ABSTRACT

THERE is no form of social activity which can do withoutthe appropriate moral discipline. In fact, every socialgroup, whether to be limited or of some size, is a whole made up of its parts: the primary element, whose repetition forms the whole, being the individual. Now, in order that such a group may persist, each part must operate, not as if it stood alone, that is, as if it were itself the whole; on the contrary, each part must behave in a way that enables the whole to survive. But the conditions of existence of the whole are not those of the part, by the very fact that these are two different things. The interests of the individual are not those of the group he belongs to and indeed there is often a real antagonism between the one and the other. These social interests that the individual has to take into account are only dimly perceived by him: sometimes he fails to perceive them at all, because they are exterior to himself and because they are the interests of something that is not himself. He is not constantly aware of them, as he is of all that concerns and interests himself. It seems, then, that there should be some system which brings them to mind, which obliges him to respect them, and this system can be no other than a moral discipline. For all discipline of this kind is a code of rules that lays down for the individual what he should do so as not to damage collective interests and so as not to disorganize the society of which he forms a part. If he allowed himself to follow his bent, there would be no reason why he should not make his way or, at very least, try to make his way, regardless of everyone in his path and without concern for any disturbance he might be causing about him. It is this discipline that curbs him, that marks the boundaries, that tells him what his relations with his associates should be, where illicit encroachments begin, and what he must pay in current dues towards the maintenance of

the community. Since the precise function of this discipline is to confront the individual with aims that are not his own, that are beyond his grasp and exterior to him, the discipline seems to him-and in some ways is so in reality-as something exterior to himself and also dominating him. It is this transcendent nature of morals that finds expression in popular concepts when we find them turning the fundamental principles of ethics into a law deriving from a divine source. And the bigger the social group becomes, the more this making of rules becomes necessary. For, when the group is small, the individual and the society are not far apart; the whole is barely distinguishable from the part, and each individual can therefore discern the interests of the whole at first hand, along with the links that bind the interests of the whole to those of each one. But as the society expands, so does the difference become more marked. The individual can take in no more than a small stretch of the social horizon; thus, if the rules do not prescribe what he should do to make his actions conform to collective aims, it is inevitable that these aims will become anti-social.