External action

“ And it is, as far as I have been able to learn, the practice of all countries.' The same will, the same positive action, the same purpose, and, it may be added, the same predicament or position of the actors, must exist in each class of cases. There must be intent and act, prompted by, and tending to, a practicable, or at least a probable result, and not mere endurance or submission to uncontrollable necessity in either case. ”

“ Firstly, our doctrine and theory of action have their own distinct character, which makes it impossible to copy the experiences of other peoples and their methods of treating such questions or social problems. ”

“ Whether we deplore the social transformations that have arisen or glorify them, we must take the nation as it is, facts as they are, enter into the spirit of our time, in order to exercise an action over that spirit. ”

“ The substitution of action based on knowledge for action based on feeling is made possible in the individual and in society by the development of higher centers of control and the power of choice through inhibition and legislation. ”

“ In all directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. ”

“ But to find words or actions which will enable us to rectify what is now amiss with us, is a task indeed. Moreover, the present is not, perhaps, the time for entering into every point: but if only you can confirm the policy which you have chosen by some suitable action, it may be that other conditions will each in turn show some improvement. ”

“ Come, tell me that!"
"Well," said I, "I suppose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people's action about these matters."
"I should think so, indeed," said he. "At all events, experience shows that it is so. Amongst us, our differences concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. ”

“ So that the three differentiated forms of control which grow up along with militant organization and action, while enforcing kindred restraints and incentives, also enforce one another; and their separate and joint disciplines have the common character that they involve the sacrifice of immediate special benefits to obtain more distant and general benefits. ”

“ The causes of every social phenomenon which we are particularly interested about, security, wealth, freedom, good government, public virtue, general intelligence, or their opposites, are infinitely numerous, especially the external or remote causes, which alone are, for the most part, accessible to direct observation. ”

“ The effect of custom on habit, and of habit upon thought is enough to prove this statement. When we [pg 317] begin to forecast consequences, the consequences that most stand out are those which will proceed from other people. The resistance and the cooperation of others is the central fact in the furtherance or failure of our schemes. Connections with our fellows furnish both the opportunities for action and the instrumentalities by which we take advantage of opportunity. All of the actions of an individual bear the stamp of his community as assuredly as does the language he speaks. ”

“ There is no formal taking of one’s “place” or [64] “position,” no ceremonious “assigning” of “duty” or “work,” but in groups and larger companies, as well as in personal ministrations, a mutual understanding of purpose, according to adaptation. If a united or concerted action upon earth-minds for any given purpose is needed it is readily perceived and entered upon by all who are in accord, and is performed by such methods as enlightened spirits readily understand. ”

“ This directs their action to a common result, and gives an understanding common to the participants. For all mean the same thing, even when performing different acts. This common understanding of the means and ends of action is the essence of social control. ”

“ All voluntary action, that is all action proceeding from a will, or effort of the mind to produce a certain event, must relate to the future, or to those things, the existence of which is problematical, undetermined, and therefore capable of being affected by the means made use of with a view to their production or the contrary. ”

“ Whatever the varying conditions may have been that guided governmental actions in the upward progress 125 of civilization, the best test, perhaps, of national morality and of a higher civilization is that as time goes on the principles which should guide individual action in a society shall more and more become the rules by which governmental action within the society and also in international relations shall be guided. ”

“ Thus it is not the forces and conditions of the existing world alone that govern human affairs and control the fortunes of movements, for these forces and conditions themselves may be modified, re-arranged, and regulated by man so as to give rise to new circumstances and situations. ”

“ With these feelings, and with these encouragements from the state of the public mind, reasoning men began to inquire what would be the ruling principles of action in a state of society, as perfect as we can suppose, or the general diffusion of which would soonest lead to such a state of improvement. ”

“ There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rale principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. ”

“ What we are all forced to do is to choose a field of action which for some reason we look upon as specially interesting or important, and exercise 34our choice in that; in other matters protecting ourselves, for the most part, by some sort of mechanical control—some accepted personal authority, some local custom, some professional tradition, or the like. ”

“ Man’s social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The132 extraneous objective forces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control of man himself. ”

“ It was therefore necessary to give them a few positive precepts, moulding and regulating their moral and social conduct, to make them 'new creatures' with new notions and new purposes, and to remodel the national life. ”

“ Thus an international habit of looking to common ideals may grow up sufficiently strong to develop a general will, and to make the binding power of those ideas a reliable sanction for their obligations to each other. ”

“ The constructive results of the control and guidance of human thinking and conduct in the private, the public, and the foreign relations of the peoples so leagued by these six principles, the reformers maintained, are the establishment and the conservation of what is reverently called Ne’′ Gayanĕñ‘sä’gō′nǎ‘—i. ”

