where further consideration can be reason ably expected, for the present, to throw new light on the situation. It forbids me to play Hamlet's part. It requires me, in a loyal spirit and in the light of all that I now know, to choose and to proceed to action, not as one who believes himself omniscient, but as one who knows that the only way to be loyal is to act loyally, however ignorantly one has to act. Otherwise stated, the case is this. I hesi tate at the critical moment between conflicting causes. For the sake of loyalty to loyalty, which one of two conflicting special causes shall I henceforth undertake to serve? This is my question. If I knew what is to be the outcome, I could at once easily choose. I am ignorant of the outcome. In so far I indeed cannot tell which to choose. But in one respect I am, nevertheless, already com mitted. I have already undertaken to be loyal to loyalty. In so far, then, I already have my cause. If so, however, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this my highest cause commands. Now, what does this my highest cause, loyalty to loyalty, command? It commands simply but im peratively that, since I must serve, and since, at this critical moment, my only service must take the form of a choice between loyalties, I shall choose, even in my ignorance, what form my service is henceforth to take. The point where I am to make this choice is determined by the obvious fact that, after a certain waiting to find out whatever I can find out, I always reach the moment when further indecision would of itself constitute a sort of decision, — a decision, namely, to do nothing, and so not to serve at all. Such a decision to do nothing, my loyalty to loyalty forbids; and therefore my principle clearly says to me after a fair consideration of the case: Decide, knowingly if you can, ignorantly if you must, but in any case decide, and have no fear.
The duty of decisiveness as to one's loyalty is thus founded upon considerations analogous to those which Prof essor James has emphasized, in speaking of certain problems about belief in his justly famous essay on the Will to Believe. As soon as further indecision would itself practically amount to a decision to do nothing, — and so would mean a failure to be loyal to loyalty, — then at once decide. This is the only right act. If you cannot decide knowingly, put your own personal will into the matter, and thereupon decide ignorantly. For ignorant service, which still knows itself as a willing attempt to serve the cause of universal loyalty, is better than a knowing refusal to undertake any service whatever. The duty to decide is, in such cases, just that upon which our principle insists.
Decision, however, is meaningless unless it is to be followed up by persistently active loyalty. Having surrendered the self to the chosen special cause, loyalty, precisely as loyalty to loyalty, forbids you to destroy the unity of your own purposes, and to set the model of disloyalty before your fellows, by turning back from the cause once chosen, unless indeed later growth in knowledge makes mani fest that further service of that special cause would henceforth involve unquestionable disloyalty to universal loyalty. Fidelity to the cause once chosen is as obvious an aspect of a thorough devotion of the self to the cause of universal loyalty, as is decisiveness.
Only a growth in knowledge which makes it evident that the special cause once chosen is an unworthy cause, disloyal to universal loyalty, -only such a growth in knowledge can absolve from fidelity to the cause once chosen. In brief, the choice of a special personal cause is a sort of ethical marriage to this cause, with the exception that the duty to choose some personal cause is a duty for everybody, while marriage is not everybody's duty. The marriage to your cause is not to be dissolved unless it becomes unquestionably evident that the con tinuance of this marriage involves positive unfaithfulness to the cause of universal loyalty. But like any other marriage, the marriage of each self to its chosen personal cause is made in ignorance of the consequences. Decide, then, in the critical case, and, "forsaking all others, cleave to your own cause." Thus only can you be loyal to loyalty.
If you once view the matter in this way, you will not suppose that our principle would leave either the future General Lee or our sup posed young professional woman without guid ance. It would say: Look first at the whole situation. Consider it carefully. See, if pos sible, whether you can predict the consequences to the general loyalty which your act will in volve. If, after such consideration, you still remain ignorant of decisive facts, then look to your highest loyalty; look steadfastly at the cause of universal loyalty itself. Remember how the loyal have always borne themselves. Then, with your eyes and your voice put as completely as may be at the service of that cause, arouse all the loyal interests of your own self, just as they now are, to their fullest vigor; and hereupon firmly and freely decide. Hence forth, with all your mind and soul and strength belong, fearlessly and faithfully, to the chosen personal cause until the issue is decided, or until you positively know that this cause can no longer be served without disloyalty. So act, and you are morally right.
