Why they fail

^^Hf They Mib

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT

Sift U.C. Library

Why They Fail

By
REV, A. T, ROBINSON, A.M.

Broadway Publishing Co.
835 Broadway : New York

Copyright, 1912, hy
A. T. Robinson

To the faithful Friends of the Experiment,
and all Parents and Teachers zvhose fingers
are, ziilly-nilly, ivcaving the high destinies
of To-morrow under the skulls of the dear
boys and girls of To-day, this book is re-
spectfully dedicated.

630974

CONTENTS

Chapter I
Things as They Are 9

Chapter II
The Confusion of Tongues 51

Chapter III
Why They Fail 79

Chapter IV
The Remedy 115

Chapter V
A Contribution 163

Chapter VI
Conclusion 212

AUTHOR'S NOTE

No apology is needed for the candid discussion
of a great theme. We beHeve that elaborated in
following pages to be of vital importance to all true
parents and patriots.

The writer is not alone in this opinion for some of
the brightest minds between the two oceans, both
in Canada and the United States, have thought
the theme of this discussion abundantly worth
while. Amongst these mention is here gratefully
made of a devoted elder brother, J. M. Robinson,
of Naramata, B. C, sometimes called "the Cecil
Rhodes of the Okanagan Valley"; His Honor, G.
H. V. Bulyea, B.A., L.L.D., Governor of Alberta,
and that animated sunbeam — one of the last Sachems
of the great tribe of humorists inhabiting this country
in the closing decades of the Nineteenth Century,
whose pens and voices moved the world to laughter
and tears by turns, Rev. Robert J. Burdette, D.D.,
pastor emeritus of Temple Baptist Church, Los
Angeles, who writes as follows:

Pasadena, Gal.
My dear friend Robinson :

"Good stuff?"

Why, the first chapter makes a man want to read
the whole book. You have something to say, and —
Man ! you do know how to say it ! Your book has

red blood in it. It seems to me you should be able
to pick and choose among the publishers. The very
titles of your chapters make a good booklet for
a man with a mind. To the print-shop with your
MS J It's timely as twelve o'clock. / like it! Mrs.
Robinson's verdict isn't a wife's partiality — it is a
woman's judgment — and that woman Portia!

Cordially yours,

Robert J. Burdette.
Santa Monica, Cal.

Why They Fail

Foreword to Chapter I

"It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness
and outrage and chicanery can exist in America —
many of the outrages would disgrace Russia or
Turkey — yet every episode related here has ten
prototypes in life, in fact, not of twenty years ago,
or yesterday, or the day before yesterday, but to-day."

Agnes C. Laut.
In "Freebooters of the Wilderness."

CHAPTER I

THINGS AS THEY ARE

One day not long since the two following questions
were sent out by the writer to five hundred of the
leading business men between Winnipeg and Vic-
toria :

1. How many people would you be willing to
trust with $10,000 in the dark, i. e., assuming they
could get away with it and no one be the wiser?

2. What proportion of our English-speaking
population are in your judgment manly men, a
manly man being thus defined : A manly man is
a man who stands squarely on his own feet, looks
the world steadily in the e3^e, "plays fair" in every
game he enters, holds up his end of the burden

10 WHY THEY FAIL

entailed by civilized society, is magnanimous in vic-
tory, and in defeat takes his poison without a
whimper?

Of the replies received, the average of votes
showed 18.91 per cent for honesty, and 23.01 per
cent for manliness. That is, it is the general opin-
ion in that group of men that of the population
of western Canada, only 18.91 per cent can be
trusted in the dark with $10,000; i. e., are unblench-
ingly upright in character, and that only about 23.01
per cent are characterized by manliness as that trait
is described above. A few pessimists (to be found
in every such drag-net that was ever let down)
reckoned one per cent would be about right in
both cases. One of that stripe, who is not without
a saving sense of humor, outdid them all by inti-
mating that there was only one man in Canada who
could fill that bill in his opinion, but his modesty
forbade his mentioning the name. On the other
hand, one gentleman who is in public life and evi-
dently takes no chances on furnishing ammunition
for the enemy's guns, gave ninety-nine per cent and
seventy-five per cent as his estimates, while another,
quite patently a cheerful optimist, simply thought
any man who would ask such questions as that
"ought to be taken in charge by his friends, if he
has any."

It is instructive to observe that these replies
came from men who are "hard up against it" in
every-day life. They reflected, not the opinions of
preachers, teachers and editors, but opinions of
cabinet ministers, princes of the business world and
smaller tradespeople of the standard commercial
lines, who would be most likely to have picked their
wisdom from the thorny brambles of experience,
and the verdicts given were not given hastily, some
honest souls of the Puritan brand of conscientious-

WHY THEY F'Ain 11

ness having chewed the end of reflection for weeks
before venturing to say anything.

Of course no one possessed of a spoonful of brains
would presume to say that any man, or any number
of men, can answer those questions correctly. The
Omniscient alone can do that. But there is some-
thing in numbers. The collective opinion is the
hope of democracy. The law of averages comes in
to pare down the crudities of individual judgment,
so that nine times out of ten what five hundred sane
men think is bound to be more nearly correct than
what one may think — with all due deference to
the tenth time when one man is right against the
world.

One thing more should be said. It will be
observed that the information was sought from the
representative business men of western Canada.
This for two reasons — because the author's home
was at that time at Summerland, in the beautiful
Okanagan Valley, now world-famous for the quality
of its climate, its scenery and its fruit, and partly
because the general average of honesty is perhaps
higher in western Canada than it is anywhere else on
the continent at the present time. The land is settled
for the most part by the hardy, adventurous, ag-
gressive type which scorns weakness and meanness.
Line-fence law-suits are unknown, and petty ac-
tions-at-law are very uncommon. As in Alaska the
miners used to leave their golddust lying about in
unlocked cabins, so in the Canadian West doors
are left unlocked and things are left lying about
in a way calculated to raise the hair of an eastern
man. So is the way of the frontier, for, "East is
East and West is West." This is not saying that
when the West is as old as eastern Canada it will
be any better. It may be far worse.

Again it may not be unfair to infer that this in-

12 WHY THEY FAIL

duction is symptomatic of conditions in the Great
Republic, for if western Canada has a higher level
of integrity than eastern Canada, Canada as a whole
must be conceded to have a level of integrity as
much higher than that of the United States as its
own is lower than that of England and Scotland,
and if these things be done in the green tree
what shall be done in the dry? No one who
is familiar with conditions on both sides of
the water and on both sides of the forty-ninth
parallel of latitude will deny this. Canada's graft-
ers and would-be grafters are cooing doves and
sucking babes when compared with the gentlemen
south of the line. What little they know they got
on their visits to New York and other large centres,
and what little they know they find it particularly
hard to practice over there.

Two things must be said here, though : One, that
the Canadian people have had their eyes opened
lately to the drift of things by reason of the pub-
licity crusades of the American magazines; the
other that Canada is relatively small and compara-
tively homogeneous. When she attains a popula-
tion ofover ninety millions with large admixtures
of foreign blood she may be as bad or even worse,
which Heaven forefend. But who can tell? Like
causes produce like results.

Independently, however, of all imperfect and
hasty generalizations and inferences, who will afifirm
that in these United States things are as they should
be, or even as they might reasonably be expected to
be? The most cursory study of every-day affairs
arouses a suspicion which subsequent investigation
does not serve to allay, that there is a serious and
wide-spread degeneration of the moral fibre in the
warp and woof of society. Were the delinquency
merely sporadic and evanescent it might be re-

WHY THEY FAIL 13

garded lightly, no matter how atrocious the lapse
might be, since we have not yet attained the golden
age of moral perfection when evil shall be no longer
with us. But the fact is that evils are apparently
increasing beyond the ratio of compatibility with
the nation's health. There must always be cases of
physical illness and we can stand so many pneumo-
cocci, streptococci and tubercle bacilli ; but when
their numbers and distribution pass a certain limit
uneasiness gives place to implacable hostility; the
people's health officers get busy, and woe to the
luckless wight who dares to gainsay or resist. The
evil is dealt with promptly and efficiently and it
doesn't make any difference who is concerned.
Pauper or plutocrat, he is quarantined for smallpox
and all the people rise up and say, ''Amen."

