Useful discussion,
then, instead of comparing ideals, reexamines the visions of the
facts. Thus the rule that you should do unto others as you would have
them do unto you rests on the belief that human nature is uniform. Mr.
Bernard Shaw's statement that you should not do unto others what you
would have them do unto you, because their tastes may be different,
rests on the belief that human nature is not uniform. The maxim that
competition is the life of trade consists of a whole tome of
assumptions about economic motives, industrial relations, and the
working of a particular commercial system. The claim that America will
never have a merchant marine, unless it is privately owned and
managed, assumes a certain proved connection between a certain kind of
profit-making and incentive. The justification by the bolshevik
propagandist of the dictatorship, espionage, and the terror, because
"every state is an apparatus of violence" [Footnote: See _Two Years
of Conflict on the Internal Front_, published by the Russian
Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, Moscow, 1920. Translated by
Malcolm W. Davis for the _New York Evening Post_, January 15,
1921.] is an historical judgment, the truth of which is by no means
self-evident to a non-communist.
At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a
map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the
sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history
(so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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