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8. An interesting symptom of the growing influence of this rationalist conception is the increasing substitution, in all languages known to me, of the word "social" for the word "moral" or simply "good." It is instructive to consider briefly the significance of this. When people speak of a "social conscience" as against mere "conscience," they are presumably referring to an awareness of the particular effects of our actions on other people, to an endeavor to be guided in conduct not merely by traditional rules but by explicit consideration of the particular consequences of the action in question. They are in effect saying that our action should be guided by a full understanding of the functioning of the social process and that it should be our aim, through conscious assessment of the concrete facts of the situation, to produce a foreseeable result which they describe as the "social good."
The curious thing is that this appeal to the "social" really involves a demand that individual intelligence, rather than rules evolved by society, should guide individual action -- that men should dispense with the use of what could truly be called "social" (in the sense of being a product of the impersonal process of society) and should rely on their individual judgment of the particular case. The preference for "social considerations" over the adherence to moral rules is, therefore, ultimately the result of a contempt for what really is a social phenomenon and of a belief in the superior powers of individual human reason.
The answer to these rationalistic demands is, of course, that they require knowledge which exceeds the capacity of the individual human mind and that, in the attempt to comply with them, most men would become less useful members of society than they are while they pursue their own aims within the limits set by the rules of law and morals.
The rationalist argument here overlooks the point that, quite generally, the reliance on abstract rules is a device we have learned to use because our reason is insufficient to master the full detail of complex reality. This is as true when we deliberately formulate an abstract rule for our individual guidance as when we submit to the common rules of action which have been evolved by a social process.
We all know that, in the pursuit of our individual aims, we are not likely to be successful unless we lay down for ourselves some general rules to which we will adhere without reexamining their justification in every particular instance. In ordering our day, in doing disagreeable but necessary tasks at once, in refraining from certain stimulants, or in suppressing certain impulses, we frequently find it necessary to make such practices an unconscious habit, because we know that without this the rational grounds which make such behavior desirable would not be sufficiently effective to balance temporary desires and to make us do what we should wish to do from a long-term point of view. Though it sounds paradoxical to say that in order to make ourselves act rationally we often find it necessary to be guided by habit rather than reflection, or to say that to prevent ourselves from making the wrong decision we must deliberately reduce the range of choice before us, we all know that this is often necessary in practice if we are to achieve our long-range aims.
The same considerations apply even more where our conduct will directly affect not ourselves but others and where our primary concern, therefore, is to adjust our actions to the actions and expectations of others so that we avoid doing them unnecessary harm. Here it is unlikely that any individual would succeed in rationally constructing rules which would be more effective for their purpose than those which have been gradually evolved; and, even if he did, they could not really serve their purpose unless they were observed by all. We have thus no choice but to submit to rules whose rationale we often do not know, and to do so whether or not we can see that anything important depends on their being observed in the particular instance. The rules of morals are instrumental in the sense that they assist mainly in the achievement of other human values; however, since we only rarely can know what depends on their being followed in the particular instance, to observe them must be regarded as a value in itself, a sort of intermediate end which we must pursue without questioning its justification in the particular case.
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9. These considerations, of course, do not prove that all the sets of moral beliefs which have grown up in a society will be beneficial. Just as a group may owe its rise to the morals which its members obey, and their values in consequence be ultimately imitated by the whole nation which the successful group has come to lead, so may a group or nation destroy itself by the moral beliefs to which it adheres. Only the eventual results can show whether the ideals which guide a group are beneficial or destruc-tive. The fact that a society has come to regard the teaching of certain men as the embodiment of goodness is no proof that it might not be the society's undoing if their precepts were gen-erally followed. It may well be that a nation may destroy itself by following the teaching of what it regards as its best men, perhaps saintly figures unquestionably guided by the most un- selfish ideals. There would be little danger of this in a society whose members were still free to choose their way of practical life, because in such a society such tendencies would be self-corrective: only the groups guided by "impractical" ideals would decline, and others, less moral by current standards, would take their place. But this will happen only in a free society in which such ideals are not enforced on all. Where all are made to serve the same ideals and where dissenters are not allowed to follow different ones, the rules can be proved inexpedient only by the decline of the whole nation guided by them.
The important question that arises here is whether the agreement of a majority on a moral rule is sufficient justification for enforcing it on a dissenting minority or whether this power ought not also to be limited by more general rules-in other words, whether ordinary legislation should be limited by general principles just as the moral rules of individual conduct preclude certain kinds of action, however good may be their purpose. There is as much need of moral rules in political as in individual action, and the consequences of successive collective decisions as well as those of individual decisions will be beneficial only if they are all in conformity with common principles.