But with regard to our moral and economic
plagues it is not quite so. Theoretically the law of
quarantine is as clear and just for the latter as for
the former, but the difficulty is to give effect to the
moral health regulations. Voices of alarm, of pro-
test, are undoubtedly raised in the land. Their call
is a clarion call, long and loud ; but somehow it fails
to do more than galvanize the public into a transient
and ebullient activity. Like the early cloud and
the morning dew the righteous indignation soon
passes away. Of twenty towns which abolished the
saloon, eighteen were found the year following to
have elected mayors in sympathy with the liquor
business. There seems to be left little or no power
of persistent and effective rebuke, but rather an
easy-going tolerance of crimes against the public
weal which would probably have been better dealt
with by the rude and irregular but mightily effective
methods of shot-gun and hemp as in other days.

A sad and significant thing is that our Sir Gala-
hads have not been better sustained. While all of

14 WHY THEY FAIL

fair mind admit the justice of the cause they plead,
not all find grace to follow them to the charge.
Many millions nod emphatic assents, and if assents
would clean out the nests of evil-doers the work
would soon be done ; but unfortunately they won't,
and only a comparativel}' few thousands of Gideons
are found to gather themselves together to the
battle. Even the voice of the prophet of God, once
so imperative, is now become to the nation as little
more than the "sound of one who has a pleasant
voice and can play well on an instrument."

If these things be true then it would seem to be
high time to institute an enquiry into causes, to
consider candidly any hypothesis and remedy which
may reasonably be advanced, and withal to make
sure of digging deep about the very roots of things
with the unsparing hand of the husbandman whose
best tree is menaced underground.

Few will be so foolish as to think or say there
is nothing, or even little of good left in the nation's
life. To take up the refrain of the poet of the
Irish melodies and wail out as some are wont to do :

"There's nothing bright but Heaven,
And false the light on Glory's plume
As fading hues at even.
And Love and Hope and Beauty's bloom
Are blossoms gathered for the tomb ;
There's nothing bright but Heaven "

is simply pietistic pessimism, which is a shade more
irrational and vastly less agreeable than the view
of the cheerful optimist who sees, or professes to
see, nothing wrong. Calamity howlers who howl
merely for the mournful joy they find in doing so
are not desirable companions to have with us, and
just so long as "this sad old earth must borrow its

WHY THEY FAIL 15

mirth," because it "has sorrow enough of its own" —
just so long will our rose-water and nepenthe
friends who see all things in the rainbow arch of
their own ardent enthusiasms find a warm place
in our hearts.

But the very warmth which the cheerful, fatuous
and ever-lovable optimist brings to us proves the
chill that is in our hearts. We rejoice in the
November sun because we are cold. The true path-
way lies between the pessimism which gives up
discouraged on the one hand, and the foolish opti-
mism which does nothing on the other, because
everything is getting on finely as it is. Aristotle's
golden mean is much to be desired. A sane view
which takes in things as they are is the best prepa-
ration for therapeutic treatment of conditions.

Such a view at once reveals the wealth of good
in the nation's life at the present time. The great
Hartford humorist in cynical moments may talk
confidentially in poisoned adjectives of what he was
pleased to term "the damned human race," but
most of us would rather adopt the phrase of which
the cultured and scholarly sociologist, Dr. C. R.
Henderson, is so fond, and speak of "the climbing
majority," for the leaven of the Christ spirit is
everywhere in evidence. A century ago the world
was egoistic body and soul. Carey, the apostle of
modern missions, was lampooned as a fool and a
fanatic even by those who bore the sacred name of
the Supreme Missionary. Religion was for the most
part a form, a fad, or a cloak. Lord Melbourne,
stalking indignantly out of church during the serv-
ice muttering that "things have come to a pretty
pass when religion invades the sphere of private
life," is typical of the body of public sentiment
in that day. At the same time slaves clanked their
chains and nursed their horrors in hopeless silence;

16 WHY THEY FAIL

disease, filth and death held high carnival in prisons
filled with people confined there for the most part
because they had been unfortunate in meeting their
financial obligations ; women and small children
wore out their lives in exhausting toil in foul mines
and fouler factories ; "wine and wassail" were so
common that the grossest inebriety marked not
only society generally but the very priests of Christ
as well. And as for political corruption, it was but
a short time before that that Horace Walpole, the
statesman, could say "every man has his price,"
and a little earlier still, as Lord Macaulay informs
us, that the very navy of Britain, the protecting
aegis of the "tight little isle," was so helplessly in
the grip of grafters that the very ships of the line
were deflected to the carrying of private merchan-
dise, while the one hope of safety for the crew in
rough weather lay in getting the land-owning,
gentleman-captain so intoxicated he could not go on
deck in order that one of the seamen might have
a chance to take his place at the helm.

Thus we see that however recent the word "graft"
may be the thing itself is neither new nor indigen-
ous to American soil. It bloomed luxuriantly long
before we had existence as a nation and its rankest
growth came from a hard soil of unadulterated
human selfishness. Altruism, which exists to-day in
a thousand institutions of charity and in ten thous-
and laws for the amelioration of social conditions,
ranging from the merciful international restrictions
of the grim dogs of war by the Red Cross Society
down to the protection of the mongrel cur in Para-
dise Lane, was then a word known only to dilettanti
philosophers, who nourished their intellectual pride
and spent their strength in wrangling over the finely
sublimated attenuosities of metaphysics and the
elusive subjectivities of moral distinctions.

WHY THEY FAIL 17

Yet in spite of all this g-lorious advance upward
in the spiral of human progress there is somewhat
against us. If, looking backward, we are vastly to
the good, looking forward we have fallen painfully
short. Our day is not as theirs. We sin against
light. Twilight is one thing; the full blaze of
twentieth-century knowledge is quite another. We
must be judged by those standards of information
and opportunity which characterize our day. And
who shall say, judging by such a metewand, that
we are what we might reasonably be expected to
be? One hundred years ago in aristocratic old Eng-
land, the masses were not enfranchised. They were
not free. The peerage dominated both Church and
State. We have no feudal institutions, we have no
established church ; we do have every necessary in-
strument of political and economic freedom, and
yet we are the slaves of corporate greed and groups
of vile conspirators beside whom Cataline stands
forth as a patriot. We have the light and the power
and the opportunity to be free, to be clean, yet the
body politic is full of sores, needless sores, un-
sightly sores, intolerable sores.

The most cursory survey of our common life
makes this painfully evident. If we look, for in-
stance, at the nation's life as it manifests itself in the
heart-beat of our chambers of legislation, what do
we see? Theoretically and popularly legislators are
the servants of the people. As a matter of fact, are
they? "Peer" was once "par," an equal; even so is
the jest, "your obedient servant" in the official docu-
ments of our day. The servants we exalt to do our
bidding stand on our necks, count it condescension
to speak to many of their electors on the street,
and in scores of instances busy themselves chiefly
in lining their own nests and those of their friends
with our feathers. And for all this, as one excited

18 WHY THEY FAIL

protestant put it one night on the platform, we
are supposed to "kiss the hand that kicks us."

The wealthy gentleman of ancient Athens
counted it an honor to be permitted to fit out a
trireme, oars, sails, paint and all, for the defense
of the republic, but in our day the wealthy gentle-
man of New York, Chicago or Massachusetts would
rather cast a golden lariat over the legislators of
the republic to lead them around for his own private
use. Let a man of affairs speak.

