Functionary

“ What are the principles which the individual shows in his mental life—principles of organization, growth, and conduct; and what additional principles, if any, does society exhibit in its forms of organization, progress, and activity? ”

“ Skill and sagacity in managing the affairs of common life, or wisdom in council and command, is nothing else than an extensive and ready knowledge of the intricate movements of the great machine of the social system; and the high price which this skill and wisdom always bears among men, may be held to represent two abstractions; first, the perplexing Irregularities of the system to which human agency is to be conformed; and then, the real and substantial Uniformity of the movements of that system. ”

“ To know where one is going and what one wishes—this is order; to keep one’s word and one’s engagements—again order; to have everything ready under one’s hand, to be able to dispose of all one’s forces, and to have all one’s means of whatever kind under command—still order; to discipline one’s habits, one’s effort, one’s wishes; to organize one’s life, to distribute one’s time, to take the measure of one’s duties and make one’s rights respected; to employ one’s capital and resources, one’s talent and one’s chances profitably—all this belongs to and is included in the word order. ”

“ Let us take the position that there is nothing in government, in any of its branches, that is outside the sphere of the practical life of the individual and we shall have the right point of view even for the work of the school room. Government, in a word, is not a specialization of function in which the few are involved, but it is a generic function, the means, we assert, of carrying to completion all the projects of individuals in all their social relations. ”

“ The answer is, capacity on the part of the subject for membership of a society, for determination of the will, and through it of the bodily organisation, by the conception of a well-being as common to self with others. This capacity is the foundation of the right, or the right potentially, which becomes actual through the recognition of the capacity by a society, and through the power which the society in consequence secures to the individual of acting according to the capacity. ”

“ To sum up all this in one formula: officers are conventionally amenable to society; society, with its officers and its rules of conduct, amenable to the purpose of society; the design of individual life, to the individuals that compose it; individuals, with their rules of conduct, amenable each to his own conscience; and all to the law of the universe, to the Eternal Right, which represents the conscience of God. ”

“ Think of your duties—not your supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your business, as emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your real duties, the duties that follow from your real position as a being called into life and endowed with reason and love. ”

“ We may find, indeed, many inferior causes,—many peculiar reasons for such and such a way of administration,—many ends and uses for which they serve,—for there is nothing that his majesty hath appointed but it is for some use and reason,—yet we must rise above all these, and ascend into the tower of his most high will and pleasure, which is founded on a depth of wisdom; and from thence we shall behold all the order, administration, and use of the creatures to depend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let's refine the formula more accurately: the organisation of the external forces of nature, the organisation of human power, the organisation of experience.
So what have we found out? Mankind has no activities other than the institutional; there are no problems other than the organisational. Do we not see destructive work of disorganisation wherever we look? ”

“ Your own personal qualities, your knowledge and your power of administration, and among greater things your rank and position in Society give you advantages in such a work which no other person possesses. ”

“ IN interpreting, evaluating and weighing the obligations which the philosophers call καθήκοντα, or “duties,” the question is often asked, when some task has been assigned to you and exactly what was to be done has been defined, whether you ought to do anything contrary to instructions, if by so doing it might seem that the outcome would be more successful and more advantageous to the one who imposed the task upon you. It is a difficult question which has been answered both ways by wise men. ”

“ So not only for the benefit of your critic but especially for the value of the exercise to yourself, reduce your argument to definite formal organization. You will be paid in the long run. You may have such a command of yourself and your thinking that you can carry all this organization in your head without any brief—but most of us can’t. ”

“ Classifying these faculties under the heads of Reason, Will, and Passion, he classifies the members of his ideal society under what he regards as three analogous heads:—councillors, who are to exercise government; military or executive, who are to fulfil their behests ”

“ What if you think another way best, or another work best, or another time best; are you to govern or obey? If the work be not yours, but another's, let his will and not yours be fulfilled, and do his service in his own way. ”

“ And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or status, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its status--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. ”

“ This doctrine of duty is sub-divided into two parts; the common duty of every man as a MAN, or A MEMBER of A STATE, which is that part of the platform and exemplar of good, he has before reported as 'extant, and well laboured.' The other is the respective or special duty of every man in his PROFESSION, VOCATION and PLACE ”

“ It is the office, then, of the eye to supply the rich materials or rudiments of thought and intelligence, but of the ear to furnish the more valuable materials or rudiments of those numberless affections which enter into the composition of the human will. ”

