Ethics and some modern world problems / by Willam McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ethics and some modern world problems / by Willam McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tional ” forces the exhortations of the moralists, the lessons of the historians, the prescriptions of the economists, have battled in vain. Human nature has continued to clasp to its bosom its 44 Great Illusion ” and to be governed by its 44 irra¬ tional prejudices.” How, then, in face of this lead¬ ing feature of the history of the modern world, can we rationally hope that a still greater freedom of intercourse and multiplicity of contacts should reverse the tendency to increasing strength of the national spirit? It remains true in general that, the more we know of other peoples, the more we prefer our own. more than a few months; because of the economic chaos that must ensue, and the economic exhaustion of the nations at war. If men had continued to be governed in the same degree as in peace by strictly economic motives, these prophecies would have been justi¬ fied. But the economists had failed to take into their calculations the all-important fact that, on the outbreak of war, the balance of motives sustaining the activities of men would be at once profoundly altered. In vast numbers of men, the economic motive, so dominant in peace, fell to a very subordinate position, and capitalists, pro¬ fessional men, artisans, and laborers alike, were dominated (with, of course, many exceptions) by patriotic and other war-sustaining motives. Viscount Milner writes: “the general conviction certainly was, and it was strongest on the part of men versed in economic studies, that, if nothing else brought the war to an early close, the impossibility of financing it must do so. In view of the enormous costliness of modern warfare, it was argued, and reasonably argued that no great civilized country could long endure the financial strain.” And he cites other instances in which, as he says, “actual experience, in and after the war, has confounded even the best- reasoned economic anticipations.” (“Questions of the Hour.”)