The Detroit times., 1916-07-08
Conscience and Efficiency.
~ DR.. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

preme, he mastered all the other animals.
Those he could not use he exterminated.
That was because he had brains.
Men fought with each other, like
beasts, until there vas developed in them
the force we call conscience. With con-
science came the possibility of social life.
organized companionship, and co-opera-
ton; in other words, civilization.
Conscience is the faculty by which we
sense right and wrong. In proportion to
its presence the general welfare Of man.
kind rises; in proportion to its absence
men tend to diSintegrate, to destroy the
products of their own organized energy,
and thus revert to the brute.
Man differs from the beast in that he
| is improbable. The beast begins where
his father began; the man begins where
| his father left off, thus making contin-
uous progress.
Mans progress has been amazing. He
has built cities. accumulated knowledge,
created art, multiplied inventions. And
in all these directions his work has been
permanent only as it has been subject
to the check Of conscience.
Not force but justice is the secret of
humanity's advance.
This we recognize as to individuals; as
to organizations (parties, nations, cor
porations, etc., we do not sufficiently
acknowledge the necessity of conscience
to permanence. Hence twentieth century
calamities.
The lie of lies is that conscience need
not bind organizations, that there is one
morality for the individual and another
for the group.
Organization may be good thing, the
way out of barbarism, the means of en-
riching and identifying human life. Or
| it may be a most deadly and damnable
thing.
All in accordance with the growth Of
group conscience keeping step with group
power.
For instance, cooperation in business
makes possible the enormous wealth of
modern times. But the great combina-
tons turn and destroy the people when
there is no combination conscience.
Labor unions are helpful until they get
the notion that the organization of Ia
5orers may righfully do deeds of vio-
lence that would be wrong in a private
person.
Cities grow corrupt because there is
no civic conscience. While aldermen, as
individuals, would not lie, cheat, and rob,
yet as party or council they think they
may do these things.
One man may not murder his fellow.
If he does he is hanged. But an army Of
men may murder and burn, and consider
| it glorious.
Right here Is the breaking point in
civilization. Where there is collective
efficiency but no collective conscience
efficiency begins to devour itself.
We must get over supposing conscience
to be merely a Sunday school affair, q
matter of being nice and good and pretty.
It is a matter of life and death.
It is as essential to progress and power
as brains and organization and force are.
Without it efficiency rots.
The first twenty centuries OF Chris
tianity applied conscience to the individ-
ual Yet it was supposed that to the
state, the church, the corporation, and
the union, conscience did not apply.
We see the result. Europe is destroy
ing her civilization in an orgy Of suicide.
America Is headed for the breakers be-
cause we have built up communal eff
cheney without communal conscience.
We cannot cheat destiny. The wages
of national, corporate, organized sin Is
also death, as much more terrible than
individual destruction as the organization
is greater than the man.
Socialism may come, in one form or an
other, but unless 1t Is accompanied by q
socialized conscience it will simply mean
greater, wider, more appalling ruin.
The church cannot go on preaching
Jesus to individuals and Macchiavelli to
states.
At last the high gods weary of such
stupidity and send the deluge.