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TSING HUA 
 LECTURES ON ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 GREGORY DEXTER WALCOTT, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Philosophy and Psychology 
 Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 BOSTON 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 
Copyright, 1919, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 9 j 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 AUG 15 1 9 19 
 
 i.A529572 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OP 
 
 MARIAH DEXTER 
 
 WHO DURING MANY YEARS 
 
 WAS FOR ME 
 
 IN 
 
 LOCO PARENTIS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE lectures of this little volume were delivered 
 before the students of the High School of Tsing 
 Hua College, Peking, China, during the fall of 1917, 
 when I was temporarily professor of psychology and 
 lecturer on ethics in that institution. Each was pre- 
 sented without manuscript and then committed to 
 writing while the matter was still fresh in mind. Very 
 naturally, the original form of spoken discourse has 
 been preserved. They represent the main view- 
 points and the gist of arguments which have consti- 
 tuted the content of a course in ethics at Hamline 
 University during ten successive years. 
 
 In making the final preparations for the press, I 
 have tried to give credit wherever credit was due, as 
 the various footnotes amply testify. It is not un- 
 likely, however, that shades of thought suggested by 
 lecture courses which I took during my own student 
 days, and impressions gained from a rather wide 
 reading in various fields have not been sufficiently ac- 
 counted for. I hope, however, that I have committed 
 no serious breach in the courtesy of acknowledg- 
 ment. 
 
 Geegoey Dextee Walcott. 
 
 Hamline University, 
 Jcmuary 28, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I The Point of View in Ethics . . .11 
 
 II The Precise Field of Ethics 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 III Twofold Morality . 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 IV The Problem of Progress 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 V The Ethical Ideal .... 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 VI The Ethical Ideal (Concluded) . 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 VII The Realization of the Ideal 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 VIII Implications and Retrospect 
 
 
 
 169 
 
TSING HUA LECTURES ON ETHICS 
 
 THE POINT OP VIEW IN ETHICS 1 
 
 CONFUCIUS, whose name adorns the annals of 
 your people, is known throughout the civilized 
 world as a teacher of ethics. I could not hope 
 to improve upon some of his excellent and famous 
 instruction, nor shall I attempt to do so. None the 
 less, there are changes that take place in the world 
 about us which make a review of ethical teaching ad- 
 visable from time to time, and new discussions of 
 these old themes can not prove harmful to the sub- 
 ject, even though no new values may be added. It is 
 in the attitude, then, of one who wishes to engage in 
 a free, frank discussion of some of these vital ques- 
 tions that I stand before you to-day. 
 
 At the very outset, however, I need to indicate 
 that I regard this particular lecture as a kind of 
 introduction to the course as a whole. All that I 
 
 1 This lecture was printed first in The THng Hua Journal, 
 November, 1917. It is reproduced in practically its original 
 form. 
 
 11 
 
12 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 plan to do at this time is to survey the field, suggest 
 various points of view, and provide a kind of guid- 
 ing thread to aid us in following through all the rest 
 of the lectures of this series. With this understand- 
 ing of my purpose to-day, I will proceed. 
 
 It is not easy for me to decide just where to be- 
 gin. One could begin almost anywhere and ulti- 
 mately present about the same material. I think, 
 however, that it will be best to start with the mean- 
 ing of the term "ethics" as it has figured histori- 
 cally in the western world. That will put us into 
 touch with the historical situation and afford a 
 basis for any comparisons that may be necessary 
 later. 
 
 The term "ethics" entered the English language 
 from the Greek. Among the Greeks, some twenty- 
 five hundred years ago, there was the term ySos f 
 plural ydta, which meant custom, traditional 
 forms of behavior, manners, or social habits. It 
 was so used rather generally in the time of Plato 
 and Aristotle. But Cicero, who was very familiar 
 with the Greek language and who did more than any 
 other man to make the Greek philosophical ideas 
 intelligible to his countrymen, used the Latin term 
 mos, plural mores, as an exact equivalent for the 
 Greek. Now, since the Latin language was especial- 
 ly used by scholars throughout medieval times and 
 until very recently, customary forms of behavior, 
 
The Point of View m Ethics 13 
 
 or social habits, were presented in European thought 
 by means of derivatives from the Latin mores. Con- 
 sequently, such terms as morality, moral philosophy, 
 etc., have been very prominent in English and other 
 European languages. With the Renaissance, how- 
 ever, there came a renewed knowledge of the Greek 
 language and Greek thought, and in consequence this 
 word "ethics" took its place in modern languages 
 beside its Latin equivalent. 
 
 Sooner or later, however, this association of the 
 two terms raised the inevitable question as to whether 
 they mean the same or are really different in their 
 connotation. Professor Palmer of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, who is himself a leading teacher in this field, 
 has suggested that we should distinguish between 
 the two by making ethics stand for the theoretical 
 part of the whole field and morality for the applied 
 or practical side. 2 This is, of course, an interesting 
 way of dealing with the matter, but such a distinc- 
 tion seems to me to be no more than that which is so 
 frequently introduced into the field of any science, 
 viz., the theoretical or pure science and the applied 
 or practical science. This does not mean that there 
 are two things, as two kinds of physics, a pure phys- 
 ics and an applied physics, although because of the 
 methods of treatment they do become somewhat dif- 
 ferent. But in the field of ethics, while we do have to 
 recognize a more theoretical side and an applied side, 
 2 The Field of Ethics, p. 206. 
 
14 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 I do not think that we can always distinguish con- 
 sistently between the terms "ethics" and "morality" 
 in this way. Consequently, I shall use the two words 
 rather indifferently throughout this course of lec- 
 tures. Ethics, then, as the customs or habits of a 
 people will be our general theme, but I shall not hesi- 
 tate to use the term morality, whenever it is the 
 more convenient, as its practical equivalent. 
 
 Another matter of more or less historical impor- 
 tance needs consideration next. It is pointed out by 
 not a few writers that in the ancient Greek world 
 the emphasis in ethical discussions was upon such 
 concepts as "virtue" and the "good," indeed, the 
 "highest good," while in the modern western world 
 the tendency has been to stress "duty" and "per- 
 fection." 3 Among the Greeks, Socrates was pre- 
 eminently a teacher of ethics, but he conducted his 
 discussions quite largely under the head of virtue. 
 "Virtue is knowledge," was his famous fundamental 
 position. If one would be virtuous, one should pos- 
 sess oneself of knowledge, such knowledge, in part, as 
 was at that time becoming rather common in Greece, 
 but more particularly such knowledge as comes from 
 self-examination and an appreciation of the con- 
 cept. But aside from Socrates' peculiar emphasis, 
 the Greek word, apery, meant manliness, the pos- 
 session of a manly character, such as had been more 
 or less evident in the great heroes of old. It meant 
 » Seth, Ethical Principles, 6th Ed., p. 14f. 
 
The Point of View in Ethics 15 
 
 practically the same for the Greeks as the corre- 
 sponding term "virtus" did for the Romans. The 
 first part of this word is the same as the Latin word 
 for man, viz., "vir." Virtue for the old Romans 
 meant manliness, and that was practically the mean- 
 ing of the Greek term which has been translated into 
 the English language as "virtue." 
 
 But, as I have said, the Greeks did not merely dis- 
 cuss virtue, but also the "good." What is that thing 
 in life which we can regard as good, indeed, as the 
 highest good? What is that for which it would be 
 worth a man's time to strive throughout his entire 
 life, or what is that superlatively good thing which 
 this world or the next holds out to a man ? Of course 
 it is not my purpose in this particular lecture to 
 deal with such a discussion in detail. I am merely 
 trying to show you what the motif of Greek ethical 
 discussions was, that this may stand as a contrast to 
 the modern emphasis, which, as I have stated, has 
 been largely on duty and perfection. 
 
 It is very easy to see, I think, why there was this 
 change in emphasis, and also that there is a real 
 connection between the two. The leaders in the 
 Church, as that institution developed, gradually 
 worked out what they thought was the highest good, 
 and then they set that before the people to be real- 
 ized in as full measure as possible. For the people, 
 obedience, duty was at the front, and in the perform- 
 ance of their duty their highest good would be real- 
 
16 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ized. There is, therefore, no great difference be- 
 tween the ancient and the more modern way of deal- 
 ing with this matter. In my discussions, however, 
 I shall incline more to the Greek emphasis, although 
 I think not to the utter neglect of the later historical 
 development. 
 
 Now, having proceeded thus far upon my way in 
 an endeavor to indicate the general point of view 
 from which I shall try to present ethics in this 
 course, another question arises. Do I plan to treat 
 the subject from the angle of some particular group? 
 Hobhouse, a prominent English writer, very well 
 points out that all ethics thus far in the world have 
 been of the group variety. 4 If we fix out attention 
 upon the Fiji Islanders and consider them apart from 
 all influences upon them from any other part of the 
 world, we shall have to admit that what is right for 
 them is what the group thinks is right, and what is 
 wrong for them is what the group thinks is wrong. 
 At the present day in France, the thing that is super- 
 latively right is for a man to leave his ordinary oc- 
 cupation, shoulder his musket, and take his place 
 in the trenches to repel the invader of his country, 
 and the thing which is eternally wrong is for a man, 
 who may be fit, to neglect or evade that duty. And 
 so for all the countries of the world. The thing 
 which is right, then, is that which the group deter- 
 
 * Morals in Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. II, pp. 264-274, and 
 passim. 
 
The Point of View m Ethics 17 
 
 mines is right, and the thing which is wrong is what 
 the group thinks is wrong. Still further, Hobhouse 
 points out, and he is not alone in this thought, the 
 world is gradually moving away from group moral- 
 ity to a universal morality, to a condition of affairs 
 when all the peoples of the world will have the same 
 customs, think alike on ethical matters, and have 
 about the same morality. There is, undoubtedly, 
 much truth in this view, but what I wish to suggest 
 is that even when such a oneness of culture should 
 be realized there would still be group morality, al- 
 though, of course, the group then would be the en- 
 tire world. 
 
 Now, I am certainly not planning to present eth- 
 ics to you from the angle of any particular group, 
 whether that of some nation as a whole, or of some 
 small group within a given nation. Least of all 
 would I be rash enough to attempt to present the 
 subject to you from the view-point of your own great 
 teacher, for I assume that you know more about his 
 teaching than I do or perhaps ever shall. I shall, 
 however, try to present a method of dealing with eth- 
 ical problems which will be rather universal in its 
 application, one which I think will prove helpful 
 here in your own land or in any other land to which 
 you may go, and which will also prove to be equally 
 useful, if the time ever should come when all the races 
 of the earth shall have about the same culture and 
 think about the same on ethical topics. It is a 
 
18 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 method which has a universalism that functions from 
 within out, rather than being a method which has a 
 universalism in some sense foisted upon it from 
 without. The development of this point, however, 
 awaits the later lectures. 
 
 Another matter that demands our attention in this 
 introductory lecture is this : Shall the ethics which I 
 propose to present be of the heteronomous sort or 
 of the autonomous sort? I realize full well that 
 these are rather formidable terms. Perhaps cold 
 chills are now running down your spinal column at 
 the mere mention of them. Let me hasten to explain 
 them. I first ran upon these terms used in this way 
 in a little book from the pen of Professor Wundt, the 
 eminent psychologist and philosopher of Leipzig 
 University. 5 The essential thought is this : A heter- 
 onomous type of ethics is one in which the course of 
 conduct is forced upon the individual by some exter- 
 nal authority, while autonomous ethics is the kind ac- 
 cording to which the individual thinks out the matter 
 for himself. Let me present each of these types 
 briefly, but sufficiently for the present purpose. 
 
 There are at least two forms of the heteronomous 
 type of ethics; one in the field of politics and the 
 other in religion. When we look back into the his- 
 tory of the race, we find systems of government ap- 
 pearing, and in most of the older ones we find that 
 
 *Einleitung in die PhUosofhie, 3te. Auflage, pp. 420-453. 
 
The Point of View in Ethics 19 
 
 the law emanated from the head of the state. What 
 is right is what the head determines to be right. It 
 is for the people to obey. The laws on the statute 
 books are placed there largely by the king, emperor, 
 ruler, or whatever his official designation might hap- 
 pen to be. Unless the people obey the royal man- 
 dates, their lives are as nothing. Morality, under 
 such conditions, consists in realizing the will of the 
 ruler; the opinions and feelings of the individual 
 count for naught. 
 
 Very largely the same thing is true when we turn 
 to the field of religion. I do not care to undertake at 
 this time any lengthy discussion of this topic. This 
 much, however, may be said. There have been many 
 religions in which ethics has been fully as external 
 as in the case of the state as a whole. Not infre- 
 quently the machinery of religion has assumed the 
 form of the state, and that form, too, which is ordi- 
 narily spoken of as characteristic of an oriental 
 despotism. The kind of ethics under such circum- 
 stances partakes largely of the type already de- 
 scribed in connection with the state. The approved 
 course of conduct is imposed upon the individual 
 from without. It is not for him to reason why, but 
 rather for him to do, even though he should die. 
 The will of the deity as interpreted by the earthly 
 representative must be obeyed with absolute fidelity. 
 There is no freedom for individual thought or initi- 
 
20 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics , 
 
 ative. The life of the devotee must be lost in that 
 of his divine master, as the life of the citizen must 
 be the expression of the will of the earthly ruler. 
 
 When, however, we turn to the autonomous type, 
 we find the situation much different, although here, 
 too, we may discern at least two varieties. The in- 
 dividual's conduct is, indeed, the result of his own 
 reflection, but he may examine carefully some system 
 of the heteronomous type and decide that that is 
 the best for him. He thus, in a sense, reenacts the 
 measures provided for his guidance either in the 
 state or in some religious body, and so he obeys in 
 all respects, but his obedience is freely given. There 
 is nothing irksome in it for him. In consequence of 
 his reflection, he has come to identify his will with 
 the will of the earthly ruler or of the deity. His 
 tasks are in a sense self-imposed, and he moves freely 
 within his self-prescribed limits. Not a few such in- 
 dividuals are to be found to-day within many states 
 more or less autocratic, and within religions of 
 practically the same sort. 
 
 With the other variety of the autonomous type, 
 the situation is decidedly different. Here the indi- 
 vidual's conduct is the expression of profound re- 
 flection, and oftentimes the way he stakes out for 
 himself does not meet the approval of the powers 
 that be, whether political or religious. . None the 
 less, such an individual feels that he must go that 
 way, no matter what the consequences to himself 
 
The Point of View m Ethics £1 
 
 may be. He thinks through his own problems, he 
 legislates for himself, and holds himself rigidly 
 to the course which his deepest convictions demand. 
 This is the autonomous type par excellence. 
 
 Now, it is very easy to see from this brief discus- 
 sion that this distinction is the same as that between 
 autocratic and democratic forms o? government in 
 general. The deepest interpretation of the gigantic 
 struggle going on in Europe to-day is that it is a 
 desperate encounter between these two types of gov- 
 ernment. Fundamentally that struggle is a political 
 one. It is true that economic questions are very 
 much involved with the issue, but the deepest analysis 
 shows two diametrically opposed theories of the state. 
 It is the same kind of conflict as that which took 
 place in the religious world at the time of the Ger- 
 man Reformation. If you ask me, then, from what 
 angle I plan to present ethics to you, I need merely 
 say that, coming as I do from the oldest of the ex- 
 isting large republics, I could hardly do anything 
 else than present the subject to you from the auton- 
 omous angle. This type has had not a few repre- 
 sentatives in the earlier history of European civili- 
 zation, but that number has been steadily increasing 
 as the centuries have brought what we call modern 
 openness of mind, freedom of thought, and freedom 
 of action. The autonomous type of ethics, then, is 
 the type which I shall try to explain and emphasize 
 throughout this all too brief course. 
 
&£ Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 There are, now, but a few things that I need to 
 add to make my position fairly plain, and to give the 
 course its proper setting. Am I intending to discuss 
 ethics from the angle of philosophy, or do I regard 
 the subject as a science? Still further, what relation 
 does ethics have to sociology? These are questions 
 which have been up for discussion many a time during 
 the last quarter of a century, but especially promi- 
 nent is the problem as to whether ethics is a science 
 or not. Let us see what may be said briefly in con- 
 nection with each of these topics. 
 
 In regard to the first of these three questions, I 
 may say that there has always been a close relation 
 between philosophy and ethics. As I have already 
 indicated, Socrates was profoundly ethical in his 
 teaching, and the emphasis which he gave to moral 
 philosophy remained as a fundamental motive with 
 his great pupil, Plato. Plato, however, gave no 
 specific work on ethics. His reflections are scat- 
 tered through his dialogues, but there can be no ques- 
 tion of the closeness of relation between his ethical 
 views and his philosophical background. This is es- 
 pecially true, too, of the teaching of Aristotle. He 
 wrote a special treatise on ethics, but the connection 
 between his ethical views and his fundamental meta- 
 physical or philosophical background is very ap- 
 parent. So, too, when we consider the men of the 
 so-called ethical period of Greek philosophy. There 
 is a decided relation between their metaphysical 
 
The Point of View m Ethics %3 
 
 views and their ethics, although the metaphysical 
 part was not especially attractive to them. The 
 same is true when we foljow down the course of philo- 
 sophic thought throughout the centuries of Euro- 
 pean development. Each great philosopher has tend- 
 ed to crown his system with a work on ethics. This 
 was eminently true of Spinoza, whose one great work 
 is entitled "Ethica," but in the early part of that 
 work he gives the metaphysical background for his 
 ethics. Equally true, too, is this in the case of 
 Herbert Spencer, although the system he worked out 
 is decidedly different from Spinoza's. In the preface 
 of his "Data of Ethics," Spencer indicates that he 
 regards his whole synthetic philosophy as but the 
 background for his ethical views. Fearing that his 
 health might not permit him to complete the entire 
 scheme of thought as he had sketched it in his mind, 
 he gave his ethical thought about midway among his 
 publications, so that the world might at least realize 
 what he had planned, even if he should be unable to 
 carry through his plan in its entirety. Fortunately 
 his health did ultimately enable him to complete his 
 work. 
 
 Now, from all this, it must be apparent that there 
 is a close and vital connection between ethics and 
 philosophy. The real question is, what kind of 
 philosophy? There are philosophies and philos- 
 ophies. I shall not risk wearying you with even a 
 brief sketch of them. This much, however, let me 
 
24 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 say. There is a philosophy growing up in the west- 
 ern world to-day which is by no means complete, but 
 which none the less gives promise of great usefulness 
 as it becomes better developed. 6 Between ethics, as 
 I shall try to treat the subject, and this newer phil- 
 osophy there will be an inner harmony, for this 
 philosophy itself makes use of ethical material as an 
 integral part of itself. To anticipate a bit, I will 
 say that this philosophy is in close relation with the 
 mass of material accumulated by all the various 
 sciences during the last three or four hundred years. 
 I could not, if I wished, develop ethics, as I view the 
 subject, without feeling and perhaps indicating here 
 and there the closeness of relation of the subject to 
 this newer and to me very promising philosophy. 
 Ultimately, I believe that this type of philosophy will 
 be crowned with a better, a more adequate, and a 
 more satisfying type of ethics than the western world 
 up to the present has yet possessed. It is not my 
 purpose, however, to go into this matter in detail. 
 It must suffice for me to state what I feel is the 
 proper relation between these two subjects and pass 
 on. 
 
 But what shall I say of ethics and science? I have 
 already rather definitely indicated my position by 
 what I have just said about this newer philosophy. 
 It is interesting for me to note here, too, the changes 
 of views within this field. When I was a student in 
 
 •It is the body of rather realistic-scientific thought that 
 I refer to here. 
 
The Point of View in Ethics 25 
 
 college, as you are now, an eminent writer on ethics, 
 in the first edition of his work, insisted that ethics 
 must be regarded strictly as a part of philosophy. 7 
 In a later edition of this same work, however, he 
 argues vigorously that ethics must be regarded as a 
 science. Evidently new light had dawned upon him. 
 In my own case, beginning with a rather strong op- 
 position to ethics as a part of philosophy, I have be- 
 come convinced that there is a close relation, but 
 depending upon the kind of philosophy. 
 
 Now, in any science, analysis is a fundamental 
 method of procedure. This, I take it, can and must 
 be applied to the field of ethics. In other sciences, 
 some unit is reached as the result of such analysis. 
 In physics the fundamental unit is the molecule, 
 while in the older chemistry the unit is the atom; in 
 physical-chemistry the unit is the electron, while in 
 biology the unit is the cell, and in neurology the neu- 
 rone is the smallest and simplest unit within that 
 particular field. So in ethics, rigorous analysis 
 yields a unit, viz., the moral idea or ideal. The field 
 is the whole range of human history. What exactly 
 have been the moral ideas entertained by men in dif- 
 ferent periods of the world's history, and how have 
 they changed from age to age? What, too, are the 
 principles underlying such changes? How do the 
 units become broken up, how do old ideas give way to 
 
 T Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 3. Cf. 8th Ed. p. 3, 
 and passim. 
 
£6 / Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the new, how do old and new coalesce into new pro- 
 grams for action? These are only a few of the ques- 
 tions one has to consider as one seeks to develop 
 ethics in a scientific manner. The task is undoubted- 
 ly a more difficult one than in some other fields, but 
 the difficulty of the undertaking is no legitimate 
 argument against the possibility of attaining ulti- 
 mately a fairly well developed science which may be 
 ranged by the side of other sciences, as psychology, 
 which deal with the various aspects of human mental 
 phenomena. Ethics as a science, then, I am inclined 
 to insist upon. 
 
 There are, however, various objections which are 
 frequently urged against such a program. I can 
 take time for only two of these. It is said that it is 
 impossible to use experiment in such a field, and fur- 
 ther that one could not make predictions. These are 
 regarded in some quarters as fatal objections. But 
 let us see. 
 
 There is no science which is more generally re- 
 garded as such, and which is regarded as more exact 
 than astronomy, but certainly one can not experi- 
 ment in a strict sense in that field. To experiment, 
 we have to control the conditions. In the field of as- 
 tronomy, however, we can not exercise such control. 
 Observations may be made under certain special 
 conditions which nature herself provides, but that is 
 far different from a nice experiment in the chemical 
 laboratory where all the elements are well known and 
 
The Point of View m Ethics VI 
 
 all the conditions are under careful control. Now, 
 of course, it would hardly be permissible to experi- 
 ment in some fields of ethics, but actually the race has 
 experimented with almost all forms of conduct, and 
 all that we have to do is to ransack history to see 
 what the conditions were and how the experiment 
 turned out. President Schurman of Cornell Uni- 
 versity has said that the only way in which ethics can 
 be made scientific is to make the subject historical. 8 
 Here is a recognition of this same experiment field. 
 Then, too, the various nations are experimenting 
 all the time. Some measure is up for discussion. 
 There are opinions both adverse and favorable which 
 are expressed freely. Ultimately the measure is en- 
 acted into law. If it does not prove to be of value to 
 the community, it is sooner or later repealed and 
 some other measure substituted for it. This is real 
 experimentation. 
 
 So, too, the objection to ethics as a science on the 
 ground that one can not make predictions is not 
 particularly strong. All predictions, even in the 
 most exact sciences, are based on the assumption that 
 conditions in the future will be as in the past. We 
 say that such or such an event will occur, if all the 
 conditions of the past are repeated. As a matter of 
 fact, conditions never are twice alike in every re- 
 spect. There is a sufficient likeness, however, to 
 warrant our expecting in a given case approximately 
 
 8 The Ethical Import of Darwinism, p. 31. 
 
28 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the same results as in the past. May we not take the 
 same attitude in ethics? It seems to be true that at 
 many times and in many places in the past, if a man 
 violated the sanctity of another man's home, his life 
 paid the penalty. We may predict exactly the same 
 thing to-day, in so far as conditions happen to be 
 the same. It is of course true, that many condi- 
 tions of modern life are different from what they 
 were many centuries ago. There are many and 
 varied legal methods of dealing with such cases and 
 there are many and varied ideas entertained in our 
 complex modern societies. But, I repeat, where the 
 conditions to-day are about what they were several 
 centuries ago, and where the parties concerned are 
 on about the same plane of social development as in 
 the past, we may predict with a high degree of cer- 
 tainty what the results will be in such matters when 
 the causes are the same as in the past. No serious 
 objection, then, may be advanced against ethics as 
 a science on the score that predictions can not be 
 made. The basis for making predictions in this 
 field is the same as in other fields. 
 
 And now we come to the last question which I have 
 raised with reference to the angle from which I pro- 
 pose to discuss ethics. Does the subject have any 
 vital relation to sociology? I need not stop long in 
 answering this query. There is no subject in our 
 modern field of thought that has a closer relation 
 to all things human than sociology has. There is 
 
The Point of View m Ethics 29 
 
 no human activity which this subject does not touch 
 in some way more or less completely. Then, too, 
 sociology is in many respects akin to that new type 
 of philosophy toward which I have already indicated 
 that I am partial. There is hardly a science which 
 does not contribute to a greater or less extent to 
 make sociology what it is. This subject, too, has at 
 times in the past been called the philosophy of his- 
 tory. With the close relation to history which I 
 have already indicated that ethics sustains, it is un- 
 avoidable that it should have a very close and a very 
 definite relation to sociology. What that relation is, 
 however, will be presented in future lectures, espe- 
 cially the one to be given two weeks from to-day. 
 
 And now my surveying of the field is complete for 
 to-day. I have indicated that the term "ethics" 
 meant originally customs, the habits of a people, and 
 that it means practically the same as the term "mor- 
 ality"; I have also suggested that I shall lay more 
 stress upon the old Greek motif of the "good" and 
 "virtue," rather than upon "duty" and "perfection," 
 although the latter will not be entirely overlooked. 
 Then, too, I have suggested that I do not plan to 
 present a purely group morality, although I recog- 
 nize the group as the basis of ethical requirements. 
 My aim will be to show how a method of dealing 
 with ethical problems may be outlined which would 
 function in any group, or in the world as a whole 
 when the population and culture become more nearly 
 
80 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 homogeneous than they are at present, and I shall 
 emphasize, too, an autonomous rather than a hetero- 
 nomous type of ethics. I hold, too, that ethics has 
 a fundamental relation to philosophy, and I shall 
 treat the subject from the angle of a rather new 
 kind of philosophy which is developing in America 
 and to some extent in Europe; I also regard ethics 
 as a science and as closely connected with sociology. 
 I realize full well that where there are so many 
 possible points of view and so many fields of thought 
 to take into consideration, it will be exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to thread a perfectly consistent course. None 
 the less, as a celebrated French writer has said, "Je 
 prend mon bien, oii je le trouve," I take my good, 
 wherever I find it. So I plan to make use in various 
 ways of all these fields that I have so hastily touched 
 upon to-day, and I shall attempt to fuse all that I 
 select from them into something which shall be of 
 value for you. 
 
n 
 
 THE PRECISE FIELD OF ETHICS 
 
 IN my lecture two weeks ago, I suggested, more or 
 less completely, the various angles from which 
 ethics may be viewed, and indicated, too, rather in- 
 cidentally, the numerous fields from which I shall 
 appropriate material, to a greater or less extent, for 
 the succeeding lectures of this series. I also pointed 
 out the particular aspects of the subject that I am 
 inclined to stress. My task to-day is to trace ethics 
 to its lair. Let us see if we can reach this goal. 
 
 Professor Palmer of Harvard University, to whom 
 I referred in the introductory lecture, published a 
 little book several years ago under the title of "The 
 Field of Ethics." In this book, the author compares 
 ethics with philosophy, with science, with law, with 
 religion, and with several other subjects, discusses 
 their likenesses and differences, and in this way reach- 
 es what he regards as the special field of ethics. I do 
 not care to repeat what Professor Palmer has so 
 well done. None the less, for our special purpose, it 
 is necessary to find out, if we can, just those par- 
 ticular activities with which ethics is primarily con- 
 
 31 
 
32 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 cerned. This, I think I can do most quickly, if I 
 make use of some generalizations which are current 
 among philosophers and sociologists, and which, at 
 any rate, will give us a valuable bird's eye view and 
 show at once where such activities are generally cata- 
 logued. 
 
 Professor Hoffding of the University of Copen- 
 hagen, whom Professor James has called "one of the 
 most learned of living philosophers," 1 has pointed 
 out that all the problems, with which philosophers 
 have wrestled for more than twenty-five hundred 
 years, can be brought under four main heads, viz., 
 the Problem of Knowledge, the Problem of Being, the 
 Problem of Worth, and the Problem of Conscious- 
 ness. It is not my purpose, of course, to deal with 
 these problems in detail, but such a grouping as this 
 gives us a survey of the entire field, and the third 
 group shows us our special province, for, as Profes- 
 sor Hoffding proceeds to explain, the topic "worth" 
 includes both ethics and religion. Still further, this 
 term "worth" is equivalent to the term "value" which 
 stands in the center of ethical discussions to-day, 
 and when we analyze carefully we find that value 
 points to the field of purpose, and this, in turn, lands 
 us at once in the midst of teleology, where many of 
 the severest intellectual battles of the past, in phil- 
 osophy, theology, and science have been waged with 
 
 1 Hoffding, The Problems of Philosophy, Preface. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 33 
 
 varying and oftentimes inconclusive results. 2 I can 
 not, of course, take the time for an elaborate dis- 
 cussion of this matter, but I must say a word or two 
 with reference to it. 
 
