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    Is civilization a disease?
    Is civilization a disease?
    Is civilization a disease?
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Is civilization a disease?

    By Stanton Coit

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
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      Is civilization a disease? - Stanton Coit

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Is civilization a disease?, by Stanton Coit

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

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      Title: Is civilization a disease?

      Author: Stanton Coit

      Release Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #29639]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? ***

      Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

      http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images

      generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian

      Libraries)

      Barbara Weinstock Lectures on

      The Morals of Trade

      IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By

      Stanton Coit

      .

      SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM. By

      John Bates Clark

      .

      THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP. By

      John Graham Brooks

      .

      COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM. By

      Hamilton Holt

      .

      THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS. By

      Albert Shaw

      .

      IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE?

      By

      STANTON COIT

      BOSTON AND NEW YORK

      HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

      The Riverside Press Cambridge

      1917

      COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE REGENTS OF THE

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      Published May 1917

      BARBARA WEINSTOCK

      LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE

      This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the University of California on the Weinstock foundation.

      IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE?

      I. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION

      In choosing The Morals of Trade as the general title of the Weinstock Lectureship, I am informed that its founder meant the word Trade to be understood in its comprehensive sense, as commensurate with our whole system of socialized wealth—at least, upon the present occasion I shall interpret it in this broad way.

      I shall furthermore ask you to consider our system of socialized wealth—its practice and principles—in relation to the whole of that vast artificial structure of human life which is labelled Civilization, and which began to prevail some ten thousand years ago. Such a comprehensive sweep of vision is, in my judgment, necessary if we are to view trade in true human perspective; nor can we estimate the degree of praise or blame we ought to confer upon it until we have determined the worth of civilization itself. For trade is not only bound up inextricably with the whole of our social order, but, as it seems to me, manifests in a most acute form the universal character of civilization in general. We must therefore discover the structural principle which began to co-ordinate the lives of any group of human beings when their tribe finally passed out of barbarism. Having discovered this, we shall be able to judge whether by its ever-advancing application to the life of men, and its ever-increasing domination over their wills, it has furthered the cause of ideal humanity or not. If we find that it has been essentially humane, we shall have arrived at the conclusion that its offspring, trade, is moral. If, however, we unearth in the very principle of historic civilization something radically wrong, anti-human and inhuman, and if we can discover another co-ordinating principle which is humane and feasible, civilization will then be seen to be a thing to be superseded—as Nietzsche thought man himself was—and trade, its latest and lustiest issue, will be felt to be a usurper deserving to be disinherited in favor of some true economic child of the Holy Spirit of Man.

      II. IS CIVILIZATION JUST?

      In order to open such lines of anthropological investigation and ethical reflection, I have raised the question: Is Civilization a Disease?

      Had I asked, Is Civilization Christian? I should have defeated my own end. You would have answered No as soon as you saw the subject of my discourse announced, and would have stayed at home. But you might still have given your ethical sanction to trade. You might have said, It does not pretend to be Christian; but that is nothing against it, for the vital principle of Christianity is sentimental and impracticable: and what won't work can't be right.

      Had I raised the question in the form, Could trade ever have emanated from an intelligent motive of universal love—of deference for the humanity in every man? you would have replied, Never! But you might have consoled yourself with the thought that it is only a small part of our boasted civilization. We have art and education and family life and monogamy and religion; and these come in as correctives, so that trade, although not conceived of benevolence and not bearing the stamp of humanity in its character, is comparatively harmless under the restraints laid upon it. Then, too, the idea of universal love savors of theology, and would have put my lecture under that general ban which in philosophical circles has been set up against theological ethics.

      Indeed, I even shrank from asking, Is civilization unethical, or wrong, or bad? For nowadays we find moral judgments more attractive when they are disguised or at least slightly veiled. When we are really curious to know what is good, we become shy; we are not sure that our neighbors may not put a cynical interpretation upon any appearance of enthusiasm in our effort to find out what is right. Anticipating such delicacy in my prospective audience of to-night, I threw a physiological drapery, not to say pathological, over the ethical bareness of my theme, by introducing into it the idea of disease. For while it may no longer be a stigma to be un-Christian, and while some have been trying to break all the traditional tables of moral values and prevent any

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