eration is much needed by our girls we have fair evidence among women in Washington, where so many are stranded without homes, friends, or fortune. Sixty women have been known to apply at a private school as teachers during the summer months, and most of them ill fitted for earning their living in any position. The political changes in Washington conduce strongly to this state of affairs. It is well known that great improvidence exists among the families of the male and female clerks in the departments in Washington as to their manner of living. Many a clerk receiving eighteen hundred or two thousand dollars a year will die, after twenty years or more, without having saved a cent, even for his own funeral expenses, leaving a family with extravagant habits to battle with the world as best they can. This is no uncommon case; to be saving and buy a home is the exception.
I can only give out a few hints on this great subject; but I venture to hope that reflective minds may be impressed with its importance, and may exert their influence to encourage the teaching of the underlying principles of economy and moderation to our children in the public schools.
Laura Osborne Talbott.
THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
Editor Popular Science Monthly:
Sir: I have read Herbert Spencer's The Data of Ethics, and, if I have not misunderstood the work, it teaches that the object to be gained by pursuing morality is happiness, and that a nation's happiness increases as does its morality. If by the term happiness we mean surplus of pleasure over pain, I think that the happiness of savage nations is greater than that of civilized ones. The former are certainly healthier. By our definition this fact alone indicates greater happiness. But savage nations are notoriously immoral. People, whether religious or not, when they argue against immorality, generally give reasons for its avoidance which issue from the heart and sentiment rather than from the mind.
Here are some instances: We say that a man who has been a miser all his lifetime is wretched and unhappy; yet he may have been in perfect health, bodily and mental, which we must assume to indicate that he has been able to exercise all his faculties: and the exercise of faculties, according to Spencer, constitutes pleasure. Persons unable to stick to one occupation for any length of time are often spoken of in terms of pity, yet they also may have led lives of perfect activity. In the former case the means by which the miser accumulated his fortune are held up to us as directly causing pain to the user of them, and we are warned not to follow his steps, for he must have suffered. In reality, however, he could not have suffered so terribly, for if he had he would not have been left in the possession of the power to exercise all his faculties. By similar reasoning we can come to a like conclusion in regard to the vacillating kind of people I have spoken of. People make a mistake in looking at such things through only their own eyes.
An instance of the opposite kind in behalf of the pursuit of morality is as follows: After hearing the biography of two persons, one of whom led a long, healthy, selfish life, and the other, having all the advantages of education, was possessed of a sympathetic and an emotional nature which recognized and met the wants of others, and who during his lifetime was universally loved but constantly suffered, most of us would prefer the life of the latter.
With the idea of happiness in mind we started with, I think the above instances show that the cultivation of morality is not necessarily accompanied by increased happiness. Now, if what I have said is true, it seems to me that the logic of the book in question is destroyed, and that all those who are interested in the furtherance of morality and the scientific discussion of ethics are obliged to face a disagreeable conclusion. It is this: Philosophic thinkers can really give no adequate reason for the pursuit of morality, and they, too, as well as professed believers in other-world motives for doing right, must often argue from the heart and according to their ideals and not as inexorable reason and logic demand; and must be content to live somewhat under a contradiction. I use the word professed not unthinkingly, as I believe that most really honorable people find their motives for rectitude in the present life.
To the possible objection to my argument that I have forgotten to take into account the increase of complexity of the pleasures which takes place as an organism becomes more moral, I may say that so do the pains become more complex.
I might also ask the question, Which pleasures are the greater, the simple ones of childhood, or the complex pleasures of maturity? It seems to me that there is no difference.
| K. |
| Somerville, Mass., November, 1890. |
