BJ 
 
 37 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 1 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
THE NEW ETHICS 
 
 AN ESSAY ON 
 
 THE MORAL LAW OF USE 
 
 HY 
 
 FRANK SEWALL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
 
 1881 
 
THE NEW ETHICS 
 
 AN ESSAY ON 
 
 THE MORAL LAW OF USE 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK SEWALL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 37 * 29 WEST 23D STREET 
 
 1881 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 FRANK SEWALL 
 
 1881 
 
 Press of 
 
 G- P. Putnam's Sons 
 New York 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 What is man's moral nature ? Man defined as a being of 
 will and intellect. The two distinguished. The error aris- 
 ing from their being confounded. The will, the subject of 
 moral education, ........ 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "What is the moral sense ? ^Esthetics defined in three 
 planes. Ethics described as moral aesthetics, . . . n 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Analogy between physical and intellectual training and 
 moral training, ......... 16 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 An objective moral law. Does it exist ? What is it ? . 20 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The law of use, the moral law of the universe. Illustra- 
 tions in Deity, in creation, in nature, in society, ... 25 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Distinguished from other ethical theories, . . . 29 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Necessity of inculcating a moral law. Danger of our pres- 
 ent culture 38 
 
 NOTES, . . ...... 53 
 
 185376 
 
-*!?>* 
 
 OF THE 
 
 DIVERSITY. 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 THE obscurity attaching to the subject of CHAPTER 
 ethics as a science and to ethical educa- object 
 
 of the 
 
 tion as a practical achievement, is owing, doubt- 
 less, to the vagueness of the notions entertained 
 as to what man's moral nature is, if indeed 
 there be any such thing, and then as to what 
 can be done with it by that process which 
 we term educational. Education as applied to 
 the bodily or intellectual faculties is an intelligi- 
 ble term. Let us accept the definition of it 
 which seems most commonly approved, that 
 it is, namely, the awakening and calling into 
 exercise of the faculties that are in man and 
 their adaptation to his surroundings. What, 
 in the case of ethics, is the moral faculty, and 
 is there a moral surrounding to which it is, by 
 
6 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 education, to be harmoniously fitted ? It is on 
 these questions that the author hopes in the 
 following pages to throw some light. 
 
 It is not so strange as might at first appear, 
 ^ n he e mSr n af that wm 'l e the physical training and the intel- 
 lectual education of man have been for so long 
 a time reduced to a science and to practical 
 methods, the training of the moral part of our 
 being is still a thing of doubt and guesses and 
 only half-admitted conclusions. When we re- 
 flect on the nature of the subject itself as being 
 distinctly unintellectual, as belonging rather to 
 the substantive than to the formative part of 
 our nature, as being a thing of feeling and not 
 of definite, formulated thought, we can partially 
 comprehend how it is that while all men feel 
 conscious of a moral nature, of moral impulses 
 from within, of moral influences from without, 
 
 Will 
 
 confounded and of moral ends to be attained, still -the 
 
 with 
 
 ect ' moment we begin with our definitions and 
 rules the matter itself slips mysteriously from 
 our grasp, and we find that we are formulating 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 7 
 
 after all a science of dialectics, a science of 
 thought and of reasoning, and not that of the 
 will and its nature at all. We fall again into 
 the old snare into which Socrates fell in declar- S ^" r a r te s f 
 ing that virtue is a knowledge, and that know- 
 ing the right would be practically equivalent to 
 doing the right. The human mind cannot thus 
 legislate itself into virtue individually, any more 
 than it can collectively or in the form of the Aristotle . 
 State. It would seem that the first step of es- intw? 
 
 definition. 
 
 sential progress in the definitions of ethics is to 
 be found in Aristotle's distinguishing between 
 the will as the affectional part of the human 
 mind and the intellect as the instrument of 
 thought. With this grand dual division of man's 
 nature acknowledged, and in the light which a 
 more recent and profound spiritual science has 
 thrown upon it, we are enabled to proceed 
 upon comparatively solid and certain ground 
 in our definitions and analysis of ethics as a 
 
 Analysis oi 
 
 whole. Man is before us as a being of twofold 
 nature, a being of feeling and of thought, of 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 emotion and of reflection, of will and of in- 
 tellect. 
 
 Siect d A deeper analysis still of the human mind 
 reveals the substance or primary force of the 
 human life itself to be the emotions, the de- 
 sires, the love which resides in and makes up 
 the will of man, and that the thoughts and the 
 ideas which occupy the other or intellectual 
 half of the mind are but the forms, the con- 
 scious representations of the contents of the 
 will. Thus affection and thought are corre- 
 lated like every substance with its own form. 
 They are one, and yet not the same ; they are 
 one, but distinctly one ; they can be thought of 
 apart, yet cannot exist apart. To illustrate : 
 
 to emotions 
 
 of the will. an emotion of the will is doubtless felt as such 
 in the will, but it has to go to the intellect to 
 acquire a form, a definite shape or determina- 
 tion. We cannot be said to know our desires, 
 to define them, much less to carry them into 
 execution, until the desire has clothed itself 
 with a judgment or a form of thought from 
 
Thoughts 
 
 THE NEW ETHICS. 9 
 
 the intellect. Thus, while our emotions or feel- 
 ings are shapeless and ineffectual without the 
 idea and the judgment of the intellect to serve 
 them as instruments of action, so on the other 
 hand the judgment and reasoning of the intel 
 lect are soulless and lifeless when influenced 
 with no purpose or motive from the will. 
 Thoughts which are not the clothing of the af- 
 
 substance. 
 
 fections are but ghosts of thoughts, and if ut- 
 tered or written, soon show their emptiness 
 and unreality. 
 
 The intellect, therefore, is the depository of 
 those forms in which as ideas or judgments the 
 will comes to a knowledge of itself, or presents 
 itself to the intelligence of others. So inti- 
 mate is the union of the emotional and the in- 
 tellectual parts, as before intimated, that philos- 
 ophers from Socrates down have been con- 
 stantly liable to the mistake of confounding the E ancients he 
 two, and treating of the will or the affectional 
 part of man as capable of a kind of intellectual 
 training, or as subject to a kind of intellectual 
 
10 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 analysis ; and this mistake has partly arisen 
 from the difficulty naturally adhering to the 
 consideration of any substance in itself or 
 apart from the forms in which it presents itself 
 to thought and reflection. 
 Education The education of the intellect, itself the form 
 
 ol the 
 
 ect ' of the mind, and at once the recipient of forms 
 in impressions of the senses and the producer 
 of forms in its own imagination, has been a 
 comparatively simple science from the begin- 
 ning. Whether we guide the child's mind by 
 objective demonstrations, or from the contem- 
 plation of one form outwardly presented to 
 that of another, or conduct the maturer student 
 through the imaginary forms of the higher 
 mathematics, or through the subtle conclusions 
 of logic as applied to abstract questions of so- 
 ciety and religion ; in either case we have that 
 to deal with the very being of which is law and 
 uniformity, and which, therefore, is capable of 
 rapidly developing into a genuine science. 
 Hence it is that intellectual education has been 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. II 
 
 at all times far in advance of that of the moral 
 nature. Not only in the classic but in modern coincident 
 
 with moral 
 
 nations we have not unfrequently been struck 
 by a strange coincidence of a period of brilliant 
 intellectual activity with that of great moral 
 stagnation and corruption, all of which goes to 
 show that the intellect is a comparatively exter- 
 
 - r . r , i Intellect 
 
 nal part of man, near the surface, capable as the external 
 well of disguising as of truly revealing the real a man al 
 man within, and susceptible of a training from 
 without by means entirely discordant, it may 
 be, to the impulses of the will within. 
 
