors of olden times have left them, and spendtheir time in the study and exposition of the ancient scriptures?Surely, he is a very rash man who would set himself up againstwhat is practically the unanimous opinion of mankind. It is theorder of the moral world, says the philosophy of common sense,that the principle comes first and that its application follows.In this view, truth is something which comes to man from66 THE OPEN COURT.some outside source ; adapted, no doubt, in some way to his nature,but made for him and not by him. It is something which existsexternal to him, has existed without him from all eternity, andwould continue to exist to all eternity were he wiped out of exist-ence. To its making he contributes nothing, and no effort whichhe can put forth will affect it one iota. The kingdom of moralprinciples is an autocracy, in which the subject has no part in themaking of laws, and in which his only function is to obey. Thoughwe live in a political democracy, and some of us are looking for-ward to an industrial democracy, in our thinking on moral andreligious subjects we still live in the old autocratic world of theancient prophet. We do not realize how his ideas of God and themoral law were formed on the only model of government and lawknown to him, the despotisms of his time. And when we find himmaking right the will of a god, responsible in no way to the subjectsof the law, a god pronouncing sentence for the infraction of a lawwhich was the mere expression of his pleasure, we fail again torealize that the prophet has in mind the autocratic rulers of hisown day. The fact is, that it was impossible for him to think other-wise in a world where civil law was, in theory at least, the ex-pression of a despot's will. Nor do we realize how much our ownthinking in morals and religion is colored by our knowledge of therecords of those times and by our acceptance of them as somethingtoo sacred to be examined in the light of our moral and religiousnotions of to-day.In opposition to this old and still almost universally acceptedbelief in the precedence of truth to conduct, it is my desire to setwhat modern philosophy teaches to be the true order of the morallife—that truth is the product, not the cause, of ethical conduct.In the realm of ethics, as- in all other realms, truth is made by manin the workshop of his every-day life. The principles which actu-allv direct a man's moral life are not the precepts and maxims foundso often on his tongue, the teaching of parents and other instruc-tors, whose deeds do not exemplify their words. No doubt theseprecepts have value when they are of the homely sort and havegrown out of the actual conditions of life, and arc, further, not inadvance of the cultural stage reached by his family and community.Probably this last condition is involved in the preceding ones. But,however his soul may glow with the feeling that his life is beinginfluenced by noble ideals, his conduct and his evident satisfactionwith his conduct show that these maxims cannot be understood inany wide sense, but that their meaning is limited by his own moralTRUTH AND CONDUCT. 67experience and by the moral stage which the group to which hebelongs has attained.The mistake made by all moral idealists is that because moraltruths are stated in general terms (as of necessity they must be)they are understood and accepted in some general and thereforepure and noble sense. This feeling, that because one can use ageneral term he really understands it to some infinite limit, is com-mon to all departments of one's mental life, and the objection urgedby those who demand that all learning by children shall, whereverpossible, be by contact with things and not simply from books orthe ipse dixit of the teacher, is justified by this weakness of humanintelligence. Because a man holds ever before him some high idealwhich he has found expressed in beautiful language by prophet orpoet, is no guarantee that, in his actual contact with the world, hisconduct will be better than that of the hind who knows no poetrybut does know life. In fact, the chances are that the better in-structed man will be the worse practical moralist. It is one of thecommonplaces of criticism that those who make noble professionsdo not live better lives than their non-professing neighbors. Thelayman will sometimes be shocked to find that the minister will beguilty of a meanness and trickery which he, though making no suchprofession as does his clerical friend, would not be guilty of. Forsome reason contact with high moral ideals does not always makethe minister a happy exemplar of his own teaching. Only as hehas experience in actual commerce with men is his moral lifestrengthened, or rather, created. This is no attack upon a greatprofession, for ministers themselves sorrowfully confess the sur-prising shortcomings of many of their brethren.This is true of all persons who live a life of seclusion or semi-seclusion. One of the arguments often urged in favor of givingthe right of suffrage to woman is that her influence on political lifewould be for good. Is not woman better than man? Has she notbeen kept pure and unspotted from the world, while man has beensubjected to moral pollution in the ugly world of business and poli-tics? Even the anti-suffragists use as their strongest argument theawful warning that woman's pure soul will be soiled by the dirtyways of the world, so that she will become as bad as man. Thissuperstition of woman's superior morality is one of the worststumbling-blocks in the way of her progress. In the home, whichhas been her peculiar sphere, woman has developed a strong senseof domestic moral values, but her inexperience of the outside worldhas, until recently, made her insensitive to moral distinctions in68 THE OPEN COURT.business and in the treatment of working people which are perfectlyobvious to men of a rather coarse type. It is well known howapparently refined and sympathetic women will drive hard bargainsand seem utterly indifferent to the hardships of those who do theirmenial service or cater to their wants in shop or store. There arenoble exceptions, of course, but the truth is in the statement, andit is easier, as a rule, to make a man see the harshness and injusticeinvolved in much of our industrial system than to make a womansee them. And this not because they profess different codes, butbecause woman has not yet made her moral code for the worldoutside her home. And she never will, or can. make it in theseclusion of the home. Not till she has had her opportunity in theworld of strife beyond the four walls which have hitherto limitedher world, can she become the moral equal of her