Now, that is how Lee acted. And that, too, is how all the loyal of our own Northern armies acted. And to-day we know how there was indeed loyalty to loyalty upon both sides, and how all those thus loyal actually served the one cause of the now united nation. They loyally shed their blood, North and South, that we might be free from their burden of hatred and of horror. Precisely so should the young woman of our ideal instance choose. It is utterly vain for another to tell her which she ought to choose, — her profession or her family. But it would be equally vain, and an insult to loyalty, lightly to say to her: Do as you please. One can say to her: Either of these lives, — the life of the successful servant of a profession, or the life of the devoted sister or aunt, — either, if loyally lived, is indeed a whole life. Nobody ought to ask for a more blessed lot than is either of these lives, — how ever obscure the household drudgery of the one may be, however hard beset by cares the worldly success of the other may prove, or however toilsome either of them in prospect is, so long as either is faithfully lived out in full devotion. For nobody has anything better than loyalty, or can get anything better. But one of them alone can you live. No mortal knows which is the better for your world. With all your heart, in the name of universal loyalty, choose. And then be faithful to the choice. So shall it be morally well with you.
Now, if this view of the application of our precept is right, you see how our principle is just to that mysterious and personal aspect of conscience upon which common sense insists. Such a loyal choice as I have described de mands, of course, one's will, — one's conscious decisiveness. It also calls out all of one's personal and more or less unconsciously pres ent instincts, interests, affections, one's socially formed habits, and whatever else is woven into the unity of each individual self. Loyalty, as we have all along seen, is a willing devotion. Since it is willing, it involves conscious choice. Since it is devotion, it involves all the mysterv of finding out that some cause awakens us, fascinates us, reverberates through our whole being, possesses us. It is a fact that critical decisions as to the direction of our loyalty can be determined by our own choice. It is also a fact that loyalty involves more than mere conscious choice. It involves that response of our entire nature, conscious and unconscious, which makes loyalty so precious. Now, this response of the whole nature of the self, when the result is a moral decision, is what common sense has in mind when it views our moral de cisions as due to our conscience, but our con science as a mysterious higher or deeper self. As a fact, the conscience is the ideal of the self, coming to consciousness as a present com mand. It says, Be loyal. If one asks, Loyal to what? the conscience, awakened by our whole personal response to the need of man kind replies, Be loyal to loyalty. If, hereupon, various loyalties seem to conflict, the conscience says: Decide. If one asks, How decide? conscience further urges, Decide as /, your conscience, the ideal expression of your whole personal nature, conscious and unconscious, find best. If one persists, But you and I may be wrong, the last word of conscience is, We are fallible, but we can be decisive and faith ful; and this is loyalty.
SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR RELATION TO LOYALTY LECTURE V SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR RELATION TO LOYALTY IN the philosophy of loyalty, whose general statement has been contained in the fore going lectures, I have made an effort to recon cile the conception of loyalty with that of a rational and moral individualism. To every ethical individualist I have said: In loyalty alone is the fulfilment of the reasonable pur poses of your individualism. If you want true freedom, seek it in loyalty. If you want j self-expression, spirituality, moral autonomy, loyalty alone can give you these goods. But equally I have insisted upon interpreting loyalty in terms that emphasize the significance of the individual choice of that personal cause to which one is to be loyal. This evening, as I approach the application of our philosophy of loyalty to some well-known American problems, it is important for us to bear in mind from the outset this synthesis of individualism and loyalty which constitutes our whole ethical doctrine.
I I The traditional view of loyalty has associated the term, in the minds of most of you, with moral situations in which some external social power predetermines for the individual, with out his consent, all the causes to which he ought to be loyal. Loyalty so conceived ap pears to be opposed to individual liberty. But in our philosophy of loyalty there is only one cause which is rationally and absolutely determined for the individual as the right cause for him as for everybody, — this is the general cause defined by the phrase loyalty to loyalty. The way in which any one man is to show his loyalty to loyalty is, however, in our phi losophy of loyalty, something which varies end lessly with the individual, and which can never be precisely defined except by and through his personal consent. I can be loyal to loyalty only in my own fashion, and by serving my own special personal system of causes. How wide a range of moral freedom of conscience this fact gives me, we began at the last time to see. In order to make that fact still clearer, let me sum up our moral code afresh, and in another order than the one used at the last time.