 IF we turn now to the will itself, to this man 
 
 a. i id. re u.L 
 
 of desire, of emotion, of pure feeling, and try to man - 
 contemplate him, first, as a subject of education, 
 and, secondly, as an agent striving to achieve an 
 end, or better still, as the end, the impulse and 
 aim itself, which animates all the intellectual 
 and physical life below itself ; here we shall en- 
 ter the real domain of ethics and ethical educa- 
 tion. 
 
 We will not, indeed, try to think of the will 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
12 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 or feeling as entirely formless, that is, entirely 
 independent of those ideal vessels or shapes 
 furnished by the intellect, but we will try to 
 contemplate pure feeling in itself as far as possi- 
 ble, knowing that the moment we define it as 
 a feeling of something, a desire of something, it 
 truly becomes a thought and thus an intellect- 
 ual act as well as a feeling. Indeed, pure emo- 
 tion, or emotion in general, which Is not a being 
 moved mentally from or to some particular ob- 
 ject, we may safely say does not exist. Con- 
 sciousness does not exist except as conscious- 
 ness of some state, or its modification. But 
 while this is quite true, it is also true that there 
 are certain abstractions of state or of forms, or 
 we may perhaps better say universals of states 
 of consciousness, which are, seemingly, more 
 truly things of feeling than of intellect, and 
 universal these are the sensations of pleasure and pain, or, 
 and a pai r n m mora -l terms, the judgments of the good and 
 the bad. 
 
 The will or the affectional nature of man does 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 13 
 
 seem indeed capable of forming immediate 
 judgments of good and of bad, of the pleasant 
 and the unpleasant, without the intervention of 
 any conclusions or even idea of the intellect. 
 We may feel pleasure and feel pain, not, it is 
 true, to the exclusion from the mind of some ob- 
 ject of the thoughts at the same time as perhaps 
 the occasion of the feeling, but still, as a sensa- 
 tion or experience by itself, an acting distinctly 
 of the will or of that part of one which feels and 
 does not think. 
 
 Now, this part of man which feels is, as I 
 
 . the subject 
 
 have said, that which is to be considered in ^J^ 1 
 moral culture. To affect it for good or bad is 
 to affect the foundation of our intelligent and 
 responsible life. Behind the man that acts, 
 that speaks, that reasons, that thinks, that de- 
 sires even, is the man that feels, that loves. 
 The life of man itself is his love. 
 
 11 1 1-11 Ethics a 
 
 It will now be apparent how admirable was branch of 
 
 aesthetics. 
 
 the classification which Kant and other Ger- 
 man psychologists have borrowed from the 
 
14 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 Greek philosophers, by which ethics was 
 treated of as a department of aesthetics. For 
 what is aesthetics but the science of taste ? 
 Is it not the science of our faculty of perceiv- 
 ing pleasure and pain through the sensations 
 contemplated in their several grades ? 
 ./Esthetics I. Thus in the lowest plane aesthetics deals 
 
 on the 
 
 pianS, C oi with the feelings as mere physical or bodily 
 
 sensuous 
 
 taste, touch ; which grade of taste embraces the 
 aesthetic judgments of all immediate sensations 
 of the body, not only of taste so-called, and 
 smell, and touch, as affording pleasure and pain, 
 but also the affection of the eye in beautiful 
 form and color, or of the ear in beautiful 
 sounds or harmonies. 
 
 IL On the second or intellectual plane the 
 aesthetic judgments embrace the sensations of 
 the pleasant and the unpleasant in ideas and 
 thoughts formed by the mind of another, more 
 especially as subject to the laws of intellectual 
 beauty or harmony and completeness. 
 
 III. In the moral plane the aesthetic judg- 
 
 mental 
 
 taste - 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 15 
 
 ments embrace the sensations of pleasure and 
 pain, or of the good and bad in those things 
 that relate to conduct, to the motives of men, ethi " 
 to the loves that inspire them, the desires that 
 impel them, the pleasures that allure them, the 
 evils that repel them. Thus, elevate the sense 
 of touch or of feeling from the body to the in- 
 ner man, the will itself as the inmost of a man's 
 life and conduct, and we have aesthetics in its 
 moral degree, or in that degree which has been 
 more generally denominated that of ethics, or 
 the laws which control our judgments of the 
 good and the bad. 
 
 According to this classification, ethics is re- 
 ducible to a science of taste, nay of touch ; it 
 treats of the will of man as subject to sensa- 
 tions of pleasure and of pain from moral objects 
 presented to it, as capable of contact with out- 
 ward impressions of a moral nature, and as 
 being stimulated by these impressions to either 
 one or another course of conduct. The will of 
 man has its finer sense of touch, by which it 
 
 taste. 
 
1 6 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 comes in contact with a universe about itself, 
 yet like unto itself, just as in the lower plane, 
 the body, with its sensations, comes in contact 
 with a material universe of agreeable or dis- 
 agreeable objects. 
 The subject Such, then, is the will and moral nature of 
 
 of ethical 
 
 education. man as a su kj ect o f education. 
 CH n" E * THE question which next arises is, into what 
 is the will to be educated ? What is the object 
 or aim in moral or ethical education ? 
 
 In answering this question we shall be 
 
 education: helped by first observing the analogous cases 
 
 analogy * 
 
 intellectual of physical and intellectual culture. From 
 
 and 
 
 educS. these more familiar and easily accessible pro- 
 cesses, we may conclude with greater certainty 
 regarding the somewhat obscure theme, the 
 education of the moral nature. 
 
 What, then, is the aim of physical education ? 
 What is a healthy development of the body? 
 What was the grand aim of the gymnastics of 
 
 T to e b b ein y the Greeks ? Was it not an adaptation of the 
 
 harmony 
 
 nSJe. body in all its parts, its functions and motions, 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. I/ 
 
 to the law of nature as bearing upon the phys- 
 ical good of man ? It was a training of the 
 body into a harmony with the physical uni- 
 verse, into such a harmony that the waves of 
 sound, and of light, and of the magnetic aura 
 of the earth's atmosphere, should be transmit- 
 ted in beautifully harmonious undulations of 
 more subtle media through all the tissues and 
 fibres of the body, producing there exhilaration, 
 concord, joy, and recreation. On the other 
 hand, the will and thought should find a per- 
 fect and ready and mighty instrument in the 
 body for transmitting its emotion and desires 
 in the forms of effectual act and profitable la- 
 bor in the field of matter, so that, not only 
 should the body perfectly reflect and respond 
 to objective nature, but also nature should be 
 brought to perfect obedience to human force 
 and mind through the exercise of the bodily 
 powers. 
 
 To take now the next step, do we not find in intellect to 
 
 be in 
 
 intellectual education the aim to be an analo- 
 
1 8 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 gous one? We have here the mind of man, 
 considered intellectually, to be developed into 
 harmony with the universal laws of truth, so 
 that the truth shall readily enter it and find a 
 welcome in a quick perception ; so that in cre- 
 ating new images and forming new conclusions 
 in inductive reasoning, the mind shall be secure 
 from fallacies, and reason in strict accordance 
 with the internal logos or reason of the universe. 
 A trained intellect is not one crowded with 
 crude knowledge, but one capable of clear 
 analytical thought, secure against delusions, 
 whether from sense or from sophistries or logi- 
 cal snares, one that can look through effects to 
 causes, and through causes to ends, and thus see 
 the laws of order upon which not only the uni- 
 verse is constructed and exists, but without 
 which there could be no determination of the 
 true or false. 
 