mate. The soilon his garments is not an evidence of pollution, but of the fact thathe is doing his part to make a living code in actual contact withhis fellows. This may be one of the unforeseen benefits of thisaccursed war, that through it woman may be compelled to rise to themoral heights already reached by man.Real moral truths, those which actually affect the life of theindividual, are made by him, not imposed from without or fromabove. They are made first by the atmosphere in which the childgrows up; not by the preaching of his mentors, but by the life theylive. With this cultural inheritance he goes out into life and thereremakes it in conflict with other men. In the dirt and noise of thestreet and the shop practical habits and practical ideals are workedout, and these, and not the superfine sentiments of the nursery, makehim the moral being he really is. It is not denied that moral idealssomewhat in advance of his present moral state are formed by everyman who is growing in moral stature. But these cannot be much inadvance if they are to have any real influence on his life. Theyare merely "working hypotheses" used to assist in taking the nextstep. They must be stated in general terms, and this may deceiveeven their makers into believing that they express very high notionsof abstract goodness. P>ut if their makers interpret them in thissense, these ideals lose their value, and their possessor becomes adreamer and not a doer, or passes his ideal life in one world and hisactual life in another.Let us consider a general rule of conduct which comes to usfrom a hoary antiquity and is made weighty by the authority of aTeacher whom we all profess to reverence. It is the Golden Rule,"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do yeTRI'TII AM) CONDUCT. 69even so unto them." Surely, here is a principle clearly stated, and ofwhose meaning there can be no question. And yet there is prac-tically no agreement among men of different generations, or amongmen of the same generation, as to its practical application. And itis not meant here that the difficulty is that men do not try to liveup to it. Even if they did try, they would not agree as to whatconstitutes living up to it. But it is not certain that they do nottry. It is true, of course, that most men have a feeling that theyare not living the moral law as they should, but that is not becauseof the violation of general principle, but because there is in themind of every person who is growing morally a vague feeling of thenext step in advance. This is true in the intellectual as well as inthe moral world. It is a question whether the feeling of the infinite,not the mathematical construction but the intellectual haunting,means more than that which is just beyond the intellectual grasp.At least this is certainly the case in the moral realm. One's feelingfor the moral perfection apparently expressed by a principle issimply a vague apprehension of the next step.In the days before the Civil War a slave-holder explained theGolden Rule as applied to the relation between master and slave tomean, not that the master was bound by it to set the slave free,simply because the master desired freedom for himself. To himslavery was a divine institution, and the Rule simply meant thathe should treat his slave as one who served'by divine decree' and ashe (the master) ought to wish to be treated had he had the mis-fortune to be born subject to that decree. In our industrial systemthere are many things which seem to some of us not consonantwith a right interpretation of this Rule. But there seems no questionthat the employer, in most instances, does not see anything wrongwith the relation. It is easy to accuse him of hypocrisy, but thechances are that he is not conscious of anything of the sort. Hisactual relations with the workers may be on a higher plane thanare ours, and it is almost certain that, were we in his place, withouthis practical experience, our conduct toward the workers wouldnot be as high as his. It is impossible for us to interpret a generalprinciple in advance of our moral experience.But it may be said that the general truth is there in advance andthat we only slowly learn what it means. Truth is eternal andeternally the same, we are told, and we simply discover it. As welook back we see a gradual progress toward a higher and still higherconception of the meaning of moral precepts, and this, we are told.is simply our gradual discovery of a meaning which was there from70 THE OPEN COURT.all eternity. But who put a meaning into them, and what purposedoes it serve? If God put it there in the beginning, why did Hewaste this value, since it is of no use to man till he puts meaninginto it for himself? Why isn't it as high a conception of God tobelieve that He made it possible for truth to be the final product—so far as there can be anything final in human life—of the relationsof men to each other? Why isn't the belief that truth is eternallybeing made as good and pure a belief as its opposite?And think of the democracy of it! We are not the subjects ofany autocratic power in our moral natures, but are the makers ofour own moral destiny. It seems to me a most inspiring philosophyto be able to say with William James : "There is no such thing pos-sible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance.We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so faras we contribute to the race's moral life. In other words, there canbe no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the lastman has had his say." (The Will to Believe, p. 184.)Man is the measure and the maker of all things human, andwithout him is not anything made which hath been, or shall be made.No autocrat dictates to him what his character or ideals shall be.The world of morals is a true democracy.TI I E SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFULKNOWLEDGE.BY JAMES CARLILE.IN the autumn of the year 1826 Henry Brougham propounded toMatthew Davenport Hill the idea of a society to be formed forthe purpose of publishing works of an instructive character at costprice. Davenport Hill sought about for a publisher who wouldundertake the work under the auspices of the proposed society, andhe bethought himself of young Charles Knight, the son of a Wind-sor bookseller, who had himself made a small venture in the directionof periodical literature. I fill wrote to Charles Knight to come totown, and took him one evening in November to Brougham's cham-bers in I ,incoln's Inn.To the end of his very long life Charles Knight retained avivid impression of that evening's conversation. Brougham was

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