The man is Herbert E. Miles, a manufacturer of
farming implements and he is speaking through the
Review of Reviews (Vol. 1909, p. 82). After inti-
mating that the secret of the trusts lies in "the
criminally unjust tariff drawn up by men grossly
ignorant of that complex phase of economics," while
Germany had a body of twenty experts employed
for twenty years in preparing a tariff, "consulting
in that time two thousand other experts in an inquiry
that was exhaustive, non-partisan and semi-judicial,"
and changed in only one particular by the Reichstag
after months of deliberation, he goes on to say :

"The Dingley committee had among its members
only four men, Messrs. Dingley, Payne, Dalzell and
Hopkins, a newspaper editor and three attorneys
and Mr. McMillan of the minority, with previous
experience. That men so inexperienced should have
hastily made a tariff for this country was worse
than a blunder — it was a crime. They only made a
great, blind jab at the task. They began wrong by
taking classifications more than a generation old,
inapplicable to our time, having neither knowledge
nor time to consider that important phase of the
subject adequately. Consequently we have had
thirty thousand lawsuits on classifications alone,
nine-tenths of which might have been avoided. They
put together in one classification, for instance, but-

WHY THEY FAIL 19

tons, stoves, electric fans, revolvers, nails, dress trim-
mings, railway cars, enamelled portraits, 'cannon
for war and crosses for churches.' With the en-
actment of this law the United States Government
went into the trust-making business up to its eyes.
It was controlled by no guiding principles, no rule
of measurement. Rates were doled out like liquor
at a revel.

"Congress in its refusal to establish the machinery
necessary to the securing and collation of exact and
underlying information in the making of the com-
ing tariff, rests only upon a bull-headed insistence
upon ancient habit, and back of this insistence is
seen the ugly vision of trusts, a greater part of
whose revenues comes from the excesses of loosely-
made tariffs. . . . Take my own business for in-
stance : A twenty per cent duty would more than
cover the difference in cost of production here and
abroad. The duty is, however on many products,
forty-five per cent. In this prohibitive duty lies
a Congressional permit amounting to an invitation
that those engaged in my industry consolidate, form
a trust under this Congressional permit which de-
livers the home market to us exclusively and add
to our prices the difference between the necessary
twenty per cent of production and the forty-five per
cent given in the law. Intelligent business men
are to be expected to make use of an advantage like
this especially granted by Congress, and this is just
what every one of your big trusts has done.
. . . The Standard Oil Company, for instance,
which heads the list, has a total wage cost of six
per cent, while the duty is for the main part ninety-
nine per cent, or fifteen times the wage cost, and
this remember, first given in the so-called free trade
Wilson law, and continued in the Dingley law. The
Heedlessness of this rate is evidenced by the fact

20 WHY THEY FAIL

that this trust shipped abroad last year $78,228,819,
selling it on the international market, as the Bureau
of Corporations discloses, at thirty-five to sixty-five
per cent less price than charged our domestic con-
sumers. The tariff fattens this one trust to the
extent of $35,000,000 a year, and yet Congressional
'dignity and economy' propose to leave the con-
sumers open to dozens of like abuses rather than
spend $100,000 per year on a safe-guarding com-
mission."

And so on with the Steel Trust, the Linseed Oil
Trust, the Locomotive Trust and a long list of
others.

Now^, as has been intimated, our legislators are
not supposed to be mean men. Presumably they are
the Sauls of the Great Tribe, chosen to do for us
because they stand head and shoulders above their
fellows, because each one is to those who know
him best "the expectancy and rose of state," if not
"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." And
yet — and yet — how many of them, judging by these
tariff tokens, can be trusted with $10,000 of the
government money in the dark, i. e., assuming that they
could get away with it and nobody be the wiser?

Charity suggests that the most of them know not
what they do ; that they are led like sheep to the
slaughter by the party leaders; that they dare not
come back to their constituents empty-handed from
the general raid on the public plunder, and yet, if
they are not good little boys and do not stand pat
and do just as they are told in the Big House they
won't get any pie ; and so there they are in a very
tight place indeed, the one way out being apparently
to do as they are told by the elder brothers of the
party and let them take the responsibility.

All of which may be and undoubtedly is true,
but as the patch for the "honesty" burn has to be

WHY THEY FAIL 21

taken from the "manliness" leg, the skin-grafting
on the honorable gentleman's character seems to
be of that doubtful sort illustrated by the Irishman
who would make his blanket longer by cutting off
six inches at the bottom and sewing it on at the
top.

Mr. Thomas Lawson affirms in public print that
the members of the Massachusetts Legislature are
bought up like fish, like decayed fish in the market.
Then he says it again more loudly, in large type,
so that all may hear. And no man lays hands on
him. Why? Evidently because there must have
been more truth than poetry in the statement. And
there are not wanting evidences of like conditions
elsewhere.

Who has not heard of "the sneak" or "the joker,"
that clause, comma or other device slipped sur-
reptitiously into a bill with a view to nullifying the
whole thing? Maybe it is a comma that is left
out — ostensibly the printer's error, as in the famous
case providing for the free entry of fruit plants,
where the failure to insert a comma between "fruit"
and "plants" cost the country hundreds of thousands
of dollars in loss of customs receipts; or may be
it is the alleged misprint of a word, as in another
case where the sale of a piece of property to the
lozvcst bidder was authorized. Legislation swarms
with this kind of chicanery, which in principle is
wholesale forgery and daylight robbery. To take
what does not belong to me is theft. How it is
done or from whom does not alter the essential
nature of the transaction. To steal from a poor man
may cause more misery than to steal from a million-
aire, but the offense is at bottom the same. Yet it
is strange how many people there are who seem to
think they would be doing God service if they
helped themselves to things belonging to some

22 WHY THEY FAIL

wealthy citizen, corporation or the government —
especially the government. As if stealing from a
million people is any the less stealing than stealing
from one ! By whatever devil's logic we may seek
to justify such a transaction, happily conscience,
that priceless watchdog of our highest welfare, always
bays a protest, which protest we do well to heed.

As Attorney-General Bonaparte, of the Roose-
velt Administration, observed, "The underlying evil
in our national affairs is simply dishonesty," but
it would be a mistake to think that our legislators
have a monopoly of it. It is easy to throw mud
at the man on the pedestal. He makes a good tar-
get ; but there is never such a target bespattered
with mud but a good many dirty fingers may be
found in the vicinity. The old proverb which says
"like priest, like people" should be amended to read,
"like people, like legislators," for it is only a shallow
interpretation of life which does not look on law-
maker and law-administrator as an effect rather than
a cause, a resultant of the forces that made them
rather than a guiding inspiration of the nation's
character. One-third of the electors of Adams
County, Ohio, were indicted for receiving bribes in
the election of 1910. Mr. La Follette's election
expenses were $4,000.00, while his opponent's were
$400,000.00, and in another riding the contest cost
one of the candidates $107,000.00. For what? The
bad bo}^ comes from a bad home, and if little Billy
is shifty, sneaky and strongly disposed to be light-
fingered, it doesn't require any Sherlock Holmes
sagacity to form a conception of his immediate pa-
ternal ancestor.

After all, it may be we are too thoughtless in our
abuse of those who sit in the seats of the mighty.
We do not have sufficient sympathy for them. The
man on the masthead knows wind pressures of
which we are, it may be fortunately for us, ignorant.

WHY THEY F'Ain 23

Half the time we should be praying for these men
instead of abusing them. The chances are they put
up a far bigger struggle with themselves in the
effort to do right than we know anything about.
It is quite probable that few if any of them would
be untrue to their trust if the currents which swirl
about their feet were not so fierce. It is equally
probable that nine-tenths of us if we were in their
place would do no better and may be not half so
well. The fact is, it is hard for these men and for
us all to do right, and the trouble is in ourselves —
a fatal weakness due chiefly to the one fatal over-
sight in our youthful education, with which it will
be the special business of this treatise to deal later
on. Meanwhile, let it be reaffirmed that our men
in public life are not necessarily "sinners above all
that dwell in Jerusalem." Most of the men who
look on would be as bad but that they lack oppor-
tunity. If it were not so they would not allow
others to do it in their name and at their expense.
Just so long as the electors tolerate crookedness in
public life, just so long will crookedness of infinite
variety abound, human nature remaining as it is;
and the electors are likely to tolerate it for an
indefinite time — until such time as we can produce a
race of men who will find themselves much more
able to do the good they knozv than it is our good
fortune to have produced up to the present moment.