 A trained intellect is one capable of detecting 
 the truth or falsity of a thing as determined by 
 a universal law appertaining to that thing. Of 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 1 9 
 
 course the existence of this universal law is pre- 
 supposed in every judgment of the intellect as 
 to the true or false. In other words, there are 
 no particular truths if there is no universal truth 
 
 or universally true law. 
 
 t 
 
 We come now to the moral plane of the The object 
 
 of moral 
 
 mind, and from analogy may we not assert that ed to c adapt 
 the object of education is to adapt this part of 
 
 education is 
 
 to adapt 
 man to the 
 
 , . , n r i universe. 
 
 man s nature to the moral laws of the universe 
 about him, and to render man so evenly, sym- 
 metrically, and wholly developed a moral instru- 
 ment, one so delicately tuned, so to speak, as 
 to its least vibrating fibre, that it shall respond 
 harmoniously to the pulsations of the moral at- 
 mosphere without ; that it shall be susceptible 
 of all the finer and purer emotions of moral in- 
 fluence, and be able to send out from itself again 
 strong vibrating currents of purpose, feeling, 
 and motion, which shall fall readily into the 
 great moral currents without, and be develop- 
 ing wider and wider spheres of good and de- 
 light to eternity ? In other words, is not every 
 
20 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 man morally as to his emotions and desires the 
 centre of a universe in which action and reac- 
 tion is forever going on according to fixed laws, 
 just as he is, by universal consent, the centre of 
 a similar physical and intellectual world ? 
 CHAPTER AT this point, I am well aware, and perhaps 
 
 IV. 
 
 Divided here first in the progress of our discussion, opin- 
 
 opinions. Is ^ 
 
 ob%ctiv" i n divides, and whichever position is taken, 
 
 moral law . - f . . 
 
 universe? wn ether lor or against an objective moral law, 
 and an objective moral law-giver, for one im- 
 plies the other, it will be liable to dispute from 
 those holding opposite views. But it will be 
 seen, I think, that no discussion of ethics as a 
 practical matter, least of all as a matter of edu- 
 cation, is possible without one or the other of 
 these positions being definitely taken. For if 
 education is the development of the subject 
 into harmony with its environment, then in 
 moral education we presuppose a moral en- 
 vironment, and to arrive at a true notion of 
 what this actually is, is probably the most im- 
 portant ethical problem before the world to-day. 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 21 
 
 Without endeavoring, therefore, to conceive 
 what the basis of an ethical education might be 
 with those who deny the existence of any such 
 moral environment of man, or objective moral 
 law, any universal distinctions of right and 
 wrong, or good and evil in the universe, I 
 shall proceed to carry out our analogy in de- A un}versal 
 fining ethical education as a development of Tssu a meT 
 the emotional nature of man into harmony with 
 the universal laws of good and evil in the 
 world around him ; such a development that 
 the really good will be felt by him as good in 
 giving him pleasure, and the really bad will be 
 felt by him as bad in giving him pain. As by 
 the well-trained intellect a fallacy in an argu- 
 ment or a fault in a literary work is felt as actu- 
 ally harsh or grating to the refined intellectual 
 sense, so to the correctly trained moral nature, 
 an exhibition of bad behavior, a suggestion of 
 evil conduct, will produce a real sensation of 
 pain or disgust and revulsion. Such a relation 
 of man's moral sense to the moral world about 
 
22 T-HE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 him, I hold to be a true and actual one, and 
 upon this as a real substantial basis afforded in 
 the very nature of things, a practical system of 
 ethical training is conceivable. 
 education This training presupposes, as I have already 
 
 implies two . . _ - . . , 
 
 factors-a said, two factors : first, a sense to be appealed 
 
 subject to 
 
 andTiaw 1 to ; and, second, a law or a standard which is 
 
 or standard 
 
 b3 JraiJJ c 5 to absolute and fixed, by which all sensations are 
 adjudged as harmonious or as discordant with 
 the moral order and harmony of the universe, 
 and thus as really delightful or undelightful to 
 the moral sense. 
 
 The sense itself is the will of man in its sus- 
 ceptibility to moral emotions, or as capable of 
 being made happy or sad by impressions from 
 moral objects ; thus, by exhibitions of emotion 
 in others, by direct expressions of feeling, by 
 persuasions, by threats, by sympathy with others' 
 states of feeling, this sense can be cultivated 
 to a finer and finer degree of sensibility, so 
 that nothing going on without shall fail to con- 
 vey its moral impress together with the physl 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 23 
 
 cal sensation and its intellectual image. The 
 sense of the good and the bad will be quite as 
 spontaneous in its action as the sense of the 
 straight or crooked, or of the odd and even num- 
 bers, or of the beauty or the ugliness of a figure, 
 or the truth or the untruth of a proposition. 
 
 Such, we conceive, is the sense which may what is the 
 
 universal 
 
 be educated and the capacity of its education. morallaw? 
 The equally important inquiry is : What shall 
 we call this universal law of good and bad 
 which this sense is to be taught to know, and 
 by which it is to form its judgments, and con- 
 trol its own indulgences, and determine its own 
 purposes and desires? 
 
 A sane man will not spend time in thinking 
 out some fanciful theory for the mere delight of 
 the thinking, when he learns that there is a fal- 
 lacy lurking in one of his premises. 
 
 So a morally sane person will not allow him- 
 self to look for pleasure in some emotion or desire 
 which he knows is discordant with the laws of 
 universal good and universal happiness. Even 
 
24 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 a transient delight will be sacrificed sooner than 
 to lose a permanent and substantial good, and 
 those delights which will interfere with or destroy 
 the soul's capacity to unite itself with the uni- 
 versal moral harmony will come to be regarded 
 as not delights, but as disorderly emotions, to be 
 dreaded and shunned. 
 Laws are What, then, is this universal lav/ of good 
 
 forms of i r r 
 
 8 ld t thei? W ^ lcn prevails in the universe of mind, of hu- 
 s * man motive and action, just as surely and invari- 
 ably as the laws of gravitation prevail in the 
 universe of matter ? And, since all laws are 
 but forms of a substance, and the law of gravita- 
 tion but the form in which a force or substance 
 
 the^vUlai P erates > wnat > therefore, is the substance or 
 force of good, which operates throughout the 
 universe of men's minds, causing happiness and 
 health in those which are in harmony with it- 
 self, and misery and disease in those who act 
 in conflict with it. 
 Arnold Matthew Arnold has offered us a definition 
 
 definition 
 
 Su ojf 1 y tive of this universal moral force, in what he calls the 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 2$ 
 
 " enthusiasm which makes for righteousness." 
 But this is rather a subjective than an objective 
 element, something that impels a man from with- 
 in rather than that which, within and without, 
 controls the whole universe of mind and matter 
 in such a wonderful harmony that by yielding 
 to it a man finds himself at one with the very law, 
 purpose, and end of the Divine Creator himself, 
 and accordingly restored to a state of orderly 
 relation, not with man alone, but with the 
 physical universe, and with all supernatural and 
 spiritual forms as well. 
 
