Having now had with you our several quarrels
We advance our lance to the subject of morals.
Ethics is a theme from which I can glean
Some substantial hopes for a better day;
When, with our prejudices all put away,
We shall all learn to act and think the things,
Which keep in view the good life to us brings.
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While this subject is as plain as a b c
The same for some reason you fail to see.
Morals are the manners and customs one adopts
For himself in private life, while he hops,
Or walks and talks with his fellow men.
Good morals are good habits and bad, bad.
Habits are easily made, and when once had,
They are hard to break for anybody’s sake.
The “stream of thought” seems the road to take,
Where it once had run anywhere under the sun.
Morals are the acts of which life is composed
That we have upon ourselves imposed.
This definition was made by Immanuel Kant,
But as it is self evident, he needn’t want,
All the credit to claim if I use the same.
Laws cause you do as others compel you;
Ethics cause you to do what you like to.
There are only two things that push us along.
Think about it till you rack your brains,
And you’ll find them always pleasures and pains.
Some even take pleasure in their sorrow and grief;
And you’d not be thanked for offering a relief;
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Nor for producing a balm to heal their wounds,
From which they suffered, regardless of their grounds.
Men, of their humility have been so proud;
That lugubriously, they’d stand up in any crowd;
Or with their heads bowed and on bended knees,
With the pride of their humbleness you they’d freeze.
The pleasures we desire and the pains we shun,
Were our only motives since the world begun.
Now keep this in mind as its use you’ll find,
As we treat of ethics and its motives behind.
“Self-imposed precepts” are not the moral code,
Prevalent in places where men their guns load,
To meet a fellow man in the public road,
To try out the question with bullets of lead,
On the field of honor, till one or both are dead;
Nor is it the legal code enacted by man,
Making rules against things under ban.
Morals deal with acts men actually intend,
Those motions adapted to some end.
“The wild gesticulations of a lunatic,”
Or of a crazy man who automatically throws a brick,
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Bear no relation to the discussion of ethics.
The standards of morals take their hue
From the aims of life men hold in view.
The pessimist says life’s a failure entire,
So to meet the demands his views require,
A scheme of acts adapted to shortening life
To get this set soonest out of the strife,
And all the sad and tragic things,
The whole of existence to them brings,
Would be the highest standard of acts,
Which in goodness one for them enacts.
The optimist takes a very different view,
Life’s a pleasure while he its joys pursue.
For him a general life suited to make,
Life long, broad and deep for his sake,
Would be a good banner at him to shake.
So we say, bad morals are bad, and good, good.
The reason the subject by you is not understood,
Is, that while you must surely know,
You constantly misapply to ethics one word as you go.
The meaning of this word if you don’t get,
Is from stupidity, for you never yet
Went into a store anything to buy or even try,
But a practical demonstration was before your eye.
The first thing you ask about a razor or knife,
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Is this, “Is it good?” and the clerk doesn’t cry,
“What do you mean!” if he wants you to buy.
He politely answers, “Both these tools cut good,
As they are warranted, one whiskers, and one wood,
And both of them do their part very good.”
If one of you farmers wished to acquire a cow,
You wouldn’t ask whether she could make a bow;
You would enquire how much milk she gave,
And how much butter, and could she save
You some expense in the way she’d behave.
If such questions had all been left out,
And the seller had known what he was about,
He’d said, “She’s good,” and everything’s understood.
If a female reader went to buy a new spring hat,
And the thing was in style, you would close your chat.
If it was in style, it’s good, every fool knows that,
The bargain’s made and the hat charged to pap.
The same thing is true of skirts and hoops,
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Of dogs and cats, and chickens in coops;
You can’t look about or run around,
Without understanding this word always so profound,
And mysterious when applied to my theme;
With yawning face you almost dream,
And look confused when I try to tell what I mean.
You never ask about any of the things I’ve spoke,
Whether they say their prayers and never joke,
To speak of such, you at me your fun poke.
Now we’ll see whether you are sensible folk,
When you try to shed your customary cloak
Of prejudice and mysticism you croak,
Every time you try sense to ethics to apply.