Such moral rules for collective action are developed only with difficulty and very slowly. But this should be taken as an indication of their preciousness. The most important among the few principles of this kind that we have developed is individual freedom, which it is most appropriate to regard as a moral principle of political action. Like all moral principles, it demands that it be accepted as a value in itself, as a principle that must be respected without our asking whether the consequences in the particular instance will be beneficial. We shall not achieve the results we want if we do not accept it as a creed or presumption so strong that no considerations of expediency can be allowed to limit it.
The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action, which, as we shall see, is equivalent to saying that only the judge and not the administrator may order coercion. When one of the intellectual leaders of nineteenth-century liberalism, Benjamin Constant, described liberalism as the systeme de principes, he pointed to the heart of the matter. Not only is liberty a system under which all government action is guided by principles, but it is an ideal that will not be preserved unless it is itself accepted as an overriding principle governing all particular acts of legislation. Where no such fundamental rule is stubbornly adhered to as an ultimate ideal about which there must be no compromise for the sake of material advantages-as an ideal which, even though it may have to be temporarily infringed during a passing emergency, must form the basis of all permanent arrangements-freedom is almost certain to be destroyed by piecemeal encroachments. For in each particular instance it will be possible to promise concrete and tangible advantages as the result of a curtailment of freedom, while the benefits sacrificed will in their nature always be unknown and uncertain. If freedom were not treated as the supreme principle, the fact that the promises which a free society has to offer can always be only chances and not certainties, only opportunities and not definite gifts to particular individuals, would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion.
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10. The reader will probably wonder by now what role there remains to be played by reason in the ordering of social affairs, if a policy of liberty demands so much refraining from deliberate control, so much acceptance of the undirected and spontaneously grown. The first answer is that, if it has become necessary to seek appropriate limits to the uses of reason here, to find these limits is itself a most important and difficult exercise of reason. Moreover, if our stress here has been necessarily on those limits, we have certainly not meant to imply thereby that reason has no important positive task. Reason undoubtedly is man's most precious possession. Our argument is intended to show merely that it is not all-powerful and that the belief that it can become its own master and control its own development may yet destroy it. What we have attempted is a defense of reason against its abuse by those who do not understand the conditions of its effective functioning and continuous growth. It is an appeal to men to see that we must use our reason intelligently and that, in order to do so, we must preserve that indispensable matrix of the uncontrolled and non-rational which is the only environment wherein reason can grow and operate effectively.
The antirationalistic position here taken must not be confounded with irrationalism or any appeal to mysticism. What is advocated here is not an abdication of reason but a rational examination of the field where reason is appropriately put in control. Part of this argument is that such an intelligent use of reason does not mean the use of deliberate reason in the maximum possible number of occasions. In opposition to the naive rationalism which treats our present reason as an absolute, we must continue the efforts which David Hume commenced when he "turned against the enlightenment its own weapons" and undertook "to whittle down the claims of reason by the use of rational analysis.
The first condition for such an intelligent use of reason in the ordering of human affairs is that we learn to understand what role it does in fact play and can play in the working of any society based on the co-operation of many separate minds. This means that, before we can try to remold society intelligently, we must understand its functioning; we must realize that, even when we believe that we understand it, we may be mistaken. What we must learn to understand is that human civilization has a life of its own, that all our efforts to improve things must operate within a working whole which we cannot entirely control, and the operation of whose forces we can hope merely to facilitate and assist so far as we understand them. Our attitude ought to be similar to that of the physician toward a living organism: like him, we have to deal with a self-maintaining whole which is kept going by forces which we cannot replace and which we must therefore use in all we try to achieve. What can be done to improve it must be done by working with these forces rather than against them. In all our endeavor at improvement we must always work inside this given whole, aim at piecemeal, rather than total, construction, and use at each stage the historical material at hand and improve details step by step rather than attempt to redesign the whole.
None of these conclusions are arguments against the use of reason, but only arguments against such uses as require any exclusive and coercive powers of government; not arguments against experimentation, but arguments against all exclusive, monopolistic power to experiment in a particular field-power which brooks no alternative and which lays a claim to the possession of superior wisdom -- and against the consequent preclusion of solutions better than the ones to which those in power have committed themselves.