 The force and law we have in view is some- , 
 
 1 tie true 
 
 thing to which man must conform himself at objectire 
 
 andsubjective 
 
 the same time that he becomes inwardly an 
 agent of it. 
 
 WE shall call this law by a new name not, in- c A * 
 deed, new in every sense, but new in the sense The u 1 s ^ w of 
 here intended. We shall call it the law of use, 
 and we will at once distinguish the sense in 
 which we employ the word. 
 
 This law of use, which is, we may say, the 
 
26 
 
 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 divine end of the universe put into effect, is the 
 law of service ; but the law of mutual service, 
 
 in u cr s eation. not tne service of self. Upon this law,we hold 
 the universe was constructed from its first ema- 
 nation in spheres of divine energy and light and 
 heat out of the Creator himself to the elementary 
 plane of nature. The same law governs the 
 three realms of nature, mineral, vegetable, and 
 animal, in their upward climbing to man, the 
 highest type of creation, and from whose ration- 
 al and voluntary nature there is the conscious 
 aspiration and return again to Deity. 
 
 proceeding Thus is completed the divine and never-ceas- 
 ing current of infinite love as a first end or 
 prime mover, operating by infinite wisdom, as 
 by the spiritual means or instrumental cause, to 
 the production of infinite uses as effects in the 
 plane of nature and of humanity. Thus the 
 o divme very essential nature of Deity is the giving of 
 itself for another, or the creating of a universe 
 which may be an object of love to a being 
 whose essence it is to love ; a universe not ere- 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 2/ 
 
 ated from nothing but from the eternal substance 
 of Deity itself, and yet in such a way that it 
 may be ever distinct from Deity, just as every 
 action is the effect of a desire and thought and 
 
 T . r i . , Creation is 
 
 is yet distinct from these, or as an artist s crea- the giving 
 
 J of self to 
 
 tion is from him and of him as to its whole for- 
 mative principle and being and is yet not him- 
 self, nor does its distinct existence imply a pro- 
 portional lessening of his own substance. 
 
 So God is conceived of as himself existing ^toJSUi 
 only to serve, and in finding the fullest and 
 divinest satisfaction in the service of others than 
 himself. God is the great creator and never- 
 resting performer of uses. The whole universe Th Lh?bIt e s rse 
 
 everywhere 
 
 is a great work of uses, and not the smallest 
 atom exists in its material depths, nor the 
 purest angel in its celestial spheres, which is 
 not actuated wholly by this one universal 
 divine law of life, and order, and happines, the 
 mutual service of things. 
 
 Says Swedenborg, in his work on The Divine 
 Love and Wisdom, No. 327 : " All things created 
 
nature. 
 
 28 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 "by the Lord are uses; and they are uses in 
 "the order, degree, and respect in which they 
 "have relation to man and by man to the Lord 
 " their Creator."* 
 
 T of usei" s There is a conatus, a struggling and yearning 
 of Nature from her inmost and subtlest particles 
 to be of use to something above herself. The 
 sun's heat and light, combining with the ele- 
 ments of the soil, strive to help the seed to ger- 
 minate ; the plants crowd and push in the dark 
 ground until they can shoot joyfully upward, 
 and offer their whole being as nourishment, 
 protection, or refreshment to either the bodily 
 or affectional life of the animal kingdom. The 
 lower animals serve the higher ; all the lower 
 kingdoms serve man, and man serves God in a 
 true sense only by serving his fellow-man. 
 This sublime law of use, which, like all things of 
 divine completeness and majesty, is at once a 
 type of simplicity and humility, found indeed its 
 highest embodiment in Him who proved His 
 own Divinity among men, not by receiving the 
 
 * See Note I. 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 2Q 
 
 homage of inferior creatures, but by doing the 
 works of God, and who, as if to write forever in Godthe 
 the mind of humanity the noblest of all legends of perfect 
 
 service. 
 
 as betokening the true knight-errantry to which 
 all mankind is by nature called and consecrated, 
 uttered once, in the hearing of men, these 
 words : " I am among you as one that serves." 
 
 THIS law of use, or mutual service, which I CHAPTER VI - 
 
 The law of 
 
 have called the moral law of the universe, is distinguished-. 
 readily distinguished from those other motives 
 which have been made fundamental in the vari- 
 ous ethical and religious systems of past times. 
 
 I. From the 
 
 It is essentially different from the theory which 
 
 declares the end of life and man's existence to ^ >0 
 
 as the end 
 
 be the glory of God in the sense of the selfish 
 delight of an arbitrary and powerful ruler in ex- 
 periencing the abject subjugation and servitude 
 of inferior creatures. The end of man is, in- 
 deed, the glory of God, but God's glory has no 
 higher or nobler manifestation than in the uses, X7 
 
 What is the 
 
 of the universe in the mutual service of creature true f lory 
 
 God and the 
 
 to creature. It is in the interchange of human of ki f a d v ? 
 
30 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 ii>rhe uses that men find at once the highest humanity 
 kl heivSi o and most intense happiness. "The kingdom of 
 
 a kingdom 
 
 of u^. 1 ' "heaven, says Swedenborg again, "is a king- 
 "dom of uses," and no man shall become the 
 happy subject of this kingdom who has not be- 
 come that which he was born to become, a form 
 or an agency of use. To serve, not to be served, 
 is the highest end of man ; and the greatest 
 man is the man who in his gifts and actions, 
 whether intellectual or moral, is the means of 
 the greatest amount of use to his fellow-men. 
 Distin "ished Compared again with the doctrine of the 
 Utilitarians,* or of those who would make self- 
 
 Utilitarian 
 
 the p?etist. interest, even to self-love, the foundation of all 
 moral and social stability, and reduce the useful 
 to only that which is useful to self more or less 
 directly, the law of use which we are assert- 
 ing, is seen to be quite different. This makes 
 service always the neighbor and not self the object 
 
 not of self J 
 
 of others, of the endeavor or the service, and regards 
 one's own advantage, or wealth, health, power, 
 and faculties, as only greater means to the 
 
 *See Note II. 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 31 
 
 real end in view, the good to be accomplished 
 for others. This use, or " the good," becomes 
 neither the dead and inert matter of mere phys- 
 ical gratification or bodily well-being on the 
 one hand, as with the more materialistic Utili- 
 tarian, nor, on the other hand, the mere abstract 
 goodness of the pietist or the theist, to whom 
 God is a being so entirely without body, parts, 
 and passions, as to be essentially nothing. It 
 is, on the contrary, the most concrete and in- 
 telligible thing of every-day experience. Good 
 is nothing except the putting into effect of a 
 desire of use, and cannot exist abstracted from 
 a personal will and intelligence. God is good 
 because He is the creator and eternal doer of 
 useful things. All good works are uses, and all 
 uses done for another than a merely selfish end 
 are genuinely, nay, divinely good. In this most 
 true sense, God, indeed, contemplates still in 
 the process of the never-ending days of crea- 
 tion, the result of each day's work which He 
 has made, and behold it is very good. 
 