 Back among the Greeks, Democritus, who was one 
 of the great systematizers of Greek thought, worked 
 out his system with a fundamental emphasis upon a 
 purposeless universe. When we analyze with proper 
 care, he maintained, we reach the conclusion that the 
 world is as it is because of a kind of necessity, a 
 blind unthinking law, a kind of fate. We do not 
 find purpose as an integral, fundamental principle. 
 Plato and Aristotle, on the other hand, insisted that 
 the deepest interpretation of the world which thought 
 reveals is that purpose is inextricably interwoven 
 with the nature of things. Account for it as we may, 
 we may not avoid the concept of purpose in our ef- 
 forts to explain the origin and succession of events 
 in the world, both human and otherwise. With the 
 development of the Church, it was rather natural 
 that this purposeful interpretation should have been 
 in the foreground, and this is what we find, for the 
 most part, throughout medieval Europe. But with 
 the reintroduction of the fundamental teaching of 
 Democritus early in the seventeenth century, very 
 naturally a purposeless universe came to the front 
 again for not a little discussion. Still further, since 
 the development of the sciences during the last three 
 
 9 Cooley, The Principles of Science, p. 163. 
 
64 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 hundred years has been in rather close relation to 
 the fundamental viewpoint of Democritus, it is not 
 surprising that science has not been very hospitable 
 toward the concept of purpose. About two years 
 ago, however, Professor Warren of Princeton Uni- 
 versity published an extended article in one of the 
 philosophical journals upon this very matter. 8 He 
 maintained in substance that we have a classical 
 treatment of the concept of causation in the work of 
 David Hume, but that purpose has never had such an 
 exhaustive examination. This, however, Professor 
 Warren attempts, and reaches the conclusion that 
 while science takes the teaching of Hume in his de- 
 velopment of the concept of causality, the concept of 
 purpose, as it has generally been used, has no legiti- 
 mate place within the field of science. This, as is 
 quite evident from what I said in the former lecture, 
 would put us into a kind of dilemma, if the older in- 
 terpretation of purpose were the only one. For, as 
 I pointed out there, I am inclined to regard ethics as 
 a science, and to be estopped from the use of the 
 concept of purpose would be to terminate my course 
 of lectures before I had fairly begun. Happily, how- 
 ever, the writer referred to has eliminated from the 
 concept of purpose its old-time "anthropomorphic 
 accretions" and indicates that in its reduced con- 
 notation it may well be employed for certain scien- 
 
 9 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 
 Vol. XIII, pp. 5-26, 57-73. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 35 
 
 tific aims. Since, too, this transformation of the 
 term is, in general, such as I have been accustomed to 
 make use of, I can all the more readily enlist it in 
 conjunction with our present task. 
 
 I may also add that we, at this time, are not par- 
 ticularly concerned with the reasons which have led 
 Professor Warren to make the changes which he has 
 deemed necessary in the concept of purpose. His 
 discussion involves not a little of metaphysics, and 
 we wisely hold ourselves aloof from that subject as 
 much as possible at present. Science restricts itself 
 to rather narrow limits, although it does have its 
 metaphysical ground principles. We are not so much 
 interested just now in the metaphysical aspects of 
 ethics, or in an extended discussion of the term pur- 
 pose, important though they may be in themselves, as 
 we are in the data of ethics and the possibility of 
 something like a scientific treatment. We need first 
 to get our material and to sift it with as great care 
 as possible. Whatever metaphysical implications 
 there may be in the subject or in some of the terms 
 tentatively used can be threshed out then. Conse- 
 quently, when we scrutinize the field of behavior with- 
 in limits that are not too far apart, and use the 
 term divested of some of its earlier meanings, we find 
 what can very well be called purpose. Let us see. 
 
 The little fishes swimming hither and thither within 
 their watery deep make continual use of their mouths. 
 Thus they aerate their system and get their neces- 
 
86 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 sary food supply. How much consciousness may be 
 involved in the process, I will not attempt to say. 
 None the less there is very evidently a purpose which 
 is subserved by their almost ceaseless activities. The 
 fox and the wolf pounce upon their unsuspecting 
 victims, while the lion and the bear stalk their prey 
 each in its own way. So, too, human beings have 
 their purposes, their ends which they seek in a va- 
 riety of ways. I may not say, perhaps, that the 
 universe is purposeful through and through. 4 Our 
 knowledge is as yet too meager for such an unequiv- 
 ocal assertion. When we consider the boundless 
 stretches of space about us and the comparatively 
 few things which we feel that we know, our knowledge 
 seems to be far too limited for us to say that the 
 universe is purposeful in its limitless extent. To 
 make such an assertion, would be to go considerably 
 beyond our evidence. But when we consider human 
 activities and the activities of the lower orders of 
 life, something which we can call purpose is very evi- 
 dent, and to that extent we may say that the universe 
 is purposeful. We ourselves are a part of the uni- 
 4 The article by Professor Warren which I have referred 
 to, I read only in part when it first appeared. When I went 
 to China and prepared this lecture, the article was not accessi- 
 ble to me, so that I depended entirely upon my memory of 
 what little I had read. Upon returning to America, I read 
 the entire discussion and found myself more fully in agree- 
 ment with it than I had supposed. Several slight changes had 
 to be made in a couple of paragraphs, but this particular para- 
 graph remains as it was originally presented. 
 
The Precise Field of EtUcs 37 
 
 verse, and to the extent that we have purposes, may 
 we say that the universe itself has purpose in it. 
 
 Here, then, is the result of this part of our in- 
 vestigation. Problems of worth are problems with 
 which the philosophers deal, and problems of worth 
 are problems of value, and these problems consist in 
 the proper discrimination among purposeful activi- 
 ties. The field of purposeful activity, then, is the 
 field of ethics from the point of view of the philoso- 
 phers. But, as I have indicated, the sociologists 
 have generalizations which are almost as wide-rang- 
 ing as those of the philosophers. If we turn to them, 
 we may find some additional light thrown upon our 
 problem as a whole. 
 
 One such generalization is rather old and will not 
 be of so much service to us as one that I shall pre- 
 sent later. Since, however, it gives us a fine, sweep- 
 ing view of the field, I think that it is a good one to 
 give in connection with the philosophical one just pre- 
 sented. It will be of value, also, in later discussions. 
 According to not a few sociologists, all the activities 
 of men may be put into four groups. There are the 
 economic activities, the political activities, the moral 
 and religious activities, and the cultural activities. 
 These make provision for the entire range of human 
 activities, for the term "cultural" includes every- 
 thing that would not naturally come under the other 
 three heads. It is used, therefore, not in that fine 
 Bostonese sense with its peculiar intonation, but 
 
38 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 rather as writers on primitive society use the word 
 "culture." With them it means the entire range of 
 human activities, while here it means the same minus 
 the other three sets of activities. Thus we see that 
 the moral activities are dealt with by sociologists in 
 close relation with the religious, and that they have a 
 definite place for consideration among the other 
 various activities. But, as I have indicated, such a 
 grouping does not help us very much when we desire 
 to determine what the nature of the ethical activities 
 is. We learn simply that they are a part of the total 
 human activities. We, however, desire to learn more, 
 and this desire will be met, I think, by using another 
 way of dealing with society, as I suggested a moment 
 ago. 
 
 In his book on "Inductive Sociology," Professor 
 Giddings of Columbia University has suggested that, 
 if we wish to know any community at all adequately, 
 there are four things which we need especially to con- 
 sider, viz., the "social population," the "social mind," 
 the "social organization," and the "social welfare." 5 
 The interpretation to be placed upon each of these 
 is as follows: By the social population is meant the 
 general physical characteristics of a people in any 
 community or country. If we want to know as much 
 as possible about any given people, we need to be^ 
 
 6 These main topics I have taken from the source indicated, 
 but I have developed them in my own way, although influenced, 
 of course, by the writer mentioned. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 89 
 
 gin with a study of their physical selves. This might 
 not be of so great importance in China, where, as I 
 understand, in some communities at least, the popu- 
 lation is very homogeneous, but in America, where 
 the population is composed of people from almost all 
 parts of the world, such a study is of prime impor- 
 tance. And, indeed, I believe that even in some of the 
 especially homogeneous parts of China, if we should 
 find out the stature of the people, the size and shape 
 of their heads, their facial angles, and various other 
 physical characteristics, we should know that popu- 
 lation far better than it is generally known to-day. 
 Then, too, by the social mind, in any community, no 
 mind independent of the individual minds is meant, 
 although some writers seem to imply something of 
 that sort, but the common stock of ideas, the ways 
 the people of that community have of reacting to 
 their environment, their beliefs, their thought habits, 
 and general outlook upon the world. This surely is 
 of importance, if we would know a people through 
 and through. Then, further, there is the social or- 
 ganization, for every community tends to have some 
 form of government, and in addition there are usual- 
 ly business organizations, chambers of commerce, and 
 enterprises of a similar nature too numerous to men- 
 tion, all of which show us the people banded together 
 in one form or another to accomplish some definite 
 purpose ; and, lastly, there is the social welfare to be 
 considered, for which all the various organizations to 
 
40 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 a greater or less extent really exist. There are, also, 
 the varying amounts of wealth possessed by different 
 groups within the community. How large a part of 
 the people, we would have to ask, constitutes the so- 
 called wealthy class, how many make up the fairly 
 well-to-do middle class, and how many are living in 
 poverty and squalor? What about schools, hospi- 
 tals, foundling asylums, and various sanitary under- 
 takings, all of which point directly to a considera- 
 tion of the welfare of the community? Whenever 
 we might make such a careful study of any commun- 
 ity as this brief outline implies, we could then say 
 that we knew that community very thoroughly. 
 
 Now, very naturally, what we call ethics or moral- 
 ity finds a place under this last head, and it is here 
 that Professor Giddings definitely places the ethical 
 activities of a community, and I think that it must 
 be apparent to all that such treatment throws a flood 
 of light upon our problem. Not only do we have here 
 an all-inclusive survey of human activities, includ- 
 ing the moral, but also a definite characterization of 
 those moral activities so that they are qualitatively 
 discriminated from other activities. 
 
 If we combine, now, the results of these two major 
 investigations, the philosophical and the sociological, 
 we shall find that we are not far from the special 
 field of ethics. From the philosophical generaliza- 
 tion, we found that ethics has to do with purposive 
 activity, while from the sociological angle we have 
 
The Precise Field of E tides 41 
 
 found that they are those activities which are par- 
 ticularly concerned with social welfare. If we were 
 to make a definition at this point, it would run about 
 as follows: Ethics has to do with consciously pur- 
 posive activities which aim at social welfare; they 
 are those activities in any community which are defi- 
 nitely aimed at the welfare of that group. 
 
 From all this discussion, it must be evident that 
 what we are especially concerned with in this field 
 are those acts which are commonly called altruistic. 
 They are the more self-sacrificing acts, the so-called 
 unselfish relations which people in any community 
 have to a greater or less extent toward one another. 
 This is not a new thing, as I intimated at the be- 
 ginning of the lecture two weeks ago, but something 
 rather old, and the question which naturally arises 
 here is as to whether such activities are forced upon 
 a community from outside itself, or whether they are 
 an integral, a vital part of the life of any community, 
 and where we may look for their origin. It is to a 
 consideration of this problem that we must turn 
 next. 
 
 The length of time during which the human race 
 has been here upon this earth has been variously esti- 
 mated. These estimates run all the way from a few 
 thousand years to one hundred thousand, five hun- 
 dred thousand, or even a million and a half years or 
 more. During all this long stretch of time, there 
 have been two fundamental impulses playing their 
 
42 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 respective parts, viz., the desire for food and the re- 
 lations of the sexes to each other. With the first of 
 these, I doubt if we shall find anything essentially 
 altruistic. This is a tyrannous impulse. Self-pres- 
 ervation is frequently styled the first law of life. It 
 is of course true that there are many considerations 
 coming from the midst of modern society which oper- 
 ate to modify this impulse, but when taken by itself, 
 as we must take it in such an investigation as this, 
 we can not find in it much that is altruistic. When 
 a man has reached his last mouthful of meat, his last 
 crust of bread, and feels the pangs of hunger strong 
 within him, he is not apt to give evidence of much 
 altruism. Still further, the way such cases are 
 handled in modern courts of law points to a recog- 
 nition of the tyranny of this impulse as a more or 
 less sufficient excuse in even rather violent misde- 
 meanors. In a New York City paper several years 
 ago, I read of a man who threw a couple of Indian 
 clubs through the plate glass windows of the dining- 
 room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel to the consterna- 
 tion of the men and women who were dining there. 
 Of course the man was arrested and when brought 
 before the judge the next morning the following 
 story was elicited from him: He had been out of 
 work for several weeks, his wife and children were 
 starving, and he himself had had nothing to eat for 
 several days. Since he had some skill in the use of 
 Indian clubs, he had gone to a few of the cafes on the 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 43 
 
 West Side to get what pennies he could by giving 
 exhibitions with his clubs. He had had but little 
 success, and on his way home he passed this hotel, 
 and there the sight of food and the wealth and good 
 cheer of the diners was too much for him. He lost 
 his head and hurled his clubs through the windows. 
 The judge, because of the legal requirements, im- 
 posed a light sentence upon the man, but at the same 
 time instructed a court official, as the prisoner was 
 being led away to a cell, to take him a steaming hot 
 meal. I have also gathered a number of similar in- 
 stances, where because of hunger men have gone coun- 
 ter to ordinary civilized behavior and have either 
 not been punished at all, or have received the mini- 
 mum penalty. In all such cases, it is evident that 
 hunger by itself knows no laws, and the presiding 
 legal officials regard human life as of more impor- 
 tance than mere things. From this impulse, then, I 
 doubt if we can find the source of altruism. What 
 can we say with reference to the other impulse re- 
 garded as fundamental? 
 
 The relations between men and women from very 
 early times have been exceedingly complex. There 
 has been much selfishness, brutality, and mere animal- 
 ism characterizing individual members of both groups 
 into which the race is divided by sex, but here, too, 
 not a little activity of another sort has been in evi- 
 dence. When we see, as has often happened, a 
 mother sacrificing herself for her child, and the fath- 
 
44 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 er sacrificing himself for wife or child or both, we 
 find ourselves in the presence of another principle 
 which has come to be known as altruism. 6 Indeed, 
 we are then at the very headwaters of such activity. 
 Of course, we have to consider that there have been 
 many variations in this field. The family has not 
 always been constituted in the simple way suggested 
 here, nor have the relations within the family always 
 been ideal, but when we reflect upon the matter 
 throughout the world and throughout the almost 
 endless periods of history, this field seems to afford 
 the best environment for the genesis and development 
 of what we to-day call altruism. 
 
 There is also another principle, which seems to me 
 to be a secondary one, but which has been emphasized 
 by Kropotkin, the Russian writer, viz., coopera- 
 tion. 7 This undoubtedly has played a large part in 
 the development of altruism. For big undertakings 
 in primitive times men had to join with one another. 
 This is very evident in connection with the commun- 
 ity life in the late Stone Age in England and on the 
 Continent, and the same was true in the valleys of the 
 Nile and of the Euphrates. 8 When man joined with 
 man in erecting some great stone structure or in 
 building a river embankment, he was not working 
 simply for his own welfare. Undoubtedly his own 
 
 6 Cf . McDougall, Social Psychology, pp. 76, 268-269. 
 
 7 Mutual Aid. 
 
 •Breasted, Ancient Times; A History of the Early World, 
 p. 27; Moore, History of Religions, p. 145. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 45 
 
 welfare was wrapped up with the welfare of the com- 
 munity, but as he toiled along with his fellows there 
 was a common end, a social aim that was bigger than 
 what the individual could accomplish for himself. As 
 a subsidiary principle, then, cooperation has played 
 an important part in the development of social life 
 and of altruistic activities. 
 
 It is thus evident, I think, that altruism is not 
 something foisted upon a community from outside 
 itself, but instead something without which a com- 
 munity could not exist. What would a community 
 be like, if we can imagine such a group for but a 
 moment, in which nobody ever did anything for any- 
 body else? Each individual, we will say, is working 
 first, last, and all the time simply for himself. How 
 could such a community hold together? Where 
 would be the chemical affinity, so to speak, the social 
 bond, the cement by which these units could be bound 
 together into a social whole? It is really unthink- 
 able. Altruism, then, is a native principle. It is not 
 something injected into society from some outside 
 source, but it is the sine qua non for any society. 
 Without it, there would be no society at all. 
 
 Here, then, we are very near the precise field of 
 ethics. Purposive activity aiming at social welfare 
 is the general field, but one further qualification must 
 be added. Unless there is a definite, conscious aim on 
 the part of the individual for the social welfare, the 
 quality of the social act is not so high. That is, 
 
46 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 over and above the outcome of definite acts which do 
 make for social welfare, there must be the conscious 
 willing on the part of the actor, or else the act itself 
 falls below par. Undoubtedly it is exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to get at a man's motives, and yet to disregard 
 motives would be to ignore the teaching of history. 
 
 Hobhouse of the University of London, in his work 
 on "Morals in Evolution," has taken several sets of 
 moral ideas and has traced them from the earliest 
 periods of human history down to the present. One 
 of these sets of moral ideas is concerned with "law 
 and justice." It is very evident, as he presents the 
 matter, that in primitive society the motive of an act 
 was not considered. The all important thing was to 
 find the perpetrator of an act. For example, in the 
 field of homicide, the motive of the guilty man was 
 not introduced into the consideration of the crime. 
 If A killed B, then A's life was forfeit. Even if men 
 were working together hewing wood and one man's 
 ax flew off the handle and killed his companion, there 
 was no discussion as to whether the man's motives 
 were murderous or not. He actually committed the 
 deed, therefore his life must pay the penalty. But 
 with the changing conditions in human society 
 which we interpret as progress there came a time 
 when just such distinctions were made. Even as 
 early as the time of Draco, in Greece, different courts 
 for different kinds of homicide were established. 9 
 9 Botsford, A History of Greece, p. 47. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 47 
 
 There were courts for cold-blooded, deliberate mur- 
 der, and also other courts for accidental homicide, 
 and for what perhaps we may call justifiable homi- 
 cide. The same distinctions are made to-day in west- 
 ern civilized society. From a total disregard of the 
 motive, society has turned to the closest scrutiny of 
 motives and to a careful adjustment of penalties to 
 correspond to the degree of guilt and individual re- 
 sponsibility. Not to do this in our consideration of 
 ethical problems would be to disregard the deepest 
 consciousness of the race as it has sought to estab- 
 lish even-handed justice within its borders. 
 
 It is true that oftentimes, because of the complex- 
 ity of modern society and the intricacies of legal de- 
 velopment, we become impatient of the results ob- 
 tained. Not infrequently, the confessed wrong-doer 
 escapes the expected requital for his misdeeds, be- 
 cause of some technicality of the law. There is a 
 doubt of some sort or an apparent unfairness in the 
 procedure, or a question raised as to the sanity of 
 the accused man, and in consequence the confessed 
 culprit goes scot-free, or passes the remainder of his 
 days in some luxurious private or semi-private insti- 
 tution for the insane. At such times there is a ten- 
 dency to decry the search for motives and to demand 
 a rougher, ruder method of dealing with the situa- 
 tion. The same is true in cases of mob rule or mob 
 law, as it is called. Not a little injustice has been 
 done in this way. But in all such cases, we should 
 
48 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 try to hold ourselves true to the development of the 
 race consciousness. Not to seek for motives and then 
 to abide by the results, is to put ourselves on the 
 plane of primitive savages ; to seek the motive of an 
 act is to align ourselves with the highest and best 
 that has been thought and achieved in this field. 
 
 But what shall we say, then, in the case of acts that 
 apparently make for social welfare, although we do 
 not know what the motive was ? We shall need to re- 
 gard them temporarily as ethical, and indeed as per- 
 manently ethical, so far as they constitute a valu- 
 able element in society, but the value of the act, so 
 far as the actor is concerned, varies with the motive. 
 If, for example, a wealthy man gives a large public 
 building to the city in which he lives, that is of value 
 to the community, and credit to that extent will be 
 freely extended to the donor. If, however, the gift 
 was made to win public favor and so prevent any in- 
 vestigation as to the methods by which the wealth 
 was obtained, then the ethical value of the gift falls 
 below par, if the motive ever becomes known. So, 
 too, a group within a given community, as Tammany 
 Hall in New York City, may be never so altruistic 
 within its own limits, illustrating pure group moral- 
 ity, but if, as in this case, such altruistic activities 
 are designed primarily to fasten the clutch of that 
 organization upon the treasure of that city, the seem- 
 ing altruism is not of a strictly ethical sort. It is 
 more nearly real selfishness and so unethical. 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 49 
 
 But let me suggest here, too, that the ordinary 
 distinction between selfish and unselfish does not hold 
 absolutely. Paradoxical as it may seem to be, if one 
 would be thoroughly selfish in the ordinary sense, he 
 must be altruistic, and to be altruistic in a large 
 way, one must be apparently at any rate selfish. 
 If a man were strictly selfish, he would be working 
 first, last, and all the time for his own welfare. But 
 even to gain his selfish ends he would have to be more 
 or less apparently altruistic. For to disregard ab- 
 solutely the claims of others upon himself would lead 
 ultimately to social ostracism and so to the non-reali- 
 zation of his desired good. On the other hand, one 
 might be consumed with the desire to serve one's fel- 
 lowmen, so much so, indeed, that one would neglect 
 all preparatory training. To follow such a course, 
 however, would make it impossible for the individual 
 to contribute his greatest service. Only as he sub- 
 mits himself to a long course of training, for ten or 
 fifteen years it might be, during which time he would 
 appear to the superficial observer to be extremely 
 selfish, could he render his fullest and richest service 
 to the community or country to which he happened 
 to belong. Selfishness and unselfishness are not mu- 
 tually exclusive terms ; they are paradoxically com- 
 plementary. But in the use of either to characterize 
 an individual, we would need to know the motive ; only 
 so could we judge accurately of the ethical value of 
 an act or series of acts. 
 
50 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 There is one further question that arises in this 
 connection. Suppose a man should spend his entire 
 life endeavoring to benefit his fellowmen, but in the 
 end should fail of ever having done a thing which 
 could be rated as real social service. Could we call 
 such a man ethical? In view of the discussion thus 
 far, I should be compelled to call him ethical, but I 
 would immediately raise a question as to his mental 
 ability. I do not think that it is at all probable that 
 a normal man who aimed at social welfare would be 
 utterly defeated in the attempt. The chances are 
 that his successes would rather outweigh his failures. 
 
 And so we have come to the end of our discussions 
 for to-day. It is sometimes said that a man's religion 
 consists in his relation to his god, while his ethics 
 consists in his relations to his fellows. This last 
 statement seems to me to be too broad. It makes 
 ethics synonymous with sociology. We may indeed 
 say that everything that is ethical is social, although 
 we may not say that everything that is social is 
 ethical. As we have seen, the ethical finds its place 
 in the discussions of the philosopher under the head 
 of worth which means purposeful activity, while 
 with the sociologist the same activities are provided 
 for under the head of social welfare. But even so, if 
 we would properly appreciate the teachings of his- 
 tory, we must search out the motives of acts so far 
 as possible. Consciously purposive activity, then, 
 aimed at social welware on the whole and in the long 
 
The Precise Field of Ethics 51 
 
 run is what we can call ethical in the midst of com- 
 plex human society. It is not something foreign to 
 society, something imposed upon society from with- 
 out, but rather something which is fundamental, in- 
 deed, vital. Society could not exist without it. 
 
 At our next hour, two weeks from to-day, I shall 
 try to show how these various discussions may be ap- 
 plied by each of you to the particular community 
 in which you happen to live, and so give a practical 
 turn to it all. 
 
Ill 
 
 TWOFOLD MORALITY 
 
 IN the lecture two weeks ago, I said that ethics 
 is concerned especially with consciously purposive 
 activities which aim at social welfare. This indicates, 
 as it seems to me, the precise field of ethics. There 
 is, however, a broader definition which I sometimes 
 find it convenient to use, but which I could not pre- 
 sent at the last hour without perhaps dividing your 
 attention too much. It includes the more precise 
 definition, and so can not be regarded as in any sense 
 out of harmony with what I said on the earlier oc- 
 casion. Since I shall need to make use of it to a 
 limited extent in the present lecture and possibly in 
 later lectures, I will present it briefly now. 
 
 From this broader point of view, then, ethics may 
 be said to be the life of a man as he seeks to realize 
 some ideal, or, to give the matter a somewhat more 
 scientific cast, we may say that ethics is the science 
 which results from the application of the scientific 
 method to the lives of men as they have sought to 
 realize ideals. At once, perhaps, you may feel in- 
 clined to object. Suppose there were a robber chief- 
 tain, you may suggest, who has the ideal of being the 
 
 52 
 
Twofold Morality 58 
 
 most successful leader possible of a gang of rob- 
 bers. Could he be regarded as ethical? From the 
 point of view of this broad definition, I should be 
 compelled to answer "Yes." So, too, if you should 
 suggest some individual who might be aiming all the 
 time at his own welfare. In so far as personal ad- 
 vantage and aggrandizement might be the ideal which 
 such an individual was constantly trying to realize, I 
 should have to call him ethical. The same would be 
 true in an almost innumerable array of cases which 
 might readily occur to you. In so far as the indi- 
 viduals considered might be striving to realize ideals, 
 we should need to call them ethical. 
 
 Such a view, however, seems to be wholly at vari- 
 ance with the major argument in the last lecture, 
 where the thoroughly selfish man, in so far as one can 
 be thoroughly selfish, was regarded as unethical, and 
 only those working definitely for social welfare were 
 characterized as truly ethical. But a different prin- 
 ciple puts in its appearance at once, a principle 
 which we may regard as belonging especially within 
 the field of comparative ethics. It would seem to 
 be true, as we look over the entire course of social 
 evolution, that there has been what we may call a 
 struggle for existence among ideals, or we might 
 also say a kind of survival of the fittest of ideals. 1 
 Such ideals, then, as the two I called to your at- 
 tention a moment ago, belong to earlier stages of 
 »Cf. Seth, Ethical Principles, 8th Ed., p. 11. 
 
54 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 social development, but they have been gradually 
 relegated to the rear as society has marched ever 
 onward and upward toward higher and better things. 
 The ideals which aim at social welfare instead of the 
 welfare of any mere individual are the ideals which 
 seem to be more worthy to survive. It was from this 
 later, more appreciative standpoint that I put the 
 emphasis where I did two weeks ago. When any one 
 seeks to realize some ideal, he is to that extent ethical, 
 but it may be that his ideal was long ago outlawed, 
 and so in a very true sense can no longer be re- 
 garded as ethical from the advanced position reached 
 by society. 
 
 But what, may we ask, is an ideal ? I used the term 
 in the first lecture of the series, but it hardly seemed 
 to be advisable to take time to indicate its essential 
 features then. Now, however, I must give a few sug- 
 gestions as to its meaning, and to do this I must have 
 recourse to modern psychology. An ideal involves 
 the imagination, and this phase of our mental life is 
 generally treated under two main heads, viz., the re- 
 productive imagination and the constructive imag- 
 ination. 2 The first of these may be illustrated as 
 follows: You may be reading some book which de- 
 scribes an African or South American forest, and I 
 will assume that you have never visited either of those 
 continents, but as you read you have an image of a 
 forest accompanying the description. This is due to 
 
 'Titchener, An Outline of Psychology, pp. 295-298. 
 
