Further, the group in its distributive aspect is bringing such new elements into the here and now that life is wholly changed, and the ethical commands therein involved are different, and therefore the task of the group is to discover the new formulation which these new elements demand. The moral law thus gathers to itself all the richness of science, of art, of all the fullness of our daily living.
The group consciousness of right thus developed becomes our daily imperative. No mandate from without has power over us. There are many forms of the fallacy that the governing and the governed can be two different bodies, and this one of conforming to standards which we have not created must be recognized as such before we can have any sound foundation for society. When the ought is not a mandate from without, it is no longer a prohibition but a self-expression. As the social consciousness develops, ought will be swallowed up in will. We are some time truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of restraints and prohibition. Morality is not the refraining from doing certain things—it is a constructive force.
So in the education of our young people it is not enough to teach them their “duty,” somehow there must be created for them to live in a world of high purpose to which their own psychic energies will instinctively respond. The craving for self-expression, self-realization, must see quite naturally for its field of operation the community. This is the secret of education: when the waters of our life are part of the sea of human endeavor, duty will be a difficult word for our young people to understand; it is a glorious consciousness we want, not a painstaking conscience. It is ourselves soaked with the highest, not a Puritanical straining to fulfil an external obligation, which will redeem the world.
Education therefore is not chiefly to teach children a mass of things which have been true up to the present moment; moreover it is not to teach them to learn about life as fast as it is made, not even to interpret life, but above and beyond everything, to create life for themselves. Hence education should be largely the training in making choices. The aim of all proper training is not rigid adherence to a crystallized right (since in ethics, economics or politics there is no crystallized right), but the power to make a new choice at every moment. And the greatest lesson of all is to know that every moment is new. “Man lives in the dawn forever. Life is beginning and nothing else but beginning. It begins everlastingly.”
We must breed through the group process the kind of man who is not fossilized by habit, but whose eye is intent on the present situation, the present moment, present values, and can decide on the forms which will best express them in the actual world.
To sum up this point: morality is never static; it advances as life advances. You cannot hang your ideals up on pegs and take down no. 2 for certain emergencies and no. 4 for others. The true test of our morality is not the rigidity with which we adhere to standard, but the loyalty we show to the life which constructs standards. The test of our morality is whether we are living not to follow but to create ideals, whether we are pouring our life into our visions only to receive it back with its miraculous enhancement for new uses.
Secondly, I have said that the conception of right as a group product, as coming from the ceaseless interplay of men, shows us that there is no such thing as an individual conscience in the sense in which the term is often used. As we are to obey no ideals dictated by others or the past, it is equally important that we obey no ideal set up by our unrelated self. To obey the moral law is to obey the social ideal. The social ideal is born, grows and shapes itself through the associated life. The individual cannot alone decide what is right or wrong. We can have no true moral judgment except as we live our life with others. It is said, “Every man is subject only to his own conscience.” But what is my conscience? Has it not been produced by my time, my country, my associates? To make a conscience by myself would be as difficult as to try to make a language by myself.16
It is sometimes said, on the other hand, “The individual must yield his right to judge for himself; let the majority judge.” But the individual is not for a moment to yield his right to judge for himself; he can judge better for himself if he joins with others in evolving a synthesized judgment. Our individual conscience is not absorbed into a national conscience; our individual conscience must be incorporated in a national conscience as one of its constituent members.17 Those of us who are not wholly in sympathy with the conscientious objectors do not think that they should yield to the majority. When we say that their point of view is too particularistic, we do not mean that they should give up
