COLLECTIVE MORALITY.
THE situation in the Balkans is one that sets the mind thinking about those ultimate questions of right and wrong which, when all is said and done, eternally underlie the mean- ing and progress of civilisation. That there are such ultimate questions few will be prepared to deny. Even those who trace rules of moral conduct from inherited practices of con- venience, and see in ethics merely the outcome of a neo- Darwinian law, will agree, with those who regard the moral sense as a miracle comparable with the creative miracles of matter and life, that there are, in fact, laws between man and man apart from mere municipal sanction. There are such things as absolute rights, even though the criminal law of a particular State attaches no punishment to the infringement of such Tights ; and there are absolute duties, even though the performance of such duties is un- enforceable by any human tribunal. There are many, the author of " Tristram Shandy " tells us, who, "when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves." It is this natural law, standing out in vivid contrast, often enough, to the laws of necessity and the laws of nations, that seems to assert absolute rights and duties. For more than a century this idea of a natural law of duty has grown in intensity, and so strongly fixed is it now in the minds of men that recently a French writer, If. Rdonard Engelhardt, in his book, " De FAnimalite et de son Droit," asserted the absolute rights of animals ; and certainly such a position is arguable.
Instances of such rights and duties occur, of course, at once to every thinking mind. Even our municipal law does not regard it as criminal for one man to allow another to perish though the rescue could be effected by the slightest possible exertion. But that a duty to save the endangered person exists no one doubts. It would be easy to develop from this central case a whole series of instances where moral, as opposed to legal, duties and rights undoubtedly exist. The fact that these rights and duties are confirmed and enforced by no definite human sanction does not affect their existence. In that respect they stand on the same footing as all primitive law, and the international customs which are known as inter- national law. In common with these, they possess that indefinite sanction which is sometimes called public opinion, but which may be more accurately defined as a manifesta- tion of collective morality. In every community there are constantly in operation mysterious forces which are the resultant of individual opinions, emotions, or intuitions. The impulses of crowds, the waves of fashion, the imposition of customs, and the pressure that enforces the observance of what we have called ultimate rights and duties are all in- stances of such forces. They are forces that materially differ from their constituent parts, but they may be analysed and classified with reference to such constituents.
At the present moment it is the question of collective morality that detains us. The individual members of a great community one and all hold certain opinions about certain acts,—acts such as are daily done during the present crisis in Macedonia. The opinion is so strong in each individual that he or she would, without any hesitation, sacrifice both fortune and life itself to prevent such acts if they were taking place in his or her immediate presence. Nothing but physical force of a compelling character would prevent intervention. Every one can relate instances of such intervention, and the newspapers frequently record them. Now the question is as to the nature and character of the resultant of such opinions. On many questions the community is divided into a majority and a minority, and there cannot truly be said to be a collective opinion in such a case on any subject. By a convention of convenience the majority is allowed its way. But the case put is different. There is no division of opinion in the com- munity. Every individual without exception holds the view that no personal sacrifice would be too great to prevent the happening in an English homestead of the events which are now occurring with appalling regularity in the villages of Macedonia. What, then, is the nature and character of the resultant of such opinions ? Is the community a moral entity as truly as is the individual, and, if so, is there the same compelling duty of intervention as exists in the case of the individual ?
In order to answer these questions various points have to be considered. We may certainly premise that in moral dynamics, as truly as in physical dynamics, a resultant force is an independent thing, and is not merely a product of the forces which bring it into existence. The collective morality of a community is not a mere aggregate of individual opinions. It is a new force which has to operate in fields closed to the individual. The existence of this new force implies the existence of similar forces. The world is, in fact, a community of communities. Such communities are of the most various character, ranging from the elementary freedom of the curious primitive race recently discovered on Mornington Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, through every phase of tyranny, to the complex liberty presented by the democracies of Anglo-Saxon origin. Each of these com- munities has its own collective morality, but for the most part it is a morality that is helpless and blind and voice- less. Until a nation attains by growth or revolution repre- sentative institutions it has no effective moral consciousness. It is an amorphous community represented by Kings or statesmen whose actions are primarily controlled by motives that are often not even analogous to morals as understood by the individual. In such a community of communities the position of a nation that would fain exercise its moral
consciousness as if it were an individual is peculiarly difficult. In so far as it has to deal with nations simi- larly, constituted, or with nations upon which it can impose its will, it will be able to prevent by co-operation, or by force, wholesale breaches of the law that binds man to man. But it has also to deal with powerful nations that are highly, though artificially, organised, whose policies are not controlled either by the desires of the units of the nations, or often enough by anything analogous to moral considerations. The policy of such nations may involve, and often has involved, catastrophes of the most appalling character, and the first thought of the average man is that any and every nation claiming to possess a moral conscious- ness must intervene to prevent such things. The rulers of such nations are only bound by the practices of international law. To this extent the nations that have not developed a moral consciousness can be bound by certain standards of conduct which find their sanction in the exigencies of inter- national intercourse. The community which is a moral entity can, by the continuous application of these standards to the conduct of a nation which is not a moral entity, secure the adoption of a policy that in fact respects the ultimate rights of those who are affected by that policy. This applica- tion of standards of conduct is a duty of a nation that claims to be moral, and it involves often enough treaty relations of an elaborate kind. The contracting parties are bound to fulfil their treaty obligations, which in the case of one of the parties are also moral obligations.
Now intervention at large may reasonably be condemned. No one nation can police the world. It may logically be said that intervention, even in a just cause, may wound the whole community of nations, and thus throw back the moral develop- ment of that whole community. That a nation should be ready to sacrifice itself in the cause of justice is, it will be admitted, the real test of its moral nature; but it may be argued that it has no right also to imperil, even for justice, the existence of civilisation. Monastir is better than Armageddon. That doubtless is so. But we are not considering interven- tion at large. We are considering the case of a nation that in its efforts for itself and for civilisation has become both contractually and morally responsible for the main- tenance of ultimate rights and duties in a certain region. Our responsibility, for instance, for active intervention cn behalf of ultimate rights involves the absolute maintenance of our ideal throughout our Empire, in every region where we claim direct or indirect control, and in all places where by our orevious conduct we are estopped from disclaiming moral -esponsibility. To fulfil our obligations we must be ready to acrifice ourselves. Even if the Balkans and Constantinople me the key of India (as they certainly are not), we must be .eady to sacrifice our interests in order to do our duty in Macedonia. It is mere cant to talk about national morality if, through personal interest, we refuse to employ all the means at our disposal to free Macedonia from Turkish misrule. When the heart comes- " Fresh from the beauty and the bliss Of English liberty," to the intolerable Macedonian horrors, it sickens to think that England is, as a nation, doing so little to prevent deeds which every individual Englishman regards with the utmost indignation.
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