Twofold Morality 55 
 
 your actual experience of forests here in your native 
 land. The trees with their wide spreading branches, 
 the leaves and the various odors, all more or less 
 blurred, come trooping along in consequence of the 
 suggestions you get from your reading. There is no 
 attempt on your part to make the imagery definite, 
 nor is there any selection. You have a more or less 
 vague forest feeling as a setting for what you read. 
 The other kind of imagination, however, is different 
 in that elements are selected from various experiences. 
 We will say that a man wishes to write a description 
 of a storm at sea, although he has never experienced 
 one. This is, of course, rather hazardous, and yet 
 not impossible. Such a writer, we will say, has been 
 to sea but never in a storm, has stood upon the sea- 
 shore and watched the waves driven by the gale roll 
 dangerously near his feet; he has also been in many 
 a tempest on land, beheld the vivid flashes of light- 
 ning, and cowered at the deafening crashes of thun- 
 der. From all these experiences he selects many ele- 
 ments and constructs a fairly good description of a 
 storm at sea. Notice particularly that there are no 
 new elements furnished by the mind itself; simply a 
 selection from various past experiences. Or, again, 
 we will say that a man plans a building such as your 
 new library or gymnasium. From the numerous 
 buildings with which he is acquainted in different 
 parts of the world and in different periods of history, 
 he selects certain elements and puts them together 
 
56 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 in his plans, and ultimately the structure takes shape 
 here upon your campus. The same is true of our 
 ideals. We do not construct the materials, but from 
 our own past experiences and from the experiences of 
 the race, as history reveals them to us, we make our 
 selection and fuse it all into a mental construct or 
 symbol which we try to realize throughout life. Such 
 is an ideal, and ethics deals with these ideals and the 
 measure of realization attained by individuals and the 
 race throughout all history. Let us turn, now, to 
 our specific topic for the day, a twofold morality. 
 
 To present this matter to you as I wish, I find it 
 necessary to direct your attention first to a con- 
 sideration of civilizations, and indeed to social evo- 
 lution as a whole. Lewis H. Morgan, in his book on 
 "Ancient Society," has indicated that to deal satis- 
 factorily with society we must make distinctions 
 within its limits. 3 He has suggested, and his sug- 
 gestion has been followed by other writers, that we 
 should divide humanity throughout its long history 
 into savagery, barbarism, and civilization. The di- 
 viding line between the first and second of these is the 
 domestication of animals and the making of pottery, 
 while the dividing line between the second and third 
 is the possession of a phonetic alphabet and the art 
 of writing. But we should not deceive ourselves into 
 thinking that when civilization has been reached, all 
 the earlier stages of society passed away at once. 
 8 Ancient Society, pp. 3-18. 
 
Twofold Morality 57 
 
 The earlier and the intermediate remain along with 
 the latest. In Central Australia to-day, we can find 
 men and women almost as primitive as the earliest 
 in the race, 4 and in other parts of the world, as in 
 Arabia, we can find good examples of the barbarous 
 stage of human development. But still further, in 
 every civilized community, we find suggestions of the 
 three. Every child born into any civilized com- 
 munity represents to a certain extent the savage 
 stage, while the child of ten or twelve years is more 
 or less of a barbarian, and then as he grows to ma- 
 turity, if he is fortunate, he becomes more or less 
 civilized. But aside from such a minute analysis of 
 a civilized community, let us consider civilizations 
 as such. 
 
 There are at least two ways of viewing any civili- 
 zation. We may select certain features as the lead- 
 ing characteristics and say that they represent the 
 civilization of a particular people. In this way, too, 
 we may make comparisons among civilizations. By 
 selecting several features of the life in America, my 
 homeland, I could say that they fairly well repre- 
 sent American civilization. I might also select simi- 
 lar features from the life in Europe and say that 
 they represent European civilization. Or, indeed, I 
 might make a selection from the life here in China 
 and say that those features represent Chinese civili- 
 
 4 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of CerUral Aus- 
 tralia. 
 
58 Ts'vng Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 zation. But more or less vagueness generally at- 
 taches to our use of the term in this way. It is a 
 very good shorthand symbol, very convenient at 
 times, but not infrequently the vagueness and the 
 broad generality of the term keep us from the clear- 
 est thinking in this field. Consequently, I wish to 
 suggest another way of dealing with the entire prob- 
 lem. 
 
 If we focus our attention upon a single community 
 in any country, we can say very truthfully that that 
 community represents the civilization of the whole, 
 or that it is the civilization of the whole in miniature. 
 I suggested in the first lecture that every science an- 
 alyzes until it reaches a rather simple unit, and then 
 the task of the scientists within that special field 
 is to find the principles in accordance with which the 
 units combine into the wholes which were first ob- 
 served in that field. Now, I am not saying that the 
 study of civilizations is a science, although it might 
 well be, but I am suggesting that a community with- 
 in any country may be taken as the unit of the 
 civilization of that country. If we fix our attention 
 upon America for a moment, we find many cities, 
 large and small. Any one of them, indeed, might be 
 taken as the unit of American civilization. We 
 might, of course, make various groups, as the census 
 officials do. There are the very large cities, as New 
 York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and others that 
 would be in a group by themselves; then there are 
 
Twofold Morality 59 
 
 the cities of about 200,000 or 300,000 inhabitants, 
 those of 100,000, and those of '50,000, or 25,000, and 
 others of 10,000, or 5,000, and many smaller. But 
 while there are differences among these cities, in that 
 the larger ones have a somewhat more complex life, 
 more elaborateness, more luxury, and so on, the re- 
 semblances among them all would far outweigh the 
 differences. Each one is really America in minia- 
 ture. 
 
 The same thing is true here in your own country. 
 There are your large cities, as Peking, Tientsin, 
 Shanghai, Hankow, Canton, and others that will 
 readily occur to you ; then there are those of 500,000 
 inhabitants, those of 300,000 or 200,000, and the 
 smaller ones as in the case of America. These are 
 all typical of Chinese civilization. To know any one 
 of them in detail, would be to know the civilization 
 of China very thoroughly. Of course there are dif- 
 ferences among them, but if all the cities of the world 
 could be spread out before us and we should mix 
 them up and then try to group them according to 
 their likenesses, we should probably put all the Chin- 
 ese ones together because of their real resemblances 
 in spite of some differences. Each and every one 
 is really China in miniature. 
 
 Thus, I think we can say that a community is the 
 unit of any civilization, and to fix our attention upon 
 a single community, to analyze it, and so come to 
 know it through and through means to grasp the es- 
 
60 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 sential problems of that community, and at the same 
 time of the entire country to which it belongs. If, 
 then, we can make such a study and find out the 
 meaning of a twofold morality for that particular 
 community, we shall be in a position to appreciate 
 the same for the country as a whole. It is to such 
 an analysis that I wish to turn next. Since, however, 
 I have been in your country for so short a time, I 
 think that it will be best for me to present a pre- 
 liminary study of an American community, and then 
 point out as complete a parallel as I can with some 
 one of your own communities. You can yourselves, 
 also, as I proceed, fill in the outline very definitely 
 from your own knowledge of the various cities and 
 towns here in China. 
 
 Let us take, then, a city of 5,000 or 10,000 in- 
 habitants in America, right in the Mississippi val- 
 ley, the very heart of the country, and apply such 
 methods of study as I suggested in the last lecture. 
 I may not take the time to follow them all out in de- 
 tail, but if we consider the social population, and 
 then the economic, the political, the moral and re- 
 ligious, and the cultural activities, we shall know 
 enough about such a community for our present 
 purpose. 
 
 If, now, we fix our attention upon the physical 
 characteristics of the population in a city of 5,000 
 inhabitants in the Middle West of America, we shall 
 find that it is rather heterogeneous. There are the 
 
Twofold Morality 61 
 
 descendents of the earlier settlers running back sev- 
 eral generations, and various residents from other 
 parts of the country, north, east, south, and west. 
 It is not unlikely, too, that we shall find in the popu- 
 lation some who went away at an earlier time to other 
 parts of the country or to foreign lands, but have 
 recently returned. There are, also, in rather large 
 numbers proportionally, representatives from Ire- 
 land, Germany, Italy, Greece, and from nearly all 
 the other countries of Europe, with here and there 
 an immigrant from still more remote parts of the 
 world. It is a decidedly cosmopolitan population 
 racially, and still more cosmopolitan with its ideas 
 and customs from so many parts of the world. 
 
 As to the economic activities in such a community, 
 I need merely say that there are the wholesale mer- 
 chants who do business in a large way, the various 
 retail merchants, the banks, the milling or mining op- 
 erations as the case may be, the clerks of several 
 sorts, the teamsters, the day laborers so called, and 
 the women who labor in their homes. With regard to 
 the political activities, we should have to recognize 
 at least two great parties, more or less opposed to 
 each other when the election season is on, but for the 
 most part able to live rather amicably with each 
 other during the greater part of the year. There is 
 a complete assortment of city officials, as the ma/or 
 and his advisers who are generally called aldermen, 
 the police, and the judiciary composed of the city 
 
63 Tsing II ua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 court and a county or superior court. Then, too, 
 there are the political bosses, usually holding no offi- 
 cial position, but exercising a potent, perhaps we 
 should rather say a baleful, influence throughout the 
 community by means of their henchmen located in 
 the several wards and districts. As to the moral 
 and religious activities, we need to note that there 
 is a church in America for every 450 people. 5 That 
 would mean about ten churches in a community of 
 5,000 inhabitants, and that number is often found. 
 These for the most part represent different denomi- 
 nations, as they are called, with their divergent be- 
 liefs, although careful analysis shows that they have 
 not a little in common. At times, however, their 
 differences are magnified to a position of supreme im- 
 portance. All these have their respective ideals of 
 conduct which are presented and emphasized from 
 week to week. Not infrequently, what one church 
 prohibits another allows without any question. Still, 
 taken as a whole, these institutions constitute a 
 kind of moral censorship for the entire community 
 with varying degrees of success. Then there are 
 the cultural activities which can be thought of as 
 represented by the fraternal societies, the library, 
 reading clubs, debating societies, the school sys- 
 tem, and a rather large number of other more or 
 less similar organizations of which the activities 
 could not properly be ranged under any one of the 
 B Cf . Giddings, The Principles of Sociology, p. 190. 
 
Twofold Morality 63 
 
 other groups considered. While much more might 
 be said, this is sufficient, I think, to give a fair idea 
 of a typical unit of American civilization to-day. 
 What kind of parallel can we make for a Chinese 
 community ? 
 
 In the first place, the social population of a Chi- 
 nese city of 5,000 or 10,000 inhabitants, somewhere 
 in the central portion of the country, would be 
 decidedly more homogeneous than the community 
 we have just now considered. None the less I am 
 inclined to believe that in addition to the descend- 
 ents of the earlier generations there would be found 
 a few who had come to dwell there from other parts 
 of the country, north, east, south, or west. There 
 probably would be none or very few people resident 
 there from other parts of the world. But to fix our 
 attention upon such a definite body of people will 
 aid not a little in our effort to deal with the ethical 
 problem for the country as a whole. 
 
 As to the economic activities, I can merely say 
 that, if we should make our way along the main 
 street and some of the side streets, we would note 
 the various stores dealing with nearly all sorts of 
 commodities. There are the butchers, the bakers, 
 and the grocers, the cabinet makers, the blacksmiths 
 and the wheelwrights, the grinders of grains of dif- 
 ferent sorts, the haberdashers and the undertakers, 
 and in addition the donkey drivers and the ricksha 
 men, the carriers of water and other day laborers. 
 
64 Tsing Him Lectures on Ethics 
 
 The political life at present is undoubtedly in a 
 ferment. Very likely there is an official at the head 
 of the city either elected or appointed by the cen- 
 tral government; there are political parties, too, 
 in the making with their bosses and active workers 
 of different grades. There are, also, the several 
 government officials, as postal clerks, and in case 
 our typical city were near the railroad, there would 
 be the officials in charge of the business at the sta- 
 tion. In regard to the moral and religious activi- 
 ties, we will assume that there are representatives 
 in rather large numbers of the ancient Confucian 
 faith, but also not a few Buddhists, perhaps some 
 Mohammedans, and possibly some who are of the 
 prevailing faith in Europe and America. These 
 various groups have their ethical programs which 
 they are able to carry through with greater or less 
 success. And finally there are the cultural activities 
 consisting of the festivities in celebration of the 
 founding of the Republic, the New Year celebra- 
 tions, and not a few organizations and social groups 
 with activities which could not be placed under any 
 one of the other heads. 
 
 Such, then, would be our typical community, and 
 what I have failed to bring out because of my brief 
 residence here, you can fill in from your own knowl- 
 edge of many actual communities which you have 
 been in throughout the country. Any such com- 
 munity as this constitutes, as I have said, Chinese 
 
Twofold Morality 05 
 
 civilization in miniature, and what we may find true 
 of it, we may infer as true in varying degrees of 
 the country as a whole. 
 
 Now, with our attention focused upon a com- 
 munity of this sort, analyzed in this way, let us 
 observe a contrast that we are sure to find there, 
 viz., a contrast between the social consciousness and 
 the individual consciousness. If, for example, a 
 robber band should make a raid upon the com- 
 munity, break into and loot the bank, and perhaps 
 kill one or two of the officials, the people as a whole 
 would be a unit, very likely, in condemning the 
 act. That would be their social consciousness re- 
 acting against this relic of barbarism. The en- 
 tire community would be thinking alike, and per- 
 haps the entire male population would set out in 
 pursuit of the bandits. If, however, a man should 
 not treat his wife kindly, or if the wife should be 
 unfaithful to her husband, possibly the whole com- 
 munity would not think alike with reference to the 
 matter. There might be a division of opinion, and 
 each group according to its size would be either 
 the social consciousness or an opposing conscious- 
 ness more or less individual. If for the moment 
 we assume that the community we are considering 
 was particularly favored by and favorable to the 
 Manchu dynasty before the Republic was estab- 
 lished, any individual within it who might express 
 an opinion against that dynasty and in favor of 
 
66 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 a revolution would feel the weight of the displea- 
 sure of the consciousness of the entire community. 
 On the other hand, if we assume such a community 
 as existing under the present form of government 
 and as favorable to it, any individual who might 
 express a desire for the return of the Manchus 
 to power would be in a dangerous minority. In 
 every such community, and in practically every 
 group within the community, there are more or less 
 radical differences of opinion; there is an opposi- 
 tion between the consciousness of the group as a 
 whole and an individual here and there within the 
 group. 
 
 This relation, too, may be brought out in still 
 another way. All of you here in Tsing Hua have 
 a social consciousness. You are distinct from the 
 community immediately about you. You have an 
 environment peculiarly your own, you think some- 
 what alike, there are rather definite socializing ten- 
 dencies within the walls of this compound. This 
 is especially evident when you engage in athletic 
 contests with some other institution. You then pre- 
 sent a solid front against your opponents. But 
 within the institution there are cither conscious- 
 nesses more or less independent and individual. The 
 Senior class has a consciousness all its own, so has 
 the Junior class, and so on down the list. This is 
 very evident when you have your class contests. 
 Then it is the class supremacy, the class conscious- 
 
Twofold Morality 67 
 
 ness that seems to be most important. Or, again, 
 some individual member of any one of these classes 
 may oppose some contemplated class action. He 
 thinks that he has a better plan or a better idea 
 than that favored by the majority of his class- 
 mates. Perhaps he is right, and by dint of much 
 argument and perhaps some coaxing he gets the rest 
 of the class to adopt his plan or idea, and then what 
 had been almost purely a bit of individual con- 
 sciousness becomes a part of the social conscious- 
 ness of the entire group. Other illustrations, almost 
 limitless in number, we need not consider at pres- 
 ent. We are more interested in the significance of 
 this background for our topic of a "two-fold mor- 
 ality," than in the opposition itself, which none the 
 less has been of vital importance throughout the his- 
 tory of civilization. 6 
 
 Let us think, now, for a moment of some boy born 
 into such a community as I have analyzed. He is 
 trained very carefully by his parents, instructed 
 in all the traditions of his particular family and 
 in the history and traditions of his city and of his 
 
 fl Cf. Deniker, The Races of Man, pp. 157, 497; Robinson, 
 The New History, p. 236; Sumner, Folkways, p. 224; Kropot- 
 kin, Mutual Aid, pp. xvi, 293-300; James, Some Problems of 
 Philosophy, p. 3; Munsterberg, Psychology, General and Ap- 
 plied, pp. 226-227; Johnson, God in Evolution, p. 203; Ross, 
 Social Psychology, p. 192; Cooley, Human Nature and the 
 Social Order, p. 325; Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, p. 484; Angell, 
 Chapters from Modern Psychology, pp. 212-214; Cornford, 
 Prom Religion to Philosophy, p. 45. 
 
68 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 country to a limited extent. He follows his father 
 in his religious faith or lack of such faith, enters 
 his father's business, and becomes the head of that 
 business at his father's death. His father's friends 
 and business acquaintances are his, and in every re- 
 spect possible he is like his father in act, thought, 
 and relations in general. Could such a young man 
 be called ethical? Undoubtedly we would have to 
 term him ethical, although perhaps he never definite- 
 ly entertained an ideal. But he has the traditional 
 morality of that community, and more or less im- 
 plicitly, and indeed to a certain extent explicitly, 
 his father's life has been the ideal which he has striven 
 to realize in as full measure as possible. This is 
 one type of morality, the traditional type, a real 
 genuine type. Its various details, however, I can 
 not elaborate further for lack of time. 
 
 There is, also, another type which I am inclined 
 to call the variant type which manifests itself in many 
 ways. We will assume that a young fellow, born 
 into such a community as we are considering, goes 
 away from home to school. Perhaps he goes to 
 America for college and university training, and 
 when he returns to his native city he insists upon 
 introducing into his mode of life certain features 
 which he thinks are good because he has seen their 
 good results elsewhere. But the large - ma j ority of 
 the people in that community severely disapprove 
 such a deviation from the ways of the fathers. 
 
Twofold Morality 99 
 
 What the outcome of the struggle will be, only a 
 great variety of circumstances will determine. Per- 
 haps the good results flowing into this young man's 
 life from the innovations, provided he is allowed to 
 follow his new program, will be so apparent and so 
 seemingly valuable that a large number of his fel- 
 low-townsmen will imitate him, and thus what was 
 at first only a part of his individual consciousness 
 will become a part of the social consciousness and he 
 will be hailed as a public benefactor. On the other 
 hand, it may be that the community will object so 
 strenuously to the innovation that the young man 
 will either have to abandon his new mode of living 
 or be excluded from the community altogether. Pos- 
 sibly, when excluded, he will slowly gather a small 
 group of imitators in some other environment, and 
 then the good results will become so apparent to 
 the old community that it will change its attitude, 
 adopt the new methods and hail the exile as an 
 ethical pioneer. Of course, it might be that the 
 thing which the young man wished to introduce into 
 his own life and into the life of the community was 
 something which had been tried earlier with bad 
 results. For any one to attempt to reintroduce this 
 would be to fly in the face of the experience of the 
 group. The young man would be privileged to do 
 so, from one point of view, but it would be ethical 
 only to the extent that that way of life was ethical 
 at an earlier period. If it were something which 
 
70 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the community had wisely set its ban upon, then 
 any attempt to revive that form of living would 
 represent a backward step. 
 
 But I have said enough, I think, to indicate what 
 I mean by a "twofold morality." It is the contrast 
 between the old, traditional morality, and the moral- 
 ity which results from individual initiative and the 
 desire to appropriate what is good in the world out- 
 side of one's own particular community. It is on 
 the inventive, experimental side of life, and may be 
 productive of good, although there is undoubtedly a 
 chance that it may prove detrimental. But nothing 
 venture, nothing have. The attitude of mind of an 
 individual who thus sets himself in opposition to the 
 social consciousness is exceedingly valuable, although 
 fraught with dangers. And further, if the opposi- 
 tion be the result of a conscious purpose to do the 
 community good, to add to the social welfare, then 
 we should have to term it exceedingly ethical, and 
 appraise highly the life of the individual who dis- 
 plays it. 
 
 But now I wish to suggest one other thing in this 
 connection. Oftentimes when an individual sets him- 
 self in opposition to the social consciousness, he 
 says that he does so because of his conscience. He 
 has sunk the plummet down deep into his own soul, 
 as he says, and has found there the absolute truth. 
 But there is danger in such an attitude of mind. It 
 is so easy for any one to get decidedly tangled up 
 
Twofold Morality 71 
 
 in the intricacies of his own inner consciousness. He 
 needs an objective reference. A definition of con- 
 science given by Paulsen meets this need. Conscience, 
 he maintained, is the consciousness of custom. 7 It 
 is easy to see this in such a community as we have 
 been considering. If the ordinary person does as 
 the social consciousness dictates, he has an easy con- 
 science, but if he goes counter to that social con- 
 sciousness, his conscience troubles him. But how 
 can this view harmonize with the attitude of the in- 
 dividual who opposes the social consciousness and yet 
 says that he has a quiet conscience? Such a one, 
 we may well suppose, might conceive of a more ideal 
 society than the one to which he belonged physically 
 and be guiding his conduct by the social conscious- 
 ness of that ideal group. In this way, he would have 
 a conscience in the same sense as Paulsen's definition 
 implies, but be decidedly different from his fellow- 
 townsmen in his conduct. Such an objective refer- 
 ence, although, of course, the result of the individual's 
 own thinking, would be of no little value to him. His 
 conscience would be the consciousness of custom, 
 but a consciousness of the customs of a more ideal 
 group. The ideal states of Plato, Campanelli, Sir 
 Thomas More, Edward Bellamy, and others, have 
 been, in a sense, such objective references. 
 
 One other way of illustrating this whole matter 
 and I shall be through. In any species of animals 
 'Paulsen, A System of Ethics, Tr. Thilly, p. 363. 
 
7f Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 there are certain modes of living which are more 
 or less peculiar to that species. We might call them 
 the social habits of that species, although ordinarily 
 they are termed instincts. To behave in such rather 
 definite ways is best for that species. Indeed, the 
 species has developed and maintained itself by strict 
 adherence to such habits. To live in any other way 
 would be to court death and the extinction of the 
 group. But all this is well enough so long as the 
 environment remains unchanged. Instincts are then 
 sufficient for the welfare of that group. As soon, 
 however, as the environment changes, the animals 
 must change their behavior more or less radically or 
 they will not survive. The price of survival so long 
 as the environment remains unchanged, is the faith- 
 ful adherence to what we might call their traditional 
 ways of living, but when the environment changes, 
 the price of survival is a change in modes of be- 
 havior. Fixed environment means fixed modes of 
 behavior, but changed environment means changed 
 modes of behavior. In a sense, we might say that it 
 is ethical for such creatures to abide by traditional 
 ways of living so long as the old environment re- 
 mains, but unethical, if the surroundings change. 
 
 Let me suggest now, if you will, an application of 
 this entire discussion to you yourselves and your 
 national life. For many centuries your people have 
 had certain rather definite courses of conduct which 
 you have regarded as the ideal ways of living. These 
 
Twofold Morality 78 
 
 social habits have been inculcated by your great 
 ethical teachers and leaders. And this was good 
 so long as your environment remained practically 
 unchanged. Very likely that was the best way for 
 you. But a changed environment, such as we can 
 not fail to recognize in the world as a whole to-day, 
 makes it dangerous for your people to persist in 
 the old ways. You yourselves, as students from all 
 parts of China, and with plans for several years 
 of study in America or elsewhere, constitute a kind 
 of opposition to the old social consciousness. I 
 doubt not but that some of you in your old city 
 or town environment have been more or less single 
 individuals in opposition to the old-time conservative 
 attitude of mind of your fellow-townsmen. It was 
 no small struggle through which you passed in your 
 opposition to the old, but in making such a struggle 
 you put yourselves on the side of the more progres- 
 sive type of morality. Still further, as you get the 
 training at your disposal here and then obtain all 
 that you can from further years of travel and study 
 abroad, with the specific purpose of returning to 
 your native land and to your particular city or 
 town to contribute to the welfare of that community 
 and to the welfare of China as a whole, you will be 
 exemplifying the higher type of ethics which I have 
 been presenting to you to-day all too hurriedly. 
 There is always this contrast between the old and 
 the new. The old was good in its particular day and 
 
74 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 generation, but it is a new world with which we are 
 forced to deal to-day. The new world environment 
 makes your individual programs essential to the 
 welfare of China, and in so far as you may help to 
 establish a part of the new as a substitute for some 
 of the old will you be in a high degree moral. You 
 are actually, and to a greater extent potentially, 
 representative of a high type of ethics. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS 
 
 IN the preceding lectures I have rather generally 
 assumed progress, although I have not used the 
 term more than once or twice. My position, in 
 what I have said, has been like that of most people 
 at the present day, who assume progress as a reality, 
 without, however, attempting to indicate just what 
 that progress consists in. But notwithstanding this 
 rather general acceptance of progress, occasionally 
 a different note is sounded, and then we are forced 
 to give a reason for the faith that is within us, if we 
 can. 
 
 "Ages of progress !" exclaims Mr. Andrew Lang 
 in his preface to Fitzgerald's translation of Omar 
 Khayyam's "Rubaiyat." 
 
 "Ages of progress ! These eight hundred years 
 Hath Europe shuddered with her hopes or fears, 
 And now! — She listens in the wilderness 
 To thee, and half believeth what she hears!" 
 
 For a thousand years, more or less, is what Mr. 
 Lang meant, Europe had been following certain 
 rather definite ideals; ideals of self-denial and of 
 
 75 
 
76 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 self-subordination; ideals which for the most part 
 consisted in postponing present pleasures and im- 
 mediate personal welfare for the sake of a greater 
 good, a greater happiness to be realized in the future, 
 either in this world or in the next, and then the phil- 
 osophy of this Persian sage came to the attention 
 of one or another, and they paused, perhaps some- 
 what aghast, at the thought that possibly they had 
 been on the wrong track. "Why mourn over dead 
 yesterdays," sang the poet, "if to-day be sweet?" 
 Why wait until the morrow, he further suggests, 
 when the morrow may never come? Seize the pleasures 
 of the moment, before it be too late. 
 
 "The Bird of Time has but a little way 
 To fly— and Lo ! the Bird is on the Wing." 
 
 Make the most of the present, insists the singer, 
 for it is only the present that you are sure of. 
 Neglect no single opportunity for present pleasure 
 with a view to some future good, for, indeed, there 
 may be no future at all for you. And the question 
 which came to many a one was this: "Have we, 
 as a people, been following a mirage? Have we, 
 as so many have fondly dreamed, been progressing 
 from better toward the best, or have we wretchedly 
 failed in our interpretation of life, and should we 
 at once right about face?" And this was no simple 
 query over which they pondered more or less 
 anxiously. 
 
 
The Problem of Progress 77 
 
 Then, too, one of the professors under whom I 
 studied several years ago, definitely raised this ques- 
 tion of progress in one of his lectures. I had always 
 taken the matter for granted. For many years prog- 
 ress had seemed to me to be axiomatic, but some 
 of the material presented on that occasion showed 
 at least the possibility of a serious doubt. Imme- 
 diately, therefore, I set myself at work to see whether 
 or not progress could be proved, and it is some of the 
 results of that investigation, together with various 
 other reflections, that I am about to present to 
 you to-day. 
 
 And at the very outset, let me say that I do not 
 believe that we can prove progress in the deductive 
 sense of that term. There is an inductive as well 
 as a deductive meaning of the term "prove," but 
 unfortunately we generally have only the deductive 
 sense prominently in mind. We become acquainted 
 with this meaning in our study of mathematics, 
 especially geometry. In that study, we have a prop- 
 osition stated for us in a beautifully concise form, 
 and then, by using the knowledge gained in the de- 
 monstration of other equally concise propositions, 
 we proceed step by step until we reach the proper 
 conclusion, and then with a feeling of great satisfac- 
 tion we add the cabalistic letters, Q. E. D. How 
 convincing it all is ! How certain we feel about that 
 conclusion ! We have proved it absolutely, we think. 
 And this, as I have suggested, is the deductive mean- 
 
78 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ing of the term "prove" which is usually uppermost 
 in our minds when that word is mentioned. The in- 
 ductive sense, however, is rather naturally quite dif- 
 ferent. In this case, we gather a lot of data, we 
 carefully sift the material, determine what the facts 
 are, balance one fact over against another, weigh 
 various statements, and then we put our thought 
 into propositional form. We have then a certain 
 degree of subjective assurance with reference to the 
 opinion we have formed. We believe it, and we 
 have good reasons for our belief. This, also, as I 
 have intimated, is real 'proving, but it must be 
 evident to all that the attitude of the mind is 
 considerably different from that which comes from 
 the other process. Here we have varying degrees 
 of subjective assurance, while there we felt a dead 
 certainty. 
 
 Now, as I said, I do not think that we can prove 
 progress in the deductive sense of that term, but 
 there is not a little evidence which may be presented 
 to give us a fairly high degree of subjective assur- 
 ance, and it is this which I wish to present to you 
 to-day. And I shall need to consider, too, to make 
 the argument most effective, what may be called cos- 
 mic progress, social progress, and then moral prog- 
 ress, or rather the part which morality has played 
 in social progress. Let us see what may be said in 
 connection with each topic. 
 