As our philosophy of loyalty states the case, the moral law is: (1) be loyal; (2) to that end have a special cause or a system of causes which shall constitute your personal object of loyalty, your business in life; (3) choose this cause, in the first place, for your self, but decisively, and so far as the general principle of loyalty permits, remain faithful to this chosen cause, until the work that you can do for it is done; and (4) the general principle of loyalty to which all special choices of one's cause are subject, is the principle: Be loyal to loyalty, that is, do what you can to produce a maximum of the devoted ser vice of causes, a maximum of fidelity, and of selves that choose and serve fitting objects of loyalty.
loyalty.
From the point of view of this statement of the moral law, we are all in the wrong in case we have no cause whatever to which we are loyal. If you are an individualist in the sense that you are loyal to nothing, you are certainly false to your duty. Furthermore, in order that you should be loyal at all, the cause to which you are loyal must involve the union of various persons by means of some social tie, which has in some respects an impersonal or superindividual character, as well as a distinct personal interest for each of the persons con cerned.
On the other hand, my statement of the moral principle gives to us all an extremely limited right to judge what the causes are to which any one of our neighbors ought to devote himself. Having defined loyalty as I have done as a devotion to a cause, outside the pri vate self, and yet chosen by this individual self as his cause; having pointed out the general nature which such a cause must possess in order to be worthy, — namely, having shown that it must involve the mentioned union of personal and impersonal interests; having, furthermore, asserted that all rightly chosen loyalty is guided by the intent not to enter into any unnecessary destruction of the loyalty of others, but is inspired by loyalty to loyalty, and so seeks, as best the loyal individual can, to further loyalty as a common good for all mankind, — having said so much, I must, from my point of view, leave to the individual the decision as to the choice of the cause or causes to which he is loyal, subject only to these mentioned conditions. I have very little right to judge, except by the most unmistakable expression of my fellow's purpose, whether he is actually loyal, in the sense of my definition, or not.
I may say of a given person that I do not understand to what cause he is loyal. But I can assert that he is disloyal only when I know what cause it is to which he has committed himself, and what it is that he has done to be false to his chosen fidelity. Or again, I can judge that he lacks loyalty if he makes it per fectly evident by his acts or by his own confessions that he has chosen no cause at all. If he is unquestionably loyal to something, to his country or to his profession or to his family, I may criticise his expression of loyalty, in so far as I clearly see that it involves him in unnecessary assault upon the loyalty of others, or upon their means to be loyal. Thus, all unnecessary personal aggression upon what we commonly call the rights of other individuals are excluded by my formula, simply because in case I deprive my fellow of his property, his life, or his physical integrity, I take away from him the only means whereby he can ex press in a practical way whatever loyalty he has. Hence such aggression, unless necessary, involves disloyalty to the general loyalty of mankind, is a crime against humanity at large, and is inconsistent with any form of loyalty. Such is the range of judgment that we have a right to use in our moral estimates of other people. The range thus indicated is, as I have insisted, large enough to enable us to define all rationally defensible special prin ciples regarding right and wrong acts. Murder, lying, evil speaking, unkindness, are from this point of view simply forms of dis loyalty.
But my right to judge the choices of my fellow is thus very sharply limited. I cannot say that he is disloyal because his personal cause is not my cause, or because I have no sympathy with the objects to which he devotes himself. I have no right to call him disloyal because I should find that if I were to do what he does, I should indeed be disloyal to causes that I accept. I may not judge a man to be without an object of loyalty merely because I do not understand what the object is with which he busies himself. I may regard his cause as too narrow, if I clearly see that he could do better service than he does to the cause of universal loyalty. But when I ob serve how much even the plainest and humblest of the loyal sometimes unconsciously do to help others to profit by the contagion of their own loyalty, by the example of their faithfulness, I must be cautious about judging another man's cause to be too narrow. You cannot easily set limits to the occupations that the sin cere choice of somebody will make expressions of genuine loyalty. The loyal individual may live largely alone; or mainly in company. His life may be spent in the office or in the study or in the workshop or in the field; in arctic exploration, in philanthropy, in a laboratory. And yet the true form and spirit of loyalty, and of loyalty to loyalty, when once you get an actual understanding of the purposes of the self that is in question, is universal and un mistakable.