It is hard for the stream to reach higher than its
source. Clean electors will soon make clean Con-
gressmen and clean politics. At present the Con-
gressman often finds that when he would do good,
evil is present with him in the form of electoral
friends, who apparently think they have elected him
to look after their especial interests, regardless of
his country's prior claims.

Theodore Roosevelt, whose life strikingly exem-

24 WHY THEY FAIL

plifies those qualities for the development of which this
book pleads, in an article on "A Remedy for some
Forms of Selfish Legislation," in the Outlook (Aug.
6, 1910) refers to another article by a Congressman
of ten years' standing, showing the reason why the
"pork barrel" special tariff favors and private pen-
sion bills became law, the reason being that the dictum
of the constituency to Congressmen is, get all you can
for US. There are no restrictions upon his methods
of getting it.

"This serious charge against the American peo-
ple," says Mr. Roosevelt, "for which there is un-
questionably too much justification, the author pro-
ceeds to substantiate by relating some of his own
experiences with his constituents, which, however
surprising they may seem to the general reader,
will seem almost commonplace to all who know
how the average constituency does, in acual prac-
ice, treat its Congressman.

"While the Payne-Aldrich tarifif law was under
consideration in May, 1909, he received a letter from
a powerful commercial association in his district
urging him by a unanimous resolution to use every
efifort to have the duties on three products named
increased one cent on one, and one-half cent per
pound on the other two respectively. He got the
half-cent on the two and prevented reduction on the
other A year later when the clamor arose against
the bill, the same association denounced the bill as
'the most iniquitous measure ever enacted by Con-
gress' and requested him to reply by letter why he
had voted to pass the bill. On producing their letter
they dropped their demand for an explanation. At
the same time a leading paper of his district, while
the bill was under debate, editorially commended
him for his 'intelligent efforts' in behalf of the dis-
trict and a year later denounced him as one of 'the

WHY THEY FAIL 25

legislative banditti responsible for the Payne- Aid-
rich measure.' "

Another illustration cited in the article concerned
the minister of a large and wealthy church who

wrote him to get a pension for , a dependent

member of his congregation. He admits the man
deserted during the second year of the war but
adds, "There must be some way the matter can be

covered up and be given a pensionable status.

Everyone seems to be able to get a pension. Why
not he?" And this is no isolated example for the
Congessman adds that he has "hundreds of such
letters filed away. So has every other Congress-
man."

Another, according to the article, wanted his
name put on the free mailing list for all public
documents. Investigation showed he wanted the
several tons of paper per month involved in his
modest request, to use as raw material for his waste
paper factory.

It is said that more old soldiers are now drawing a
pension after the lapse of forty-four years than were
mustered out after the peace at Richmond. A miracle
truly— either of graft or of longevity. "You pays
your money an' you takes your choice."

No wonder Professor Frank Giddings should say,
"We are witnessing to-day, beyond question, the
decay, — perhaps not permanent, but at any rate
the decay — of republican institutions. No man in
his right mind can deny it."

And what better is it in our municipal govern-
ment? The administration of our city affairs has
long been the scandal of the world. It is hardly
possible that corruption could have attained to
greater lengths in purely heathen lands than it has
reached in this land of open Bibles and Christian
temples. To judge simply by some of the doings

26 WHY THEY FAIL

in our great cities, Zeus, Bacchus and Venus might
be their chief presiding divinities rather than the
pure and beneficent triune Jehovah. What shame
of ancient Rome is there which cannot be paralleled
within our borders under protection of our police?
If there are deplorable and reprehensible lapses and
abuses in the legislative halls of our nation some
poor stagger at extenuation might be made by refer-
ring to the vastness and variety of the interests
involved, coupled with the limited time available
for the actual transaction of business; but our cities
are not so situated. They are sizable propositions
in every way. Their sons have grown up in them,
know them well and could in a few hours have first-
hand information, if they so desired, on almost
every point under investigation. The afifairs of a
city even as large as New York are not so large that
a score of competent men could not handle them
easily were the crooked places made straight. ]\Iany
a business has a turnover as large as that of our
metropolitan expenditures. London, which is nearly
twice the size of New York, is governed honestly.
Business men of acknowledged ability and integrity
are in charge of its interests, and no one dreams
of charging malfeasance of ofifice. Errors of judg-
ment may be charged, are charged, and that with
great spirit, but crookedness is not even hinted at.
And if that can be done in London it should be done
in New York where the public debt has reached the
enormous total of a thousand million dollars, or
within about thirty-two millions of being as large as
the interest-bearing debt of the nation with its army,
its navy, its wars and its ninety millions of people.

But it is not done in New York. Boss Tweed,
stealing New York City Hall and then renting it
to the citizens at so much per, is the most significant
joke of the Nineteenth Century, That was a good

WHY THEY FAIL 27

many years ago, before electric light and wireless
had come into the world to tell us about what
other people are doing. But the more general dif-
fusion of light and intelligence does not seem to
have much disturbed the rats in Tammany Hall.
It is even probable that if Boss Tweed could come
back to his old haunts he would find that his suc-
cessors in ofhce had vastly bettered his instructions.
Mr. George Gibbe Turner, writing in McClure's
Magazine (1909) says, in speaking of Tammany's
control of New York :

"From 1894 to the present day — fifteen years —
it (the Democratic Party) has been in charge of
New York two-thirds of the time. In all that
period, with one doubtful exception, it has never
had one majority of the popular vote at a city
election that was not obtained through the votes
of trained bands of 'repeaters' composed largely
of professional criminals. The history of this arti-
ficial control of a population of four million people
and an annual expenditure of one hundred fifty
million dollars, and its disastrous results, is strik-
ing and important. . . . The government of the
second largest city in the world, when the system
is in full working order, depends at bottom upon
the will of the criminal population — principally
thieves and pimps. The Eighteenth Century gov-
ernments founded on mercenary troops offer mild
examples of social decadence as compared with
this."

If we cross the continent to the western gateway
of the nation we find in San Francisco a state of
affairs that in 1907 at least was not very much
better. There the grafting oil seemed to have
diiTused itself till every cog in the wheels of busi-
ness was smeared with it. Hardly a wheel would
move without it. It became the conditio sine qua

Z8 WHY THEY FAIL

non of conducting business at all. The "itching
pahn" did not follow the prosperous; it effectively
blocked their way till it was sufficiently greased.
Save in the veneer of politeness with which it was
done and that the thieves wore the garb of the
people, the hold-up did not differ essentially from
that of the highway robber. But that mattered
little to the loser, whose one recourse was appar-
ently to raise his prices and to take it out of the
next wretch who came along to the doomed city.
Mr. Lincoln Steffens whose long probe has profit-
ably explored more than one grievous ulcer under
the galled withers of the people, says, in the Ameri-
can Magazine for 1908:

"The 'Fight Trust' was one of the schemes by
which the vices of the city were being organized
and brought under orderly and profitable control.
The supervisors used to grant permits for the prize
fights. The several sporting rings quarrelled over
the privilege till Reuf and the mayor brought to-
gether the leaders into a company which was to
have a monopoly of prize fighting. The other vice
grafts were saloons, bawdy houses, gambling joints,
slot machines and common crimes like burglaries,
highway robberies, pocket-picking, etc."