 I hesitate somewhat about introducing cosmic 
 
The Problem of Progress 79 
 
 progress, since the subject is so vast and our time 
 so limited. None the less, I feel that it is necessary 
 to say just a word or two with reference to that sub- 
 ject. Mr. Spencer, in his "First Principles," has 
 suggested that there was originally in the universe, 
 where our solar system now exists, nothing but a 
 kind of fire-mist, a rather homogeneous stuff in 
 unstable equilibrium. At length a differentiating or 
 integrating process was set up within this stuff, and 
 this meant a dissipation of energy and a correspond- 
 ing loss of motion. Ultimately the solar system, as 
 we know it, came to be in consequence of this process. 
 Then, later, there was a comparatively long period 
 of fairly stable equilibrium, or balance of the in- 
 tegrating and the disintegrating forces, to be fol- 
 lowed, according to Mr. Spencer, by a period of 
 dissolution which would result ultimately in the 
 complete resolution of this entire solar system back 
 into the original fire-mist. From fire-mist to fire- 
 mist, according to this theory, is the ceaseless round 
 of cosmic evolution and dissolution, and the question 
 which arises is, How much progress can we discern 
 in such a constant ebb and flow of cosmic stuff, 
 either in this part of the universe or elsewhere? If 
 in any such cycle of transformations everything 
 should ultimately return to exactly the same con- 
 ditions as prevailed before the process began, how 
 much progress could we legitimately assume? And 
 this question, as it seems to me, we can not answer 
 
80 T skiff Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 very definitely. In fact, I doubt if we can secure 
 any considerable degree of subjective assurance with 
 reference to the entire cycle. There is, however, 
 change, and that much I wish to emphasize, for it 
 is in line with one of the deepest interpretations ever 
 yet made of the universe as a whole. 
 
 Among the ancient Greeks, there were two funda- 
 mental interpretations of the world set over against 
 each other. In fact, it has been asserted by com- 
 petent students that all the thinking in Europe dur- 
 ing the last twenty-five hundred years harmonizes 
 with either the one or the other of these two views. 
 They are ordinarily spoken of as Being and Becom- 
 ing. On the one hand, the world was thought of as 
 being eternally the same, yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever. There is no such thing as change in the whole 
 vast universe. Static immobility reigns supreme. On 
 the other hand, the world was thought of as being in 
 constant flux. There is nothing stable but the law 
 of change itself. As between these two views, we can 
 not decide absolutely. We can not give a deductive 
 proof for either. This much, however, may be said. 
 In different periods of the developing life in Europe, 
 one or the other of these views has been stressed. In 
 the medieval period, the emphasis was on static im- 
 mobility, while in our modern age the constant chang- 
 ing character of the world is at the front. - Now, this 
 very shifting back and forth of opinion agrees with 
 the interpretation of change more than it does with 
 
The Problem of Progress 81 
 
 that of static immobility, so that to that extent the 
 former may be regarded as more nearly adequate, 
 but the weight of argument is not very great. 
 
 Thus we see that whether we turn to the ancient 
 Greek world, or listen to an eminent modern thinker, 
 we find a decided emphasis upon a changing world, 
 but we may not say with any high degree of cer- 
 tainty that such changes mean progress. I have in- 
 troduced the matter just to give a suggestion of the 
 difficulties with which we have to contend when we at- 
 tempt to deal with the problem of cosmic progress. 
 Change, from many points of view, there certainly 
 seems to be, but whether this means progress or not, 
 when we take a wide survey, we can not assert with 
 any appreciable degree of subjective assurance. Let 
 us turn, then, from this rather unprofitable field of 
 speculation to the realm of social progress, and see 
 what may be said when we hold ourselves within 
 rather narrow limits. 
 
 That there are numerous changes in our ordinary 
 life and in the world immediately about us is very 
 evident to all. Summer follows winter and winter 
 summer; rain follows snow or snow rain. There is 
 sunshine and then shadow, heat and cold, pain and 
 pleasure. There is youth, middle life, and old age. 
 One generation, too, follows another with almost 
 frightful rapidity. What is there that is fixed or 
 upon which we may depend in such a world ? And let 
 me say here, too, that I am not raising in this con- 
 
88 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 nection the question of worth. The youth, now be- 
 come a man, perhaps would have been better off, had 
 he never beheld "the light that never was on sea or 
 land" "fade into the light of common day," but 
 actually just this transformation takes place with 
 all. It may be that the primitive savage, however 
 mythical he may at times seem to be, with his simple 
 life, lack of nerves, minimum of curiosity and maxi- 
 mum of contentment, was better off than the mod- 
 ern man vainly trying to "look pleased" with a mass 
 of "undigested securities" and colossal liabilities, but 
 as a matter of fact the modern man with his nerves, 
 almost insatiable curiosity, and at time worthless se- 
 curities is the reality, while the happy savage is 
 wrapped about with an almost impenetrable fog of 
 centuries. But the worth of the process, as I have 
 said, I am not considering at this time. All that I 
 am suggesting is that changes, within fairly narrow 
 limits, are undeniable. What interpretation may we 
 place upon them? 
 
 When we survey the entire field of social evolution, 
 as it is called, we find the situation about the same as 
 I have just briefly suggested. We may not deny the 
 changes that have taken place and that are taking 
 place practically everywhere in the world to-day, and 
 when we look just beneath the surface we find that 
 this change has been and is from a simple to a more 
 complex mode of life. Undoubtedly life was suffi- 
 ciently complex for the primitive savage. With his 
 
The Problem of Progress 83 
 
 particular mental endowment, it was a serious prob- 
 lem which he faced when he tried to construct his 
 bow and arrows, when he sought to clothe himself and 
 to provide himself with proper shelter. But how- 
 ever complex life may have seemed to him, it is cer- 
 tainly true that early civilization presented still more 
 complex problems for men to solve, while later civili- 
 zations have increased in complexity with an almost 
 geometrical ratio. It was but a little world that 
 primitive man viewed, and the early civilizations in 
 the Nile valley and in the valleys of the Tigris and 
 Euphrates were comparatively on a small scale. 
 Their problems were undoubtedly complex for those 
 times, but simple compared with what the modern 
 man faces. Even the world of the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans, for the most part centered about the Mediter- 
 ranean, was simple in comparison with what we call 
 our modern civilization, the limits of which are the 
 limits of the world itself. 
 
 This difference is brought vividly before us, when 
 we view, as I did this last summer, some of the rather 
 primitive settlements of the North American In- 
 dians, and then meet, as I did later upon the Pacific, 
 a modern business man from South Africa, who is 
 constantly studying the map of the world. This 
 man is a banker, and indicated that in any given 
 transaction he habitually has before his mind the 
 trade and exchange conditions in the great business 
 centers of the world. Before he can commit himself 
 
84> Tsmg Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 in an important transaction, he has to consider the 
 situation in New York City, London, Paris, San 
 Francisco, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hongkong, Cal- 
 cutta, Melbourne, and the principal cities of South 
 America as well as those of South Africa. What an 
 intricate web of human affairs such a man has to deal 
 with, and there are very many more of the same sort 
 in all these large centers. Never before in the his- 
 tory of the world was there such intricacy of business 
 and of communication among men. When we turn 
 our attention away from some particular place 
 which we might analyze for some special purpose, as 
 I suggested two weeks ago, and consider the pattern 
 of human life as it is being woven in the world as a 
 whole at the present day, we get a complexity far be- 
 yond anything which the world has previously seen. 
 And this very complexity is evidence of progress. 
 
 In the field of biology, as pointed out by the late 
 Professor Minot of Harvard University, the more 
 complex structure may be regarded as the higher. 
 "The primary object," he said, "of all differentia- 
 tion is physiological. The higher organism, with its 
 complex physiological relations, is something really 
 higher in structure than the lower organism. The 
 term 'higher' in biology implies a much more complex 
 interrelation of the parts, a much more complex re- 
 lation of the organism to the outside world; and 
 above all it implies in the highest animals a complex 
 intelligence of which only a rudimentary prophecy 
 
The Problem of Progress 85 
 
 exists in the lowest forms of life." 1 Of course, this 
 is a more or less arbitrary ruling, and yet since com- 
 plexity is used in biology as a criterion of the higher, 
 why may we not use it in a similar way as a test of 
 higher in comparison with a lower in the field of so- 
 cial evolution ? This seems to me to be advisable, and 
 in consequence we get a definite meaning for the term 
 "progress," for we may say that a distinct change 
 from a simpler to a more complex state of society is 
 from a lower to a higher, or, as common thought 
 would put it, that would be progress. Thus we have 
 changes in society, and throughout the untold centu- 
 ries such changes have been in the main from a rather 
 simple form of social life to a more and more complex 
 form, and this change we may definitely, although 
 more or less arbitrarily, regard as from a lower to 
 a higher, and such a change we may properly call 
 progress. 
 
 Another method of dealing with the problem is to 
 see what leading students of society have said with 
 reference to it. Our time is all too short to present 
 the evidence in detail, but a few selected opinions will 
 undoubtedly help to produce not a little subjective 
 assurance as to social progress. 
 
 Mr. Spencer has laid emphasis upon social prog- 
 ress. He has indicated, however, that progress has 
 
 x Age, Growth, and Death, p. 154. Cf. Ostwald, Natural 
 Philosophy, Tr. Seltzer, p. 176; Bergson, Creative Evolution, 
 Tr. Mitchell, p. 104; Conn, Biology, p. 385; Johnson, God in 
 Evolution, p. 175. 
 
86 Tsvng Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 not been a continuously uniform upward movement. 2 
 In line with his rhythmical interpretation of the uni- 
 verse, his thought was that human progress has been 
 like the advance of the tide upon the seashore. A 
 big wave rolls high upon the sand and then recedes; 
 this is followed by another and another until ulti- 
 mately high tide is reached. But none the less he re- 
 gards it as real progress, and as a criterion he sug- 
 gests the changes in the methods of production. 
 Originally there was mere hand production ; this gave 
 way to animal production which in turn was suc- 
 ceeded by machine production. 3 If we contrast the 
 early hand weaving with the product of even the hand 
 loom, but more particularly with the volume of work 
 yielded by a modern power loom, the real progress 
 achieved is very apparent. 
 
 Mr. Lester Ward, who during his lifetime was re- 
 garded as one of the great leaders of sociological 
 thought in America, has suggested that the progress 
 of the race, when viewed from certain angles, is not 
 so apparent as we are generally inclined to think. 
 "There is what we call human progress," he says, 
 which "is but a rhythmic and only partial success in 
 rendering a worse condition a trifle better," 4 but 
 none the less he terms it progress. Still further, he 
 presents several tests to aid in judging of progress. 
 
 a First Principles, Sections 85-88. 
 
 a Principles of Sociology, Vol. Ill, pp. 362, 608-609. 
 
 * Outlines of Sociology, p. 33. 
 
The Problem of Progress 87 
 
 "In every community," he says in substance, "no 
 sooner are the simpler questions settled than new and 
 more complex ones arise, but this very elevation of 
 public discussion is itself evidence of progress." And 
 again he says, "The greater valuation placed upon 
 human life to-day is one of the best tests of progress. 
 The gradual abolition of the so-called code of honor 
 by the more advanced nations also looks in the same 
 direction. So, too, the dying out of the spirit of 
 martyrdom, which is by some regarded as evidence of 
 degeneration, is on the contrary good evidence of an 
 increased value set upon human life and so points 
 toward progress." He also adds that a change from 
 a "pain economy to a pleasure economy" signifies 
 progress, and most of all a "growing sense of good" 
 in the world is a sure mark of progress. 5 
 
 Professor Robinson of Columbia University, in his 
 little book on "The New History," says that only 
 within the last three or four hundred years have men 
 been conscious of progress, and only within the last 
 fifty or seventy-five years have they realized that they 
 could direct progress and have they been definitely 
 trying to reach such a goal. 6 Still, in all that 
 he says in this connection the assumption of prog- 
 ress is very pronounced. Professor Giddings, 
 too, of this same institution, said in a lecture several 
 years ago that "race maintenance and evolution with 
 
 • Outlines of Sociology, pp. 157-158, 205-207. 
 •P. 251. 
 
88 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 diminishing cost of life, with increasing power, free- 
 dom, and happiness of the individual person — that is 
 progress." 7 This I regard as an especially signifi- 
 cant statement, but I do not care to comment upon 
 it at length just now. I shall recur to it later in 
 connection with moral progress. This much, how- 
 ever, I may call attention to now. Both Professor 
 Giddings and Lester Ward lay emphasis upon the 
 value placed upon human life as a criterion of prog- 
 ress. Where two such men agree, we may well heed 
 the point of their agreement. 
 
 Such statements as these, taken in conjunction 
 with the test of complexity, add not a little, I sus- 
 pect, to our subjective assurance as to human prog- 
 ress. We do not get a deductive demonstration, 
 but considering the difficulties involved in the prob- 
 lem, the result is not altogether unsatisfactory. 
 
 Still another suggestive way of dealing with this 
 matter is as follows: Several years ago, Professor 
 Giddings, with whom you should feel fairly well 
 acquainted by this time because of my frequent ref- 
 erences to him, assigned the following task to a stu- 
 dent : He wanted that student to go through English 
 history, period by period, and century by century, 
 and to find out what men's desires were; what their 
 ambitions were, and what means they used to satisfy 
 their desires and to gain their ambitions. This seemed 
 
 7 Columbia University Lectures on Science, Philosophy, and 
 Art. 1907-1908. Lecture on Sociology, p. 36. 
 
The Problem of Progress 89 
 
 like a big undertaking, but the student set himself 
 resolutely to work and when he had finished there 
 stood out upon his results, unmistakably and clearly, 
 the one word "Progress." It had often been disputed 
 whether one could prove progress in the case of any 
 nation. There could be no doubt about the English 
 people when this young man had completed his task. 
 In the earlier periods the principle that might makes 
 right was at the front. The lower, coarser desires 
 were much in evidence, and men were but little 
 scrupulous as to the means they used to satisfy their 
 desires and to gain their ambitions. As the centuries 
 passed, however, "sweet reasonableness," as it has 
 been called, became more and more prominent. Men 
 were ready to arbitrate at least some of their differ- 
 ences ; the finer emotions and desires were much more 
 in evidence than in the earlier periods. Undoubtedly 
 the English people had progressed throughout the 
 long centuries of their history. 8 And what was true 
 of them no doubt would be shown to be true in varying 
 degrees of other peoples, provided the same method 
 should be applied. It certainly would be a highly 
 desirable thing to have all the peoples of the world 
 tested in this way, to the extent that their history 
 might be available. Could it be done, we should have 
 a fairly good demonstration of the progress which 
 has characterized the world up to the present. 
 
 "This is in substance as the point was presented in a class- 
 room lecture. 
 
90 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 One other way of testing progress within the so- 
 cial body as a whole, and I shall be through with this 
 part of our work to-day. Social control may well be 
 used as a test of progress. The difference between 
 children and adults is especially marked in the mat- 
 ter of control. A child of five or six years of age 
 believes almost everything that is told him, and he 
 will do practically anything that he is urged to do, 
 but when he becomes a man he has an accumulation of 
 experiences upon which he reflects before he takes any 
 serious step. And what is true of the individual, has 
 been true in a very real sense of the race. Mr. Lewis 
 H. Morgan, in his book on "Ancient Society," has 
 said that the Semitic peoples and the Aryan peoples, 
 using the term "Aryan" in the older sense, were the 
 first peoples to emerge from barbarism and to estab- 
 lish real civilization. 9 In addition to the reasons 
 which he assigns for this step, we might well assume 
 that these two peoples had come to exercise a some- 
 what greater control over themselves than was true 
 of the other peoples. Social control, then, would 
 thus be an index of progress. At any rate, in almost 
 any present day civilized community the most fla- 
 grant infractions of the law are treated promptly and 
 energetically. Then, too, if we should compare two 
 communities of about the same size and should find 
 that one of them has a strong police force and very 
 little crime, while the other has a weak police force 
 
 8 Pp. 39-45. 
 
The Problem of Progress 91 
 
 and much crime, we would be apt to call the former 
 more highly developed because of the greater control 
 exercised. But still further, any diminution in the 
 need for a police force would also be interpreted as 
 an evidence of progress. While I have not the statis- 
 tics at hand, I will venture the opinion that not more 
 than one per cent, of the population of the United 
 States comes into collision with the laws annually. 
 That would mean about a million cases. I doubt very 
 much if there are a million people in that country 
 who need to be controlled by the law. The other 
 99,000,000 are self-controlled, and this in itself would 
 be evidence of very great progress. 10 
 
 Still further, the control which men have exer- 
 cised over their fellows in the centuries past has not 
 been an altogether bad thing. Oftentimes we are 
 shocked at man's inhumanity toward man in the cen- 
 turies gone, but Mr. Spencer has insisted that that 
 was not an unmixed evil. 11 Just because men were 
 compelled to work long hours, under the whip it may 
 be, were they disciplined to shoulder the duties and 
 responsibilities of later civilized society. So, too, it 
 
 10 This is simply a guess which a careful investigation might 
 not confirm in every respect. None the less, even if there were 
 ten or twenty millions who annually came into conflict with 
 the law, the remaining eighty or ninety millions who keep 
 free from judicial entanglements would be a sufficiently large 
 proportion of the entire population to make an impressive 
 argument for social, indeed, self-control as an index of social 
 progress. 
 
 11 Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, p. 665; Vol. Ill, p. 465. 
 
92 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 is frequently pointed out that the rather apparent 
 tyranny of the Church in Europe during the medieval 
 period was not without its value. The barbarians 
 who had overrun the older civilization needed such 
 control, and, while we not infrequently are inclined 
 to criticize the methods used in the process, the net 
 result may be regarded as good. The same may be 
 said within certain limits of the control which in 
 times past the more advanced nations have exercised 
 over less well developed nations. Undoubtedly there 
 has been not a little exploitation, but with that excep- 
 tion such control has been of not a little value. With- 
 in the last three years, however, a higher thought has 
 come to the front, none other, indeed, than that it is 
 not best for any nation to interfere with the internal 
 life of another. Each nation should be allowed to 
 work out its own salvation without pernicious inter- 
 ference from any other nation. Other nations, of 
 course, may aid to the extent of their ability and in- 
 clination, but the policy of "Hands Off" points the 
 way to higher things. This is the policy which is 
 rapidly taking shape in the consciousness of the 
 world because of the present European conflict, and 
 any nation that holds by the old ideal of exploitation 
 in the face of the events of the last three years will 
 sooner or later find itself in serious conflict with that 
 consciousness. 
 
 And now the question arises as to what may be 
 meant by moral progress, or what part morality has 
 
The Problem of Progress 93 
 
 played in this social progress. And here I think that 
 I can do no better than to take that statement quot- 
 ed from Professor Giddings a few minutes ago and, 
 considering it section by section, try to determine 
 what has been the moral element in the entire social 
 process. "Race maintenance and evolution," he said, 
 "with diminishing cost of life, with increasing power, 
 freedom, and happiness of the individual person — 
 that is progress." 
 
 Nature has been pictured for us by Huxley as "red 
 in tooth and claw." The waste of life, especially hu- 
 man life, was frightful throughout the early ages. 
 Much of this waste was due to disease, and not in- 
 frequently disease was believed to be due to the anger 
 of some god or malevolent spirit. The methods for 
 an attempted cure were crude in the extreme. Any 
 individual, then, who opposed the social conscious- 
 ness in the treatment of disease and sought to intro- 
 duce more rational methods was to that extent a 
 moral hero. Nor was such a person's position always 
 an enviable one. It is frequently dangerous to op- 
 pose a people's superstitions. Then, too, any one in 
 more recent times who has spent months or years in 
 the quest of some serum to cure a malignant disease, 
 sometimes criticized by the unthinking masses for his 
 apparent waste of time, has been to that extent a 
 moral hero. Of course it might be urged that any 
 one who might discover such a serum could use it 
 upon himself and so get the desired immunity. By 
 
94 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 doing so, however, he would be selfish and not altru- 
 istic. But very seldom, if ever, has a man sought such 
 a cure for himself alone. It has been the welfare of 
 others, of humanity as a whole, which has inspired 
 him and kept him patiently at his work. So, too, in 
 the case of vivisectionists. Such men have been con- 
 vinced that not a little valuable knowledge may be 
 obtained for the welfare of the race from careful 
 study of the lower animals, and in spite of popular 
 clamor they have held true to their purpose. All 
 such efforts have aimed at lessening human mortality 
 and so are in line with the growing valuation of life. 
 This is indeed an evidence of social progress, but 
 every step of the way was a moral step, involving 
 the opposition between the individual consciousness 
 and the social consciousness which I presented at the 
 last hour. 
 
 If we consider, next, the "increasing power" of the 
 individual, we shall find the case much the same. In 
 early times, if any man gave evidence of special pow- 
 er, either physical or mental, he aroused the jealousy 
 of the rulers and his life was in danger. "Saul has 
 slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands," 
 sang the women as they went out to meet David re- 
 turning from a victory over the foe. And Saul was 
 angry and sought how he might slay the victor. 
 This, of course, is but one of almost innumerable 
 similar cases throughout the history of the race. As 
 the centuries passed, however, the situation changec? 
 
The Problem of Progress 95 
 
 somewhat, but the change has been due in no small 
 measure to what such men have actually contributed 
 to the common good. They and the people have been 
 too strong for the rulers. But not infrequently the 
 suspicions of the people have been strong against 
 such men of power, and with good reason, too, in 
 many cases. Gradually, however, as some of these 
 men have held steadily on their way and have actual- 
 ly contributed largely to the social good, has the 
 opposition lessened somewhat. There is more scope 
 and opportunity for the exercise of their powers to- 
 day than ever before. And right here, we may well 
 suggest, is a specially valuable field for them to 
 work. The "great man theory" of history is in 
 rather ill repute to-day, but in so far as men with 
 a large endowment of mind and heart shall give them- 
 selves more and more freely for the welfare of the 
 communities in which they live, will they disarm still 
 further the suspicions of the common people and be- 
 come still more influential factors in social progress 
 as a whole. 
 
 When we turn to the "increasing freedom" of the 
 individual, we find a long series of steps taken toward 
 the end realized in modern civilization. There is 
 freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of 
 religious worship, freedom of thought, freedom of 
 movement from place to place, and various other steps 
 too numerous to mention. All of these mark defi- 
 nite social progress, but each at first involved a moral 
 
96 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 attitude. During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies in Europe, the blood of multitudes of the best 
 people was shed for one or another of these issues. 
 In each case there was an opposition to the social 
 consciousness, an opposition which the succeeding 
 centuries has shown was of great value for social wel- 
 fare, and consequently, in accordance with the test 
 that I have emphasized, highly moral. And to-day, 
 each of the groups involved in the great conflict in 
 Europe proclaims that it is fighting for freedom. The 
 Central Powers maintain that they are fighting for 
 the "freedom of the seas," while the Entente Powers 
 declare that they are fighting for the right of each 
 state, whether great or small, to live its own life and 
 to make its own peculiar contribution to the civiliza- 
 tion of the world. When we consider that many of 
 the previously neutral states have joined the Entente 
 Allies during the past year, we may conclude that 
 the world has rather definitely decided which group 
 has the better argument on its side. From the point 
 of view that I presented two weeks ago, we shall have 
 to concede that the Central Powers, in so far as they 
 are trying to realize an ideal, are ethical, but their 
 ideal is out of date. It belongs five thousand years 
 in the past. It is an anachronism in our modern 
 world, and we may well hope that the more demo- 
 cratic group will speedily prevail. 
 
 With reference to the "increasing happiness" of 
 the individual, I need say but little. The introduc- 
 
The Problem of Progress 97 
 
 tion of these other elements through much travail of 
 the human spirit could not fail to add immeasurably 
 to the individual and collective happiness of the 
 world. We need to note, however, that the recog- 
 nition of each individual's right to the "pursuit of 
 happiness" is a modern achievement, the result of 
 definite opposition on the part of not a few indi- 
 viduals to the social consciousness that had long 
 prevailed. It constituted a real moral issue, and 
 those who struggled for it were moral heroes. Their 
 contribution to the social welfare of the race is of 
 no mean value. 
 
 But one might well ask, "Have all the important 
 issues been disposed of?" and the answer would be 
 a strong denial. We are very far indeed from such 
 an Utopian condition. I have already called atten- 
 tion to the issue which is in the balance in Europe 
 to-day, and there are many more that vitally con- 
 cern both the nations there and elsewhere in the 
 world. They are more or less in the discussion stage 
 now, but when settled they too will contribute not a 
 little to the advancement of the race. There is the 
 problem of capital and labor. It took real moral 
 courage for a laborer years ago to oppose the social 
 consciousness with respect to capital, and it takes 
 moral courage for any laborer to-day to oppose his 
 fellows in any plan they may have for their relief; 
 it also takes moral courage of the same sort for any 
 capitalist to oppose his fellow capitalists in any sug- 
 
98 Tsmg Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 gested measure for reform. It took moral courage 
 for individuals here and there, when competition was 
 the approved method for conducting business, to ad- 
 vocate a change to what we call combination or co- 
 operation to-day. Then, too, there is the temper- 
 ance question which has advanced so rapidly during 
 the last three years. When individuals at first began 
 to oppose the social consciousness with reference to 
 liquor, their position was hardly an enviable one. The 
 opposition which they met was oftentimes of the bit- 
 terest kind. None the less, to-day, with victory cast- 
 ing its shadow before them, they are being recog- 
 nized as real moral heroes, and we may well believe 
 that their contribution to the social welfare of the 
 world will be by no means an inconsiderable one. 
 Then, too, there is the question of woman suffrage, 
 white slavery, the social evil so called, and a large 
 number of other issues, each of which constitutes a 
 real moral issue, and we may rest assured that when 
 they shall have been settled the social welfare will 
 have been increased not a little. Morality, as it is 
 frequently said, creates values, while the social con- 
 sciousness conserves them, and that creating process 
 is largely one of opposition to the conserving attitude 
 of the social group as a whole. 
 
 And now I am through for to-day. Have I proved 
 progress to your satisfaction ? I am sure that I have 
 not proved it in a deductive way, and, as I indicated 
 at the beginning, I did not expect to prove cosmic 
 
The Problem of Progress 99 
 
 progress, if there is anything of that sort. Still I 
 hope that I have made it clear that change is one 
 of the most fundamental aspects of the world as a 
 whole, and that in the field of human affairs a change 
 from simple relations to more complex relations may 
 be interpreted as from a lower to a higher plane, and 
 this may be designated properly as progress, follow- 
 ing the example of the biologist in his special field. 
 We have seen, too, that several prominent writers 
 have expressed their belief in real social progress, 
 and also that control is a fair test of that kind of 
 progress. But throughout the entire course of hu- 
 man progress there have been many definite issues 
 involving an opposition between the individual con- 
 sciousness and the social consciousness, and those 
 very issues have been the index of a high type of 
 morality. 
 
THE ETHICAL IDEAL 
 
 IN the opening lecture of this series, I indicated 
 that the Greek emphasis in the field of ethics was 
 upon "virtue" and the "good," indeed, the "highest 
 good." I also intimated that before the end of the 
 series I should find it necessary to deal with the 
 Greek point of view somewhat at length. It is that 
 aspect of the entire subject that I plan to deal with 
 more or less incidentally to-day. In the third lecture, 
 also, I presented rather briefly the essential features 
 of an ideal, indeed, of an ethical ideal, and gave the 
 impression that I would have more to say on that 
 topic before concluding the series. I had thought at 
 first of dealing simply with the content of the ethical 
 ideal, but on further reflection it has seemed to be 
 wiser to include some of the wider aspects and impli- 
 cations, since to confine ourselves to the content would 
 narrow too much the range of our discussions. I 
 may add, further, that the ideal may be treated either 
 from an historical angle or from a constructive one, 
 but it is the historical aspect that I plan to present 
 on this occasion, while I shall postpone the construc- 
 
 100 
 
The Ethical Ideal 101 
 
 tive treatment until two weeks from to-day. The 
 ethical ideal, then, from an historical angle is our 
 topic for this hour. 
 
