The Standard

“ Life, then, continuance, fullness, joy, use, this is the standard of right and wrong; a standard which no book ever set up, which no book can ever overthrow; a standard which is inherent, natural, necessary, a part of the very nature of things. ”

“ While public opinion is the practical standard of justice, the ideal standard is the concept that those acts and those only that tend to promote the welfare of the race as distinguished from the welfare of particular communities are right, just and equitable. [2] While this is my view of both the ideal and the practical yardstick to determine right from wrong, the majority believe that the standard is objective, or that it is to be found somewhere in space rather than in the consciousness of the individual, of the community or of the human race. ”

“ The practice of the several arts need not suffer from diversity of standard, provided the several separate standards are themselves incorruptible. In all the arts—and by the arts I mean all disinterested and liberal practical occupations—the difficulty is not that sufficiently authoritative standards do not exist, but that they are not applied. The standard which is applied is merely that of the good-enough. ”

“ A standard remains fixed only until a more perfect standard displaces it. The data from which the standard was derived may be reviewed because of some error, because a further subdivision of the elements studied may prove possible, or because improvements in some factor of the work, i.e., the worker, material, tools, equipment, etc., may make a new standard desirable. ”

“ What, then, shall be, the common standard that shall decide which is the man that thinks with the greatest justice? What the scale by which to measure who has the best regulated imagination? What balance shall be found sufficiently exact to determine whose knowledge is most certain, when he agitates subjects, which experience cannot enable him to examine, that escape all his senses, that have no model, that are above reason? ”

“ When a deviation from analogy has become the universal practice of a nation, it then takes place of all rules and becomes the standard of propriety.
The two points therefore, which I conceive to be the basis of a standard in speaking, are these; universal undisputed practice, and the principle of analogy. Universal practice is generally, perhaps always, a rule of propriety; and in disputed points, where people differ in opinion and practice, analogy should always decide the controversy. ”

“ In other words, the standard we should establish is the standard of conduct, not the standard of occupation, of means, or of social position. It is the man's moral quality, his attitude toward the great questions which concern all humanity, his cleanliness of life, his power to do his duty toward himself and toward others, which really count ”

“ While this doctrine is believed, it will be impossible for a nation to follow as fast as the standard changes—for if the gentlemen at court constitute a standard, they are above it themselves, and their practice must shift with their passions and their whims. ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”

“ You must find a fixed standard of some kind or other; for if there is no standard but the immediate momentary purpose of the day, guided and governed by the man who uses it, fixed not only for the disposition of all the wealth and strength of the state, but for the life, fortune, and property of every individual, your Lordships are left without a principle to direct your judgment. ”

“ And I would ask, in turn, if my old friend had studied history with reference to the principle that, as a rule, human beings do not rise above the standard implied in society’s general estimate of the class to which they belong. ”

“ It is evident that an appeal to a fixed standard, and an admonitory application of its known rules to the existing practices of the people, completes the requisite data of the historical problem above-mentioned. In the standard we have a known quantity ”

“ The standard of what you say may be a shifting one, and anyhow, he cannot be at all sure what you will say unless he knows what is your standard, the standard by which you will decide whether to say, in any given case, that a thing is wrong or right. ”

“ Does anyone know the meaning of individual standards and social concepts?
Individual standards are the standards that a person sets up for herself, and social concepts are the standards that have been passed down through the centuries. ”

“ If it means taking note of all concrete relations involved, it is relative. The absoluteness, in fine, of the standard of action consists not in some rigid statement, but in never-failing application. Universality here, as elsewhere, resides not in a thing, but in a way, a method of action. The absolute standard is the one applicable to all deeds, and the conception of the exercise of function is thus absolute, covering all conduct from the mainly impulsive action of the savage to the most complex reaches of modern life. ”

“ If they judge of equality, or any other proportion, by the accurate and exact standard, viz. the enumeration of the minute indivisible parts, they both employ a standard, which is useless in practice, and actually establish the indivisibility of extension, which they endeavour to explode. ”

“ If this view is sound, there are as many standards and sources of justice as systems of law; for in this view of the matter, each community evolves its own ideals and makes laws to effectuate them. As each community evolves its own ideals, each must have its own standard of right and wrong; for that standard, in so far as any particular community is concerned, is equal to the sum of its ideals. If, however, the standard were objective, every community would have the same standard of right and wrong ”

“ Pain and [Pg 243] pleasure give the real value of actions; they are the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may be translated. There is always a common measure applicable in every formula for the estimation of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense, you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions. ”

“ In the latter case, a standard somewhat different from the old is created through the new experience; and, when I have acquired a large acquaintance with works of art, there grows up a standard which is the resultant of all of them—a type or schema no longer associated with particular works. Sometimes, however, it happens that the standard continues to be embodied in some one or few works which, because of outstanding excellence, serve as explicit paradigms governing judgment ”