“ Then, with regard to the phenomena of what are called constitutions of government, or the political systems of exercising public authority, I find numerous cases in which the force of an individual will and intelligence has been not only a great factor, but by far the largest factor in the production of particular institutions. ”

“ If this process could be understood, it should be the ordinary rule in every department of the universe. All the power there is, should be concentrated into action through the most advanced, and consequently the most perfect forms—perfect forms always being those which are adapted to the highest uses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And we ought to tell ourselves (parenthetically) at this point that the one reasonable and worthy use of all our machinery is just this—to follow the example of life not only in the actual organizing but in the purpose and meaning of organization. ”

“ A function, in practice, in a democratic state—that will mean something which can be seen to be useful for today, but not for tomorrow, far less for any distant future. The more subtle, spiritual, posthumous the activity of a man the less it will be seen to be a function. ”

“ The fact that such a substitution is one of the professed aims both of pedagogy and of sociology gives peculiar interest to the examination of the forms of control which have dominated different types of society, and the determination of the conditions and forces leading from one form of control to another. ”

“ For only then can they themselves know where they are, get on with their own duties and affairs, and fulfil the law of their being. Ultimately those in authority are chosen by, and are responsible to, those over whom they exercise authority. ”

“ Lord, in which the objects, or agents, of one class are, without any formal notice, employed in the place of the persons or things of which the passages in which they occur treat; and they are exhibited either as exerting, or as subjected to an agency proper to their nature, in order to represent by analogy, the agency which those persons are to exert, or of which those things are to be the subjects. ”

“ Joined to the interest in making plans, and the constructive impulse, which are in themselves compelling forces, we have in the organization of a society in accordance with a preconceived outline, with fixed positions and ranks, the special stimulus of exercising a decisive influence over a future and ideally submissive circle of human beings. ”

“ The organization of a society, whose institution shall serve as a bond to its members, for the purposes of virtue, happiness, liberty, and wisdom, by the means of intellectual opposition to grievances, would probably be useful. ”

“ The same observations are applicable when we would estimate the moral excellence of an individual, his worth in a private or a public capacity, his character as a subject or a governor,—as the framer, or the guardian, or the administrator of the laws. ”

“ But in each and every case the power at work is the activity of reason, and the end ever in view in the selection and in the formation of the system is the satisfaction of some end or interest desired either for its own sake or as a means to some further and remoter end. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Every system, as we have seen, must be founded in principle—a principle rooted in the active powers, resting down upon the main-springs of the soul, so as to be moved forward by all the mental energies combined. ”

“ But these duties become diversified and specialized according as we view man either in the light of the private functions he fills in society, which are his professional duties, or in the light of the particular society of which he is a member, and which is called the State or the country, and these are the civic duties. ”

“ To draw the line between necessary subordination and vexatious interference—to apportion to each a fair share of work, and to see that the work is done—to be liberal and considerate without over-indulgence,—these are duties requiring judgment, moderation, method, decision, often no small share of moral courage; in other words, precisely the same qualities which are wanted in governing bodies of workpeople. ”

“ In all branches of practical business there are cases in which individuals are bound to conform their practice to a pre-established rule, while there are others in which it is part of their task to find or construct the rule by which they are to govern their conduct. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was also the responsibility for the use or exercise of the operating forces. We humans are a product of those forces. We also share in their functioning. Consequently we share in the responsibility which is associated with their exercise.
It is the task of philosophy to designate the responsibility; to describe it, measure it and perhaps to assign it. At any rate, we find ourselves in a position where certain things are expected of us, perhaps even required of us as members of the human family and/or of the human family as a functioning whole. ”

“ And it will be derived from the divisions of honour and usefulness, concerning which we will give rules when we lay down a system of deliberations. And if we compare the definition given by our adversaries with our own definition, and prove our own to be true, and honourable, and useful, and theirs to be entirely different. But we shall seek out things like them in an affair of either greater, or less, or equal importance, from which our description will be proved. ”

“ Logic, Ethics and Esthetics.—In the domain of human activities, to the right regulation of which practical philosophy is directed, we may distinguish two departments of mental activity, namely intellectual and volitional, and besides these the whole department of external, executive or bodily activity. In general the right regulation of acts may be said to consist in directing them to the realization of some ideal ”

“ Thus at every point we meet the evidence that the great principles, which now govern society, were elaborated step by step, proceeding in sequences, and tending invariably in the same upward direction. ”

“ 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. ”