3 2 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 The phrase " to do good," and " to be 
 
 " Doing 
 
 g p bein a g d "good," is lifted from the drear inanity of aimless 
 
 good." 
 
 sentiment into the noble plane of action. Good- 
 ness, as held up to a child's mind as a motive 
 of life, means no longer a mere feeble yielding 
 to another's violence and dying at an early age. 
 It means the being and doing of service to one's 
 fellow-being. It is most true that in this sense 
 
 Nature a ^ aw ^ gd pervades all inanimate nature. 
 
 oes but d Not a mineral or plant but what obeys it, and 
 
 instinctively, 
 
 ratSSaiiy obeys it in the sense of its being the operation 
 
 nor 
 
 morally. o f personal will and intelligence ; but in this 
 case, that which we call inanimate, is only so in 
 being more absolutely animated from God only, 
 than is the case with the free moral animation 
 of man. The question which is often asked, of 
 The uses of what use is all the loveliness and elegance of 
 
 nature not 
 
 S! form and color lavished upon flower and plumage, 
 and tinting even the evanescent clouds, may be 
 answered best in the simple words : the use of 
 giving delight to the affections of living crea- 
 tures, and of making man a fuller recipient of 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 33 
 
 the love of his Maker, and thus the more grate- 
 ful dispenser of it to others. God ministers 
 through the useful contrivances of nature not 
 to man's stomach alone, but to his affections 
 and his thoughts ; and all the glories of creation 
 are provided to be of use to that life of man's 
 will and love which is more than meat, and that 
 body of his immortal reason and thought which 
 is more than raiment. 
 
 Finally, as compared with the ethics of Plato, 
 this law of use is far more a doing than a 
 knowing ; as compared with the Stoic's virtue i v . 
 
 From the 
 
 of duty and a passionless indifference to pleas- stoics - 
 ure or pain, it indeed has a pleasure in view, 
 but a pleasure that is experienced only in re- 
 garding the good of others as first end, and is 
 lost when this order is inverted and the good 
 of others is made subservient to one's own 
 pleasure. As compared with the ascetic vir- From the 
 tues of the monastic orders, whether of the 
 Christian or of other religions, the law of use 
 subordinates all rules, all practices, whether of 
 
34 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 prayer or work, whether fasting and morti- 
 fication, or bodily and mental recreation by 
 means of healthy sports, games, and feastings, 
 to the one most catholic, general, benefi- 
 cent, and divine rule : " That is good which is 
 That is " in the order of the uses of God's universe; 
 
 good which 
 
 serves. t( ^^ j g g OO( j w hich helps man in his own sta- 
 " tion to be a larger, stronger, and more perfect 
 " agent of good, whether spiritual or rational or 
 " physical, to his fellow-creatures. He best 
 "serves God who serves his fellow- man." 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell longer in defin- 
 ing use as the universal ethics of creation ; it 
 will be proper here to add, in conclusion, a few 
 reflections on the ethical education as based 
 upon the recognition of this law ; and first as 
 
 Moral . , 
 
 culture to to the distinction necessary to observe between 
 distinguished momland intellectual culture. There can be 
 no ethics, properly speaking, without dialectics, 
 any more than there can be an affection as a 
 subject of reflection without the thought in 
 which that affection forms itself in the Intel- 
 
 from 
 intellectual. 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 35 
 
 lect. Moral culture without some intellectual 
 culture is impossible. The very form of good 
 is the right ; and the right is the intellectual 
 apprehension of the good. The good is the of/** 
 substance of the law ; the right is the form 
 which the law gives it. The will by its higher 
 aesthetics is aware of the distinction between 
 the good and the evil as truly as the body feels 
 its sensations of pleasure and pain. But man 
 cannot act morally except he acts in freedom 
 and from reason. It is by intelligent or self- 
 conscious reason that man approves or disap- 
 proves of acts, and so makes himself morally 
 responsible for them. A brute would be vir- 
 
 How man 
 
 tuous if its orderly instinctive life, instead of 
 being guided immediately by a divine intel- 
 ligence, were guided by the conclusions of its 
 own reason and the determinations of its own 
 free choice. Man is thus guided, and is there- 
 fore a responsible moral agent. But while 
 thus the intellect is so necessary to the moral 
 agency of the will, and a man must know what 
 
The love 
 
 36 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 the right is before he can do what is good in 
 preference to what is bad, we must be careful 
 not to reverse the case, and hold that the mere 
 intellectual power of distinguishing the right 
 from the wrong is itself moral culture. The 
 affection, the desire, the sense of use and its 
 L Sleds 6 love must itself be cultivated by example, 
 
 culture 
 
 thought stimulus, and exercise, and from the earliest 
 beginning of mental impressions. 
 
 The power of such a moral aim we have 
 of C mond r seen illustrated in the patriotism of the Spartan 
 
 culture 
 
 illustrated. s ^- ate especially, narrow and imperfect as was 
 its conception of the law of human use. The 
 Spartan lived for an end, the power of the 
 state over the subject, and the military pre- 
 dominance of Sparta over the neighboring 
 tribes and states. The mothers taught this, 
 the schools reechoed it, the state exhibited it ; 
 life was comparatively of little worth so far as 
 it did not contribute to this common end. A 
 similar, but spasmodic and temporary enthusi- 
 asm has seized other nations at other times, as 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 37 
 
 that of the Crusades and Knight-errantry in 
 the Middle Ages, and that of the great national 
 uprisings of England, France, and our own 
 country for the attainment of popular rights 
 or the preserving of national integrity. These 
 motives are not things of intellectual culture ; 
 they come from a contact of wills, from great 
 currents of feeling, permeating the minds of 
 society and stirring up the depths of emotion 
 or the sources of action. 
 
 But how poor and insufficient is the moral 
 impulse and education which animated 
 
 mo i*cils. 
 
 in her noblest days, because founded on a mis- 
 taken law, is abundantly shown in the career of 
 her greatest generals, men like Themistocles 
 and Pausanias, who made the glory of their 
 states only the bridge of their own personal 
 ambition, and who died in disgrace as traitors 
 to the powers their valor had served. The 
 same ruinous principle of self-love as underly- 
 ing public service is equally exhibited in the 
 careers of Cicero and Cato of Rome, and, among 
 
38 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 modern leaders, in Napoleon Bonaparte. How- 
 ever great the literary and military legacy of 
 these men, how poor is their contribution to the 
 moral forces of society as compared with that of 
 the humblest Christian martyr of whatever sect 
 or clime, who, for the love of God and his fellow- 
 men, has held dearer than life his adherence to 
 the truth as the revealed law of the eternal 
 goodness ! Compare, too, on a still larger scale, 
 the periods of the greatest intellectual with that 
 of the greatest moral eminence of nations. 
 How often do we find the golden age of letters, 
 as that of Greece, of Rome, or of our own Eng- 
 land, to be the age of a more than ordinarily 
 corrupt and dissolute social and public life. 
 CHAPTER PERHAPS there is no greater danger threat - 
 dSger cning the educational progress of our own time 
 hre oS ning and our own land than this over-estimate of 
 
 educational 
 
 progress. mere mte u ectua l culture and the confounding 
 of it with moral progress. If history teaches us 
 anything like a general law, it is that the cultiva- 
 tion of the head and of the heart do not necessa- 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 39 
 
 rily go together, and that of the two a sound moral 
 training of a people is of greater importance to 
 real human happiness and welfare than brilliant 
 intellectual culture. The great argument held 
 out nowadays for the promotion of education, 
 and especially of free schools, is that intelligence our D p r | s sent 
 
 i T i i i i free- school 
 
 prevents or reduces crime. 1 think that be- d ^f^ h 
 fore long the American people will begin to 
 question this statement, or, at least, to ask 
 whether or not it must be modified to include a 
 restrictive phrase that moral and not alone in- 
 tellectual culture is necessary to protect society 
 from crime. If statistics are appealed to, while 
 it may appear that the universal stimulus given 
 to the intellect of our young men and women intenec e t s uai 
 
 culture 
 
 has tended in our more advanced communities 
 
 i i r 1 conceal 
 
 to the reduction ol the grosser and more out- vice? 
 wardly offensive forms of vice and immorality, 
 it is not so evident that at the heart of society, at 
 its very core and kernel in the secret plane of 
 the moral consciousness where dwells all that 
 is most sacred and pure and noble in humanity, 
 
40 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 there is not growing a sore of immorality which 
 will sooner or later make a whited sep- 
 ulchre of all this mere outside polish of mind. 
 