Common sense teaches us there is no reason why,
The definition will not fit conduct every whit,
As it did other things about which I’ve writ.
Conduct is good if its ends come through,
And its natural results are good for me and you.
I take the optimist’s view, life’s a blessing,
And when to you my words I’m addressing,
Say whether I’m right in possessing,
The notion that acts are morally right and good,
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That contribute to life as above understood.
In its thickness, breadth and length, all those things,
Which happiness achieve, diminishing man’s stings.
Before us examples have been set by teachers,
By Immanuel Kant better than preachers;
That each one of our actions should lofty be,
That each would be a model for a code of morality.
This form of hedonism I would gladly place
Before the eyes of the whole human race.
Asceticism is a term derived from the Greek,
Applied to monks, signifying the exercises they seek,
By which they distinguish themselves in that they do,
For favor with the deity in the lines they pursue,
Away from their fellow man as much as they can.
Virtue is a term originally meaning prowess,
And as applied to bravery they did possess;
It aroused the ancients to courage in distress.
When the Old Bard sang “the wrath
Of Peleus’ son against those in his path;
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When his armies did advance with spear and lance,
Against the Trojans against whom he did advance;
Or of him sulking in his tent, nursing his spleen
Against tall Agamemnon for acts in being mean
Towards him in regard to a captive maid
Upon whom he had his affections laid.”
And all the bloody deeds done by gods and men,
Breathing anger from their nostrils when
Upon each other their darts they did hurl,
And in the dust many bleeding bodies did curl;
As these savage men struggled for their prize;
To their gods whole hecatombs did they sacrifice
Of poor dumb brutes that could not sympathize
With them in their bloody wars and heroic cries.
Out of virtue as thus defined did arise
Asceticism and all the horrid tortures it did devise.
Even now men are so wedded to their inspired books
And things written in them by ancients where one looks
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To find every act for you and me so well defined
That they claim that all experience combined,
Cannot those precepts change to suit the age;
Although we point out inconsistency on every page.
They even allege that what by their book is said,
Makes things good or bad under each particular head.
That even as simple a thing as theft,
If out of their book the subject were left,
There would be nothing in our practical observation
To distinguish whether or not stealing was a proper avocation.
Whatever of man’s moral nature the origin may be,
Whether he was created with a certain propensity,
Or whether our tendencies are a matter of growth;
One thing is certain, and needs not any oath,
To prove that our several tastes may be improved,
To treat our fellow man as it him behoved;
And toward ourselves the truer to be,
Until our standards and the right did agree.
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If all the acts that you and I must do,
Were written into mandates constantly held in view,
And we should follow them all the way through,
We still would be nothing but very slaves,
Marching under orders of some specially wise knaves.
Now if one in what he does, lives to the very top,
Of his own ideals, him we cannot stop,
Until for him his ideas we raise; he is up to full speed,
For the requirements of all are not if the same meed.
Most of man’s motions should be left to his whims,
Whether he rides or walks, or even swims.
Moral conduct being by each self imposed,
The acts men do will naturally be disclosed,
In the things they like in the tastes disclosed.
When the acts of men are ruled by laws enacted,
From the category of ethics they are subtracted.
No human motions should be forced or restrained,
Unless the welfare of others is to be attained.
In some general sense, everything I do,
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To a limited extent, has its natural effect on you.
By two meeting in the road, one of us must turn,
To let the other pass or his rig might overturn.
By breathing the air some oxygen I must consume,
Also infecting what remains by what I exhume.
When in the market I buy my daily supplies,
That alone has a tendency to make the price rise;
So that you have to pay more for your store.
Thus in many and varied ways our motions bear
Some natural disadvantages we should all share,
In our relations each with each as we live everywhere.
Any physical fact, however simple it may look,
May change aspect by the turns it took,
Showing how the morality of any motion,
May appear and disappear, simply by the notion
We have about those unseen motives in its track
Preceding, going with, or following it back.