I hesitate, therefore, to decide for another person even such a question as the way in which his most natural and obvious opportunities for loyalty shall be used. It is true that nature furnishes to us all opportunities for loyalty which it seems absurd to neglect. Charity, as they say, begins at home. Still more obvi ously does loyalty naturally begin at home. People who wholly neglect their natural family ties often thereby make probable that they are disloyal people. Yet the well-known word about hating father and mother in the service of a universal cause paradoxically states a possibility to which the history of the early Christian martyrs more than once gave an actual embodiment. If the martyr might break loose from all family ties in his loyal ser vice of his faith, one cannot attempt to deter mine for another person at just what point the neglect of a naturally present opportunity for loyalty becomes an inevitable incident of the choice of loyalty that one has made. Nature, after all, furnishes us merely our opportuni ties to be loyal. Some of these must be used. None of them may be so ignored that thereby we deliberately increase the disloyalty of mankind. But the individual retains the inalienable duty, which nobody, not even his most pious critical neighbor, can either perform or wholly judge for him, — the duty to decide wherein his own loyalty lies. Yet the duty to be loyal to loyalty is absolutely universal and rigid.
As we also saw at the last time, since fidelity and loyalty are indeed inseparable, the break ing of the once plighted faith is always a disloyal act, unless the discovery that the original undertaking involves one in disloyalty to the general cause of loyalty requires the change. Thus, indeed, the once awakened and so far loyal member of the robber band would be bound by his newly discovered loyalty to hu manity in general, to break his oath to the band. But even in such a case, he would still owe to his comrades of the former service a kind of fidelity which he would not have owed had he never been a member of the band. His duty to his former comrades would change through his new insight. But he could never ignore his former loyalty, and would never be absolved from the peculiar obligation to his former comrades, — the obligation to help them all to a higher service of humanity than they had so far attained.
You see, from this point of view, how the requirements of the spirit of loyalty are in one sense perfectly stern and unyielding, while in another sense they are and must be capable of great freedom of interpretation. In judg ing myself, in deciding how I can best be loyal to loyalty, in deciding what special causes they are through which I am to express my loyalty, in judging whether my act is justified by my loyalty, — in all these respects I must be with myself, at least in principle, entirely rigid. As I grow in knowledge, I shall better learn how to be loyal. I shall learn to serve new causes, to recover from vain attempts at a service of which I was incapable, and in general to be come a better servant of the cause. But at each point of my choice my obligation to be loyal, to have a cause, to have for the purposes of voluntary conduct no eyes and ears and voice save as this cause directs, — this obligation is absolute. I cannot excuse myself from it with out being false to my own purpose. I may sleep or be slothful, but precisely in so far as such relaxation fits me for work. I may amuse myself, but because amusement is again a necessary preliminary to or accompani ment of loyal service. I may seek my private advantage, but only in so far as, since I am an instrument of my cause, it is indeed my duty, and is consistent with my loyalty, to furnish to the cause an effective instrument. But the general principle remains: Working or idle, asleep or awake, joyous or sorrowful, thoughtful or apparently careless, at critical moments, or when engaged in the most mechanical routine, in so far as my will can determine what I am, I must be whatever my loyalty requires me to be. And in so far my voluntary life is from my point of view a topic for judgments which are in principle perfectly determinate.
Profoundly different must be my judgment in case of my estimate of the loyalty of my fellow. The tasks of mankind are not only common but also individual. So long as you are sure of your own loyalty, and do not break your trust, I cannot judge that you are actually disloyal. I can only judge in some respects whether your loyalty is or is not enlightened, is or is not successful, is or is not in unneces sary conflict with the loyalty of others. I have to be extremely wary of deciding what the loyalty of others demands of them. But this I certainly know, that if a man has made no choice for himself of the cause that he serves, he is not yet come to his rational self, he has not yet found his business as a moral agent.