To that list he adds on the strength of the in-
vestigation conducted by Mr. Heney, a list of larger
game— "Light," "Telephone," "Street Railways,"
"Real Estate," and goes on to say :

"There was more. Lonergan had the milk graft
permitting favored dairymen to sell milk that
wasn't necessarily 'pure,' especially to hospitals, for
he let this privilege as chairman of the hospital
committee. Mike Coffee, as chairman of the com-
mittee on printing, had a rake-off on printers' sup-
plies; Nicholaus, as chairman of 'Furniture' had ten
per cent on all 'furnishing' bills, and so on. This

WHY THEY FAIL 29

was the custom in San Francisco and it is the
custom in most cities and states to have each com-
mittee represent a graft. And that, by the way,
is why we see our legislators fighting so often to
be assigned to preferred committees. We despise
all this political graft, but it must be understood
that this is one of the ways by which the big
organized grafts pay our representatives to betray
us. Every traitor must get 'his,' as Gallagher illustrates :
Having no committee graft all his own the president
of the board received ten per cent on all bills which
he O. K.'d for collection for all supplies ! What are
the big grafts in which they all shared? Look back
over the list: Vice, gas, telephone, street railways,
and real estate speculation."

And so on with the other great centres of population.
Boston's Good Government League in its first re-
port laid its finger on one leak of a million dollars.
Chicago, dominated and despoiled for years by an
illiterate ward heeler, John Caughlin, whose twc
bar-tending aldermanic satellites rejoiced in the
names of "Hinky Dink" and "J^wney" Powers
never failed him in any villainy, is another classic
example of our civic misgovernment. The mainten-
ance of its infernal royalty of graft cannot have cost
that city less than fifty million dollars. Phila-
delphia, Pittsburgh, Albany, St. Louis, New
Orleans — but what's the use of citing others? Has
not every city its own disgusting array of soiled
linen to be washed, its people hypnotized by the
glitter of infected wealth, or stupefied by the aromas
of the party medicine bag; inane, helpless, knowing,
protesting, making hideous grimaces, mimic ges-
tures indicative of dire happenings later on, but
apparently powerless to do anything, because, you
see, that seventy-seven per cent of manliness can-
not be reckoned on in a hard scrimmage. Well

30 WHY THEY FAIL

might the editor of a leading magazine observe:

"We who would enter the lists in behalf of the
people betrayed by those appointed to represent
them need not go far afield. The black trail of
those who are disgracing representative govern-
ment can be followed across the continent. Here
the people's will is nullified by bribery; there a
city council is honey-combed with graft ; further on
a United States senator buys his election; another
whole city government is devoted to robbing the
city treasury ; and so on to the coast. Why do
common honesty and the sense of civic rights so
often and so conspicuously fail? Are men cheap?
Is money dear? Or is the mere possession of it
of more account than honor? Whatever the prem-
ise, who is putting paltry dollars in the scale
against men? The Cosmopolitan has undertaken
to find out, and at the start of the trail has
uncovered Privilege and Big Business at the capital
o- the Empire State."

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Even that last refuge of the helpless, the Temple
of Justice, has been unable to stand out against the
general moral infection. Its own lofty ideals do
not appear to have been for it a sufficient prophy-
lactic. Plainly justice should be made easy for the
poor, always the under dog in a fight. The scales
should be held in an even hand. Right should be
done in the courts if anywhere. But is right done
in the courts and is justice made easy of access to
those most likely to need it? Far from it. Justice
is most apt to be accorded the man who can pay well
for it. So numerous are the kinks and quirks of the
law that, apart altogether from such hideous trav-

PVHY THEY FAIL 31

esties of justice as are described by Judge Benjamin
B. Lindsey, of Colorado, where the courts would
appear to have been the menial servants of mori-
bund corporations, a civil case, instead of being
speedily tried on its merits, may be made to "drag
a lengthening chain" till the plaintiff is financially
worn out. As a simple matter of fact the processes
of law are so interminable and costly that, unless
the amount involved be a very large sum indeed,
a man is very foolish to go to law to recover his
rights. He would far better "bear the ills he has
than fly to others he knows not of."

Much has been written on the abuses of the
criminal law. Among other things might be men-
tioned Mr. Hugh C. Weir's article in The World
To-day (June, 1909). It is both lucid and infor-
mative, and it does not hesitate to brand the
criminal law as the scandal of the civilized world.
There seems to be no doubt about that. President
Taft, as quoted, admits this when he says it is "a
disgrace to civilization." Judge Amidon, of Dakota,
adds his quota to much similar testimony when he
says: "We have long since passed the time when
it is possible to convict an innocent man. The
problem which confronts us to-day is whether we
can convict a guilty man." The judge may well
make that remark when it can be said that only one
murderer out of fifty ever suffers punishment of any
kind. General Bingham, Police Commissioner of
New York, and therefore a man not without experi-
ence in such matters, assures us that "the law en-
courages the criminal." Who will affirm that he
has not some ground for his complaint when he
finds that out of two hundred thousand cases, one
hundred and sixty thousand get off with white-washed
sentences or acquittals. Philadelphia in two years
produces one hundred and thirty-five indictments for

32 WHY THEY FAIL

murder, of which one hundred and twenty are abortive
and fifteen are successfully carried into execution.
Well may Judge Amidon make his remark about
the difficulty of convicting the guilty, and the police
get weary of catching birds of prey only to see them
liberated by some invisible power higher up. A
key of gold seems to unlock even the murderer's
cell. Lawyers and judges seem more bent on pre-
serving the forms of justice than on administering
justice itself. Justice nine times out of ten is not only
fallen in the street but kicked into the gutter, while
legal gentlemen do their mental gymnastics and
manifest their great acumen in discovering trifling
spots no bigger than a fly-speck on the part of the
prosecution, to the wonder and compulsion of an
: dmiring court, which thereupon immediately
grants freedom or a new trial. The records of
the courts of Alabama, according to Mr. Weir, tell
of one case in which a man indicted for murder
was set free because the letter "i" in the word
"malice" was left out in the indictment. Another
murderer in a neighboring state, who had shot his
victim in the heart, was set free because the clerk
had misspelled the word "breast." In still another
state, a nev/ trial was granted because the evidence
was presented before the indictment, instead of
vice versa. And in Seattle a man in whose office
a set of teeth was found and who had, because of
this and other clear evidence, been convicted of the
illegal practice of dentistry, was granted a new
trial on the ground that the indictment did not state
whether the teeth were artificial or natural.

So is the great cause of Justice bamboozled and
befuddled. Justice is wounded in the house of her
friends. She is bound hand and foot with a wilder-
ness of tape in which the very lawyers and judges
themselves would seem to have gotten all tangled

WHY THEY FAIL 33

up in the frayed-out ends till their mental condi-
tion would appear to have approximated that of
the good old minister when he prayed, "O Lord,
remember thy dust, and thy dust's dust, and thy
dust's dust's dust."

According- to our present jury system, none but
idiots and recluses are, theoretically at least, elig-
ible for service. If they have formed an opinion
they are not competent to sit on the case. As if
a man could escape having formed some kind of
opinion regarding the crime with the news of which
his whole world is ringing, or as if it were impos-
sible for a sane man to change his opinion on the
presentation of sufficient evidence to the contrary!
Jury challenging has reached the status of a fine
art in the legal profession, and long after the time
that reparation should have been made we find
the legal gladiators fighting over the men who are
to sit on the case. The English courts tried, sent-
enced and hanged the notorious Dr. Hawley Crip-
pen in less time than it would have taken in
America to empanel his jury.

Such delays are unnecessary and vicious in their
reflex influences. They encourage crime as much
as delays of other kinds often discourage justice.
It is no uncommon thing for cases to be dropped
or dismissed because the witnesses on the case have
died or moved away while waiting for the cause
to be tried. The Donnelly-McArdle case in New
York dragged on for twenty-three years. A suc-
cession of forty judges sat on the case, of whom
sixteen died without seeing a settlement, as also
forty-two of the witnesses. Philadelphia has a rec-
ord of two hundred fifty cases dropped in one year
for that reason and it is said on good authority that
the Court of Special Sessions of New York had
five thousand cases awaiting trial at one time and

34 WHY THEY FAIL

so were nearly six months behind with their work.

