Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/367

 SANITY IN SOCIAL AGITATION 349

blind, v/hether its object is son or lover or neighbor or humanity or God.

The principle of love, among those who accept Christian standards, is: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." This principle is also blind as a direct guide to details of action in a new case. For example, it does not tell us what sort of a constitution should be given to "free Cuba," or what plan of currency reform would accom- plish most, or what is the best method of preventing juvenile crime. Having the feeling of love and the formal principle, we must have an enlightened programme of love.

The programme corresponding with the feeling and the prin- ciple of love must be discovered at every new turn of circum- stances. We need to find out what we would want others to do to us if we were in the new circumstances and fully under- stood them. Until that discovery is made, the man who wants to obey the Christian law of love, without being willing to inves- tigate the circumstances, may stumble on the right thing to do, but he runs a hundred risks of doing the wrong thing. By virtue of this sentiment of love, he is not infallible by any means. He must make up his judgments about the application of his feeling of love, just as the churches of the United States are today' forming their opinions about the duty of our govern- ment toward the Philippines. We cannot claim to utter any Christian dictum upon details until we are better instructed about all the facts.

What conclusions are to be drawn from the foregoing con- siderations ? I will mention four : First, we may do incalculable damage by agitation that disregards these principles. If we agitate for social adaptation before there is persuasion and edu- cation, or for individual adjustment before there is discovery, we assume, and we teach others to assume, that there is ripeness for social change, when we are really accountable for knowing and for showing that the fullness of the times is not yet come.

Second: The men who declaim against "society," and espe- cially against "the church," for not ushering in Kingdom Come

'September, 1898.