Society And its Purpose
Book 1 - Society
CHAPTER 12
Morality tempers and reconciles social and extra-social right
142. Un-oiled gears grate and grind, and soon wear out. The same is true of the social machine: the two great gears of social and extra-social right break down very quickly if they are not continually lubricated with the oil of moral obligation and the unguent of virtue. It is principally perfect virtue, the teaching of Christianity, that keeps the social machine in repair and moving sweetly. If we consider solely naked right and forget duty, we convert our right into a wrong. The ancient tag, summum jus, summa injuria [there is no greater injury than supreme right], is verified.
143. We need more than knowledge of our rights if we are to learn to act as we should. We must at the same time be fully cognisant of the limits of our rights, and the way in which they are to be employed. Only morality teaches this. It too often happens that a person with a right allows himself to think he can use it capriciously and without limit. This is an extremely baneful error which produces insubordination and rebellion on the part of subjects in a society, and strong-arm tactics and despotism on the part of government. Subjects say to themselves: `We have the right to take precautions to preserve our rights as individuals and citizens; we want to be in charge of public administration, and so on.’ Government says: `We have the right to take precautions against harm to society. We can and must, therefore, oversee and manage everything private and secret, sacred and profane, and so on.’
It is immediately obvious that there can be no mutual confidence, harmony, peace and collective security between individuals in society and its government and administration unless such extended, undetermined rights are given precise, determined limits by good faith, equity and goodness — in other words, by duty and moral virtues. The intervention of morality is absolutely necessary; its authoritative veto has to forbid various parties the use, or rather abuse, of their cold, coarse rights.
144. Morality first establishes the supreme safeguard: `No one has the right to make bad use of his own right.’ It is not sufficient for individuals or even government to vaunt a precautionary right as an excuse for doing what they please, without limit or supervision. Both individuals and government must always use their precautionary right `well, and as little as possible.’ Every unnecessary enactment or restriction entails overstepping one’s limits; it is a real injustice and brings into being that summum jus which is indeed summa injuria. Only morality can teach this good faith and moderation in the use of one’s own right; without morality no peaceful society, or even society, is possible.
145. Some other examples will help to show the necessity of morality if social advancement is to proceed smoothly and harmoniously.
146. Government is composed of people who, as human, are all fallible. Now, it is true that individual members of society have the right to a government which administers public affairs zealously and with all the prudence of which those in charge of government are capable. Nevertheless, to claim that government possesses real infallibility would be a genuine lack of discretion and indeed a real injustice in society. There are, however, individuals who demand their right to be governed well without considering the limitations to this right. They have no difficulty in laying claim to the impossible by requiring unerring government, and refusing to tolerate inculpable mistakes made through the inevitable limitation of governmental views.
Only virtue, that is, equity and benignity, can temper such a summum jus, and limit the unjust pretensions of subjects.
Christianity established one of the most social of all possible maxims when it made charity an obligation towards all, and in particular towards those who govern society; when it forbade rash judgement; when with respect and love towards governmental power, it taught people always to presume as well as possible of government actions; and when, in cases of doubt, it obliged subjects to renounce their own right generously and prefer not to offend others’ right rather than exercise their own.
147. The same kind of considerations can be made about governments, which must also acknowledge their own fallibility. By concentrating on their own authority to govern and administer, instead of loving justice without limit, they lay claim to summum jus. Their argument runs as follows: `We have the right to administer and govern, and can therefore administer and govern as we want without ever being censured for what we do.’
Christian morality, however, suggests a totally different reasoning. Starting from the principle we have indicated, `No one has the right to use his own right badly’, it shows the obligation incumbent upon rulers of administering and ruling as well as possible without refusing any means that can lead to the exercise of good, just government. They must keep their own fallibility firmly in mind, be ready to receive enlightenment from any source, and prompt to discuss willingly and loyally those points where the individuals they govern sincerely feel offended. If these individuals have probable reasons in their favour, social administration is bound by moral duty to settle every question peacefully and promptly through arbitrators of proven integrity and universal trust. And neither of the parties must act violently.
148. These reflections show the desirability in treatises of ethics of a distinct place for the moral duties on which society rests. These duties would spread amongst all members the benevolence and trust that form the best guarantee for the conservation and prosperity of the social body.