Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/357

ABSTRACT AND PRACTICAL ETHICS 343 pher, but the uneducated and the so-called practical man." His examples are so vivid and so aptly illustrate what is here meant by an abstract idea that I make no apology for quoting them.

A murderer is being dragged to execution. The multitude see only the criminal in him and follow him with their curses. Some fine ladies remark what a powerful, handsome, interesting man he is. The bystanders are scandalized that anyone should be so lost to propriety as to find good looks in a murderer. A priest who stands by and understands the heart explains that it all comes of the corruption of the upper classes. This illustrates one abstraction. These people see only the murderer in the prisoner. They take no account of his upbringing, the traits of character he has inherited, the previous harsh sentence for some trivial offence that embittered him against society. But, besides the common-sense practical people among the crowd, there are the idealists and sentimentalists. They see nothing of the murderer in the unhappy man, but only the scapegoat of an unjust society. They shout in his honor and would fain throw bouquets on the cart that carries him. This illustrates the opposite abstraction. These people see only what may be alleged in justification of the individual. The outrage on social institutions escapes them. Finally there is an old woman from the poor-house who is overheard to say as the sunlight strikes upon the prisoner: "See how sweetly God's gracious sunshine falls upon poor Binder's head." She means it in allusion to the German proverb that a worthless man does not deserve the sun. That was the multitude's view of Binder. God thought otherwise and the old woman recognizes it. She does not, like the sentimentalist, simply cancel his guilt. On the other hand, she does not see in him merely the accursed murderer. He is going to pay—perhaps rightly—the last penalty to human law, but in the judgment passed by society upon him, society itself is judged. This is concrete thinking. The different sides or aspects of the event have grown together or coalesced in a higher and a truer view.

What we are called upon to notice in all this is that the "abstract" idea is not the more remote and difficult to reach, but