There is nothing in the law of
consistency to direct him; men might be consistently bad as well as
consistently good. We have still no criterion, only an appeal to
coolness, to detachment from hot impulses and selfishness.
Practically, what the Kantian viewpoint amounts to is an exaltation
of conscience-a much more concrete (and variable) thing than this
abstract formula. Do your duty, at any cost! Our hearts respond to
such preaching, but our intellects remain perplexed, if the practical
apotheosis of goodness is not supplemented by an adequate theoretic
justification thereof.
What evils may go with conscientiousness?
At this point it may repay us to note more carefully the inadequacy
of that mere blind conscientiousness which is the practical burden
of the Kantian teaching. One would think that the only source of our
troubles lay in our lack of desire to do right! As a matter of fact,
there is a vast amount of good will in the world which effects no good,
or does serious harm, for want of wise direction. Much of the tragedy
of life consists of the clashes between wills equally consecrated and
pure. Conscientious cranks and blunderers are perhaps even more of
a nuisance than out-and-out villains; they hurt every good cause they
espouse and bring noble ideals into ridicule; they provoke discouragement
and cynicism. There is hardly a folly or a crime that has not been
committed prayerfully and with a clear conscience; the saint and the
criminal are sometimes psychologically indistinguishable indeed,
by which name we call a fanatic may depend upon which side we are on.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139