The other extreme of over-working the courts
might at the same time be seen in the petty courts
of New York City, where the mills of Justice, grind-
ing steadily with day and night shifts, railroaded
the cases through with an average of six minutes
to each. Indeed, the unofficial records of one court
tell of one celebrated night in which the unfortunates
were disposed of with an average of a minute to
each, or one hundred cases tried and adjudged in
one hundred minutes.

Is it any wonder in view of these things that
there should be manifested some disposition on the
part of many people who have only common sense and
the instinct of Justice to guide them, to take a turn at
the administration of the law for themselves, in
order to be real sure that it it administered? The
wonder is rather that there have not been more out-
breaks of the kind. Vigilance committees may
make mistakes, but they can hardly have made more
than have been made in the regular court pro-
cedure, while their methods have been vastly more
potent as a deterrent of crime. Judge Lynch is
unknown where Justice is enthroned. Great Britain
and Canada don't know what he looks like, for the
simple reason that the courts protect. No one there
thinks of crime going unpunished, once it is proven,
and every policeman knows that every power the
government possesses is behind him in the execu-
tion of his task and whether the chase costs a
thousand or a million doesn't really matter; the
crime has to be dealt with. It is for that reason
the "bad" men of our mining camps become good
as pie on crossing the international boundary, and
because of that a handful of mounted police have
for years been able to maintain order over a terri-
tory as large as that of ten countries of Europe.

WHY. THEY FAIL 35

Statistics of our criminal procedure show that in
1885 there were 180S murders in the United States,
108 of the perpetrators of which were executed.
Crime then advanced by steady progression far
beyond the increase in population, till by 1904 the
number of murders had grown to 8482. But while
6674 murderers were thus added to the list, all
but eight of them escaped the gallows. Hence the
reversion to the more primitive type of society — •
where justice is administered by the tribe with scant
attention to forms and processes; and hence the
spectacle of 3337 lynchings in less than twenty
years, of which 263? were of white men, according
to Mr. Weir, and the balance negroes. And this
in spite of the fact that we pay a billion and a half
yearly in cold cash for the maintenance of order
and lose an additional estimated three and a half bil-
lions through the withdrawal of the army of justice
from productive activity.

Naturally where Justice is thrown down so read-
ily and so hard in the legislatures and the courts,
the interpretation of the divorce laws becomes very
loose. Of course, the courts do not make the
divorce laws, but the general looseness manifested in
legislation and jurisprudence finds expression in laws
that incline to laxity in morals and so it becomes
easy to loose "what God hath joined together."
This evil, as has often been remarked, strikes at
the very roots of our civilization, which has its
centre in the home, and its rapid growth of recent
years has been a matter for grave apprehension on
the part of all right-minded people. Heathen Japan
is the only civilized nation in the world which is
at all in the same class with us in this regard. We
are by demerit raised to a very bad eminence. The
United States statistical summary shows 945,625
divorces in twenty years (1887-1906), the rate of

36 WHY THEY FAIL

increase over the previous two decades being nearly
sixty-six per cent. From present indications within
thirty-five years there will be one divorce for every
marriage.

The rate of increase in divorce as compared with
the increase of population steadily continued till in
the decade between 1890-1900 divorce had popula-
tion beaten three times over. The sacred tie is
dissolved for the most trivial reasons, and at least
one case is on record where the trial, decree and
subsequent remarriage of both parties was put
through in thirty minutes. In Los Angeles and else-
where last year one marriage for every four was
invalidated.

No wonder Mr. Brooke Adams should be con-
Strained to say in the Atlantic Monthly: "Through
divorce modern women assert and practically exer-
cise the right of living with what men they please,
as long as they please, and changing when they
please, repudiating all obligations to anyone but
themselves. The result has been the dissolution of
the family in the sense that parental authority has
nearly ceased as a constraining force in society.
But parental authority has always been the source
of all authority and the foundation upon which has
rested the sanction of all coercive law. As the
instinct of obedience is weakened by the decay of
parental authority, so must the administration of
the criminal law decay, and it has decayed."

There are other symptoms which would also indi-
cate that the stream of our national life is not so
pure as it might be. The hard nature of monopo-
lies and their evident disposition to over-reach and
under-pay makes truer than ever Bobbie Burns'
sentiment about man's inhumanity to man making
countless thousands mourn. Of course we should
not forget that these capitalists are in some meas-

WHY THEY FAIL 37

lire creatures of their circumstances. We should
not visit all our displeasure upon them, since back
of them sits a board of directors, and a horde of
stockholders howling for dividends. The old indi-
vidual competition of the cobbler and the corner
grocery has given place to group competition, that
is all. So far as principle and intent go, the new
is probably not a whit more "red in tooth and claw"
than the old, but whereas the multiplied divisions
of the old favored labor, the concentration of wit
and wealth cripples it by giving almost absolute
power to capital. The laborer has become simply
a tool of production, to be cast aside for the slightest
deficiency, as valuable engines go to the scrap heap
immediately on the appearance of a better one.

While, therefore, some sympathy should be
shown for the capitalist, who, as surely as the lab-
orer, is a cog in a wheel driven by powers beyond
his control, the most lively sympathy should be
given to those who are broken on the wheel — who,
even when they toil receive no adequate recom-
pense for their toil, but only such a pittance as
will keep body and soul together, so they can work
some more for the good of corporations — corpora-
tions already grown fat upon the blood and brawn
of millions made in the image of God, as certainly
as were the directing officers of those corporations.

The supreme peril of this nation lies in the pres-
ent rapid and vast accumulation of capital in the
hands of a few men. The world has never seen such
a spectacle before. Something like a score of men
absolutely control its foreign and domestic afifairs.
This oligarchy is now entrenched and growing
stronger every minute. When it chooses it can
precipitate a panic. There is hardly a bank or a
corporation which it could not cripple or break,
should it choose to turn its baleful eye upon it. It

38 WHY THEY FAIL

controls the transportation of this country and the
banks, and anything- which controls those two fac-
tors controls the nation. The bald fact is that we
are not free. We are simply the economic servants
of a small group of men whose unprincipled in-
genuity in subverting legislators and courts, has
diverted a million silver rivulets into the mighty
current which now turns its mighty mill wheels.
Any power which can precipitate a panic on de-
positors, merchants and manufacturers without re-
gard to natural causes, has those depositors, mer-
chants and manufacturers, and those whom they
employ, under its thumb. They are not free. And
this is precisely what has happened to us in this, our
day of boasted freedom. We are measurably free
only as long as it is the pleasure of our masters
of Wall Street to allow it. One act of insubordina-
tion and the lash is drawn for the fool's back, as
it was in the year of grace 1903, and as it will un-
doubtedly be again. The Boston seer, Edward
Bellamy, saw this day coming more than twenty
years ago and foretold what would happen — the
final revolt of a people goaded to desperation, and
their violent seizure of that which by direct fraud
and every indirection, had through the years been
wrung from their reluctant hands. Surely it is the
white teeth of the breakers ahead we see in the re-
port of the Stanley Committee, showing that twenty-
one directors and officers of the United States Steel
Corporation are also directors in 213 other corpora-
tions of which the total capital, surplus and funded
debt amounts to $15,208,487,325. At the same time
the total amount of money in circulation in the United
States is only $3,284,152,496, with $3,621,117,239 in
the Treasury.