 When we begin to speak of ideals, not a few peo- 
 ple become decidedly critical. "Don't talk to us 
 about ideals," they say. "Give us practice, give us 
 conduct in the concrete. Ideals are too visionary al- 
 together. They mean nothing in the practical affairs 
 of life." So great a discrepancy has often appeared 
 between ideals and the realization of them, or be- 
 tween promise and fulfillment, we might say, that it 
 seems better to many to dispense with ideals alto- 
 gether. But when there is such a disharmony, gen- 
 erally the reason is either that the individual no long- 
 er believes firmly in the ideal he is credited with hold- 
 ing, and so allows himself more liberty in his con- 
 duct than his assumed ideal provides for, or the thing 
 which subjects him to criticism is an element which 
 that individual has never brought definitely within 
 the scope of his ideal. In either of these cases there 
 might be a wide divergence between ideal and con- 
 duct, between theory and practice. I heard of a man 
 several years ago who was very successful in busi- 
 ness, and also a prominent member of a church. His 
 activities during the week, however, did not square 
 very well with his professions on Sunday. So great 
 was this disharmony that one of his associates asked 
 him on one occasion how he could be so pious on Sun- 
 day and yet be so unscrupulous, as he was reported 
 
102 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 to be, in some of his business transactions. "Why," 
 he replied, "there is no difficulty there. When I was 
 a young man, I firmly determined never to let my 
 religion interfere with my business." He had what 
 have been called "thought-tight compartments" in 
 his mind. The actions complained of, he had never 
 brought in under the real sway of his apparent ideal. 
 And, too, we must admit that it is exceedingly diffi- 
 cult for any one to have a perfectly consistent scheme 
 of life which would make provision for all the varying 
 experiences that come. Perhaps only the highest and 
 best philosophers have ever been successful in con- 
 structing such logical systems and then holding them- 
 selves rigidly to them. Still further, as implied a 
 moment ago, one may come to a different understand- 
 ing of one's original ideal, and seeing that some 
 parts of it are not so obligatory as at first thought, 
 such a one may allow his conduct to diverge some- 
 what from the strict realization which that ideal 
 demands. But aside from such discrepancies, there 
 is generally a fairly close agreement between what a 
 man thinks and what he does. We note first the 
 various activities, which perhaps seem strange to us, 
 but when we learn of the thought back of the acts, 
 a real harmony between thought and act is very ap- 
 parent. 
 
 Down in Central Australia, as I indicated to two 
 of my classes this morning, there are men almost as 
 primitive as in the earliest days of the race. One 
 
The Ethical Ideal 103 
 
 group of them is known as the "witchetty grub" 
 group. 1 At certain seasons of the year, these men 
 go apart from their usual habitation and subject 
 themselves to various practices more or less in imi- 
 tation of the witchetty grubs which constitute their 
 food supply. They think that their acts will in- 
 crease their food supply that season. So, too, when 
 we consider the field of magic, which has been very 
 widespread in early times and which continues in 
 many parts of the world even at the present day. 
 There is what is called "sympathetic magic," which 
 means that if you can get possession of something 
 that was once a part of an individual whom you wish 
 to influence, as a lock of his hair or finger nail par- 
 ings, you can work your will upon him. 2 Or if you 
 have an enemy who is larger than you are, or who is 
 at a distance where you can not get hold of him, 
 you can make a wax image of him, and then by stick- 
 ing pins or a knife into the image, or by melting it, 
 you can work him harm. This is called "imitative 
 magic." Then, again, it may seem very strange to 
 us to see a man drive a nail into a tree without doing 
 anything further. Upon inquiry, however, we learn 
 that he thought that he could get rid of a toothache 
 in that manner. This might be called "transference 
 magic." Then, too, off to the southwest of us in 
 
 1 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Aus- 
 tralia, pp. 170-179. 
 " Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. II, pp. 16-23. 
 
104 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 India, they treat some diseases as follows : If a man 
 happens to be sick of the jaundice, he goes to the 
 medicine man of the tribe who repeats a few magical 
 phrases, anoints the sick man with yellow clay, and 
 then commands him to bathe. The thought is that 
 the disease will disappear with the disappearance of 
 the clay. 3 Furthermore, there are people who, when 
 they have an enemy, hang themselves at the door of 
 his house, thinking that their ghost will haunt him. 4 
 We probably would hardly care to get even with an 
 enemy in that way. But none the less there is the 
 thought and the consequent act. Many other similar 
 incidents might be mentioned, all indicating that there 
 is a real connection between what people think and 
 what they do. The discrepancy comes, as I have 
 said, when the individual no longer cherishes the 
 ideal in its original form, or perhaps has never 
 brought all his actions to the touchstone of the ideal. 
 Consequently, the protest against ideals and the em- 
 phasis upon mere conduct are not so thoroughly jus- 
 tified as might at first appear. 
 
 But to come closer to the main topic of the hour. 
 I may not at this time deal at length with all the 
 ethical ideals which men have cherished and have 
 sought to realize. I may, however, present the three 
 leading ideals among the Greeks, which have been in- 
 
 a Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, pp. 163-164. 
 
 4 Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral 
 Ideas, Vol. II, p. 234. 
 

 The Ethical Ideal 105 
 
 fluential in various ways throughout the centuries of 
 European history. In this way, too, I shall be deal- 
 ing with the Greek conception of virtue and of the 
 good. 
 
 When we attempt to deal with ethical reflection 
 among the Greeks, we are practically compelled to 
 consider Socrates. In the earlier periods of Greek 
 history, there were many isolated expressions about 
 conduct, especially in the poems of Homer and in the 
 sayings of the Gnomic poets, but there was no sys- 
 tematic treatment of ethics until after Socrates' day. 
 He himself was a curious individual. He was many- 
 sided, and because of the variety of his interests and 
 the range of his discussions his pupils interpreted 
 him in many ways. These pupils, too, were a com- 
 posite lot. There were Aristippus, Plato, Antisthe- 
 nes, the aged Euripides, Chaerephon, the gay and 
 youthful Alcibiades, and many others who found Soc- 
 rates interesting and entertaining, and, due to their 
 own characteristics in large measure, they were in- 
 clined to interpret him very differently. And it was 
 this difference in interpretation which produced the 
 three leading Greek schools of ethics. Let us see. 
 
 As I indicated a moment ago, one of the young 
 men in the group surrounding Socrates was Aristip- 
 pus. He had been brought up in the city of Cyrene 
 on the northern coast of Africa. He belonged to a 
 wealthy family and had known all the luxury and 
 pleasure that the age afforded. Since he had heard of 
 
106 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 Socrates, probably through Protagoras, the great- 
 est of the Sophists, he decided to go to Athens to 
 see and hear the great teacher for himself. He did 
 not, however, think it necessary to change from his 
 early mode of life. Certain aspects of Socrates' life 
 seemed to give him warrant for continuing his easy- 
 going, pleasure-loving ways. After his master's 
 death, he returned to Cyrene and established a school 
 of his own which became known as the Cyrenaic 
 school. The central principle which he emphasized 
 was pleasure. In choosing among several possible 
 courses of action the amount of probable pleasure 
 should alone decide. Technically this kind of ethical 
 theorizing is known as Hedonism. It is the same sort 
 as that which I briefly suggested two weeks ago in 
 the quotations from Omar Khayyam. Later, we find 
 this general type of thought presented by Epicurus 
 who taught at Athens from 306 to 271 B. C. Epi- 
 curus, however, felt the need, to a certain extent, of 
 a philosophical background which he secured by ap- 
 propriating the general world-view of Democritus, 
 which I briefly referred to in an earlier lecture. He 
 also changed the teaching of Aristippus to the ex- 
 tent that he laid emphasis upon the pleasures of a 
 lifetime rather than of the fleeting moment, and also 
 stressed the pleasures of the mind rather than those 
 of the body. None the less, it was pleasure which 
 served him as a criterion of conduct.' The most 
 pleasure on the whole and in the long run was the 
 
The Ethical Ideal 107 
 
 highest good for him, and for a man to incorporate 
 the greatest amount of pleasure into his life was to 
 be truly manly and thoroughly virtuous. Not to fol- 
 low such a course was to fail in virtue. These are 
 the essential features of this system, and all, indeed, 
 that we need to consider at this time. I may add, 
 however, that if we regard the philosophic back- 
 ground obtained from Democritus as a naturalistic 
 type, which would certainly be a fair way of charac- 
 terizing it, then it is not surprising that this kind of 
 ethical theorizing should have been revived in Euro- 
 pean thought during the last three or four centuries, 
 since there have been not a few naturalistic interpre- 
 tations of the world in recent years in Europe and 
 America. 
 
 Now, this type of ethical theory or kind of ethical 
 ideal has been characterized as individualistic or 
 egoistic in the ancient world, and on that account, 
 since it was an ideal, we should need to regard it as 
 ethical, but since it emphasized the pleasure of the 
 individual, we should need to rate it rather low, in 
 consequence of the stress that I have laid on social 
 welfare as the test of what is strictly ethical. In the 
 modern world, however, it has been largely altruistic, 
 and on that account it would rise in the scale of 
 ideals. None the less it has various other defects. 
 It is a one-sided view of life. A human being is more 
 than a mere pleasure-loving animal. Then, too, as 
 we consider the entire development of animal life up 
 
108 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 to and including mankind, there has gradually arisen 
 that which within the limits of humanity we call 
 reason. This has been of incalculable value in the 
 genesis and further elaboration of civilization, and 
 if so, why should one not make use of it in the field 
 which we call ethical? To make pleasure alone the 
 criterion of conduct is to neglect one of the most 
 potent factors in the advancement of the race. This, 
 as it seems to me, is one of the strongest arguments 
 against pure hedonism. It is also true, as pointed 
 out by many writers, that hedonism has not been able 
 to dispense with the use of reason, although such 
 procedure was contradictory of its fundamental prine- 
 ciple. The historical course of this type of ethical 
 theory has been toward a larger and larger appro- 
 priation of its opposite principle, viz., reason. It 
 was only in this way that Epicurus could emphasize 
 the pleasures of a lifetime rather than the pleasures 
 of the moment. Pleasure in and of itself gave no 
 warrant for any such discrimination. The hedon- 
 istic principle, pure and simple, is tyrannous; it is 
 immediate. We may not calculate before and after. 
 It is the immediate moment that is superlatively 
 urgent. Pleasure as such knows nothing else. Here, 
 then, is one of the classical types of ethical theorizing 
 in the western world, or, in other words, an ethical 
 ideal which not a few, first and last, have sought to 
 realize. Let us consider next its historical foil. 
 Another man who listened to Socrates and caught 
 
The Ethical Ideal 109 
 
 an inspiration from the master for his own life's pro- 
 gram was Antisthenes, whom I mentioned but a mo- 
 ment or two ago. This man was especially impressed 
 by Socrates' complete self-mastery, his indifference 
 to heat and cold, hunger and thirst. It is reported 
 of him that he wore practically the same kind of 
 clothing both in summer and in winter. When he 
 went on a military expedition one winter he walked 
 barefoot over the snow and ice as if walking through 
 the streets of Athens in the summertime. Thus Antis- 
 thenes, when he began to teach by himself, laid em- 
 phasis upon indifference to the smiles or frowns of 
 Fortune. He went so far, indeed, that he manifested 
 a similar indifference to the refinements of civilized 
 life. Life according to nature became his funda- 
 mental tenet, which meant at times an almost total 
 disregard of the amenities and niceties of life. So 
 much opposed, too, was Antisthenes to the view of the 
 Hedonists that he is reported to have said that he 
 "would rather be insane than pleased." This type 
 of ethical interpretation was taken up by Zeno of 
 Citium, a city on the Island of Cyprus. He taught 
 in Athens from about the year 300 to 264 B. C. He 
 did not, however, hold absolutely by the teaching of 
 the group which Antisthenes had started. His 
 thought was modified somewhat by other views. He, 
 also, as Epicurus had done, developed a world-view 
 as a background for his teaching. For him the 
 whole universe was permeated by reason and some of 
 
110 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 this reason was in each and every human being. He 
 used the expression, "Life according to nature," 
 which had been emphasized by the preceding group, 
 but with an entirely different meaning. Life accord- 
 ing to nature meant for Zeno a life according to one's 
 rational nature. This was the highest and best in 
 each man, and if one would be virtuous, if one would 
 reach the highest good possible, one would let this 
 reason expand and become more and more dominant 
 in one's entire life. Everything else was of but little 
 worth. The passions, feelings, desires, and emotions 
 should all be rooted out so that reason, pure and 
 simple, might flow through a man and his life become 
 exclusively a life of reason. 
 
 In its general features, this ideal had not a little 
 to recommend it. It was decidedly altruistic and 
 stressed particularly the brotherhood of all men. Its 
 influence was decisive in the final abolishment of slav- 
 ery in the old Roman Empire, and modern interna- 
 tional law, when it began under Grotius, had the 
 world-view of this type of thought as its foundation. 
 None the less, like Hedonism, this is but a one-sided 
 interpretation of life. If we think of the latter as 
 being better in the course of human social develop- 
 ment, then reason has more to recommend it to favor- 
 able consideration than Hedonism has. But it is a 
 psychological impossibility for any human being to 
 lead a life of pure reason. If there is one thing more 
 than another that modern psychology emphasizes, it 
 
The Ethical Ideal 111 
 
 is the unity of the mental life. It is not a "faculty" 
 psychology which is at the front to-day. Instead, 
 every complete state of consciousness is thought of 
 as having an awareness suffusing it, a feeling of agree- 
 able or disagreeable, and a suggestion of activity. 
 We could not, if we would, live a life of pure reason. 
 Still further, as various writers point out, the his- 
 torical development of this type of ethical theorizing, 
 which is usually called "Rigorism" or "Rationalism," 
 has been away from the extreme form in which it orig- 
 inated. The tendency has been, with exceptions here 
 and there, to make some provision for the feelings. 
 Reason continued to give the form to the ethical life, 
 but the rich human content was recognized as coming 
 from the feelings. It was only so, as not a few dis- 
 covered, that life could receive a satisfactory evalua- 
 tion. 
 
 Here, then, we have two of the great historical 
 ethical ideals worked out among the Greeks, which, 
 as is apparent, were originally diametrically opposed 
 to each other. None the less, neither maintained it- 
 self strictly in its primitive form. Each tended to 
 lean more or less toward its opposite, or perhaps we 
 would better say, its complement. We are not, how- 
 ever, confined to these two. There is another ideal 
 which came from the Greek philosophical workshop, 
 and to a consideration of that we will turn at once. 
 
 It has been said, and not without a large measure 
 of truth, that there have been four superlatively 
 
1158 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 great minds in the European world, viz., Plato and 
 Aristotle in the ancient world, and Kant and Hegel 
 in the modern world. The first two have given their 
 ethical views in connection with their far-reaching 
 philosophies. In brief, they are as follows: Plato 
 had his peculiar view of the world as a whole. He 
 thought of a world of Being from which the souls of 
 men come at birth, and to which they return at death. 
 The body is the prison-house of the soul, and the 
 highest good for any individual is to be freed from 
 the body and to return to the world whence it came. 
 This for Plato was the sum/mum bonum par excel- 
 lence. But he also conceived of another summwm 
 bonwri, if we may disregard the paradox, and in dis- 
 cussing it he dealt with the two concepts of pleasure 
 and of reason which we have just considered. In his 
 dialogue, "The Philebus," the main discussion deals 
 with the problem whether pleasure or reason may be 
 taken as a sufficient guide for life, and the upshot of 
 the devious turns which the argument takes is that 
 neither may be taken in that way. Instead, the vic- 
 tor in the contest is harmony or due proportion, but 
 none the less reason is said to be nearer the victor 
 than pleasure. Indeed, it is maintained that reason 
 is ten thousand times nearer the victor than pleasure, 
 while the latter is put at the foot of the list of several 
 other elements which enter into the complete life. 
 Again, in his "Republic," where he gives his theory 
 of the state, Plato gives us the suggestion of a reason- 
 
The Ethical Ideal 118 
 
 controlled life as the ideal. In this work, political 
 theory, psychology, and ethics are closely interwoven, 
 but the outcome of the discussion is that righteous- 
 ness or justice, which constitutes the leading motive, 
 may be expected only in that state in which there are 
 wise rulers, a courageous and well trained soldiery, 
 and an industrious artisan class. These classes in 
 the state are analogous to the virtues of wisdom, 
 courage, and self-control or temperance in the indi- 
 vidual, which are based respectively upon the ration- 
 al soul, the spirited part, and the desiring part of 
 the self. While I may not take the time to present 
 Plato's thought in detail, the opinion stands out very 
 prominently in the discussions throughout this dia- 
 logue that reason should be the controlling factor in 
 the state, and that when the life of the state is regu- 
 lated in this way there will be righteousness or justice 
 within its borders. In brief, then, we may say that 
 this secondary ideal or summum bonum presented by 
 Plato is not a life of reason nor is it a life of pleas- 
 ure, but rather a reason-controlled life, a life, indeed, 
 in which pleasure among other elements is admitted, 
 but always under rational control. 
 
 When we consider Aristotle's teaching, we find a 
 good deal like the teaching of his master, but there 
 are also variations. Aristotle, no less than Plato, 
 had two summa bona, but developed in a different 
 manner. Aristotle laid emphasis upon pure reason in 
 man. This it is which especially distinguishes men 
 
114 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 from all creatures in the animal world. Consequently, 
 the highest good in a strict sense is for a man to give 
 himself up unreservedly to pure thought. In so far 
 as reason functions in the individual without any 
 hindrance from the rest of the self, will that person 
 be living the highest, indeed, the divine life. But 
 no human being can lead such a life all the time, and 
 most people lead such a life practically not at all. 
 Consequently, Aristotle developed a secondary sum- 
 mum bonum. He arranged a list of virtues, such as 
 Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Good Temper, and 
 so on, each of which stands as a mean between an ex- 
 cess and a deficiency. Courage is the mean between 
 cowardice and foolhardiness, liberality between stin- 
 giness and prodigality, good temper between a lack 
 of proper spirit and irascibility, and so on through 
 the list. All these means are determined by the rea- 
 son. This is quite clear, although Aristotle did not 
 indicate in the works that have come down to us just 
 how the reason operates within this field. Thus we 
 have again a reason-controlled life set forth as an 
 ideal. A life of pure reason was Aristotle's highest 
 good in the strict interpretation of that term, but he 
 also emphasized a reason-controlled life as the best 
 attainable for most people all of the time, and even 
 for the select few for most of the time. 
 
 Of course, we may not accept such a view simply 
 upon the authority of the philosophers who fash- 
 ioned it, viz., Plato and Aristotle, but what about 
 
The Ethical Ideal 115 
 
 the inherent reasonableness of such an ideal? We 
 have seen that the other two great historical ideals 
 were not able to maintain themselves in their extreme 
 positions. Each tended to lean in the direction of 
 its opposite, and this very leaning is toward the mid- 
 dle position struck out by both Plato and Aristotle, 
 two of the master minds in the entire field of Euro- 
 pean thought. For myself, I frankly confess that 
 the general form of this middle course seems to be 
 the highest that we have yet been able to evolve. A 
 reason-controlled life. Not a life of pure reason, 
 and not a life of pleasure pure and simple, or per- 
 haps not so simple, but a life controlled by the rea- 
 son, but making provision for pleasure and other ele- 
 ments as the occasion might offer. 
 
 This particular type of ethical theorizing has been 
 known as Eudaemonism, but unfortunately that term 
 has sometimes been confused with Hedonism and 
 sometimes treated as equivalent to Happiness. 
 Neither of these interpretations, however, does jus- 
 tice to the view. It certainly is not pleasure in the 
 sense meant by Aristippus, nor is it happiness in 
 the shallow sense often implied by that term. Conse- 
 quently, some writers suggest that we should return 
 to the original meaning of the Greek term, which was 
 "good fortune" or "welfare." This was its meaning 
 in the time of Homer, and it was frequently used in 
 this sense in the time of Plato and Aristotle. If we 
 follow this suggestion, we can call it the welfare 
 
116 Tsincf Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 theory, and indeed we should not be far wrong, if 
 we should add the word "social," for both Plato and 
 Aristotle laid emphasis upon the life of the individual 
 within the state. This was apparent in what I pre- 
 sented from Plato's Republic, and with Aristotle a 
 consideration of the state and the development of the 
 ethical life of the individual went hand in hand. These 
 were but two branches of a single subject. A reason- 
 controlled life for the individual, and the individual, 
 too, in the state, warranting our calling it a life 
 directed toward social welfare, would come very close 
 to a proper interpretation of this highest of ideals 
 as presented by these two famous Greek thinkers. 5 
 
 There is still another field of thought which, I 
 think, will contribute somewhat to our general dis- 
 cussion. Just as in the second lecture I turned first 
 to philosophy and then to sociology to determine the 
 field of ethics, so I am now inclined to turn to sociol- 
 ogy to gain such additional light as we may upon 
 ideals of human conduct. And here I shall refer 
 again to the teaching of Professor Giddings of Co- 
 lumbia University, if you will permit me to do so. 
 I make these frequent quotations from his works be- 
 cause he has helped me to see into some of these mat- 
 6 The works which have contributed to my discussion of these 
 Greek ideals are too numerous to mention. Seth's Study of 
 Ethical Principles was the ground-breaker, but that could not 
 be regarded as responsible for all I have said, whether good 
 or bad. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 117 
 
 ters better than many others whose works I have be- 
 come acquainted with. 
 
 In his work on "Inductive Sociology," Professor 
 Giddings has said that there have been four great 
 ideals of conduct in the history of the race. 6 The 
 first of these is that of the "Forceful" man. Such a 
 man has been tall, strong of limb, and powerful. He 
 was Saul, towering head and shoulders above the 
 other men of his day. Such a man always stood as 
 a bulwark of defense in time of need; he did valiant 
 deeds in war and was successful in the chase. He is 
 the soldier and the sailor of to-day, the policeman, 
 the fireman, and many others whose brawn and cour- 
 age are at a premium. He is the football hero on 
 many a college gridiron. But when the war was over, 
 when the chase was at an end, another type of indi- 
 vidual came to the front as the hero, but it was a 
 heroism of a different kind. When all had gathered 
 around the festive board, the new hero was the one 
 who could tell the most interesting story, sing the 
 best song, or make the best speech. This is the 
 "Convivial" type, represented to-day by the jolly, 
 happy-go-lucky, hail-fellow-well-met; it is the type 
 of the successful after dinner speaker. No doubt 
 you have all been present at Banquets in honor of 
 some football team, and the fellow who was the main- 
 stay of the team on the field, now stutters and stam- 
 mers, grows red and pale alternately, stands first on 
 
 fl Pp. 82-83. 
 
118 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 one foot and then on the other, and can hardly say 
 three intelligible sentences. But then some little fel- 
 low, rather insignificant in appearance, who perhaps 
 hardly knows a touchdown from a home run, delights 
 the whole company with his ready wit. He becomes 
 the hero of this new situation. 
 
 But there came a time in the early community 
 when some of the wiseacres perceived that these hap- 
 py-go-lucky fellows often became a drag upon the 
 community, and consequently there developed the 
 "Austere" type, or we might say the Puritan type. 
 This type did not begin in old New England. His 
 ancestors are much farther back in the past. These 
 long-faced individuals perceived that when there was 
 a drought and famine, these gay young singers, story 
 tellers, and genial ne'er-do-wells had to be supported 
 by the rest of the community. Consequently, maxims 
 of prudence multiplied, and many rather innocent 
 forms of amusement were placed under the ban. This 
 type is still with us, but it is too familiar to need 
 further illustration. The fourth and last type which 
 Professor Giddings discusses is what he calls the 
 "Rationally Conscientious" type. This is a kind of 
 resultant from the other three. Individuals of this 
 type are inclined to keep themselves in good physical 
 condition through proper exercise, but they do not 
 carry their devotion to athletics in any form to an 
 excess ; they are courageous when real courage is de- 
 manded, but they are never foolhardy. They also 
 
The Ethical Ideal 119 
 
 enter into the various rounds of social activities, but 
 do not go too far; they avoid making fools of them- 
 selves in the pleasures in which they indulge. They 
 do not attempt to lead lives of pure reason, but all 
 proposed courses of action are brought to the bar of 
 reason. They have a deep sense of duty, and often 
 shoulder heavy loads of responsibility, but they do 
 not let duty play the part of the tyrant in their lives. 
 They recognize their limitations, play their part in 
 our complex social life to the extent of their ability, 
 and leave the appraisal of their deeds to posterity. 
 They are rationally conscientious, but not conscien- 
 tious beyond the bounds of reason. 
 
 If we compare this fourth type with the ideal of 
 the reason-controlled life, we shall find that the two 
 are practically the same. Thus philosophy and soci- 
 ology are virtually agreed as to the form of human 
 conduct which will function best in rather high grade 
 society. The different ideals of the sociologist are 
 adjusted to the different levels which are always 
 found in any community, but in so far as intelligence 
 increases in a given community will there be a ten- 
 dency for the rationally conscientious type to in- 
 crease. Somewhat the same may be said with refer- 
 ence to the ideal presented from Plato and Aristotle. 
 Since that is the reason-controlled life, the number 
 of its representatives will increase with the increase 
 of trained reason among any people. We may not 
 say that these two ideals, one from philosophy and 
 
120 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the other from sociology, are the superlatively best 
 among men, but they seem to be the best on the for- 
 mal side yet developed within the race. 
 
 At the next hour, I shall attempt to give somewhat 
 in detail the constructive side of the ideal. This will 
 involve dwelling upon the content which we indi- 
 vidually would be inclined to give to the bare form of 
 the ideal presented at this time. 
 
VI 
 
 THE ETHICAL IDEAL 
 (Concluded) 
 
 DURING the last hour we were together, I pre- 
 sented the ethical ideal, for the most part, from 
 an historical angle. I sketched the three leading 
 ideals among the Greeks, and indicated that the 
 "reason-controlled life" might be regarded as the 
 highest that we know on the formal side. I also said 
 that on this occasion I should need to deal with the 
 content side of the ideal. That is our leading prob- 
 lem for to-day. None the less, in the first few min- 
 utes of the hour, I shall need to consider a matter 
 to which I referred in the first lecture. I suggested 
 then that there would be a universality attaching to 
 the ideal that I was planning to present, and it is 
 this aspect of the entire discussion that I wish to 
 deal with now. 
 
 Very frequently in ethical discussions the asser- 
 tion is made or implied that the requirements decided 
 upon are obligatory upon all men. With the growth 
 of evolutionary thought, however, it has become in- 
 creasingly difficult to universalize in the old way. As 
 
 121 
 
122 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 we saw in one of the earlier lectures of this series, 
 there are different degrees of social development in 
 the world taken as a whole. When we take a wide- 
 ranging view, we find that culture shades off from 
 the kind of life lived by the residents of the Back Bay 
 district of Boston to trie decidedly primitive modes 
 of life that characterize the Fiji Islanders. And 
 indeed, as we have seen, even within the limits of the 
 same community there are pronounced differences in 
 culture. Still further, one of the most assured re- 
 sults of modern psychological research, as pointed 
 out by Professor Angell of the University of Chicago, 
 are the fundamental differences among men. 1 How 
 could we, then, insist that whatever regulations we 
 lay down for ourselves should be equally binding 
 upon all sorts and conditions of men? As I indicated 
 in the third lecture of this course, an ethical ideal 
 is a complex mental construct which we fashion by 
 fusing together the especially good features selected 
 from our own past experience and from the experi- 
 ence of the race, in so far as history presents it to 
 us. How could such a complex thing be the ideal of 
 all people? The difficulty which this question raises 
 is a logical one, and it is really a logical difficulty 
 which underlies all that I have just said, but although 
 I may weary you with an excursion into the field of 
 logic, I must say a word or two about it. 
 
 There is a principle in logic known as the "inten- 
 1 Chapters from Modern Psychology, pp. 155-173. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 123 
 
 sion and extension of terms." There is the meaning 
 which a term has, and there are also the objects 
 meant by it, but in a series of terms the increase of 
 the intension or meaning results in the decrease of 
 the extension or number of objects meant. If I say 
 "man," I mean all the objects in the world that have 
 the physical characteristics which distinguish man 
 from the merely animal world. If, however, I say 
 "white man," I have increased the meaning of my 
 term, but I have at the same time reduced the num- 
 ber of objects to which the term would apply. Still 
 further, the term "Englishman" would apply to a 
 much smaller number of individuals, and "Oxford 
 graduate," because it would have a still greater mean- 
 ing, would apply only to a rather small, select group. 
 If, now, I begin with the term "Oxford graduate," 
 and then proceed to "Englishman," "white man," 
 and "man," I continually decrease the meaning of the 
 term, but increase the number of objects designated. 
 Since this is true, if we are to have an ideal, as I 
 suggested a moment ago, that shall be obligatory 
 upon the entire race, either that ideal will have but 
 little content, so as to meet the actual condition of 
 very primitive people, and such an ideal would be of 
 almost no value, or else with a complex ideal we should 
 have to wait until all people might reach a high plane 
 of culture. There is, too, a third alternative, but I 
 will deal with that later. 
 