 Indeed, it may be a question whether the 
 effect of mere increased intelligence, without 
 accompanying moral principle, may not be 
 either to invent new forms of dishonesty and vi- 
 cious practice, or to cover up and ingeniously 
 shield from penalty those crimes which with the 
 more ignorant are not more prevalent, but are 
 only not so cunningly and successfully con- 
 cealed. I think that at least a large proportion 
 of the excess of criminality attaching to the un- 
 educated classes in statistical reports may be at- 
 tributed, not to a real excess of crime, but to a 
 lack of intelligent concealment ; but even read- 
 ing the figures as they are, the moral elevation 
 produced by intellectual culture is by no means 
 
 Statistics 
 
 America everywhere apparent. 
 Massachusetts From the last census of the United States, it 
 
 especially 
 
 hfgh e a would, indeed, appear that for one crime com- 
 
 percentage 
 
 p f opuia c tfon d mitted by an educated person there are ten 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 4* 
 
 committed (and detected) by an illiterate per- 
 son. In France, from 1867 to 1869, one half 
 of the inhabitants could neither read nor write, 
 and this one half, or the illiterate half of the 
 population, furnishes eighty-seven per cent, of united 
 the detected and convicted criminals ; and in M !La n c C h e usetts. 
 Massachusetts, where only seven in a hundred 
 cannot read and write, eighty per cent, of the 
 crimes committed (and detected) are committed 
 by this small minority. This would appear cer- 
 tainly, at first glance, abundantly to vindicate the 
 claim of education as being the effectual pre- 
 ventive of crime. 
 
 But how far these figures indicate the moral 
 influence of education itself, in not merely con- 
 cealing but actually reducing the immoral ten- 
 dencies of society, may be more accurately de- 
 termined if we bear in mind a significant reve- 
 lation from the report of the Board of State 
 Charities of Massachusetts for the year 1875. 
 
 " In 1 865, the whole number of persons in 
 " all our prisons during the year did not much 
 
4 2 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 B U t " exceed 10,000, and of these only 481 were in 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 marked " tne State Prison. In 1875, the whole number 
 immorality. " has exceeded 20,000, and the whole number in 
 " the State Prison has been 852. 
 
 "Thus we see that detected crimes and misde- 
 " meanors have doubled since the close of the 
 " civil war ; while undetected and unpunished 
 " crimes have increased at least as fast, and now 
 " we find that there is hardly a State in the Union 
 " or a country in the civilized world where atro- 
 " cious and flagrant crime is so common as in 
 " Massachusetts. 
 
 in ten " With an increase of 23 per cent, in popu- 
 
 years : . 
 
 increase tt \^{ on ^ fa^ pn SO n returns show an increase of 
 
 population 
 
 ' 
 
 percent i While we need not become fanatical on the 
 
 The reform subject of the " Bible in schools," at least until 
 
 that is 
 
 needed. t j le sacrec l volume is more universally read and 
 pondered at home, nor on that of " God in the 
 " Constitution," while God in the private and 
 daily affairs of the citizen is so frequently and 
 unscrupulously ignored ; still the practical and 
 
 *See Note III. 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 43 
 
 urgent need must sooner or later appear of a 
 definite moral training for the youth of our na- 
 tion, based upon something more than a whim- 
 sical patching up by the politic school- 
 master of maxims here and there, now of 
 " honesty as the best policy," now of " all for 
 " number one," now of " might makes right," or 
 the survival of the fittest, now of " evil as un- 
 " developed good," now of the " wickedness of 
 " the world and the flesh," and now of " all for 
 " the greater glory of God." 
 
 Has not the world been searching- for this Need of a 
 
 definite 
 
 law that shall be to man's moral nature what 
 
 discipline. 
 
 the laws of thought are to his intellectual na- 
 ture, a law which shall determine absolutely 
 the good and the evil, and tell him what to 
 shun and what to exercise in training him- 
 self into harmony with the order of the uni- 
 verse ? And if it has been reserved for this 
 new age in which we live to arrive at this 
 principle of use or mutual services as the pri- 
 mary law of the kingdom of God and all or- 
 
44 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 derly society among men, while we may miss 
 the majestic outline of some vision of our fancy 
 in this plain and realistic principle, may we not 
 be thankful that we have so simple and practi- 
 cal an ethics as this to teach and impress upon 
 the youth of our age and to subject to the test 
 of experience ? Use is the end itself to which 
 other motives, those of duty or self-control or 
 self-abnegation, yea, even the sacred exercises 
 of piety and religion, regarded as outward ordi- 
 nances and rites, all serve as means. The goal 
 is here at last reached and all the moral philos- 
 ophy of the centuries finds its solution in this 
 
 The 
 
 very simple and homely commonplace, that to 
 
 of use : its 
 
 character. ^ e gd and to do good is to be useful. 
 
 ^ Is it objected that in making- this the motive 
 
 Objections J 
 
 ed< of life, religion is ignored ? I would protest 
 
 rather that rightly understood this is the sum 
 
 of religion, in that, to quote again the 
 
 wedenborg's language of Swedenborg, "All religion has 
 
 definition of - ,.. 
 
 religion. relation to life, and the lite of religion is to 
 " do good." 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 45 
 
 And if it be objected, on the other hand, that 
 all distinctions between religion and morality 
 are henceforth blotted out, I would say that 
 the world is so much the better off in being 
 disabused of the delusion that morality, in the 
 sense of doing right from purely selfish motives 
 rather than from the principle of obedience to a 
 
 * A Morals and 
 
 Divine law of right and wrong, can confirm the r unSd! 
 good, or abolish the evil of the world ; for no 
 more than the devil can cast out devils, can the 
 principle of self-love, impelled by its own motive 
 only, cast out or mitigate in any degree the 
 evils which it has brought into the world. 
 
 Not mere self-abnegation for its own sake, , 
 
 ' Use the law 
 
 not the crushing out of instinct, and the morti- P se r if- na 
 
 discipline. 
 
 fying of our natural faculties, but the subordina- 
 tion of the whole man to this one holy principle 
 of use, this will harmonize our life, and bring 
 health, beauty, and joy again into the world in 
 the very name of those once dreaded powers 
 morality and religion. Let our children be 
 taught this principle from their earliest age ; 
 
46 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 let parents inculcate it, schools teach it, and 
 society exemplify it, and how much of our 
 aimless, distracted moralizing and even legis- 
 lating will soon vanish among the discarded 
 errors of the past. Let it with children be made 
 children to a thing of absolute requirement, that they be 
 
 be trained 1-1 
 
 trained to be useful ; let the idea of service 
 
 enter into every relation possible, at home, at 
 school, and in the state. Let the much-abused 
 term, " the dignity of labor," which is rapidly 
 undergoing an evolution into the right of the 
 laboring classes to be supported without labor, 
 let this give way to the sacredness of service ', 
 a sacredness derived from no lower source than 
 the Divine Man Himself, who came to men 
 " not to be ministered unto, but to minister." 
 