“ Let them and us be the testing grounds and mediums in a new and better plan and ways of human conduct, relationship, intercourse, culture, and an economic system for the unlimited benefit of all mankind. ”

“ Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and distribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of society, each assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing the right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual development and self-perfection. ”

“ True, but intention is not action. I might have altered my intentions on coming into the port, and finding our two nations to be at war: you cannot know what alteration a knowledge of the war might have made in my sentiments. We do indeed judge much of the merit or demerit of an action by the intention with which it is performed; but in all cases there must be an action performed to constitute any certain merit or demerit amongst men. ”

“ Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. ”

“ He must deal with the people, their ideas, development and social movements as well as with the incidents of war and foreign relations and the actions and influence of great men whose agency in shaping the progress of events is often over-estimated. ”

“ Chapter 22:On Inward and Outward Acts ACTS are distinguished into external and internal. External acts are those which appear outwardly, and bear relation to some sensible object, and have no moral character, except such as they derive from the principle from which they proceed. ”

“ We have opportunities to supply the service with the means of moral and physical progress, to free it from the shackles of old forms, and suffer it to clothe itself with the panoply of modern science, and to be identified with the spread of civilization and enlightenment over the world. ”

“ This structure, which adapts a society for combined action against other societies, is associated with the belief that its members exist for the benefit of the whole, and not the whole for the benefit of its members. ”

“ They suggest action on the basis of combining the two most stable forms of harmonious organization, namely, the sympathy form growing out of like-mindedness, and the democratic-control-expert-executive form of the utility type. ”

“ Do you find in it that sagacity, prudence, that dexterity, that quickness of perception, and those conciliatory moods which we are always taught to believe necessary in the transaction of our foreign affairs? Is there to be seen that knowledge of human nature, and especially that peculiar kind of science, most necessary in these affairs—an acquaintance with the character of foreign countries and of the chief actors in the scene? ”

“ Now since every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims at,—what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with conduct? ”

“ There are enterprises, military as well as civil, which sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see their importance in their results, and call them great, because great things follow. ”

“ He devotes nearly 10,000 words to the task of persuading us that it is only a war of duty and humanity, and that all that has been done was done “not for aggrandizement, nor for pride of might, nor for trade or commerce, nor for exploitation, but for humanity and civilization.” ”

“ To be effective, it should be the fruit and outcome of a tendency, natural or acquired, by which the individuals of a nation identify themselves with surrounding 'interests and willingly take part in the duties and burdens of local affairs. ”

“ We make daily great improvements in natural, there is one I wish to see in moral philosophy,—the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats. ”

“ Still, on the whole, the class of actions called duties exhibit both characteristics: they are not only actions, against the performance of which there are strong natural inclinations, but also actions of which the most obvious effects, commonly considered goods, are effects on other people. Expedient actions, on the other hand, are actions to which strong natural inclinations prompt us almost universally, and of which all the most obvious effects, commonly considered good, are effects upon the agent. ”

“ The emphasis of the international proposition has indeed had time, as I say, to place itself elsewhere—if, for that matter, there be any emphasis or any proposition left at all—since the age when that particular pleasure seemed the keenest in life. ”

“ HAVING nearly always to defend themselves against external enemies, while they have to carry on internally the processes of sustentation, societies, as remarked in the last chapter, habitually present us with mixtures of the structures adapted to these diverse ends. ”

“ The consolation is that, whereas these agencies are mere unconscious forces, called into being by causes independent of the human will, the resisting influences have their origin in the will, and are capable of intelligent direction. ”

“ It is essential that great operations—and the business of the future will be conducted on a great scale—be directed by great wisdom and power. The possessors of high qualities we now discover by the trying-out process. ”

“ In order to judge how he will act under the variety of desires and aversions which are concurrently operating upon him, we must know how he would act under the exclusive influence of each one in particular. ”

“ Once this threshold is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through which the peoples of the world can be drawn into the task of formulating common goals and committing themselves to their attainment. ”

“ What is needed for its acquisition is cultivated intelligence, and certain moral qualities. This is precisely the point to which the attention and the efforts of the Internationalists should be directed. ”

“ So dependent upon one another are all the factors of human life that we should expect to observe the effects of the agencies we have been considering upon all, and we do so observe them, most prominently, perhaps, besides the points on which we have remarked, upon the modern methods of war. ”

“ On the basis of that sounder education I have sketched in a preceding paper, there is possible such an extension of understanding, such an increase of intelligent co-operations and such a clarification of wills as to dissolve away half the difficulties and conflicts of the present time and to provide for the other half such a power of solution as we, in the heats, entanglements and limitations of our present ignorance, doubt and misinformation can scarcely begin to imagine. ”