II Such are our general results regarding the nature of loyalty as an ethical principle. This complete synthesis of loyalty with a rational individualism must be borne in mind as we attempt a certain practical application of these principles to the problem of our present American life. If there is any truth in the foregoing, then our concept especially helps us in trying to define what it is that we most need in the social life of a democracy, and what means we have of doing something to satisfy the moral needs of our American community, while leaving the liberties of the people intact.
Liberty without loyalty — of what worth, if the foregoing principles are sound, could such liberty be to any people? And yet, if you recall the protest of my young friend, the Rus sian immigrant's son, as cited to you in a for mer lecture, you will be reminded of the great task that now lies before our American people, — the task of teaching millions of foreign birth and descent to understand and to bear con stantly in mind the value of loyalty, the task also of keeping our own loyalty intact in the presence of those enormous complica tions of social life which the vastness of our country, and the numbers of our foreign immi grants are constantly increasing. The prob lem here in question is not merely the problem of giving instruction in the duties of citizenship to those to whom our country is new, nor yet of awakening and preserving patriotism. It is the problem of keeping alive what we now know to be the central principle of the moral life in a population which is constantly being altered by new arrivals, and unsettled by great social changes.
If you recall what was said in our former lecture regarding modern individualism in general, you will also see that our American immigration problem is only one aspect of a world-wide need of moral enlightenment, — a need characteristic of our time. One is tempted to adapt Lincoln's great words, and to say that in all nations, but particularly in America, we need in this day to work together to the end that loyalty of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
It is not, indeed, that loyal people no longer are frequent amongst us. The faithful who live and die in loyalty so far as they know loyalty are indeed not yet uncommon. The loyalty of the common people is precisely the most precious moral treasure of our world. But the moral dangers of our American civil ization are twofold. First, loyalty is not suf ficiently prominent amongst our explicit social ideals in America. It is too much left to the true-hearted obscure people. It is not suffi ciently emphasized. Our popular literature too often ignores it or misrepresents it. This is one danger, since it means that loyalty is too often discouraged and confused, instead of glorified and honored. In the long run, if not checked, this tendency must lead to a great decrease of loyalty. The second danger lies in the fact that when loyalty is indeed emphasized and glorified, it is then far too seldom conceived as rationally involving loyalty to universal loy alty. Hence we all think too often of loyalty as a warlike and intolerant virtue, and not as the spirit of universal peace. Enlightened loy alty, as we have now learned, means harm to no man's loyalty. It is at war only with disloy alty, and its warfare, unless necessity con strains, is only a spiritual warfare. It does not foster class hatreds; it knows of nothing reasonable about race prejudices, and it regards all races of men as one in their need of loyalty. It ignores mutual misunderstandings. It loves its own wherever upon earth its own, namely, loyalty itself, is to be found. Enlightened loy alty takes no delight in great armies or in great navies for their own sake. If it consents to them, it views them merely as transiently nec essary calamities. It has no joy in national prowess, except in so far as that prowess means a furtherance of universal loyalty. And it re gards the war-spirit, which in our first lecture we used as an example of loyalty, — it regards this spirit, I say, as at its best an outcome of necessity or else of unenlightened loyalty, and as at its worst one of the basest of disloyalties to universal loyalty.
Now, it is precisely this enlightened form of loyalty, this conception of loyalty to loyalty, which we most need to have taught to our American people, — taught openly, explicitly, -yet not taught, for the most part, by the now too familiar method of fascinating denun ciations of the wicked, nor by the mere display of force, social or political, nor by the setting of class against class, nor yet by any glorifica tion of mere power, nor by appeals merely to patriotic but confused fervor. We want loyalty to loyalty taught by helping many people to be loyal to their own special causes, and by show ing them that loyalty is a precious common human good, and that it can never be a good to harm any man's loyalty except solely in necessary defence of our own loyalty.
