Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements of the Past Half Century

From the INTRODUCTION. AMONG English-speaking peoples there have been in progress during the past fifty years three types of ethical reform movements. These aimed at practical and not at merely theoretical ethics. They aimed at conduct and not at theories of conduct. Each of these types has had a free run for at least a generation, and during this period each has developed and perfected its scheme and method, setting forth its ground plan and its propaganda. Time has now come to examine the aim and scope of these reform movements, with a view towards determining the chances of success which each type inherently carries by virtue of the principles on which it makes its appeal for a more ethical conduct. A practical ethical movement resembles in this one respect a political movement. Both make an appeal for a certain line of conduct. But the manner of estimating their success in obtaining their object is ascertainable in the one by a resort to the suffrage of the people, a purely a posteriori process; in the other by an indirect a priori process; for there is no direct way of determining the efficiency of a contemporary ethical movement. The three types of practical ethical movements must therefore be subjected to an internal criticism, if their efficiency as practical movements is to be determined. This is all the more necessary because in the absence of any other test, the protagonists of each type claim, for one reason or another, the superiority of the one favored by them over those favored by others. There are at present hosts of workers in the Religious Ethical Movement, who have certain interests to maintain. Now it is as easy to become a bigot in an ethical as in any other movement, and those who are attached to certain interests often become willing bigots to maintain them. And by most people the glowing accounts these give of their successful achievements in practical ethical reform, can neither be proved nor disproved in any direct way. To a few only is direct observation possible, and these few are offset by the many who have an interest to maintain. Where it is thus hard to maintain the truth by an appeal to objective facts, resort must be had to subjective principles. A thorough analysis of these will reveal the strength and weakness of the types to which they belong and thus also forecast the likelihood of their efficiency in practical affairs. Each of the three types of the practical ethical reform movements rests on a different basic principle, from which it derives the greater part of its strength and no small share of its weakness. To set these forth by an analysis of the movements both in their historic developments and in their principles is the object of this work. Whatever positive contribution to practical ethics is to be found herein, has been set forth not as a separate and altogether new thesis - for in a treatment of practical ethical reform movements, this would involve, nay necessitate, the formation of a different and entirely new movement which is not at all necessary - but has been embodied in the negative criticisms of the Religious Ethical Movement in Chapter I and of the Social Ethical Movement in Chapter II; but more directly in the positive and favorable criticism of the Pure Ethical Movement treated in Chapter III.