 And here I must say a word further in the 
 definition of use, lest I should be so unfortunate 
 lhty " as to seem to inculcate a mere utility, or service 
 of bodily and worldly interests, and to ignore 
 the culture and exercise of the finer and higher 
 faculties of our nature. While it is true that 
 
 mere 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 47 
 
 no sense or taste exists in human nature so 
 highly refined as not to have some practical 
 use as its end, whether it be in the fine arts, in 
 literature, in religion, in the love of nature, or 
 of philosophy, it is equally true that the uses 
 which our faculties subserve, are of various 
 
 i T>I rr i i T i i Variety and 
 
 grades. Ihere are affections to be delighted, 
 and thoughts to be inspired, and impulses to 
 be stirred and strengthened, as well as bodies 
 to be clothed and fed in the world ; and how 
 large a part of the substantial good of human 
 life comes from these higher fields of service, 
 where the poet, the musician, the painter, the 
 skilful designer and decorator of our every- 
 day utensils, the architect, the orator, the his- 
 torian, and the philosopher, have cast in their 
 noble intellectual earnings into the wealth of 
 the ages ! Who shall calculate the stores of 
 delight contributed to humanity through end- 
 less generations by a single beautiful creation 
 of genius, by a single noble, helpful act of gen- 
 uine charity, however humble and unpretend- 
 
48 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 ing. Men live from delights, either good or 
 The ufe of bad, and to contribute to the good delights in 
 
 man to be 
 
 served, those planes of- life which are higher than the 
 body, this is as truly of practical use to the 
 world as the clearing of forests, the plowing of 
 fields, and the weaving of fabrics. 
 
 So, too, the uses of life multiply almost infi- 
 nitely when their complex and more general 
 forms are subject to the analysis of a true spirit- 
 
 .Mana U al physiology. Man is a little world in himself, 
 
 microcosm. f J t>J 
 
 and the human body is a picture in miniature, 
 not only of all the universe of mind within, but 
 of the universe of matter without, and not a 
 muscle or vein or cell or fibre in the human 
 body but corresponds in a mysterious and a 
 wonderful manner to some organ or faculty of 
 the mind ; so that the study of the mutual re- 
 u u s man f ^ at ^ on ^ a ^ these minute particles and forms of 
 the human body, in the uses of the animal 
 economy, will enable us to judge by analogy of 
 the intricate and beautiful system in which 
 every emotion and intellectual activity of the 
 
 uman 
 
THE NEW ETHICS, 49 
 
 human mind may play its part in the kingdom 
 of social uses or in the collective man. 
 
 Let men cultivate, then, a conscience of use ; The 
 
 consciencs 
 
 so that the strong and healthy current of social ofl " 
 life shall be a steady sphere of happy labor, 
 the doing, the achieving of something, and not 
 the idle and selfish consumption of the earnings 
 of others.* Let happiness be sought in useful 
 work, be it manual or mental, in the use adapted 
 to each, in his proper sphere or station. Let 
 the evils of mere intellectual culture, so often industrial 
 
 . . training. 
 
 stimulating to pride and mischievous cunning, 
 be made to give way, in proper measure, to in- 
 dustrial and artistic training, so that children may 
 learn at an early age the heavenly delight that 
 flows in only to the mind of him who works 
 unselfishly to add something to the treasure, the 
 good, the happiness of the world ; and let vices 
 be judged as vices, because they destroy useful- t ^ at |^ 
 ness, because they violate the Divine command : hu use! to 
 "To love God with all our strength, and our 
 " neighbor as our self." 
 
 * See Note IV. 
 
50 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 Will there be any difficulty in inculcating a 
 catholicity moral, nay, a religious system, such as this, in 
 
 of this 
 
 doctrine, ^he schools even of our free and tolerant repub- 
 lic ? Where is the sect or the party that can 
 raise a whisper of reproach against this holy 
 gospel of use, of mutual service of man to man, 
 as the very will and law of God ? 
 
 We live in a strange age, an age of contra- 
 
 An f?he es dictions, indeed ; an age which presents the 
 
 time, in unprecedented spectacle of municipal and State 
 
 morals and * 
 
 lon ' legislatures, on the same page of the statute- 
 book, forbidding the use of the Bible in schools, 
 an< ^ enacting laws for keeping holy the Sab- 
 bath ; an age which thinks by legislation not 
 only to restrain man from crime by punishment, 
 but by prohibition of outward indulgence to 
 make him inwardly virtuous. Is there not here 
 a confusion of police and educators ? If, indeed, 
 the temptation to vice comes only from without, 
 t ^ ien ma y a heavenly state of society be within 
 
 s 
 
 , 
 
 but if, on the contrary, the temptations to vice 
 
 man needs the possibilities of any legislature of reformers ; 
 
 reforming, 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 51 
 
 come not from without, but from within, if the 
 man, and not his surroundings, need reforming, 
 must we not begin in giving man a moral police 
 within, a guardian stronger, more watchful, and 
 more effectual than any outward agencies our 
 legislatures can operate ? 
 
 And is this inward police any thing else than 
 conscience, and without this what is any reform, 
 
 Inefficiency 
 
 any prohibition of vice, but a mere whitening of legislation 
 
 in moral 
 
 the surface of that which remains foul and cor- reforms, 
 nipt within, ready always to pour forth again 
 when the restraint is removed ? And where 
 shall we begin in cultivating and educating this 
 best guardian of society, the human con- 
 science ? I answer in that which is the begin- 
 ning and ending of ethical and religious culture, 
 for, so far as either is genuine and not a sham, 
 they both constitute a one, in this teaching 
 our youth to know the law of mutual service as 
 the Divinely imposed law of the highest happi- 
 ness and highest good of man, to reverence it 
 as the very soul of Divinity, to love it, to live 
 by it. 
 
52 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 How this principle is to be inculcated, I do 
 not regard it as necessary to discuss in further 
 detail here. A useful life is the standard, the 
 
 The work . . . ...... 
 
 of ethical aim, the pattern ; the human will, with its emo- 
 
 education. r 
 
 tions and desires, its likes and dislikes, is the 
 subject to be trained to conformity with this 
 standard, to attain to this good as an end ; the 
 means is in the knowledge of the right or the 
 lawful as the useful, and of the wrong and un- 
 lawful as that which injures or destroys use ; 
 and the implanting of this knowledge in the 
 mind and, by constant exercise, in the affections 
 of youth, and thus making it the law of life, is 
 the work of the ethical educator. 
 
 Let those who undertake this education re- 
 
 pSfcVnJt member, however, that the end is a moral, that 
 
 n> is, an affectional, and not an intellectual one ; 
 
 that it is a practice and not an opinion that is 
 
 to be inculcated ; and that while legislatures and 
 
 The force 
 
 t0 a b mo u r s a e i d governments may outwardly compel, educators 
 
 one: which T 1 i 11 1 
 
 leads but never may. It is the swine-herd who drives his 
 
 does not * 
 
 compel ' flock ; the shepherd leads his. 
 
NOTES. 
 
NOTE I. 
 