 Of course, it might be objected to the second al- 
 
124 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ternative which I have presented that even if all the 
 people in the world should ultimately reach the same 
 high plane of cultural development, they would not, 
 therefore, necessarily be the same in their outlook 
 upon life. This depends in part upon the way we de- 
 fine the term "same." If we are exceedingly nice in 
 our interpretation, we may find that there is no such 
 thing as sameness at all. Any object we may notice 
 is not exactly the same from moment to moment, and 
 our states of consciousness are notoriously never 
 twice alike in every detail. For, indeed, if they should 
 be alike in every other respect, there would still be a 
 difference in the time of their occurrence. If, how- 
 ever, we are less finical in our interpretation and are 
 willing to admit approximations, there will be a de- 
 cidedly good basis for assuming considerable like- 
 ness in the views of people who are upon about the 
 same plane of culture. A dozen students who attend 
 the same preparatory school and then pass through 
 the same college and university, taking practically 
 the same courses of study, will have a very similar 
 way of viewing the world and of reacting to the prob- 
 lems which they face in life. Of course, they will not 
 think exactly alike in every respect, but there will 
 be more unanimity of opinion among them than 
 there would be between them and the simplest sav- 
 ages. This is evident, too, in the case of any nation, 
 as I indicated in another connection earlier in this 
 series of lectures. The people of any country are 
 
The Ethical Ideal 125 
 
 more alike in their thinking and general outlook upon 
 life, than are the peoples of different countries. So, 
 if the time should ever come, although I do not think 
 that it will come very soon, when all the peoples of 
 the world should be upon the same plane of culture, 
 we might expect that the complex ideal of conduct 
 developed by them would have practically the same 
 binding force upon all, but with the world as it is to- 
 day, how can anything but the simplest requirements 
 be laid upon all alike? This is a serious question, 
 but I think that the third alternative which I sug- 
 gested a moment ago will answer it, and give the de- 
 gree of universality which I think is the only kind 
 possible. 
 
 If we should construct an ethical ideal, as I sug- 
 gested a moment ago, by selecting from the good in 
 the entire world as history reveals it, we would, of 
 course, have a very complex thing, but would there 
 not be elements in it which people on other planes of 
 development would recognize as their own and so 
 feel binding upon themselves? To that extent the 
 ideal would be theirs also. Among the simplest sav- 
 ages, there is a certain amount of kindness shown to 
 the nearest kin. 2 Could we ourselves leave such an 
 element out of the ideal which we might construct as 
 our own? To that extent, then, would the savage 
 have a stake in our ethical claim. So, too, when we 
 
 "Hobhouse, Morals m Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. I, p. 348; 
 McDougall, Social Psychology, p. 69. 
 
126 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 turn to the barbarous plane. 3 If you and I should 
 ever enter the tent of an Arab sheik, our lives would 
 be safe, even though we might be total strangers to 
 him. A certain amount of kindness and of consider- 
 ation is shown to strangers even by the barbarians. 
 Could we omit hospitality from our own ideal? To 
 that extent, also, would our ideal be the ideal of the 
 barbarian. In the early civilizations of Egypt and 
 of Babylonia there was a certain amount of empha- 
 sis placed upon the binding character of contracts, 
 and an effort was made to mete out even-handed jus- 
 tice. 4 These are elements in the ideal of the most 
 highly civilized peoples in the world to-day. It must 
 be evident, then, I think, that such an ideal as I have 
 been working toward in this course can be regarded 
 as the ideal of the most highly developed people in 
 the world at the present time, but also, in part at 
 any rate, the ideal of people in the past and in the 
 present who may not be upon the highest cultural 
 plane, but who might, none the less, perceive in our 
 ideal some things which they themselves approve. 
 To that extent the ideal of the most cultured, con- 
 structed as I have in part suggested and as I intend 
 to suggest further, would be the ideal of all. It 
 would be the ideal in its fullness for the people who 
 might deliberately construct it, and it would be the 
 
 * Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. I, p. 
 348. 
 4 Hobhouse, Ibid., pp. 84-85, 179-190. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 127 
 
 ideal potentially of all people who might be develop- 
 ing in the same direction, although it would be theirs 
 actually only to the extent that they might see in it 
 elements which they were accustomed to approve in 
 their own particular environment. Let us turn, now, 
 to the special content of such an ideal, but always, 
 from the angle of the formal treatment presented at 
 the last hour. 
 
 In attempting to deal with the content side of the 
 ideal, as I have it in mind, I think that it will help, 
 if I present the matter, as I have been accustomed to 
 for several years, with reference to my other students 
 in America. Later I will treat the ideal from what I 
 conceive to be your special angle. For a few min- 
 utes, then, please consider yourselves a group of 
 American students, and I will proceed as I usually do 
 with them. 
 
 When we seek to do justice to the ethical ideal in 
 its entirety, we find it necessary to consider both the 
 physical and the spiritual aspects, using the term 
 "spiritual" in a broad sense. The old Romans had a 
 saying, mens sana sano m corpore, a sound mind in 
 a sound body. That was practically the ideal, too, 
 of the Greeks taken as a whole. If we desire to have 
 a well rounded ideal to-day, we can do no better than 
 to follow their example and give attention to these 
 two sides of our complete self. What shall I say, 
 then, with reference to our physical development? It 
 is true, of course, that there have been many indi- 
 
128 Tsktg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 viduals, frail in body and racked with pain, who have 
 made valuable contributions to the welfare of the 
 world, but we must always regard them as the excep- 
 tions. Other things being equal, we may expect a 
 desirable development of the spiritual side of our 
 lives, using that term, as I have said, in a broad 
 sense, in correlation with a good physical foundation. 
 We have already seen that an increasing valuation 
 placed upon human life is one of the leading criteria 
 of social progress. Not to give sufficient attention to 
 our physical selves is to fail of the proper apprecia- 
 tion of this growing valuation placed upon life. Then, 
 too, the "rationally conscientious" ideal, which we 
 found at the last hour is practically identical with 
 the "reason-controlled" life, points in this same di- 
 rection. To despise the body, or to neglect the body 
 would be a cardinal flaw in one's ideal. 
 
 Let me say a word, too, at this point with refer- 
 ence to the instincts. Very frequently writers on 
 ethics distinguish between instinctive morality and a 
 higher or rational sort. Such a distinction, how- 
 ever, opens the way for a wrong attitude toward the 
 instincts. If the more rational type of conduct is 
 higher, why may we not neglect the instinctive alto- 
 gether? Such an attitude of mind seems at times 
 actually to occur. Hut the instincts constituted the 
 highest type of behavior at an early period in the 
 development of the race, and we could not dispense 
 with them entirely at present. When one distin- 
 
The Ethical Ideal 129 
 
 guishes, however, between instinctive morality and 
 rational morality, as just indicated, some individuals 
 either refuse altogether to follow their instincts, or 
 else feel that they are abandoning or violating their 
 higher ideal, if, perchance, instinctive activity 
 should at any time gain the right of way. But the 
 ideal, as I am developing it, takes the instincts up 
 into itself. There are times when the instincts 
 should not be restrained and we should not feel on 
 such occasions that our ideal has been in any sense 
 lowered. The rational element in the ideal makes 
 provision for them, although it is true that they 
 should be under proper control. To let our instincts 
 run away with us would be to fail in a just appre- 
 ciation of the ideal, but to disregard them altogether 
 would also mean to fail in like manner. Like a 
 trained pointer, they should always be at heel, ex- 
 cept at such times as reason might permit them to 
 function. 
 
 When, now, we turn from the physical aspect of 
 the ideal to the spiritual side, what shall we select for 
 the content of the ideal? Here I think that we can 
 do no better than to consider that list of virtues from 
 the teaching of Aristotle which I touched upon at the 
 last hour. He gives in that list twelve virtues, some 
 of which perhaps we might not be inclined to intro- 
 duce into the ideal, and yet I doubt if we could very 
 well avoid including many of them. In considering 
 them, however, we should need to test them individual- 
 
180 Tsvng Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ly in accordance with the principle of social welfare. 
 Would such or such an element make for the social 
 welfare? If it would, then we might feel wholly 
 justified in introducing it; if not, we should need to 
 reject it. Let us consider several of these elements 
 one by one and see to what extent we might feel in- 
 clined to follow Aristotle in this list. 5 
 
 The first virtue which Aristotle mentions is "cour- 
 age." Could we very well omit such an element from 
 the ideal which we intend to construct for ourselves ? 
 Very likely not many of us will have opportunities 
 to display courage as would the "forceful man" whom 
 I discussed at the last hour, but could we fail to in- 
 clude this element? Certainly we would not think of 
 introducing its opposite "cowardice." But courage 
 is not always closely connected with the physical self, 
 although we usually think of it in that way. There 
 is also what we may call spiritual courage. This is 
 often termed "moral courage," but it seems to me 
 that we might better call it spiritual courage which 
 leads to specific moral activity. Since I have already 
 emphasized the opposition between the individual 
 consciousness and the social consciousness, I could 
 not fail to include in the ideal such spiritual courage. 
 It takes just this kind of courage to oppose the 
 group with which one happens to be connected, and 
 yet such opposition, as we have seen, is a very neces- 
 
 6 Welldon, The Ethics of Aristotle, pp. 48-53, and passim. 
 Cf. Wallace, Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 100. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 131 
 
 sary factor in social progress. I suspect that we 
 would all be inclined to add this element. 
 
 Then there is "temperance" which Aristotle pre- 
 sents. Rather unfortunately, this term is associated 
 in America almost exclusively with abstinence from 
 alcoholic liquors. It undoubtedly means that but 
 more besides. It suggests temperance in eating, in 
 action, in thought, and in word. Another term which 
 is frequently used as an equivalent for "temperance" 
 in translating Aristotle at this point is "self-con- 
 trol." This at once brings us into line with the fun- 
 damental character of the ideal as outlined at our last 
 hour together. A reason-controlled life would natur- 
 ally suggest control in these other matters just men- 
 tioned. 
 
 Another element which appears in the list fur- 
 nished by this Greek philosopher is "liberality." 
 Whenever this term is mentioned, we naturally think 
 of those who are blessed with an abundance of the 
 good things of this life, and consequently we are in- 
 clined to apply it to them rather than to ourselves. 
 But liberality is not restricted in its meaning to the 
 large giver. It is more the attitude of mind that 
 is meant. When there is an appeal made to our 
 purse-strings, we should calculate the extent of our 
 resources and give accordingly. The free, generous 
 spirit back of, or evidenced by, the act is the essen- 
 tial. But a word of caution is needed here. When 
 appeals are made to us, as they so frequently are, 
 
182 T skiff Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 by the beggars on the street, it cloes not follow that 
 we should always give. Liberality would not neces- 
 sarily be evidenced in that way. Students of society 
 tell us that it is far better to investigate the case, 
 find out the cause of the poverty, and then remedy 
 the conditions, rather than to confirm the beggar in 
 his ways by the modicum we toss him. 
 
 There is, also, another meaning lurking in this 
 term "liberality." The root idea is freedom, which 
 may well be interpreted as freedom from prejudice, 
 from narrowness, and from mere tradition, or in 
 other words a liberal attitude of mind. Several years 
 ago I heard culture defined as "the ability to recog- 
 nize and the disposition to approve that which is 
 excellent wherever found." With proper changes in 
 the terminology, that definition might well be used in 
 connection with liberality. We are liberal in our 
 thought when we have the ability to recognize good 
 thinking in another, even though we may not agree 
 with the conclusions, and when we have the disposi- 
 tion to approve that thought as good solid thinking, 
 without necessarily being inclined to accept it in toto 
 or to follow out all its implications. There has been 
 altogether too much narrowness in the world in this 
 respect. We should not attempt to browbeat one 
 another in our thinking, nor be ready to convince 
 with the club. We have reached a high plane of 
 ethical development when we can introduce into our 
 ideal liberality in this sense. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 188 
 
 Aristotle also suggests "right ambition" and "good 
 temper." Not infrequently, we are cautioned against 
 having any ambition at all. But an individual with- 
 out any ambition would be a very neutral factor in 
 society. He would belong in the ranks of the "ho- 
 boes" and so-called "weary Willies." Social prog- 
 ress has not come about through such individuals. 
 What Aristotle warns against is seeking to aggran- 
 dize ourselves at the expense of our neighbors, using 
 them as tools for our own welfare, exploiting them 
 for our own personal advantage. Right ambition, 
 however, means taking one's own proper measure, 
 and then seeking to realize the highest and best of 
 which that individual is capable in the interests of 
 society as a whole. As for "good temper," not much 
 need be said. Its value as a virtue is quite obvious. 
 We certainly would not care to introduce its oppo- 
 site, a quarrelsome, surly, sour temper into our ideal. 
 None the less, an exhibition of temper, provided the 
 occasion might demand it, would not be out of har- 
 mony with the ideal. It is said that Dr. Arnold, the 
 famous headmaster of Rugby, used to declare that 
 he never felt sure of the stability of a boy's character 
 until that boy hated a lie. One might, indeed, avoid 
 lying, or even discountenance it in another, but until 
 a boy showed his hostility to a lie by an actual mani- 
 festation of temper, the good old doctor did not 
 think him fully established in his ways. 
 
 There is also "friendly civility" in this list. You 
 
134* Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 can readily enough see what is meant by this. You 
 know the man with a cheery greeting, a friendly 
 smile, and a warm, hearty grasp of the hand. Such 
 a one makes friends wherever he goes. The lack of 
 such an element on some occasions makes us value 
 it all the more when we do encounter it. Last sum- 
 mer, in a large hotel in Tokyo, Japan, I saw a man 
 wearing a uniform which I thought I recognized. 
 The color alone was strange. In what I thought was 
 a friendly manner, I said to the man wearing it, "I 
 think that I know that uniform, all but the color." 
 "It is the regular color," was his reply. That is all 
 the information I received from him. Later, I 
 learned that the color of the uniform he was wearing 
 is the regulation color for full dress in summer time. 
 I suspect, however, that no one of you would say 
 that he gave evidence of friendly civility. 
 
 Aristotle also includes in his list "sincerity" and 
 "modesty." The former of these two words almost 
 sums up in itself all the other virtues. It means 
 honesty of purpose, genuineness, lack of deceit, frank- 
 ness, nothing underhanded, without guile. It has in 
 it the essence of gentle breeding. It might well serve 
 as the foundation for the other virtues. When this 
 is lacking, we may regard the other virtues men- 
 tioned in the list with suspicion; when this is pres- 
 ent, we may have more confidence in the rest. As to 
 "modesty," we may say that it means strictly that 
 we should respect the privacy of others just as we 
 
The Ethical Ideal 135 
 
 wish them to respect our privacy. It may also be 
 taken in the sense of being unassuming, rather than 
 boastful and showing an overweening confidence in 
 our own ability. It does not, however, mean excessive 
 humility, whether of the Uriah Heep type or not. 
 One should take a just estimate of one's self. We 
 should not think too highly of ourselves, nor should 
 we belittle ourselves. Modesty in this sense suggests 
 having a due regard for one's place among men. It 
 avoids servile flattery and self -depreciation, just as 
 it gives no place to pride of intellect and swaggering 
 boastfulness. 
 
 The last virtue that Aristotle insists upon, passing 
 over several others, is "just resentment." There are 
 some people who seem never to get angry at any 
 thing. They impress us as having a "cotton string 
 for a backbone," as one speaker has put it. There 
 are occasions, however, when hot indignation should 
 flash forth. Such explosions are good for the indi- 
 vidual himself and for the one who happens to be 
 their target. They clear the atmosphere as a thun- 
 der storm does in summer. There have been times 
 during the last three years when my own nation 
 seemed to be lacking in just resentment. Happily 
 that time is now past, and sooner or later, the sooner 
 the better, the nation that trifled with the dignity of 
 the United States and trampled upon her self-respect 
 will learn that the just resentment of a peace-loving 
 nation may not be scorned with impunity. 
 
136 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 Here, then, are the virtues which Aristotle empha- 
 sized. 6 I do not suggest that we should incorporate 
 them all into our ideal simply because of the eminence 
 of this Greek thinker. As I have suggested before, 
 we need to scrutinize them very carefully one by one 
 and then select in accordance with the principle of 
 social welfare. I feel very confident, however, that 
 if we do deal with the list in this way, we shall not 
 omit them all from the ideal which we construct for 
 ourselves. 
 
 At this point in my discussion of this problem 
 with my students in America, I suggest that we turn 
 to the teaching of the Hebrew people. There has 
 been a tendency in recent years in the West to neg- 
 lect this side. The historical reason for such aloof- 
 ness would not be far to seek. But such an attitude 
 is unscientific. One of the first steps in any scien- 
 tific enterprise is analysis. If, then, we analyze 
 European and American civilization, we shall find a 
 large element in it contributed by the Hebrews, in 
 addition to what has been inherited from the Greeks 
 and the Romans. To neglect this would be to fail 
 in our attempt to construct an ethical ideal at least 
 in the spirit of science. 
 
 Even a cursory survey of the Hebrew teaching re- 
 veals certain requirements called the "Command- 
 
 6 In the discussion, I have not confined myself closely to 
 Aristotle's teaching. I have simply taken the several virtues 
 from his list and have presented them in my own way, but not, 
 I think, out of harmony with his general thought. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 137 
 
 ments." Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not 
 steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt 
 not covet, and so on through the list. These regu- 
 lations grew up out of the Hebrew life. They were 
 regarded as essential for social welfare. In so far 
 as such requirements make for social welfare to-day, 
 and they certainly seem to tend in that direction, 
 they might very well be introduced into our ideal. 
 The test, also, in connection with this list is the same 
 as that already applied in connection with the teach- 
 ing of the Greek philosopher. Then, too, there is the 
 teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest among 
 the Jews. Much of his teaching has* become incor- 
 porated into the social consciousness of the western 
 world. We may not say, however, that all that he 
 taught is incorporated at the present day. He 
 taught that if a man should smite you on the right 
 cheek, you should turn your left cheek to him. Cer- 
 tainly the nations of the West do not follow that 
 teaching. Whether they ever will follow that par- 
 ticular injunction, we can not say. Possibly many 
 elements of. his teaching, not yet accepted in the 
 West, will be incorporated ultimately into the social 
 consciousness of that part of the world. It may be, 
 too, that some of his teaching, already a part of the 
 western mind, will be sloughed off later. The whole 
 matter is in flux. The foundation principle, however, 
 for incorporating or rejecting any of his teaching is 
 whether or not in the long run it would or would not 
 
138 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 make for social welfare. Much of it seems to con- 
 tribute richly to that end; much of it has never yet 
 been tried on any large scale. The real test is still to 
 come. 
 
 When, now, I have developed the ideal for my other 
 students thus far, I have always suggested to them 
 to look even farther afield. If they should ever find 
 in the teaching of Brahman sage or Buddhist saint 
 anything that seems to promise well for social wel- 
 fare, that also might be included in their ideal. Still 
 further, I have said to them that if they should make 
 themselves acquainted with the teaching of Confucius, 
 Mencius, Laotze, or others of your great leaders of 
 thought, and should find there elements that appealed 
 to them as likely to enrich the lives of men, they 
 should also without any hesitation incorporate such 
 material into their ideal, subject, of course, to such 
 limitations as contradictions or a difference in geo- 
 graphical location might impose. Whatever defi- 
 nitely makes for social welfare, on the whole and in 
 the long run, and wherever found among men, may 
 properly be regarded as promising material for the 
 content of the ethical ideal. 7 
 
 7 In addition to the elements discussed here, there is, of 
 course, the vast field of European thought from the time of 
 Aristotle to the present. I have not attempted to deal with 
 that here for lack of time allowed the original lecture. The 
 method of constructing the ideal I regard as of. prime impor- 
 tance. The points considered in the lecture are not in any 
 sense restrictive; they are simply suggestive and illustrative. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 139 
 
 Here, then, is the ideal toward which I have been 
 working as our goal throughout this course. There 
 is the formal side, as I presented it at our last meet- 
 ing, and here are specific elements, or virtues, gleaned 
 from some of the best sources. Does it, or would it 
 work? This question we shall need to consider at 
 the next hour, but just now I wish to present the 
 matter, as I said, from your point of view as Chinese 
 students. 
 
 Here, as in the previous case, we need to give at- 
 tention to both the physical and the spiritual sides. 
 Is there anything that I said about the proper care 
 of the body which you would be inclined to change? 
 I feel very sure that you take the same attitude 
 toward this matter that my students in the West do. 
 Your athletic contests and the noble gymnasium 
 nearing completion upon your campus make me con- 
 fident that you would agree entirely with what I 
 have said about proper attention to the physical 
 foundation for your mental and spiritual develop- 
 ment. So, too, with what I said about the instincts. 
 You need to incorporate them into your ideal. This 
 does not mean, of course, that you should let them 
 run away with you. They constitute a part of the 
 ideal as a whole, but always subject to rational con- 
 trol. . When, however, I turn to the remainder of 
 the content, I feel that you should proceed in a dif- 
 ferent way. If I am not very much mistaken, you 
 should begin with the teaching of your own great 
 
140 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 men. They have been accustomed to emphasize "filial 
 piety," "benevolence," "the doctrine of the mean," 
 "the golden rule," and so on. 8 These would seem to 
 be good, but I would suggest that you should not 
 incorporate them into your ideal simply upon the 
 basis of tradition. Scrutinize them carefully. Often- 
 times, a thing that is good, if over-emphasized, be- 
 comes more or less harmful. None the less, as it 
 seems to me, you should begin here. Then I would 
 suggest that you look farther afield. Take the same 
 list of virtues that I have discussed from Aristotle 
 and decide whether any or all of them could find a 
 place in your ideal. Then, too, turn to the Hebrews 
 and to the teaching of the Nazarene and examine 
 what you find with great care. Use the test which 
 I have made fundamental, viz., social welfare. You 
 may even go still farther in your quest. If anywhere 
 within the limits of human history you find anything 
 which seems to you to be good, or that you think 
 would make for social welfare, then incorporate it, 
 subject, as I have said, to the possibility of there 
 being a contradiction, or that the geographical situa- 
 tion would dictate otherwise. In this way, your ideal 
 would approximate to the ideal which students in the 
 western world not infrequently set before themselves. 
 Last winter, when I decided to come here for this 
 year, I reflected as to what I might make my chief 
 
 8 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. II, pp. 161-178; 
 Moore, History of Religions, pp. 30-64. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 141 
 
 emphasis, and I have just now given you the thought 
 which I ultimately reached. It seems to me that you 
 should avoid being swept clean out of your own orbit, 
 in your effort to familiarize yourselves with western 
 ideas and to incorporate western principles into your 
 own lives. Begin with the best that you have here, 
 but begin with it in a critical way. Then use the 
 same critical method on western thought and cul- 
 ture. Last summer, I had a conversation with a man 
 in Washington, D. C, who has been in this part of 
 the world a great deal, and I was glad to find him 
 expressing himself in much the same way as I have 
 just now. We were speaking with reference to Japan. 
 He said that Japan has almost lost her national iden- 
 tity in consequence of the avidity with which she has 
 appropriated western thought and life. Some of 
 them are sorry for this and they are trying at present 
 to utilize more of their own earlier type of life. He 
 said further that he hoped that the Chinese would 
 not make the same mistake. That harmonized wholly 
 with my own thought. You are Chinese with a long 
 history behind you. Be Chinese, but in a critical 
 way; appropriate from the West, but appropriate 
 in a critical way. Dovetail the new into the old ; let 
 the new and the old coalesce. It will be a slow 
 process, but do not get discouraged. The richest 
 results will come, if you use the proper method. 
 
 The late Professor James of Harvard University 
 brings out a vital distinction in the matter of memory 
 
142 Tsi7ig Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 in his great work on "Psychology." He distinguishes 
 between a "total recall" and a "focalized recall." 9 
 When one tries to describe some event and seeks to 
 include all, even the most trivial incidents, the re- 
 sult will be a long drawn out, rambling account. If, 
 however, one picks out the really salient points and 
 combines them skilfully, there will be a unity and 
 force to the account wholly lacking in the other 
 kind. To remember, we must forget. I think that 
 you will admit that the kind of ideal I have con- 
 structed for you aims to be of the selective type. 
 Do not take material simply upon the authority of 
 this or that teacher, but estimate the value of the 
 work critically. Put into your ideal the best you 
 can find anywhere in the world, but begin with what 
 has characterized your own people for so long a time. 
 Do not misunderstand me. I am not arguing against 
 the incorporation of western ideas into your ideal. 
 Far from it. My presence here, and the presence 
 of other American teachers, both point toward your 
 appropriation of western thought. This college itself 
 in a unique way aims at just this result. What I 
 mean is that you should begin with your own culture, 
 but subject to a rigorous criticism, and, further, the 
 critical scrutiny which I suggest that you apply to 
 the teaching of your own great men, I also urge that 
 you apply to the teaching of the West. - 
 
 I frequently like to think of the whole matter in 
 9 Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 569-581. 
 
The Ethical Ideal 143 
 
 an historical way. Fully five thousand years ago, 
 your remote ancestors journeyed from the interior of 
 Asia to the valley of the Yellow river and began the 
 civilization which you know now. 10 At a somewhat 
 later time and apparently not very remote from the 
 same region, the early ancestors of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean peoples, most of them, journeyed in a westerly 
 direction to Europe and ultimately to America. 11 
 During all these intervening centuries, there has been 
 considerable intercourse between these two races, 
 more, indeed, as some scholars think to-day, than was 
 formerly believed. 12 But however extensive those 
 past relations were, they were almost as nothing when 
 compared with the situation to-day. The East and 
 the West are meeting in this present age as never 
 before in the history of the world. You are studying 
 western civilization just as we of the West are study- 
 ing eastern civilization. You find things that are 
 good and no doubt things that are bad, just as we 
 find things good in your civilization and some things 
 that seem to be bad. Both you of the East and we of 
 the West need to evaluate what we find in a critical, 
 but friendly spirit. As I have told my other students 
 in the West to study you and upon the basis of their 
 study to incorporate into their own ideal whatever 
 
 10 Moore, History of Religions, pp. 1-2. 
 
 11 Cf. Breasted, Ancient Times; A History of the Early 
 World, p. 171. 
 
 12 Cf. Breasted, op. cit., pp. 438, 462; Robinson, History of 
 Western Europe, p. 347. 
 
144 T sing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 good things they find, so I suggest to you to study 
 the West in the same way and to incorporate into 
 your ideal, based fundamentally upon your own civil- 
 ization, whatever good you find. In this way, both 
 the East and the West will come to see "eye to eye, 
 and face to face." Our ideals will grow to be more 
 and more alike, and we shall be able, both East and 
 West, to join forces in friendly cooperation for the 
 greater welfare of the world as a whole. 
 
VII 
 
 THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 
 
 THE first lecture of this series was a kind of 
 conjurer's hat, as perhaps some of you have al- 
 ready inferred. I have been able to take a number of 
 ideas from it and to develop them somewhat at length 
 in the succeeding lectures, in much the same way 
 that a conjurer takes many wonderful things from 
 a high silk hat, and the reason, too, has been about 
 the same. The sleight-of-hand performer takes out 
 of the hat what he put there in the first place, and I 
 have been able to develop these various ideas from 
 the first lecture, because I put them in there original- 
 ly with a view to their utility later in the series as a 
 whole. You may recall that I characterized the open- 
 ing lecture as a kind of guiding thread for the entire 
 course, and it has been that in a very true sense 
 throughout our various discussions. 
 
 Now, among the other matters which I briefly 
 called your attention to at that time and which I 
 have developed more or less completely since, was the 
 difference between a pure or theoretical science and 
 an applied or practical science. I also suggested 
 
 145 
 
146 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 that there is a similar difference between an ethical 
 ideal and the realization of that ideal. An ideal, as 
 I have been presenting it, is really a theoretical con- 
 struct, a system of principles elicited in much the 
 same way as the theoretical principles of any science, 
 but if there were no practical application of those 
 principles, our time would be wasted in the consider- 
 ation of them. In the last two lectures, we dealt 
 with the ideal on its more theoretical side, while 
 to-day we have before us the problem of the realiza- 
 tion of that ideal. This involves a consideration of 
 the environment, both what we might call an ideal 
 environment and the actual environment. Still fur- 
 ther, within each of these there are physical and so- 
 cial features to which we shall need to address our- 
 selves in turn. 
 
 I have hesitated not a little with reference to pre- 
 senting even the suggestion of an ideal environment. 
 There is so much of vagueness and uncertainty which 
 lurks in the term at best, there is so little that is 
 definite which we can command in our efforts to de- 
 velop even the outlines of an ideal environment, and 
 there is so little likelihood that any of us will ever 
 live in the midst of wholly ideal conditions, that pos- 
 sibly our time would be spent better in some other 
 way. None the less, a few words in this connection 
 seem to be necessary. 
 
 And first, what might we say with reference to an 
 ideal physical environment ? This much, at any rate. 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 147 
 
 There is but the one world, that in which we are 
 living, that constitutes the physical theater for our 
 physical development. No matter what might or 
 might not be true elsewhere in the universe, this par- 
 ticular planet is the field of our operations. There 
 are, however, differences in healthfulness and general 
 suitability for our individual needs in different parts 
 of the world. If we were wholly free to choose, and 
 I am assuming ideal conditions, we would go to that 
 part of the world which might happen to be the 
 best for us to live in. This would apparently be lim- 
 ited by the desire of others who might be cherishing 
 the same ideal and who might wish to be in the same 
 place. But, as we have already seen, people differ 
 not a little, and the locality that might be best adapt- 
 ed to the needs of one might not be suitable for 
 another. Consequently, while there would still be 
 some limitations imposed by reason of others seek- 
 ing the same place as ourselves, we need not con- 
 sider that difficulty further. The best part of the 
 world, from an hygienic angle, so far as we indi- 
 vidually are concerned, is what we would seek for 
 ourselves, provided we were wholly free to choose. 
 Beyond this, however, I do not care to go. Every 
 other consideration would constitute a limitation and 
 bring us face to face with the actual environment, 
 and that we shall discuss later. Let us turn, next, 
 to the social elements within such an assumed ideal 
 environment. 
 