Ill From the point of view of the foregoing dis cussion, if you want to do the best you can to teach loyalty, not now to single individuals, but to great masses of people, — masses such as our whole nation, — you should do three things: (1) You should aid them to possess and to keep those physical and mental powers and posses sions which are the necessary conditions for the exercise of loyalty. (2) You should pro vide them with manifold opportunities to be loyal, that is, with a maximum of significant, rational enterprises, such as can be loyally carried out; you should, if possible, secure for them a minimum of the conditions that lead to the conflicts of various forms of loyalty; and you should furnish them a variety of oppor tunities to get social experience of the value of loyalty. (3) You should explicitly show them that loyalty is the best of human goods, and that loyalty to loyalty is the crown and the real meaning of all loyalty.
Helping the people to the attainment and preservation of their powers obviously involves the sort of care of public health, the sort of general training of intelligence, the sort of protection and assistance, which our philanthropists and teachers and public-spirited peo ple generally regard as important. There is no doubt that in our modern American life our social order does give to great numbers of people care and assistance and protection, such as earlier stages of civilization lacked. But the other side of the task of providing our people with the means of ethical advance ment, the side that has to do with letting them know what loyalty is, and with giving them opportunities to be loyal, this side, I say, of what we ought to do to further the moral prog ress of our people, is at present very imper fectly accomplished.
With prosperity, as we may well admit, sym pathy, benevolence, public spirit, even the more rational philanthropy which seeks not merely to relieve suffering, but to improve the effective powers of those whom we try to help, -all these things have become, in recent decades, more and more prominent on the better side of our civilization. And yet I insist, just as prosperity is not virtue, and just as power is not morality, so too even public charity, and even the disposition to train peo ple, to make them more intelligent, to give them new power, all such dispositions are in sufficient to insure the right moral training of our people, or the effective furtherance of ideal life amongst them.
What men need involves opportunity for loyalty. And such opportunity they get, espe cially through the suggestion of objects to which they can be loyal. If you want to train a man to a good life, you must indeed do what you can to give him health and power. And you do something for him when, by example and by precept, you encourage him to be sym pathetic, public-spirited, amiable, or industri ous. But benevolence, sympathy, what some people love to call altruism, — these are all mere fragments of goodness, mere aspects of the dutiful life. What is needed is loyalty. Mean while, since loyalty is so plastic a virtue, since the choice of the objects of loyalty must vary so widely from individual to individual, and since, above all, you can never force anybody to be loyal, but can only show him opportunities for loyalty, and teach him by example and pre cept what loyalty is, the great need of any higher civilization is a vast variety of oppor tunities for individual loyalty, and of sugges tion regarding what forms of loyalty are possi ble.
Now, I need not for a moment ignore the fact that every higher civilization, and of course our own, presents to any intelligent person nu merous opportunities to be loyal. But what I must point out in our present American life is, that our opportunities for loyalty are not rightly brought to our consciousness by the conditions of our civilization, so that a great mass of our people are far too little reminded of what chances for loyalty they themselves have, or of what loyalty is. Meanwhile our national prosperity and our national greatness involve us all in many new temptations to disloyalty, and distract our minds too much from dwelling upon the loyal side of life; so that at the very moment when our philanthropy is growing, when our sympathies are con stantly aroused through the press, the drama, and our sensitive social life generally, our training in loyalty is falling away. Our young people grow up with a great deal of their attention fixed upon personal success, and also with a great deal of training in sympathetic sentiments; but they get far too little knowl edge, either practical or theoretical, of what loyalty means.
IV IV The first natural opportunity for loyalty is furnished by family ties. We all know how some of the conditions of our civilization tend with great masses of our population to a new interpretation of family ties in which family loyalty often plays a much less part than it formerly did in family life. Since our mod ern family is less patriarchal than it used to be, our children, trained in an individualistic spirit, frequently make little of certain duties to their parents which the ancient family re garded as imperative and exalted as ideal. Many of us deliberately prefer the loss of cer tain results of the patriarchal family tie, and are glad that in the modern American family the parental decisions regarding the marriage choices of children are so much less decisive than they used to be. Many insist that other weakenings of the family tie, such as divorce legislation and the practice of divorce have involved, are in the direction of a reasonable recognition of individual interests.