“ Between these two highest grades, as between the two lower, we shall find a difference of value, extent, and difficulty; always supposing the standard to be the manner in which they affect Man’s well-being, collectively or individually. ”

“ If, however, the standard of living which one has inherited from his class is adopted as an individual standard, and is made the object of effort and self-denial, the individual and social results are of high value. ”

“ Some people think that we should be in a position to compare the different possible changes of our life in such a future society, based on planning, with, as it were, a comprehensive standard, composed of the standards which may be elaborated by the experts in the single fields. ”

“ I think that the doctrine was characteristic of his good sense, and I fully subscribe to it. I heartily agree that equality in the sense I have given, is a most desirable ideal; I agree that we should do all that in us lies to promote it; I only say that our aims should be always in consistence with the principle that such equality is only possible and desirable in so far as the lowest classes are lifted to a higher standard, morally as well as physically. ”

“ To this standard we must conform till the law is changed, and till some other commodity is discovered, by the use of which we shall obtain a more perfect standard, than that which we have established. ”

“ We have had to reject the idea that a standard of excellence can either be extracted by critical analysis from the practice of accepted models, or that it can be based on the consensus of experts, or upon universal suffrage. ”

“ Instead of representing, as a government should, the better contemporary ideals and methods, they have reflected at best the average standard of popular behavior and at worst a standard decidedly below the average. ”

“ The heavy line AB, rising toward the right, represents the rising standard of living which the man's reason makes him maintain during the period over which his vision is clear, while the dotted line BC represents the standard for which, in an imperfect way, he makes provision during the next fifty years. ”

“ Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence. ”

“ A true standard of conduct is found only in the highest civilization, with those two inspirations, justice and benevolence,—never in any barbarism, though affecting the semblance of sensibility and refinement. But this standard, while governing the relations of the individual, must be recognized by nations also. ”

“ The demand, again, for a justification of what one is called on by authority to do presupposes some standard of right, recognised as equally valid for and by the person making the demand and others who form a society with him, and such a recognised standard in turn implies institutions for the regulation of men's dealings with each other, institutions of which the relation to the consciousness of right may be compared, as above, to that of language to thought. It cannot be said that the most elementary consciousness of right is prior to them, or they to it. ”

“ And instead of blindly reprobating those among us who do not conform to our present theoretical standard, or even the present normal standard, we should regard them as fragments of a different society gone astray in time or space. ”

“ Those who have dispensed with the assumption of such a universal standard, have only been enabled to do so by supposing that a moral sense, or instinct, inherent in our constitution, informs us, both what principles of conduct we are bound to observe, and also in what order these should be subordinated to one another. ”

“ But before the crucial question of justice which divides modern society, namely, whether we shall lay emphasis upon adjustment of rewards to previous abilities, habits, possessions, character, or shall lay stress upon needs, and the possibility of bringing about a greater measure of equality, the doctrine which would find its standard in an a priori reason is helpless. ”

“ So, whether in the case of those who begin to pay respect to such forms of good because they perceive that others approve of them, or in the case of those who, when those forms of good are thus presented, perceive a worth in them and take a pride in living up to them for their own sake,—in both cases, the creating and sustaining of the higher standard depends on the principle we have now before us. ”

“ And, passing from this to conscious life, we are called on still for further uses and fresh applications of our standard. In the will of the individual, or of the community, so far as adequately carried out and expressing itself in outward fact, we have a new claim to harmonious and self-included reality. And we have to consider in each case the consistency, together with the range and area, of the principle, and the degree up to which it has mastered and passed into existence. ”

“ Thus it will be seen that law and the sentiment of society may each be employed as corrective of the other, and that, consequently, their comparison implies a higher standard than either, by means of which each may be tested, and to which each, in its turn, may be referred. ”

“ If a common standard were known among men, and if the understandings of men determined in the same manner as to the conformity, or otherwise, of an action to that standard; what renders it a matter of obligation that any one should perform it? The rule must be proved to be binding, or no ground of obligation is established.
An action is obligatory, say others, because it is agreeable to the moral sense. ”

“ The original standard of a right line is in reality nothing but a certain general appearance; and 'tis evident right lines may be made to concur with each other, and yet correspond to this standard, though corrected by all the means either practicable or imaginable. ”

“ Governed by any other than such a broad standard, changes and modifications in present systems and forms are made simply to meet the exigencies of the times, and with no view to place government upon a basis which should never need modification, and which should meet all exigencies of all times. ”

“ The home, the school, the church, the club, business, profession, trade, and union, all insist on strict, correct conformity to standard; all demand authoritatively implicit obedience and submission to rule and regulation. ”