As the grinding of the faces of the poor and the
dethronement of Justice preceded the downfall of

WHY THEY FAIL 39

ancient Israel ; as the accumulation of vast wealth
in few hands and its attendant vices with the cor-
responding depression of the masses, disintegrated
the mightiest republics of antiquity, so must the
same causes now operating among us produce like
results. Monkey dinners costing thousands, and
eight thousand dollars a year or so for nurses, dent-
ists and physicians to care for pug dogs while a
few blocks away women starve, or bear the pangs
of parturition without medical aid because of their
dire poverty; feasts that eclipse Belshazzar's for
splendor and orgies that shame the Bacchanals for
vice ; shop girls who are forced to sell their virtue
that their masters may keep up appearances in the
fashionable rout, and factory men who sweat and
drink the bitter waters of poverty, and die, in order
that their master may build for himself monuments
in cities he has never seen — all these things offend
high Heaven and outrage that Divine Charity which
regards the sparrow's fall, and feels for that con-
summate flower of creation — man, who is made in
the image of God and born to a destiny surpassing
that of archangels.

The rapid accumulation of wealth from the con-
quest of vast natural resources and the pleasure
and power manifestly attending its possession, have
in turn served to obscure the higher things of life.
Mammon is by far the most popular god in
America. The dollar symbol covers all stains, opens
all doors, atones for all sins. It appears to be the
one object considered worthy of most feverish pur-
suit. No matter how you get it — only get it. That
is the attitude, if not the cry. The evidence of
which disposition may be found in the ease with
which people are swindled out of their hard-earned
ducats, Post-Master General Hitchcock tells us
that innocents have been swindled out of one

40 WHY THEY FAIL

hundred million dollars in five years by a few
crooks who made fraudulent use of the mails. Fifty
millions it is estimated, was lost during the same
time in bucket shop gambling, while even those last
citadels of integrit}^ the banks and trust companies,
were not immune, losing a matter of twenty-eight
million dollars in the same time at the hands of
dishonest employees. One railway company proposes
to let the public go unwashed hereafter because the
dear people stole $31,000.00 worth of towels from
their trains last year.

This gold itch reveals itself in other inconvenient
ways. It has poisoned our food and slain more
babies than Herod's sword. Stock gambling ap-
peals to something more than greed; it appeals to
the gambling instinct within us, for we all have
got enough of the gambler in us to make us want
to take chances on this or that, in one way or an-
other; but the deliberate adulteration and poisoning
of the people's food is a cold-blooded villainy which
should have had short shrift at the hands of the
law's officers. It has not received its due reward.
Our moral executive is as yet too weak for that ;
but we have at any rate scotched the tail of the
fiend, thanks to men like Senator McCumber and
Dr. Wiley, of pure food fame.

Some years ago, when the dust was raised about
this iniquity, the Secretary of Agriculture affirmed
that thirty per cent of the money paid for food prod-
ucts in the United States was paid for adulterated
or misbranded goods. Bad enough, that, especially
when Senator McCumber could say on the floor of
the House that if the per cent were cut to fifteen in
order to be sure to be on the safe side, the amount
of that swindle would be about one billion, seven
hundred and fifty million dollars. Stock gambling and
post office swindles anu bank defalcations all put

WHY THEY FAIL 41

together look small alongside of that, don't they?
But when we remember that a portion of it went to
pay for formaldehyde in the milk doled out to sick
babies, the heart recoils from the cold rapacity of
the game. Alcohol in medicines, powdered soap
stone for flour, coal-tar and benzoic acid for fruit
flavors are crooked enough and odious enough, but
men who could poison the food of a helpless infant
with formaldehyde, in which farmers kill rust, fungi
and other pests on their wheat, are real Herods of
the Twentieth Century who might well be con-
ceived of as uttering in earnest the jesting reply of
the genial Charles Lamb, bachelor, when a lady asked
him how he liked babies — "B-b-boiled, madam." ^

The lack of honesty and manliness shows even in
our sports, where presumably those qualities are
at a premium. For instance in the brutal exhibition
of human skill and animal prowess which had place
at Reno, Nevada, in 1910, between Johnson, the
black pugilist, and Jeffries, "the white man's hope,"
a spirit which was anything but fair was manifested.
The management itself feared the crowd it had
evoked. This was evidenced by the array of special
constables armed with rifles, who stood near the
ring, and by the further fact that every spectator
was relieved of his weapons before entering the
theatre of strife. If honesty and manliness are
prominent among our virtues, how does it come that
a negro who showed no fear and asked no favors
had to be so amply protected during a struggle in
which he stood all but alone? And why, immedi-
ately on the awarding to him of the palm of victory
so fairly won, should he have to be bundled out of
the building and out of the town as if he were the
vilest of criminals? And why should it be that
while the people of his race, according to their
light, were praying for their national champion,

43 WHY THEY FAIL

mobs of white men should be hounding them with
savage impulses, killing half a dozen and wound-
ing hundreds who had probably never in their
lives either harmed a white man or even laid eyes
on "Mistah Johnsing?"

It may be said that this illustration is unfortunate
since it is drawn from an affair which does not truly
represent American sentiment. That is true, for
which praise be ! We may not be all we ought to be
but thank God we have our limits, and they fall
this side of Reno, Nevada. But unhappily the
blight of unfairness appears to have touched other
and fairer flowers of our society. Let us rise from
the fetid air of the prize-ring with its odor of beer
and mark of the beast. Let us hasten to the dec-
orous East, home of the fine arts, beauty, brains
and chivalrous culture. Let us take an illustration
from thence. This time it is the sport of kings —
aviation. And what may we reasonably expect to
find there? Surely high courtesy, a disposition to
yield the advantage, if there be any, to the foe, a
generous hospitality, especially to the stranger
within the gates. Were these hall-marks of honesty
and manliness in sport found there? If they were
why should a prominent American millionaire mem-
ber of the Aero Club, himself an aviator of no mean
repute and therefore familiar with all the rules of
the game, rise up to protest against unfairness to
the British aviator and ask to be permitted to with-
draw his membership on the ground of an alleged
breach of honorable dealing?

Or again, take the horse show. If there is one
form of sport which more than another may be
deemed both clean and fashionable it is the horse
show of our great cities. No other function seems
to attract such crowds of our most representative
citizenship day after day. Once again we deal with

WHY THEY FAIL 43

the diversion of kings. This is no play of irrespons-
ible boys, but the genuine avocation of people of
high standing. Hundreds of millions of wealth one
might say, attend the annual sessions of the New
York Horse Show, and millionaires of national
reputation are not ashamed to act as judges of the
magnificent animals presented to their discriminat-
ing eyes.

This is not a horse race, mark you. One would
expect to meet charges of unfairness there. This
is merely a gentleman's exhibition of fine horses,
fine horsemanship and, in a small degree, fine equi-
pages. Surely there at least, will be no question as
to the integrity of the awards made, however the
judgment of the judges may be doubted. But alas,
it is not so. In a certain Horse Show for 1910
the Canadian contingent was conspicuous by its
absence, though competent judges think their
horses fit for any ring, and more than fit for the one
from which they excused themselves. They felt they
didn't get a square deal and wouldn't come back.
In another and smaller city the whole institution
went to the wall after flourishing for a time, be-
cause of the withdrawals of those who felt they
had received the double cross ; and in still others
there is trouble brewing.

It is to be expected that not all will be satisfied
with the awards made. That is so in almost every
competition ; but where gentlemen who are men of
affairs are concerned one must infer from the talk
that there is either a want of fair dealing on the
one hand, or on the other a lack of that quality
in a man which enables him to take his lemon and
suck it in silence.

Finally, if we consider that highest efflorescence
of the nation's life, the part of it which is supposed
to express itself through the Church of Jesus Christ,

44 WHY THEY FAIL

we find that even there, there is apparently a failure to
measure up to the demands of the day and the op-
portunity. Time was when the church was the
theatre of the world's great drama. She dispensed
its charities, shaped its laws, restrained brute force
in its oppression of the weak ; sheltered the innocent
(likewise the guilty sometimes) and was the con-
servator and patron of literature and art. She can-
not be accused of having ever coddled science, but
if not, she was at any rate sufficiently influential to
make science feel the weight of her hand.

