The Philosophy of Loyalty

THE NATURE AND THE NEED OF LOYALTY

NE of the most familiar traits of our time is the tendency to revise tradition, to reconsider the foundations of old beliefs, and sometimes mercilessly to destroy what once seemed indispensable. ‘This disposition, as we all know, is especially prominent in the realms of social theory and of religious belief. But even the exact sciences do not escape from the influence of those who are fond of the reéxamination of dogmas. And the modern tendency in question has, of late years, been very notable in the field of Ethics. Conventional morality has been required, in company with religion, and also in company with exact science, to endure the fire of criticism. And although, in all ages, the moral law has indeed been exposed to the assaults of the wayward, the peculiar moral situation of our time is this, that it is no longer either the flippant or the vicious who are the most pronounced or the most dangerous opponents of our moral traditions. Devoted reformers, earnest public servants, ardent prophets of a coming spiritual order,—all these types of lovers of humanity are represented amongst those who to-day demand great and deep changes in the moral standards by which our lives are to be governed. We have become accustomed, during the past few generations, — during the period of Socialism and of Individualism, of Karl Marx, of Henry George, of Ibsen, of Nietzsche, of Tolstoi,—to hear unquestionably sincere lovers of humanity sometimes declaring our traditions regarding the rights of property to be immoral, and sometimes assailing, in the name of virtue, our present family ties as essentially unworthy of the highest ideals. Individualism itself, in many rebellious forms, we often find asserting that it speaks in the name of the true morality of the future. And the movement begun in Germany by Nietzsche—the tendency towards what that philosophical rhapsodist called the “transmutation of all moral values”? — has in recent years made popular the thesis that all the conventional morality of the past, whatever may have been its inevitableness, or its temporary usefulness, was in principle false, was a mere transition stage of evolution, and must be altered to the core. “Time makes ancient good uncouth”’: in this well-known word one might sum up the spirit of this modern revolt against moral traditions.