The Cruelty of Good People by Samuel M. Crothers
Crothers argues that cruelty is not confined to wicked or brutish people: it often appears in those whose motives are spiritual, rational, and moral. Good women may regard strikes, starvation, or war with detached curiosity because the sufferers are distant from their personal sympathies. Philosophers and reformers of abstract systems can likewise become merciless when general laws matter more to particular human beings. A philosophy that leaves the “unfit” to natural law, or explains suffering instead of alleviating it, makes pity seem like rebellion against reason. The essay finds an especially painful form of such cruelty in religious severity. Jonathan Edwards is presented as a man of exceptional ethical and religious power whose teachings nevertheless inflicted torment on sensitive souls. His disciple David Brainerd continually records guilt, vileness, and despair, not chiefly over definite acts but over the supposed infinite guilt of human nature. As a missionary, Brainerd seeks to awaken Indians not merely to particular wrongdoing but to a crushing sense of innate depravity, even using the anger of small children as evidence that they are “by nature the children of wrath.” Though moral awakening necessarily involves pain, Crothers argues that Brainerd subordinates practical reformation to making people feel the full misery of being human. Cruelty also arises in conflicts between progress and conservatism. The innovator may suffer persecution, but defenders of an old order often believe that sacred truth is under attack and fight desperately to protect it. Through the image of Una and her lion in “The Faerie Queene,” Crothers shows how adherents of a cause can pity their own wounded defender and endangered Truth while overlooking the suffering inflicted upon those treated as enemies. The central explanation is the tendency of good people to allegorize. In allegory, virtues and vices are fixed types: Holynes cannot truly fall, Temperance must prevail, and figures such as Duessa, Sansfoy, Sansjoy, and Sansloy cannot be reformed. Since they stand for evils rather than living individuals, readers feel no compunction when they are punished or destroyed. The same applies to symbolic stories whose moral force becomes cruel when pressed literally. A child naturally asks why foolish virgins cannot receive a little oil, why the shut door cannot be opened to the repentant, or why a fearful servant deserves outer darkness. The answer is that these are symbols; yet the child’s questions expose the difference between judging a sin and treating a sinner. Crothers applies this distinction to “Pilgrim’s Progress,” where Christian properly leaves behind figures such as Ignorance and Vain-Confidence because they are allegorical obstacles. But ignorant, vain, and imperfect persons are not abstractions. They can change, repent, seek better lives, and suffer. Hawthorne is praised for recognizing that his symbolic treatment of sin and retribution represented only one aspect of reality; actual life is more complex and contains more possibilities for good. Good people, Crothers concludes, are often less cruel in personal conduct than in their words or theories. A theology professor may speak harshly of abstract Canaanites, yet would tenderly shelter an actual Canaanite in distress once he recognized him as human. Cruelty is therefore linked to crude, unripe righteousness: it confuses sinners with their sins and condemns both alike. Righteousness remains a good thing, but it needs time and sympathy to become sweet and mellow.
By Samuel M. Crothers · First published 1914 · Genre: Essay, Philosophical Essay, Ethics · 4,583 words
First lines
The cruelty of bad people is easily explained. They are cruel because they enjoy watching the pain of others. There are also the ignorant and half-formed, to whom the word "inhumanity" applies literally. They have not yet been really humanized. Before they can habitually yield to feelings of compassion there is much to be done in developing their higher natures. They must be urged to
Move upward, working out the beast, / And let the ape and tiger die.
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Genres
- Essay — The work is a sustained nonfiction prose essay that develops and argues a central idea: the ways morally earnest people can inflict cruelty through abstraction, ideology, and impersonal judgment.
- Philosophical Essay — It examines moral responsibility, compassion, justice, sin, abstract virtue, and the difference between symbolic categories and individual human beings.
- Ethics — Its principal concern is ethical: how goodness can become harshness, why pity should temper judgment, and how people ought to treat perceived sinners, opponents, and social outsiders.
- Social Criticism — The essay criticizes drawing-room indifference, labor-conflict commentary, war enthusiasm, religious severity, political ideology, and the social consequences of detached moral judgment.
Tags
moral philosophy · cruelty and compassion · righteousness and intolerance · religious severity · theology and guilt · original sin · Calvinism · Jonathan Edwards · David Brainerd · Christian missionary work · Indigenous Americans · social class and labor conflict
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The Cruelty of Good People is listed on Textopian as a short story by Samuel M. Crothers, dated 1914 CE.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Samuel M. Crothers
- Date: 1914 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Essay, Philosophical Essay, Ethics, Social Criticism, Religious Criticism
- Length: 4,583 words
- Structure: 1 section, 52 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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