"Political Ideals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Bertrand)

into better channels.

But although we cannot set up in any detail an ideal of character
which is to be universally applicable--although we cannot say, for
instance, that all men ought to be industrious, or self-sacrificing,
or fond of music--there are some broad principles which can be used to
guide our estimates as to what is possible or desirable.

We may distinguish two sorts of goods, and two corresponding sorts of
impulses. There are goods in regard to which individual possession is
possible, and there are goods in which all can share alike. The food
and clothing of one man is not the food and clothing of another; if
the supply is insufficient, what one man has is obtained at the
expense of some other man. This applies to material goods generally,
and therefore to the greater part of the present economic life of the
world. On the other hand, mental and spiritual goods do not belong to
one man to the exclusion of another. If one man knows a science, that
does not prevent others from knowing it; on the contrary, it helps
them to acquire the knowledge. If one man is a great artist or poet,
that does not prevent others from painting pictures or writing poems,
but helps to create the atmosphere in which such things are possible.
If one man is full of good-will toward others, that does not mean that
there is less good-will to be shared among the rest; the more
good-will one man has, the more he is likely to create among others.
In such matters there is no _possession_, because there is not a
definite amount to be shared; any increase anywhere tends to produce
an increase everywhere.

There are two kinds of impulses, corresponding to the two kinds of
goods. There are _possessive_ impulses, which aim at acquiring or
retaining private goods that cannot be shared; these center in the
impulse of property. And there are _creative_ or constructive impulses,
which aim at bringing into the world or making available for use the
kind of goods in which there is no privacy and no possession.

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the
largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. This is no new
discovery. The Gospel says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we
eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?"
The thought we give to these things is taken away from matters of more
importance. And what is worse, the habit of mind engendered by
thinking of these things is a bad one; it leads to competition, envy,
domination, cruelty, and almost all the moral evils that infest the
world. In particular, it leads to the predatory use of force.
Material possessions can be taken by force and enjoyed by the robber.
Spiritual possessions cannot be taken in this way. You may kill an
artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought.
You may put a man to death because he loves his fellow-men, but you
will not by so doing acquire the love which made his happiness. Force
is impotent in such matters; it is only as regards material goods that