 THE author, while treating of his subject in a new form, 
 desires to lay no claim to originality in the principles here 
 presented, but rather to refer his readers to the more full 
 elucidation of them to be found in the writings of 
 Emanuel Swedenborg, especially in a posthumous work 
 of this remarkable writer, entitled De Divino Amore, being 
 a treatise attached to a larger work, Apocalypsis Explicata. 
 To indicate the comprehensiveness of this doctrine of use 
 as a Divinely established basis of ethics, it is only neces- 
 sary to quote here the chapter headings of this treatise, 
 which are in substance as follows : 
 
 That life, which is the Divine Love, is in a form. 
 
 That that form is a form of use. 
 
 That man, both in particular and in general, is in such a 
 form. 
 
 That heaven is in such a form. 
 
 That all things of the world also tend to a similar 
 form. 
 
 That there are as many uses as there are affections. 
 55 
 
5 6 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 That there are genera and species of affections, and dif- 
 ferences of species, in infinitum, and, in like manner, of 
 uses. 
 
 That there are degrees of affections and uses. 
 
 That every use derives its life from the common use, and 
 that from it flow in the necessary, the useful, and the de- 
 lightful things of life, according to the quality of the use and 
 the quality of its affection. 
 
 That so far as a man is in the love of use, so far he is in 
 the love of the Lord, so far he loves Him, and loves his 
 neighbor, and is a man. 
 
 That a man is not of sound mind unless use be his affec- 
 tion or occupation. 
 
 That a man has eternal life according to his affection of 
 use. 
 
 That a man's will is his affection. 
 
 That, in the Word, to love means to perform uses. 
 See John, xvi : 21, 24 ; xv : 9, 10 ; xxi : 15-17. 
 
 Etc., etc. 
 
 NOTE II. 
 
 IT is but just to recognize the distinction which exists 
 between what may be called the egoistic and the altruistic 
 schools of utilitarian moralists ; but leaving aside the 
 pure and avowed egoists, the followers of Helvetius, for 
 instance, who declared self-love to be the foundation of 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 57 
 
 all morals and all society, we are equally required to dis- 
 tinguish between two kinds of altruism, namely, between 
 that which inculcates the love of others for the sake of 
 others, and that inculcating the love of others for the 
 sake of self. While the latter is, without doubt, only 
 egoism or self-love, more or less effectually concealed, 
 even from the subject himself, under the more amiable 
 traits of charity or benevolence or public spirit, it is 
 nevertheless available for the good of society in that Di- 
 vine economy which regards the moral freedom of man 
 as a most essential agent to his regeneration, and in- 
 cludes in its wise providence even the permission of evil. 
 The element of selfishness, lurking more or less conspicu- 
 ously in all human motives, must not lead us to utter self- 
 condemnation. At the same time, the ideal to be striven 
 for, and the standard of our real moral perfection, will 
 remain the principle of a genuine altruism, namely, the 
 love of others purely for their good, or, at least, the find- 
 ing our own happiness first and chiefly in that of others. 
 That this ultimately results in the highest happiness to 
 one's self, does not detract from its purely altruistic char- 
 acter. Otherwise the perfection of society would be the 
 negation of happiness. Our highest conception of the 
 happiness of God must indeed be of that which He ex- 
 periences in the happiness of His creatures, and this 
 infinitely, yet without self-love. 
 
58 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 NOTE III. 
 
 IN citing the Massachusetts report, the author would 
 not be understood as presuming to infer a law from a 
 single example ; nevertheless, in all reasoning like this 
 upon the method of " concomitant variations," it is of the 
 first importance that all phases of a question be exam- 
 ined ; and the relation of intellectual education to crime 
 manifestly embraces more than a mere comparison be- 
 tween the illiterate and the school-trained populace. The 
 progress or the decline in morality of society as trained 
 in our present public schools, is a more pertinent subject 
 of inquiry. On this point, Mr. Richard Grant White has 
 written some searching words in an article in the North 
 American Review for December, 1880, entitled " The 
 Public-School Failure." In this article further statistics 
 from New England reports are given, which throw valu- 
 able light on the question of public morality as affecte/ 
 by our own much-boasted free-school system. 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 IN using this term, the conscience of use, the autK /r 
 would recall to the reader the analogy drawn in the ear- 
 lier part of the essay between the physical, intellectual, 
 and moral training. As one, by a kind of acquired in- 
 tuition, recognizes that which is agreeable or revolting to 
 the physical state, and so may be said to have always on 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 59 
 
 the alert a conscience of the agreeable and the disagreeable, 
 which governs his bodily actions ; and as, in like manner, 
 our conscience of truth is a constantly present standard, 
 by which we instinctively decide the verity or falsity of 
 statements, so the conscience of use is regarded as an ac- 
 quired sense of being in harmony or in discord with the 
 objective good of the universe, a sense so quick and ur- 
 gent that we are prompted rather by a persistent feeling 
 than by any reflection or reason to set ourselves right 
 with the Divine order of uses, in which our true happi- 
 ness finally lies. This feeling can be described, perhaps, 
 as that satisfaction which is experienced in the pursuit of 
 all useful, congenial labor, or, in other words, in that labor 
 which is the particular use for which one is by his nature 
 fitted, and also that miserable unrest and sense of dis- 
 satisfaction which to all well-trained moral natures a 
 state of enforced idleness invariably produces. A stronger 
 than any magnetic current seems to drive and pulsate 
 through the whole moral universe, beating at the sources 
 of our life and calling us to work. If we yield and are 
 borne along, it becomes a stream of quiet, profound de- 
 light and peace. If we resist, or grow insensible, or lose 
 our conscience of use, we then become like the blind or 
 the deaf, to whom the beauty and the harmony of the 
 universe appeal in vain. The delight in pleasure is only 
 genuine delight when the pleasures are true recreations, 
 
60 THE NEW ETHICS. 
 
 that is, when they restore the bodily and mental energies 
 for the renewal of those labors in which true happiness 
 dwells. 
 
 " Rest is not quitting 
 
 The busy career ; 
 
 It is but the fitting 
 
 Of man to his sphere." 
 
 There is nothing unreasonable in teaching children to 
 regard their hours of study or busy occupation as their 
 essentially happiest ones, for such they undoubtedly are 
 when not accompanied with undue fatigue or excessive 
 confinement, and to look upon their pleasures as only 
 secondarily happy or as instrumental to the genuine hap- 
 piness of work. How strong the natural impulse to use 
 is, is beautifully shown in the peculiar delight a child 
 feels in those plays in which he believes himself to be 
 constructing or performing somethipg of use, and his 
 manifest grief in finding that he was deceived when his 
 little creation is thoughtlessly cast aside by his parents. 
 And in the more mature experience of life, the happiness 
 of an employment is unquestionably enhanced by the 
 consciousness, even though it be a mistaken one, of its 
 usefulness ; while, on the other hand, the pleasures of leis- 
 ure, rest, and recreation are doubtless proportionate to 
 the sense of their having been fairly earned by useful in- 
 
THE NEW ETHICS. 6 1 
 
 dustry, and of their contributing to our greater capacity 
 for usefulness in the future. 
 
 And if the Divine Parent is more tenderly considerate 
 than earthly ones in not so hastily dispelling the fond il- 
 lusions of those of His children who are happy in the 
 consciousness of useful endeavors, even though the re- 
 sult be one of mistaken importance to the great mass, 
 still this will not be discordant with our conceptions of 
 His love and of His perfect wisdom in the moral govern- 
 ment of the world. 
 
 URBANA UNIVERSITY, O., September, 1881. 
 
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