In presence of ladies a man takes off his hat,
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To show respect for them and nothing but that.
The morality of this act is not hard to adjust.
The same gentleman to brush away the dust,
Takes off the same hat in perfect disgust.
In each case the taking off the hat was in view.
The one act was moral, while the other it’s true,
With the question of ethics had nothing to do.
He now takes off his hat at the command of the law,
In the presence of the court where he waits in awe.
Being tired of the hat, he takes it off to sell,
Now the above illustration you know so well,
That its application I’ll leave you to spell.
“Nothing’s good or bad but the thinking makes it so.”
Behold the beauty of ethics, let us make it grow.
If you want plants to thrive, cultivate the soil,
Don’t over fertilize, or you will make them spoil.
We may stimulate our desires for good morals,
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And our desire for good deeds, even by quarrels.
We may over stimulate the passions of the youth,
Even when trying upon them to impress the truth.
By unduly stimulating their appetite for gains,
And their desires for pleasures without enduring the pains;
And by excess their natures may be changed.
In that way we destroy their faculty to enjoy,
The real blessings of life born of strife.
Rewards and punishments for acts and omissions,
Are causes for delinquencies and its commissions.
Both have their way their victims to sway,
From the natural paths of right every day.
Every good act brings its consequential pay
And every wrong act its own punishment,
Upon all who upon mischief are always bent.
But to add to the natural consequence of things,
Which their performance usually brings,
This over pay in the nature of rewards,
Drives one on until the pay alone he regards,
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And the nature of crimes fades out of view,
While the punishment alone is considered by you.
Thus on we are naturally driven from our path,
Straying out of the right and the pleasures it hath.
Most of our motions should be left open to choice
To develop our selective faculties in acts and voice,
That make us kind and fellows to rejoice.
A certain kind of approval we feel,
That might be compared to the scent flowers yield,
Upon the doing or even contemplation of acts.
There is also a stifling sensation coming about,
The doing of things about which there is a doubt,
As to whether we ought, although never found out,
Think, do, or pursue the thing we’re about.
Conscience is the name applied
To this moving feeling with our faculties allied.
And some say it is a true moral guide.
But experience finds conscience in this plight,
It approves everything we think to be right,
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And condemns all things in our sight,
That even from ignorance we deem wrong that may be right.
For conscience’ sake many have been burned at the stake,
To appease its gnawings, and thirst for blood to slake.
Gored by its pricks, Hindu mothers, their own babes,
In innocence swathed, into the seething waves,
Of the River Ganges, writhing, religiously they fling,
While to this river god their hymns they sing,
Galled by conscience the monk and anchorite,
In dark caves, out of human sight,
Tear their flesh and do themselves every spite
To humiliate themselves in heaven’s sight.
What a freak conscience has proved to be,
Is illustrated in a story by Heinrich Heine,
Of a certain judge in a certain state,
Having condemned eight hundred by his mandate,
To be burned at the stake for witchcraft,
One day conscience threw at him its own shaft.
He imagined too that he was guilty of the crime,
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That so many others had been during his time.
So to quiet his conscience he paid the fine;
And having declared himself guilty, did resign,
And purge his soul in punishment condign.
Conscience may help us our morals to regulate,
But first of all, we must our conscience educate,
By educating the head by which it is led.
Know the right and do it too as best you can
And conscience will aid you to be a man.
To learn the right, and it pursue,
Read all books and observe the actions of man,
Acquire by your own experience all you can;
Value conduct as you would value your goods,
Digest the subject as you do your foods,
Always keeping in view that present good,
Is often best achieved, when understood,
By enduring pains now to prepare us for pleasures,
In the days to come in greater measures.
After all, the art which makes life a success
In blessing those we love to bless,
Is to find th’ equilibrium of pleasures and pains,
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As we do our business losses and gains.
Altruism is a word by Auguste Compte made,
Meaning regard for others, which he truly said,
We should cultivate and human love assimilate.
Sometimes the best thing for others we can do,
Is not to worry them, but our own course pursue,
And to ourselves be true, and they’ll pull through.