148 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 That there would be society of some sort, we can 
 hardly question. Aristotle characterized man as a 
 "social animal," and this has been assumed through- 
 out the construction of the ideal. Then, too, I have 
 laid emphasis upon altruism from the very beginning 
 of our discussions, and social welfare has been the 
 criterion for the admission of specific elements into 
 the ideal. Outside of society altogether, off on some 
 desert island, one could hardly expect to realize such 
 an ideal as I have been developing. There would also 
 be, very likely, family life. I have already indicated 
 that the ideal takes the instincts up into itself, and 
 one of these, as we saw early in this series, concerns 
 the relations between the sexes. In no other way, it 
 would seem, could such virtues as we have introduced 
 into the ideal be realized to a greater degree than 
 within the family circle. I have already spoken of 
 the community as the unit of civilization, and in a 
 very true sense we can regard the family as the 
 unit of the community. There is a very vital rela- 
 tion between these two. The character of the life 
 within the family determines very largely what the 
 life of the larger unit will be. The really difficult 
 question here is as to the kind of family. 
 
 When we survey social evolution, as historians and 
 other students of society present it to us, we find 
 two main types of the family. Of course there have 
 been and are several other kinds, but these two stand 
 out most prominently in the history of the race. 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 149 
 
 These are the matriarchal, as it is called, and the 
 patriarchal. 1 The former is a misnomer. While 
 the term means "the rule of the mother," actually 
 it designates that type of the family in which descent 
 was reckoned on the mother's side. The rule, in so 
 far as we might use that term at all, was in the hands 
 of the mother's brothers and other male relatives. 
 The general features of this kind of family were as 
 follows: A woman, when she married, did not go to 
 a new home which her husband had provided for her, 
 nor did she go to his father's home. On the con- 
 trary, she remained in her own old home. Her hus- 
 band lived with her for a longer or shorter period 
 and then went away, perhaps to return later, and 
 perhaps not. The children were cared for by the 
 mother and her male relatives. They took the moth- 
 er's name, and property descended to them through 
 their mother. 
 
 There are not a few traces of this kind of family 
 in literature and in customs surviving until the pres- 
 ent day. In the German folklore, we often read of a 
 gay young prince who leaves home to see the world. 
 Sooner or later he meets a charming princess, and 
 since they are mutually pleased, they marry, but 
 live at her home. Not infrequently, the new hus- 
 band succeeds his wife's father as ruler of that city 
 
 1 Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Preface and Introduction; Hob- 
 house, Morals in Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. I, pp. 160-161; Gid- 
 dings, Principles of Sociology, p. 94. 
 
150 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 or country. A suggestion of the same sort, too, 
 comes to us from the literature of the Hebrews. Ja- 
 cob went back to the land of Ur of the Chaldees to 
 obtain a wife. In fact, he gained two, but he lived 
 for many years at their father's home. This entire 
 story represents a transition stage from the one main 
 type to the other, but there is an unmistakable trace 
 of the earlier type present in it. I also understand 
 that there are some traces of the same sort here in 
 China, while over in Japan the evidences are still 
 more convincing. In Japan, as is well known, if 
 there happens to be no son in the family, the parents 
 try to induce some suitable young man to marry a 
 daughter of the house, take her family name, and 
 live at her home. In this way, the old family name 
 will be preserved, and this seems to be the primary 
 motive for the arrangement, but the suggestion of 
 the matriarchal family may not be disregarded. 2 
 Similar traces are to be found elsewhere in the world. 
 This is, as I said, one of the great types of the fam- 
 ily, reaching back through the barbarous stage of 
 social development even to the period of savagery. 
 
 The other type of the family, the patriarchal, is 
 better known generally, and seems to have been fully 
 developed before the dawn of history in a strict 
 sense. As students of society tell us, the peoples 
 who first emerged from barbarism and established a 
 real civilization had the patriarchal type of the 
 8 Hall, Things Japanese, 5th Ed., p. 312. 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 151 
 
 family, and it has persisted, with some modifications, 
 until the present day. 3 One of these modifications is 
 the strict "pair-marriage," as the late Professor 
 Sumner of Yale University termed it. 4 This seems 
 to be the mode of the family among civilized peoples, 
 to use a statistical form of expression. This term 
 means the unit in any investigation which occurs 
 most frequently. While there has been much ex- 
 perimenting in this field in the past, and while there 
 is not a little experimenting in our own day, beyond 
 any question the "pair-marriage" has been and is 
 the most frequent sort within civilized society, and 
 we may not expect any very radical changes within 
 the near future. I am not saying that this type is 
 the absolutely best. It may be that what I have 
 termed "experimenting" will yield some valuable new 
 element or will result in the elimination of some fea- 
 ture long cherished, but because of what we may 
 call social inertia that form which has been the mode 
 for so long a time will continue as the leading type 
 rather indefinitely. 
 
 Another problem, however, which we confront at 
 this point is with reference to the children in such a 
 family. We need to note that we are considering an 
 ideal environment for the realization of such an ideal 
 as I have been sketching during these several weeks. 
 As I have said, there could hardly be a better environ- 
 
 'Hobhouse, Morals m Evolution, 1st Ed., Pt. I, p. 178. 
 * Folkways, pp. 375-376. 
 
152 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ment for the realization of such virtues as I dwelt 
 upon at the last hour than the family, and I meant 
 the complete family. This would be especially true 
 in the case of the parents themselves who might prize 
 such an ideal, and some of its essential features could 
 be fairly well inculcated in the lives of the children 
 even in their earliest years. Each rising generation, 
 then, would be well prepared along altruistic and so- 
 cial service lines to play a valuable part in the life 
 of the community as a whole. But the vital question 
 is with reference to the size of such a family. Stu- 
 dents of society inform us that there should be three 
 or four children, on the average, in each family, if 
 the population is to be maintained and guaranteed 
 a healthy growth. Many a family, however, has ten, 
 twelve, or more children, while others have but one 
 or two, or none. This minimum size of the family, 
 if universal, would mean a diminishing population or 
 the ultimate extinction of the community, while the 
 larger number increases the economic burden almost 
 beyond endurance and not infrequently is charac- 
 terized by a consequent inferiority in quality. The 
 ideal family, then, as the best environment for the 
 realization of the ideal, would seem to be the one with 
 the more nearly average number of children. 
 
 At this point, however, we are confronted with the 
 fact that some individuals apparently feel so keenly 
 the call to social service that they neglect entirely to 
 establish a home for themselves. The various monks 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 153 
 
 and nuns of different religions in various parts of 
 the world are of this sort. They forget, it would 
 seem, that their plan enables them to minister only 
 to their own generation. If they had developed an 
 ideal family environment, they would be able to con- 
 tribute as well to future generations. The actual con- 
 ditions in America, to go no farther afield, are very 
 instructive in this matter. One branch of the Church 
 there permits its leading workers to establish homes 
 for themselves. The number of prominent men and 
 women who have developed from those homes is amaz- 
 ing. There have been and are eminent jurists, phy- 
 sicians, educators, literary men, and chief magis- 
 trates who have contributed an incalculable amount 
 of good to the life of the nation as a whole. These 
 people came from homes which would never have 
 existed, if the other, the single generation, policy had 
 been followed. Their value in the total life of the 
 country can not be fully estimated. 
 
 Another k*hdred topic which we must notice in 
 this connection is the childless home. Not infre- 
 quently the home is established, but children do not 
 appear to complete the ideal, and the reason would 
 seem to be design. This introduces us to the prob- 
 lem of "race suicide," as it is called. Of course, no 
 precise rules may be laid down in such a matter, but 
 an attitude of antagonism to the presence of chil- 
 dren in the home would seem to be reprehensible. 
 Every individual in the community enjoys to a cer- 
 
154 Tsing Hua Lectures out Ethics 
 
 tain extent what others have toiled for and have 
 risked life and health to obtain. Not to share in this 
 labor, is to show one's self lacking in the sense of 
 social responsibility. We may not say, as yet, what 
 the final significance of life is, and since the race has 
 progressed through much travail of mind and of 
 body, but none the less has progressed, if the discus- 
 sion in an earlier lecture was sound, it would seem 
 as if the argument for a medium sized family of chil- 
 dren is strong. In no other way can an ideal social 
 environment for the realization of the ideal be se- 
 cured. 
 
 What other organizations there might be in such 
 an environment as we are dealing with here, it is 
 hard to say. Very likely there would be a state. At 
 first blush it might seem that if all the individuals in 
 the community should cherish the kind of ideal that I 
 have been developing, there would be no need of a 
 state. We have already seen that as people, become 
 more highly civilized, the need of state interference 
 in their daily mode of life diminishes. None the less, 
 there are certain ends which individuals desire that 
 can be obtained only through cooperation. We may 
 not expect the state, therefore, to disappear alto- 
 gether, but what its form would be we can not out- 
 line With any great definiteness. There have been 
 many ideal states sketched throughout the past, but 
 no one of them has ever been realized in every detail. 
 The most famous one, without doubt, was the state 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 155 
 
 as conceived by Plato. The discussion at the be- 
 ginning of his "Republic" is concerned with "right- 
 eousness" or "justice." In none of the existing 
 states, the argument runs, could a righteous life be 
 lived, but if there ever should be a state, such as Plato 
 then proceeded to outline, its inhabitants could live 
 just and righteous lives. The problem, as presented 
 in that discussion, was practically the same as that 
 we are facing in this part of the lecture. But no 
 such state as Plato conceived ever existed, and per- 
 haps there never will be. To speculate about an ideal 
 of that sort is undoubtedly interesting, but we can 
 hardly grasp the conditions of existence sufficiently 
 to guarantee any close correlation between the form 
 of the state, as we think it, and its realization. We 
 might, of course, select elements from the various 
 states that have existed in the past, and from those 
 that exist to-day, and make a fusion in accordance 
 with the principle followed in constructing the 
 ethical ideal, but we could not even then be sure that 
 an environment so conceived would prove to be the 
 best. Very naturally we would assume that such 
 would be the case. This specific problem, however, 
 belongs properly in the field of political science. 
 None the less, this much may be said. Since I have 
 laid emphasis upon the autonomous type of ethics, 
 it would seem as if that kind of state which should 
 allow the maximum of individual freedom and initi- 
 ative would come closest to furnishing the desirable 
 
156 Ts'vng Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 environment for the realization of our ideal, while 
 any other form might prevent even the sketching of 
 such an ideal. 
 
 What other organizations an ideal environment 
 might possess, it is very difficult to say. In many 
 actual communities throughout the past there have 
 been religious organizations, and there are not a few 
 in many parts of the world to-day. Many of these 
 are known as churches. Whether such institutions 
 would be necessary in an ideal community, we can not 
 say in an absolute sense, but judging from the past, 
 which alone may guide us, we may assume that they 
 would be present. Institutions of this sort, when 
 viewed historically, have exhibited a decidedly con- 
 servative character, and this has not been altogether 
 without value. Every community, as I have indi- 
 cated before, needs a conservative element in it, but 
 if the members of a religious organization cherished 
 individually the kind of ideal that I have been con- 
 structing, the character of that organization, taken 
 as a whole, would probably not be extremely con- 
 servative. None the less, we should not assume that 
 it would be necessarily excessively radical. The ra- 
 tional element in our ideal would preclude that. Such 
 a lack of conservatism, however, might not be the 
 best thing for the community, unless some other 
 agency within its limits should function as the neces- 
 sary balance wheel. In the West, the law is generally 
 rather conservative and might be a sufficient brake 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 157 
 
 upon radical tendencies. At any rate, there would be 
 little reason to lament, if religious organizations, as 
 factors contributing to a presumably ideal environ- 
 ment, should be somewhat less conservative than in 
 the past. The deficiency would undoubtedly be made 
 good in some other way. 
 
 With reference to still other organizations in an 
 ideal community, I do not care to take the time to 
 speculate. That there would be not a few, I think 
 entirely probable. In the analysis of a typical com- 
 munity, presented in the third lecture of this series, 
 we saw that there were many organizations, and I 
 suspect that even in an ideal society most of them 
 would be necessary, although they would be modi- 
 fied not a little, if practically all the people cher- 
 ished the ethical ideal which I have outlined. But 
 further speculation would not be worth while. As I 
 said in the first place, there is so much vagueness at- 
 tending our thought when we try to determine the 
 specific elements in an ideal environment, that we 
 would better turn without more delay to a consider- 
 ation of the actual environment within which alone 
 we may hope to realize so much of the ideal as we 
 shall ever know. 
 
 Here, as in the preceding discussion, we must deal 
 with the physical elements in the environment, and 
 also with the social relations. When, then, we con- 
 sider the physical side, we must ask ourselves to what 
 extent it is favorable for our own physical well be- 
 
158 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ing. To neglect to make ourselves acquainted with 
 the dangers that may lurk there is to fail in a proper 
 valuation of human life. If, after investigation, we 
 become convinced that our actual environment is not 
 suited to our needs, then we should move. If it is im- 
 possible for us to move, then we should seek to 
 apply all the resources of science to improve the con- 
 ditions. Almost any part of the world may be made 
 habitable for men through the application of scien- 
 tific research. One of the most striking examples of 
 this is the Panama Canal zone. Before the United 
 States Government undertook the construction of 
 that waterway, that region was regarded as one of 
 the most unhealthful in the world, but by the liberal 
 use of scientific knowledge it has become noted for 
 its healthfulness. By using all the resources of sci- 
 ence, we may live in the vicinity of the North Pole, 
 beneath the surface of the ocean in the submarine, 
 or fly through the air on the aeroplane. Almost any 
 part of the world becomes habitable in this way. If, 
 however, it is impossible for us to make a full appli- 
 cation of science to our particular environment, we 
 must expect nature to work out her rather harsh 
 laws in our case. Of course, we may be exceptions, in 
 the sense that we were mistaken in our survey of the 
 situation, and in spite of the apparent unsuitability 
 of the region where we live, we may continue to a 
 ripe old age, but the possibility of our being exempt 
 should not warp our judgment and influence our ac- 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 159 
 
 tion. It would be unethical for us to assume that 
 attitude of mind. Not until we have rid the com- 
 munity where we live of all flies, mosquitoes, other 
 harmful insects, and dangerous vermin of whatever 
 sorts, could we feel that we had fulfilled our whole 
 duty. If such a program should be absolutely im- 
 possible, then, and not till then, could we calmly let 
 nature take her course. 
 
 With regard to the social features of our actual 
 environment, we may assume that there would be a 
 home, but it might be maimed. Father or mother or 
 both might be dead, and some of the influences which 
 might otherwise have facilitated the growth of those 
 virtues which we have incorporated into our ideal 
 would be lacking. Under such circumstances, how- 
 ever, a more intimate contact with the rest of society 
 might be developed with perhaps an even more pro- 
 nounced tendency toward social service. Or, again, 
 the family might be broken through the action of 
 the divorce court and the children be entrusted to 
 one parent for all the time, or placed in charge of 
 one parent for a part of the time, and of the other 
 for the remainder of the time. Still again, the fam- 
 ily might have come to honor within the community. 
 The father or a brother might have done valiant serv- 
 ice on the battlefield, or have lost his life in the de- 
 fense of his country. In consequence of such dis- 
 tinguished service not a little honor would attach to 
 that family. This might breed pride and an over- 
 
160 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 valuation of one's importance instead of the modest 
 estimate of one's self discussed at the last hour. Or, 
 indeed, the reverse might be true. Some member of 
 the family might commit a crime, and while in civil- 
 ized lands we do not recognize the principle of col- 
 lective responsibility, the social consciousness not 
 infrequently burdens the culprit's family with not a 
 little of his odium. Still further, the family might 
 become rich overnight through some turn of For- 
 tune's wheel, and in consequence relations become 
 established which might not be favorable for the real- 
 ization of the ideal in the form originally held, or, 
 indeed, the reverse might be true in that the family, 
 once in affluence, might be reduced to poverty and so 
 be deprived of those associations which seemed to be 
 essential factors for realizing the ideal. The state, 
 too, in which one actually lives may not look with 
 favor upon such a freely developing life, and one 
 would, therefore, need to move to a more liberal com- 
 munity, or else struggle to change the existing polit- 
 ical conditions, or, again, effect some more or less 
 satisfactory modus vivendi with the "powers that be." 
 The same, too, might be true of one's religious life. 
 These, of course, are only a few of the features 
 which constitute actual elements in the environment 
 where those, who might cherish an ideal of the kind 
 that I have been developing, live. What are the pos- 
 sibilities for ethical achievement within such limits? 
 It is in connection with actual conditions more or 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 161 
 
 less like these that there has developed at different 
 times in the past what is technically known as casu- 
 istry. I do not care to discuss this at present in a 
 strictly technical way. A few points, however, need 
 consideration. In general, we may say that when in 
 any community certain principles have been evolved 
 which are regarded as absolute, and then, somewhat 
 later, other principles are developed which seem to 
 have an equal absoluteness, or, indeed, the environ- 
 ment has changed very decidedly, it becomes extreme- 
 ly difficult to determine how those principles may be 
 reconciled with one another, or to what extent one 
 may still hope to realize the ideal already cherished 
 for a long time. To make the matter somewhat more 
 concrete, let us consider a few typical examples. 
 
 A young man, we will say, in a country like the 
 United States where the question of abstinence from 
 alcoholic liquors is at the front, has advocated tem- 
 perance and is known rather widely as a temperance 
 worker. After the passage of a law against the liquor 
 traffic in the town where he lives, the proprietor of 
 the drug store in which he works decides to sell 
 liquor quietly in violation of the law, and insists that 
 this shall be a part of the young man's duties. We 
 will assume, further, that the young man has a wife 
 and several children to support. What should he 
 do? Or, again, a member of the national legislature 
 in some country where there is a liberal form of gov- 
 ernment has a bill which he wishes to have passed. 
 
162 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 His constituents are anxious to have the measure 
 become law, and if he does not succeed in getting it 
 through, he probably will not be reelected. To get 
 the measure passed, however, he must agree to vote 
 for another bill which he regards as vicious. What 
 should he do? Or, consider the situation here in 
 your own country in connection with the warfare 
 against the opium trade. A mandate, we will say, 
 has been sent from Peking to the governor of a prov- 
 ince to suppress entirely the cultivation of the poppy. 
 When, however, he attempts to obey, his former 
 friends and the violent element in the community 
 threaten his life. What should he do? I was read- 
 ing recently what one such official actually did. He 
 sent a notice throughout his county, calling upon all 
 to obey the law, and declared that he would make a 
 tour of inspection in June and if any one should be 
 found with poppies in his possession he would be 
 severely punished. But this particular governor 
 knew very well, when he sent out the notice, that the 
 poppy crop would be gathered and disposed of before 
 the month of June. 5 Yet again, we might assume 
 that a woman has good reason for believing that her 
 husband is untrue to her. She thinks of a divorce, 
 but shrinks from the notoriety of a divorce suit. 
 Then, too, there are her children. What should she 
 do? These are but a few of the actual crises which 
 B Ross, The Changing Chinese, p. 159. 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 163 
 
 come in the lives of real human beings. How may the 
 ideal be dealt with under such circumstances? 
 
 The one suggestion which I wish to make is that 
 on all occasions of stress we should think through the 
 various aspects of our ideal anew. Much of our life 
 goes on rather automatically, as many writers have 
 pointed out. We make some great decision, or in- 
 troduce some special element into our ideal, and then 
 other lesser decisions or particular courses of con- 
 duct follow naturally. But there come, not infre- 
 quently, supreme crises which seem to tear every- 
 thing up by the roots. There is our ideal, but over 
 against it an actual situation which seems to make 
 the ideal absolutely impossible of realization. What 
 should we do then? On such occasions we should re- 
 view our ideal with great care. It may be that some 
 of the elements, introduced at an earlier time, are 
 not so important as we at first thought. The abso- 
 luteness of some of them may have diminished with 
 the broadening and deepening of our experiences. 
 We may find that some of the elements may properly 
 be eliminated or modified, and that is precisely what 
 the rational principle, introduced into the ideal in 
 our formal treatment of it, would dictate. It might 
 be, however, that after a very thorough examination 
 of all the features of the ideal we should find it im- 
 possible to make any modification. Under such cir- 
 cumstances, we should have to stand firm, even though 
 it might involve the sacrifice of life itself. But what- 
 
164 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 ever might be the result, a rigorous review of the 
 ideal is the first essential step when we face a real 
 crisis. Even though the outcome of our reflection 
 should ultimately be judged wrong, we would have 
 been right in our method. 
 
 Oftentimes, however, there have been people who 
 have been more rigid with themselves than this dis- 
 cussion would imply. Unable to realize their ideal 
 in its original fair proportions, because of changes 
 in their circumstances, they have tended to beat their 
 lives out in vain efforts to realize the unrealizable. 
 Such a course is not in harmony with the rational ele- 
 ment in the ideal, and it is also unethical through its 
 lack of respect for life itself. Others under similar 
 circumstances become discouraged and fail to realize 
 the measure of success still open to them. A num- 
 ber of years ago, I heard Professor Simmel at the 
 University of Berlin say, "When difficulties multiply 
 about you, enlarge your ego and so overcome." That 
 is good advice within certain limits, but sometimes 
 the difficulties are too great, and a modification of 
 the ideal rather than the "will to victory" is the 
 rational course. The late Professor James of Har- 
 vard University gives an illustration in his little 
 book on "The Will to Believe, etc.," which is in line 
 with the advice of Professor Simmel. He suggests 
 there the case of a man clambering over the moun- 
 tains and ultimately reaching a ledge from which he 
 can not return and beyond which he can not go be- 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 165 
 
 cause of a yawning chasm which he did not notice at 
 first. What should he do? James says that if the 
 man should say to himself, "That is a terribly wide 
 chasm. I never jumped so far in my life. I am sure 
 that I can not clear it, but it is my only chance and 
 I might as well try," it is very likely that he would 
 plunge to the bottom. If, however, he should measure 
 the distance carefully with his eye and say, "That is 
 certainly rather wide, but I always was a good jump- 
 er. I feel sure that I can clear it. It is my only 
 chance but I think that I can make it," and then 
 should gather himself for a great effort, the chances 
 are that he would land on the other side. 6 Now this 
 is an interesting illustration and the main truth em- 
 phasized is good, but it is also true that if the chasm 
 were really too wide, no matter how much a man 
 might gird up his spirits with encouraging remarks, 
 and even if he had the jumping ability of a kangaroo 
 he could not clear the chasm. Under various difficult 
 circumstances, then, as I have said, not a few peo- 
 ple become absolutely discouraged and do not achieve 
 what is still within their power. The ideal, as I have 
 developed it, makes provision for such cases. There 
 ought not to be any absolute discouragement. If 
 certain elements in the ideal are no longer realizable, 
 then emphasize other elements still within the limits 
 of the ideal, or incorporate new elements and realize 
 them to the extent possible. The best possible under 
 6 P. 59. Not quoted verbatim. 
 
166 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the circumstances would be a fair brief interpreta- 
 tion of this ideal. 
 
 This does not mean, as some might infer, that the 
 ideal, as developed, is mere opportunism. It is, in- 
 deed, somewhat opportunistic, but not unwarrant- 
 ably so. An illustration from one of Emerson's es- 
 says fits this case very well. 7 There we are told of a 
 ship putting out to sea against a strong head wind. 
 First in one direction it tacks and then in another, 
 and the course seems exceedingly crooked. As the 
 ship gets farther and farther away, however, the de- 
 vious windings become less apparent and we become 
 assured that the skipper is laying an approximately 
 straight course for a definite goal. So when we re- 
 interpret our ideal in a crisis and perhaps modify it, 
 that does not mean complete opportunism. Far bet- 
 ter to modify in this way and realize the modified 
 form, than to realize nothing through complete dis- 
 couragement or to waste one's life through attempt- 
 ing the impossible. 
 
 Not infrequently, too, the failure of one's individ- 
 ual hopes and plans, or the perception of such failure 
 in the case of others, has led to that interpretation 
 of the world which we call pessimism. This means 
 that the world we live in is the worst possible world, 
 which is a judgment which runs far beyond the evi- 
 dence. We do not possess the material for such an 
 absolute statement as to the nature of the world, any 
 7 Self -Reliance. 
 
The Realization of the Ideal 167 
 
 more than we have the material to assert that it is 
 the best possible world, which would be optimism. 
 We may say, however, that the world is becoming 
 better. When we applied the several tests for social 
 progress in the fourth lecture of this course, we found 
 sufficient warrant for believing in the reality of prog- 
 ress. There has been both social and moral prog- 
 ress. Such actual betterment, it is maintained, 
 points toward meliorism, a world-view less ambitious 
 than either of the other two, but more in accord with 
 the facts. We may contribute toward such better- 
 ment, as well as share in it, if we make proper use of 
 the rational element in the ideal and modify it as the 
 actual conditions seem to demand. If we find it im- 
 possible to make any modification, we may actually 
 realize less, or eliminate ourselves altogether from 
 the field of human activities. 
 
 Here, then, is the ethical ideal as I have developed 
 it in the last two lectures. There is the formal as- 
 pect expressed by the term "a reason-controlled life," 
 and there are the various elements which we con- 
 sider as possible content. Here, too, are some sug- 
 gestions with reference to the realization of such an 
 ideal within an assumed ideal environment and some 
 of the difficulties we often face within our actual 
 environment. As I said a few moments ago, a fair 
 interpretation of it in its entirety is the best pos- 
 sible under the circumstances. Difficulties should 
 not lead to absolute discouragement, although they 
 
168 Tsmg Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 may necessitate a change in some of the elements, 
 nor should changes in our environment result in our 
 breaking under the strain. Revaluation and per- 
 haps modification in accordance with our funda- 
 mental rational principle should be our guiding 
 thread. Thus interpreted, the ideal is capable of 
 wide application and of a large, rich realization, al- 
 though not always as we might have anticipated. 
 
VIII 
 
 IMPLICATIONS AND RETROSPECT 
 
 TO-DAY we come to the end of our discussions 
 together, for which I suspect that some of you 
 are profoundly thankful. And I do not know that 
 I blame you very much. It has been necessary in the 
 development of some of our topics to introduce ma- 
 terial that was more or less unfamiliar to some of 
 you, and to use methods of thought for which some 
 of you, perhaps, are not yet quite ready. None the 
 less, I feel sure that many of you, if not all, will 
 sooner or later become very expert in just such mat- 
 ters, and, indeed, will wrestle successfully with even 
 more difficult and more abstruse subjects than these 
 that I have tried to elucidate for you. If this should 
 prove to be the case, and if, too, our work together 
 should serve to prepare you somewhat for such men- 
 tal activities, then our various discussions will not 
 have been wholly in vain. 
 
 In the second lecture of the course, we sought es- 
 pecially the precise field of ethics, and, to aid us in 
 our quest, we turned to the fields of philosophy and 
 sociology to see what light those subjects might 
 
 169 
 
170 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 throw upon our problem. In philosophy, we found 
 that some writers bring all problems under four 
 heads, and that one of these is designated "The 
 Problem of Worth." Under this general topic, we 
 found two sub-divisions, viz., ethics and religion. 
 In the province of sociology, also, we found that all 
 human activities may be put into four groups and 
 that one of these groups provides for moral and re- 
 ligious activities. Such an intimate association of 
 these two subjects, when viewed by leading thinkers 
 in these two fields, suggests a close and vital relation 
 between them. The same suggestion, too, is evident 
 in a couple of definitions which I have picked up at 
 different times. In one of the earlier lectures, I re- 
 ferred to Professor Hoffding of the University of 
 Copenhagen and his grouping of philosophical prob- 
 lems. He has also defined ethics as that which cre- 
 ates values, while religion conserves those values, and 
 the late Professor Pfleiderer of the University of Ber- 
 lin has said in one of his publications that "Religion 
 contains the ideal ground of morality, and morality 
 the real manifestation of religion." 1 That there is, 
 therefore, a close relation between these two fields, 
 we may not doubt. Thus far, I have not 'dwelt upon 
 religion, for our main concern has been with ethics as 
 such, nor may I now give an exhaustive treatment of 
 
 1 Hoffding, The Philosophy of Religion, Tr. Meyer, pp. 6, 
 323, 374; Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Religion, 
 Vol. I, p. 66. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 171 
 
 that subject, because of lack of time, if for no other 
 reason. None the less, there are a few things that I 
 wish to present so as to render our discussions as a 
 whole somewhat more complete. 
 
