ABSTRACT
Skillfully invested, ethical capital brings regular and increasing dividends, which may be spent immediately or reinvested. In asserting that goodness, that is, ethical capital, is real, we do not assert that man is wholly good, nor do we deny the reality of war, slavery, and exploitation. It will be enough that in human society there is, as well as evil, clearly discernible goodness. The social life of man gives abundant evidence of this. To understand the nature of ethical capital more fully, the coefficients of human goodness must be examined in some detail. Let the behavior of the good Samaritan be our starting point. Human behavior takes a more markedly ethical direction when, as an offshoot, extension, deviation, or copy of the maternal and mating instincts, it becomes concerned with the protection of the weak and the undefended. Though not itself part of the ethical capital, weakness is, as it were, ethical raw material.