 When the topic of religion is introduced, people 
 are apt to do either of two things. They may shrug 
 their shoulders and turn their backs upon the mat- 
 ter altogether, or they may become overearnest in 
 their discussions. There is a saying in America that 
 nothing will start a quarrel more quickly than to 
 introduce the subject of politics or religion. I do 
 not, however, care to quarrel with you. You are 
 more numerous than I, and I am a stranger in a 
 strange land, but there are a few things which grow 
 rather naturally out of our various discussions dur- 
 ing these several months, and which will add not a 
 little, I suspect, to the value of our work as a whole. 
 Still further, if we approach the subject in a scien- 
 tific way, as I intend to, we shall keep cool enough, I 
 think, to avoid any unpleasant features. 
 
 In the first lecture of this series, I said that one of 
 the initial steps toward any definite science is analy- 
 sis, and if we apply analysis to what we ordinarily 
 call religion, we generally find at least four main 
 aspects. 2 There is, first, a more or less definite 
 world-view which constitutes the background for all 
 the other features. Secondly, there is an attempt 
 
 "Cf. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the 
 Moral Ideas, Vol. II, p. 584. 
 
172 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 made to solve some of the most serious problems of 
 life from the angle of that background, such prob- 
 lems, indeed, as the origin of life and human destiny. 
 Next, there is a greater or less manifestation of emo- 
 tion, according to the temperament of the individual, 
 in consequence of his satisfactory solution of his 
 problems, and lastly, there are activities of one sort 
 or another which the individual feels are expected 
 from him by reason of the relation which he assumes 
 exists between himself and his general world-view or 
 background. This last point, of course, presents us 
 at once with the field of ethics, and shows, too, how 
 that subject is knit up with religion as a whole. 
 
 I may not, as is quite obvious, deal with all these 
 matters in this last lecture, nor has it been my desire 
 to do so, but the first of these elements of religion, 
 the background or world-view, suggests the line of 
 thought that I especially wish to pursue. But when 
 we speak of world-views and backgrounds, we find 
 ourselves within the precincts of philosophy. 3 For 
 a number of years, I have been accustomed to define 
 philosophy as "the attempt to interpret one's experi- 
 ences consistently," and I have frequently said, too, 
 that "religion is an attempt to interpret one's ex- 
 periences," but, historically, there has been less em- 
 phasis on consistency in this latter field. This for- 
 8 Since delivering these lectures, I have read Cornf ord's From 
 Religion to Philosophy and have found myself in general 
 agreement with his main thesis, although his detailed analysis 
 was, of course, new to me. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 173 
 
 mula, however, as is quite evident, applies particu- 
 larly to the background. Still further, in dealing 
 with this aspect of the subject, we shall find the same 
 opposition between the individual consciousness and 
 the social consciousness that I have already dwelt 
 upon in connection with ethics. This will afford ad- 
 ditional evidence of a close relation between religion 
 as a whole and ethics, which alone gives us warrant 
 for dealing with this subject at all in this series of 
 lectures. 
 
 When we try to envisage a primitive community, 
 we generally find that it was a comparatively homo- 
 geneous group, as I have suggested in another con- 
 nection earlier in this course, and, usually, there 
 was about the same interpretation of the world en- 
 tertained by all in the group. Such a general view 
 of the world, which was, of course, rather nebulous, 
 constituted the background for the religious life of 
 the people, in so far as they could be said to have a 
 religion at all, and the serious problems of that com- 
 munity were solved with reference to it. Sooner or 
 later, however, a different interpretation originated 
 in the mind of some member of the group, and, if the 
 new view were not so extremely different from the 
 old that its originator would be expelled from the 
 community, the opposition between the new and the 
 old would gradually become less pronounced, until 
 ultimately there would be more or less of a coales- 
 cence of the old and new into an old-new or new-old 
 
174 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 world-view which would thus be a substitute back- 
 ground for the religious life of the entire community. 4 
 Still later, some other new view might be developed 
 and pass through a similar process of modification 
 to coalescence with the modified old view, and thus 
 become a new substitute background for the slowly 
 developing religious life of the community. And such 
 a process as this, all too hastily sketched, has gone 
 on in various communities throughout the world and 
 in various periods of the world's history. 
 
 Perhaps the best illustrations of this process are 
 to be found in the changing conditions among the 
 Greeks and in the variations evident throughout Eu- 
 ropean history. In the early days among the Greeks, 
 with which you are all more or less familiar, there 
 
 4 The tendency of many writers to stress the oneness of 
 thought and feeling in a primitive community I can not al- 
 together accept. If we apply the principle of the Normal 
 Curve to any early group, we would expect a half or more 
 representing the majority view, but a quarter or less looking 
 backward to what had been approved at an earlier time, while 
 another quarter or less would be at least open-minded, to use 
 a modern phrase, toward things that were new. The probable 
 physiological development of the individuals in such a com- 
 munity would point toward this conclusion. It is highly im- 
 probable that there were no dull, sluggish, more or less ape-like 
 individuals in the primitive community, and equally improb- 
 able that there were none who varied physiologically, and in 
 particular neurologically, in the direction of a higher type. 
 This principle is being applied to school children to-day with 
 surprisingly rich results. We should not fail to use it in our 
 attempt to understand primitive society. Cf. the references 
 indicating variation on page 67. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 175 
 
 were the gods who were assumed to live on Mt. 
 Olympus, and the Greeks' thought with reference to 
 them was knit up with a particular interpretation 
 of the world. As the centuries passed, however, the 
 views entertained with reference to the world and the 
 deities changed very considerably. ^Eschylus, we 
 find, maintained that the supreme deity no longer 
 lived on Olympus. In this poet's thought, deity had 
 grown until he was conceived of as ruling the entire 
 world. 5 Indeed, the deity filled the heaven of heav- 
 ens and merely allowed himself to be called Zeus. 
 Still later, there were the wide-ranging views of Plato 
 and Aristotle, who first developed the conception of 
 an immaterial deity. 6 There was a vast difference 
 between the earlier and the later views, but the old 
 views entertained by the early religionists became 
 modified somewhat, while the later philosophic 
 thought made at least some provision for the earlier 
 religious life. Later still, the world-view known as 
 neo-Platonism, which developed in the third and 
 fourth centuries A. D., took up into itself most of 
 the best elements worked out by the earlier Greeks 
 and gradually became the background or framework 
 for the religion which gained the dominance in the 
 European world. Still further, in the period of the 
 Renaissance and in so-called modern times, there have 
 been many new world-views developed which have been 
 
 6 Botsford, A History of Greece, p. 160. 
 8 Moore, History of Religions, p. 501. 
 
176 Tsvtig Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 used by their authors, or by others more interested in 
 this phase of the problem, as substitutes for the older 
 background of the religious life. And at the present 
 day, there is not a little confusion of thought in con- 
 sequence of the variety of world-views and the modi- 
 fications taking place, which aim, at least some of 
 them do, at securing a consistent background for the 
 religious life. But I must not follow out this line of 
 thought any farther. 
 
 It must be evident to all, however, that the con- 
 ception of deity, as already hinted, is closely bound 
 up with a world-view. Here, too, throughout the 
 past, there has been a great variety of thinking, and 
 not a little opposition, too, has been evident between 
 the individual consciousness and the social conscious- 
 ness. Generally, in this field, men's minds have tend- 
 ed in two opposite directions. They have either 
 thought of deity in a very general way, as widely ex- 
 tended, pure being, unlimited, eternal, all powerful, 
 vast, filling the entire world, and in various other 
 similar ways, or they have tended to particularize 
 him and to conceive of him under the form of man. 
 In primitive times, this was very frequent and has 
 come to be known as anthropomorphism, i.e., con- 
 ceiving deity according to human form. This ten- 
 dency, however, has not been confined to the earliest 
 times, nor to any one part of the world, for we find 
 it among the Greeks, among the Jews, among the 
 Buddhists, and even here among yourselves. In fact, 
 
Implications and Retrospect 177 
 
 you have both tendencies in evidence here. Your 
 great deity is Heaven, stretching far and wide, 
 sometimes regarded in an impersonal way and some- 
 times in a personal way. But it was also customary 
 in the days of the Empire to conceive of each emperor 
 of the reigning dynasty as taking a place beside 
 Heaven and Earth when they had ceased to rule here. 
 Still further, no longer ago than in 1906, you ele- 
 vated your great ethical teacher, Confucius, to a 
 place of equality with Heaven and Earth. 7 Here, 
 then, you have both of these tendencies illustrated 
 in connection with your own State religion. I may 
 add, too, that this particularizing tendency comes 
 closest to our work in the field of ethics. 
 
 But let us view the matter from yet another angle. 
 Not infrequently in the past there has been a great 
 deal of emphasis within religious circles upon the 
 knowledge which the various worshipers possessed 
 of deity. "We know, we know," has been the oft- 
 recurring burden of their thought. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, it would seem as if they felt that they had de- 
 scribed a circle about their deity and consequently 
 knew him through and through. Far better is it, as 
 it seems to me, to use the figure of the parabola. 
 This curve sweeps down from the infinite stretches 
 of space, and then sweeps away again into equally 
 unknown regions. Only a part of this curve comes 
 within the range of our experience. We know deity 
 
 1 Moore, History of Religions, pp. 22-24. 
 
178 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 in part, perhaps we may say, but there is a great 
 deal more that is beyond our ken. Or, to put the 
 thought in still another form, we might say that men 
 have been accustomed to put into their concept of 
 deity the best that has been worked out in human 
 life, and they still do the same thing, but whereas in 
 the past that concept has all too frequently been as- 
 sumed to be complete, we would do better to-day to 
 make provision for a plus something, which the later, 
 fuller experiences of the race might more nearly de- 
 termine. 
 
 I suspect, however, that at this point some of you 
 notice a similarity between what I have just said 
 about the nature of a concept of deity and what I 
 have said previously about the character of an ethi- 
 cal ideal. In our earlier work, I said that we form 
 our ethical ideal by putting into our mental con- 
 struct the various elements which make for social 
 welfare, and here I have indicated that our concept 
 of deity consists of the best wrought out in human 
 life. These two statements mean practically the 
 same on the content side, for what is most useful to 
 social welfare may well be considered as the best 
 kinds of activities that have been developed through- 
 out the past. Possibly you say that this likeness is 
 due to the fact that the same thinker has been busy 
 with both fields of thought. This may be a sufficient 
 explanation, but I am inclined to think that there is 
 something more vital involved. But be that as it 
 
Implications and Retrospect 179 
 
 may, another problem with reference to deity con- 
 fronts us immediately, viz., as to whether there is 
 any reality corresponding to the concept of deity, be 
 that concept never more perfect than you or I might 
 construct it. Among the ancient Greeks, there was 
 the idea of a mermaid, which implied a creature with 
 the head and face of a human being, but the body of 
 a fish. They also easily conceived of a centaur 
 which meant a creature with the body of a horse, but 
 the head and shoulders of a man. But was there a 
 real creature corresponding, actually existing in the 
 external world? This, in its main features, is the 
 problem with which the philosopher of Konigsberg, 
 Immanuel Kant, wrestled long and valiantly. I may 
 not take you into all the mazes of his thought, but 
 one or two of his conclusions are right in point. 
 
 Kant maintained that we never obtain any knowl- 
 edge of Deity, and he was able to convince himself 
 of the truth of this position by reason of his very 
 precise definition of knowledge. None the less, he 
 said that there are multitudes of people who are 
 ready to stake their lives upon the reality of God's 
 existence, and this, he declared, is far better than 
 mere knowledge. Again he said, "I may not say that 
 it is morally certain that God exists," but "I may 
 say that I am morally certain that God exists." 8 
 These two statements, at first glance, do not seem 
 very far apart, but upon careful analysis we find 
 8 Critique of Pure Reason, Tr. Miiller, p. 665. 
 
180 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 that they are fundamentally different. There is a 
 difference here like that which I pointed out in an 
 earlier lecture between inductive and deductive think- 
 ing. As I indicated then, inductive thinking yields 
 varying degrees of subjective assurance, while deduc- 
 tive gives an apparent absoluteness or finality to our 
 thought. So with the philosopher Kant, in the state- 
 ments just quoted, there is an evident leaning toward 
 induction. To assert that God exists is to imply a 
 demonstration, which Kant had previously shown 
 was impossible, but he felt that he might claim a cer- 
 tain amount of subjective assurance with reference to 
 such existence. 
 
 But let us go a step farther with the problem. 
 Could Deity be less than humanity? What I mean 
 is this: Could there be a real Deity for the human 
 race who lacked such qualities as the race has slowly 
 wrought out and has come to cherish? Just to raise 
 the question is sufficient to elicit a denial. It might 
 be argued, however, that Deity is so far on beyond 
 humanity, has such superlative and transcendent 
 qualities and virtues in Himself that the best wrought 
 out in the history of the race is as nothing in com- 
 parison. The great leader of the Roman Church, 
 Augustine, was wont to say that "all the virtues of 
 the heathen are but splendid vices." In the same 
 way we might assume that Deity is so superior to 
 humanity, so different, that the best concept which 
 the human mind can construct upon the basis of race 
 
Implications and Retrospect 181 
 
 experience is totally inadequate. But again I raise 
 the question, Could a Being of such a sort be Deity 
 for the human race? Not infrequently in philosoph- 
 ical circles men argue as to whether we could ever 
 know another world or universe which had no rela- 
 tion whatever to the one in which we live. 9 The con- 
 clusion reached has generally been a negative one. In 
 the same way I maintain that a Deity to be such for 
 humanity must have in Himself the qualities and vir- 
 tues men have developed and have come to value, no 
 matter what additional attributes, to fill out the 
 plus something, He might also possess. 
 
 But what is the upshot of such a discussion? Just 
 this. I have indicated that there is a close relation 
 between the ethical ideal which we form for our- 
 selves and our concept of Deity, and if the discus- 
 sion which I have just presented has any real force, 
 and I think that it has, then whether we take the po- 
 sition of the religious man and seek to realize in our- 
 selves such qualities as we conceive of in Deity, or 
 whether we confine our attention to the ethical ideal, 
 as some are inclined to do, and realize that to the 
 fullest extent, we shall in either case be realizing 
 Deity, and the only kind of Deity, too, that could be 
 such for us. More than this, I have no time for at 
 present. 
 
 Another rather important line of thought for us 
 to consider in this connection is concerned with the 
 
 •Cf. Marvin, An Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 270, 410. 
 
188 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethic t 
 
 conservation of values. I quoted, earlier in the hour, 
 from Hoffding to the effect that ethics creates values, 
 while religion conserves those values, and the question 
 naturally arises as to how completely values may be 
 conserved. 
 
 There is the ideal with which we have been deal- 
 ing during these several weeks, and there is the prob- 
 lem of realizing it as I discussed the matter at the 
 last hour. But even though we might realize the ideal 
 rather fully, how much of a permanent possession is 
 it likely to be? Will the conservation of its values 
 coincide simply with the span of our brief lifetime? 
 In answer to such a question it is sometimes said that 
 the values wrought out by one generation will be 
 taken up by the next and so on indefinitely. We may 
 believe, therefore, in a kind of race immortality, as 
 it is called. But what about the conservation or 
 preservation of values, in case our entire solar sys- 
 tem should be resolved back into its original form? 
 At this point, we touch again the problem of cos- 
 mic values to which I called your attention several 
 weeks ago. If when the entire cycle, as it is called, is 
 complete, there should be nothing left over, nothing 
 permanent as a result, what could we say about 
 the value of the entire process ? Obviously, I can not 
 deal with this problem adequately at this time. There 
 are, however, two lines of argument that I wish to 
 present briefly. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 183 
 
 We may approach this problem from the angle of 
 some of the most recent results in the field of phys- 
 ical-chemistry. Let us assume for the moment, if you 
 will, that there was an original cosmic energy, which 
 we will not try to define very rigidly, and let us as- 
 sume, further, that there was a kind of differentiation 
 or variation taking place in it. One of the results 
 of that variation we will call matter, as that term is 
 generally used, and we will say that another varia- 
 tion is what we ordinarily call organic matter. That 
 there is a difference between these two is very evident, 
 but what that difference is we may not say with cer- 
 tainty at present. Still further, let us assume that 
 the life cycle of any bit of the organic matter re- 
 sults in the freeing of what we might call a finer 
 energy from its contact with its coarser accompani- 
 ment. What remains is merely matter, and that, ac- 
 cording to very recent physical discoveries, may per- 
 haps be resolved back into the original coarse energy 
 to undergo the process of variation again, to become 
 organic matter and the finer energy be freed again, 
 and so on, until we may at least think of the entire 
 original coarse energy being completely transformed 
 into the finer energy. 10 There are difficulties with 
 such a view, but I may not deal with them now. 
 
 "For a view which has some elements in common with this 
 which I have sketched, Cf. Bixby, After Death— What? in 
 Harper's Magazine, Vol. CXXVIII, p. 945. 
 
184 Tsing Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 There is, also, a likeness between this view and one 
 worked out by the philosopher Schelling about a cen- 
 tury ago. 
 
 According to Schelling, the great task that any 
 philosopher faces is this : If he should start with the 
 assumption that there was at first nothing but mat- 
 ter in the universe, how could he explain the presence 
 of spirit later? Or, if he should begin with the view 
 that originally there was nothing but spirit, how 
 could he explain the existence of matter at a later 
 time more or less closely correlated with it? Schil- 
 ling's own solution of the puzzle was to assume that 
 originally there was only slumbering spirit, not real 
 matter and not real spirit, but that gradually this al- 
 most nameless something began to awake, and it is 
 awake to the extent that the race is conscious to-day, 
 and the goal of the process is for the entire universe 
 to become awake. There would, therefore, no longer 
 be even the semblance of matter in the universe, but 
 all would be spirit. 11 Now, as I said, there are de- 
 cided resemblances between this outline of Schelling's 
 thought and the other view that I have so briefly 
 sketched, but in that sketch I have tried to keep 
 close to some of the newer, but apparently assured 
 results of scientific investigations. I may not, how- 
 
 11 Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, pp. 536-537, 544, 
 560; Cf. Hdffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, pp. 
 165-166. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 185 
 
 ever, dwell longer upon this suggestive treatment of 
 our problem. 
 
 The other suggestion that I wish to give grows 
 out of the problem of the rationality of the universe. 
 If there be no conservation of values in this broad 
 sense which we are now considering, then it would 
 seem as if the universe were irrational at the core, but 
 as a matter of fact the universe does not seem to be 
 wholly irrational. It is good logic to say that the 
 universe is either rational or irrational, and if the 
 universe, in its inmost nature, were irrational, what 
 could you and I do about it? Yesterday might be 
 the day after to-morrow, or the North Pole might be 
 parallel with the Equator, or various other absurdi- 
 ties might be true. But within the limits of our ex- 
 perience the universe does not seem to be entirely ir- 
 rational. 
 
 We must consider at this point, however, the vari- 
 ous meanings of the term rational. There are at 
 least three which we can distinguish. 12 Rational may 
 signify an ordered whole. When we look out upon 
 the world, we find not a little that is suggestive of 
 a cosmos rather than a chaos. The scientist assumes 
 that this is true throughout, although this assump- 
 tion runs far beyond our actual experience. It is a 
 bit of scientific faith that is often referred to. But 
 within the limits of our experience there certainly 
 
 13 Cf. Cooley, The Principles of Science, pp. 203-217. 
 
186 Tsing Hwa Lectures on Ethics 
 
 seems to be a real order. One of the best illustra- 
 tions of this is furnished by the discovery of the 
 planet Neptune. In 1845 and 1846 respectively, the 
 astronomer Adams, an Englishman, and Leverrier, a 
 Frenchman, reached the conclusion independently 
 that the irregularities in the movements of the planet 
 Uranus could not be explained except upon the hy- 
 pothesis that there was another planet belonging to 
 the system which no one had ever yet seen. 13 Upon 
 the basis of nice mathematical calculations, they then 
 turned their telescopes toward a certain part of the 
 heavens and found the new planet. And not merely 
 once did they find it, which might have been an acci- 
 dent, but again and again, and they also instructed 
 others how to find it. Certainly there would seem to 
 be order in this part of the universe at least. 
 
 But rational may also mean the possession of 
 reasoning powers. We may not be quite so am- 
 bitious as the ancients were who assumed a kind of 
 reason which they thought permeated the entire 
 universe and of which each individual possessed a 
 portion, but we may say that there is reason of a 
 certain sort in the universe, since we ourselves are a 
 part of the universe and we do reason at least a little 
 sometimes. To that extent, beyond any question, the 
 universe is rational. 
 
 Still another interpretation of this term, when ap- 
 plied to the universe, is that there is meaning of some 
 "Newcomb, Popular Astronomy, pp. 367-368. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 187 
 
 sort in the universe rtiUu^, i»* . udM .mats of our 
 
 experience, and this leads us to expect other mean- 
 ings which are at present beyond our experience. 
 This significance lies very near the first one. The 
 scientist regards the universe as a fairly consistent 
 series of coexistences and sequences. When we say 
 that the universe is rational in the sense of an or- 
 dered whole, it is more the static, the coexistential 
 aspect that is at the front, but when we say that it 
 has meaning, it is more the dynamic, the sequential 
 aspect with which we have to deal. There are hap- 
 penings of many sorts, and from our observation of 
 them we gather their meaning, that is, we understand 
 within certain limits why they have occurred as they 
 have and what results to expect. 
 
 Now the assumption of rationality in this last 
 sense has been rather general in the race. Suppose 
 every single individual in the primitive world had 
 gone on the assumption that there was no meaning 
 in the world. Is it likely that such an attitude of 
 mind would have yielded the accumulation of knowl- 
 edge which we possess to-day? If every individual 
 from the earliest times to the present had actually 
 thought that no explanation of events could possibly 
 be given, from what source could knowledge have 
 come? Of course, there might have been some acci- 
 dental meanings obtained, as undoubtedly there were, 
 but even these would have been of but little value to 
 people who positively discounted any large, rich 
 
188 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 meaning in the world by their general attitude. One 
 of the best cases in point is that of the so-called Skep- 
 tics among the Greeks. They maintained that it is ab- 
 solutely impossible to obtain any knowledge of the 
 world, and one of the clearest evidences of their 
 skepticism is their failure to make any addition to 
 the store of human knowledge. Why should they have 
 added anything, when they assumed that knowledge 
 was impossible? The best refutation of their skep- 
 ticism, however, is the vast accumulation of what we 
 call knowledge from their day until the present. 
 
 Here, then, are the several connotations of the 
 term rational, and it is this last one which is most 
 important for our particular discussion. It is this 
 one, too, which presents us with two alternative po- 
 sitions. It may be that values do not persist beyond 
 the limits of an individual's own lifetime, or if they 
 persist in the race, then not beyond the dissolution 
 of our solar system. This would seem to make the 
 universe irrational, in the sense of having no real 
 meaning, in spite of a superficial rationality. But 
 the accumulation of meanings which the centuries 
 have brought makes it difficult to accept such a 
 reductio ad abswdwm. The growing volume of 
 meanings would seem to point toward still other 
 richer meanings, indeed, toward a universe full of 
 meaning rather than toward a meaningless one. The 
 former position tends to cut the nerve of hope and 
 to paralyze all effort, while the latter is more of a 
 
Implications and Retrospect 189 
 
 live wire. To assume that there is no meaning natur- 
 ally results in our finding none, while to assume that 
 there is meaning, even though we may not know what 
 the meaning is, nerves us to supreme effort. On the 
 one hand, we would stand facing a blank wall, while 
 on the other we would find ourselves aligned with the 
 race as it has struggled and achieved. I may not, 
 however, dwell longer upon these themes. 
 
 At this point, I wish to give a brief resume of our 
 course as a whole. Several years ago, I heard of a 
 rather prominent man who gave a lecture before a 
 thousand or fifteen hundred young women in one of 
 the large women's colleges in America. At the end of 
 his address, as the story goes, he began and gave the 
 entire lecture over again, evidently fascinated by his 
 audience. I do not know that I could blame him very 
 much, nor do I hesitate to admit that I, too, have 
 been more or less fascinated by my audience here. 
 But let me hasten to dispel any apprehensions you 
 may feel. I do not intend to repeat the entire course 
 in the few minutes that remain. It is quite obvious 
 that that would be impossible. None the less, I do 
 want to bring together into immediate relation some 
 of the most important points which I have been de- 
 veloping, so that you may have a kind of bird's-eye 
 view of the entire series. 
 
 In the first lecture, when we were getting somewhat 
 
190 Tsmg Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 acquainted with one another, I called your attention 
 to the distinction between autonomous and heteron- 
 omous ethics and said that my chief emphasis would 
 be upon the former, and I think that I have fairly 
 well fulfilled my promise. We also saw in the same 
 lecture somewhat of the nature of science, and I in- 
 dicated that the type of ethics that I was planning 
 to present would have much in common with the sci- 
 entific spirit at least. Furthermore, I suggested that 
 I intended to make use of material from the fields 
 of both philosophy and sociology. In the second 
 lecture, we sought the precise field of ethics and 
 found that fundamentally the subject is concerned 
 with altruistic activities. I also gave a definition of 
 ethics to the effect that it deals with those activities 
 which are consciously directed toward social welfare. 
 We saw, too, that the motive of conduct must be 
 considered, if we are to remain true to the historical 
 development of the subject. We then passed to a 
 consideration in the third lecture of twofold moral- 
 ity. To appreciate this, it became necessary to 
 analyze a community of four or five thousand peo- 
 ple, and to consider, also, the opposition between the 
 individual consciousness and the social consciousness. 
 WTien this preliminary work was completed, it be- 
 came evident that the topic referred to the older, 
 more traditional morality in a community, and a 
 newer sort due to the reflection of some individual or 
 small group of individuals within the larger whole. 
 
Implications and Retrospect 191 
 
 Such a divergence from the accepted views always in- 
 volves an element of danger, but not infrequently 
 those who take the step become pioneers in the field 
 of morality. In the fourth lecture, we gave atten- 
 tion to the problem of progress. This, we saw, was 
 threefold. There was cosmic progress, which we 
 only glanced at, and social and moral progress. In 
 social progress, we learned that we might use com- 
 plexity as a test of higher in contrast with lower 
 planes of civilization, just as the biologist uses such 
 a test in his special field. Then, too, the growing 
 valuation of human life and social control we found 
 constitute especially important criteria. As to moral 
 progress, we saw that practically every step toward 
 what we call social progress was originally a moral 
 issue, and that we have there but a further illustra- 
 tion of the opposition between the individual con- 
 sciousness and the social consciousness. 
 
 When we had gained such a survey of the field as 
 these lectures afforded, we passed, in the fifth and 
 sixth, to a consideration of the ethical ideal as such, 
 first on its formal side, and then in regard to its 
 content. We dealt, somewhat in detail, with the three 
 great ideals of the Greeks. There was the ideal of a 
 life of pleasure on the one hand and a life of reason 
 set over against it. The middle course of a reason- 
 controlled life, developed by Plato and Aristotle, 
 seemed by far the best. This seemed to receive con- 
 firmation, also, from the sociologist's emphasis upon 
 
198 Ts'vng Hua Lectures on Ethics 
 
 the rationally conscientious life. With reference 
 to the content of the ideal, I suggested such a list of 
 virtues as we get from Aristotle, the teaching of the 
 Hebrews, the reflections of the Indian sages, and 
 the moral precepts of your own great men, but 
 all elements, I insisted, were to be tested by the prin- 
 ciple of the social welfare on the whole and in the 
 long run. Then in the lecture at the last hour, we 
 considered the realization of the ideal, and saw some 
 of the vagueness that attaches to the thought of an 
 ideal environment and some of the difficulties which 
 might interfere with our program in our actual en- 
 vironment. None the less, we should not permit our- 
 selves to become discouraged overmuch, since, as I 
 indicated, the best possible under the circumstances 
 would be a fair estimate of what the ideal demands 
 from us. Finally, in the first part of the hour to- 
 day, I have tried, all too briefly, to indicate some of 
 the larger reaches of thought which our various dis- 
 cussions imply. Science holds itself within rather 
 narrow limits, and ethics, as a science, also remains 
 within fairly determinable boundaries, but just as 
 other sciences lead out into the wider fields of phil- 
 osophy and metaphysics, so ethics has far-reaching 
 implications. To deal with these adequately, how- 
 ever, would require much more time than we have at 
 our disposal, and the body of thought would consti- 
 tute an altogether different kind of course. 
 
 And now we are through. I wish, however, to ex- 
 
Implications and Retrospect 193 
 
 press to you my appreciation of your good at- 
 tendance, which, as I understand, was required, and 
 to say that I hope that some of the discussions may 
 linger with you for many a day, and be of real ser- 
 vice to you in your individual lives. 
 
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