To-day she seems bereft of these ancient preroga-
tives. The tide of the world's affairs seems to pour
around her demesne rather than through it. She
finds herself marooned — left like a beacon on a hill
or a stump in a forest of saplings. She no longer
holds in leash the dogs of war; no longer dic-
tates terms to princes, peers and statesmen; no
longer can she protect the weak and innocent or
shelter the guilty; no longer does literature care
what she thinks, good or ill; science is at open odds
with her; public charities are dispensed by aliens,
or in any event without leave asked of her, and the
social life has shifted from the shadow of the church
steeple to the busy marts of men.

Is there a holy war to be waged on the
infamous liquor traffic, then a legion of temper-
ance societies is organized to do it; is vice to be
challenged in its urban citadels, a Moral Reform
Association will lead the charge; does the hideous
and malodorous ulcer of a white slave traffic break
out upon the body politic, then a lawyer will rise
up to treat it with his mundane caustic ; are young
men homeless and friendless in the strange city,
then a Y. M. C A. will take care of them and
find a place for them as the Y. W. C. A. looks
after their sisters ; is woman to be granted her

WHY THEY FAIL 46

standing by the side of man, society leaders will
look after that ; is the brother stricken down sud-
denly, then he is glad, since he has a wife and
babies to be cared for at home, that he belongs to
a Masons,' Oddfellows,' or any of a dozen other
fraternal organizations, at whose hearth he has
often warmed his soul. When the lodge by its in-
surance fund and sick benefits has cared for his im-
mediate needs and enabled him to square away his
obligations and discharge his responsibilities as a
man, then he is ready for the priest and the look into
the beyond. Is there a huge injustice being done to
some of the humbler and hard-working citizens of
the town, atrocious hours, unsanitary conditions
about home or workshop, starvation wages, or other
limitation of natural rights, the Labor Union, not
the Church, will take the matter up and deal with
it till justice is done.

Naturally the laborer comes to look to his Union
for his temporal salvation, that being a matter
both urgent and near at hand, and naturally there is
a tendency to bless the hand that feeds him and
to forget the institution whose members forgot him
in the hour of his need, when he stood before the
legislature, city council or board of arbitration.

And so it comes that the laboring man, and many
other men, have drifted away from the church and
have come to look upon it somewhat as though it
were simply an improved and animated prayer
wheel, of no practical value, and of interest only to
those peculiar people who care for the odd, the
antiquated and the esoteric.

Rev. Charles Stelzle, who has done such mag-
nificent work for the Presbyterian body, and in-
directly for the Church at large, in the way of lead-
ing us to a better understanding of the working-
man's attitude and just grievances, tells us that

46 WHY THEY FAIL

workingmen are alienated from the Church because

(1) having fought for and won religious and politi-
cal democracy, they are now fighting for industrial
democracy and get no help from the Church. It
even opposes ameliorating laws as in England,
where Churchmen voted for the saloon, and in New
York against the better housing of the poor, be-
cause the church had vile tenements of its own ;

(2) because the Church is the tool of the rich man ;

(3) "because the preacher lives in the clouds and
has not enough of the man-to-man message style
about him, as have labor leaders. He is more con-
cerned with Jerusalem and Abraham than Chicago
and the Polaks there," and (4) because "the Church
denounces labor unions while at the same time it is
the closest kind of a corporation itself, in other
days persecuting all ecclesiastical scabs who did
not belong to it."

If we disentangle from the skein of this general
statement the discolored, broken threads — the half
truths blown in in the breadth of a tremendous indig-
nation and conviction — such threads for example
as that about the Church being "the closest kind
of corporation" (as if in the nature of things, the
initiative requirement being a new birth from above,
it could be anything else) or that other general
statement about owning tenements and opposing
ameliorating laws (where only a part of the Church
did so) we still have left a strange fabric — one that
is far different from the pure white linen of the
saints which the Church is supposed to be wearing.

That the Church has lost her mediaeval grip on
legislation, education, social life, benevolence, war
and politics is not the cause for tears; the cause for
tears is that she has lost her grip because she could
not sufficiently adjust herself in spirit to changed
conditions. War, politics, education, legislation.

WHY THEY FAIL 47

economics and all that kind of thing is not the busi-
ness of the Church. Her business is to help make
men ; to help make them over again, under God, in
the name of God into the image of God. This is at
bottom a spiritual operation and a heavenly task.
And if she only attends to her own proper business
of making men over in the image of God, by the
spirit of God, with all her might, war, politics, legis-
lation, education, and social reform will take care
of themselves. For the Church is like a medical
school, which, though it does not treat human dis-
eases yet turns out the men who do. Her sons will
have light enough and influence enough to see to
that out in the world. They will be the leaven that
will leaven the lump, the grain of mustard seed
which becomes a great tree into which the weary,
panting birds of the air will flock for shelter from
the burning heat of the day.

Infinite trouble and infinite loss have been our
portion because of our failure to distinguish ade-
quately between the Church's influence and the
Church as an organization. The Church as an or-
ganization has no business with war, politics, litera-
ture and art. As an institution she is no more of
this world than her founder was. Her citizenship
is in Heaven and her business is to keep on telling
everywhere the good news contained in John 3 :16,
and then to perfect holiness in the fear of God in her
members according to the rules laid down in the
Guide Book. That is her sole business; but if she
does that faithfully, the influence of the Church
will soon become a terrific force for righteousness,
an influence in public life which can neither be
ignored nor despised. The only way the Church
can rule or should want to rule in the affairs of this
world is indirectly, by her influence over the lives
and consciences of men.

48 WHY THEY FAIL

If the Church will only develop the right kind
of men in her own organization, everything else
will come right of itself. A Church composed of
men and women who have not only the will, but the
power to do right, will be indeed "fair as the moon,
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with
banners." And a Church like that will compel the
admiration, reverence and respect of the world.

But the trouble is her sons are so often just like
other men. They are Samsons shorn of their power ;
inconsistent Lots whose words have lost their in-
fluence ; Christians who have lost their savor, and
are therefore fit only to be cast out and trodden
under foot of men, as the Master long ago told us.
If the Christian brother, who through cupidity
takes a bribe, or for lack of Christian manliness
fails to stand up and speak out, and so becomes in
some shady transaction the silent partner of men
who make no pretence of religion — if he could only
see their sneers behind his back, he would have a
new and lively appreciation of the Saviour's insight.
He would see them, hardened sons of Belial though
they might be, in a very real sense if not a literal
one, wiping their feet on him, thanking God that
however low they might have sunk, they hadn't yet
sunk that low — so low as to be religious hypocrites.
It is not without pain we have to admit that the
Church of to-day fails to inspire that measure of
respect which in other days, superstition aside, she
was wont to be accorded, and that we see the
crowds swinging down other streets and away from her
doors. Not so many strong men are disposed to
enter her ministry, and not so many men of any
kind crowd her gates on Sunday morning or even-
ing as should be there. Harsh things are said about
her by those whom she is supposed to reach, and
above all, in politics, civic life, commercial Hfe,

WHY THEY FAIL 49

sports and the courts, such enemies have crept in
as to force the conviction that to have allowed it
to happen, with all her far-flung outposts, strons^ly
entrenched centres and lines of battle innumerable,
her sentries must either have been asleep at their
posts, or else her commanding officers must have over-
looked some very important, not to say strategic posi-
tion.

"Facts are the fingers of God," and "Truth is
truth if it sears our eye-balls." We have to look
at and deal with things as they are. Yet no one
who thinks at all will be so silly as to think for
all this, that the Church is either a doubtful insti-
tution or a decrepit and negligible quantity so far
as the every-day life of the people is concerned.
Far from it. If things are as tainted as they are
in spots, what would they have been like if there
had been no Church? Let no man think that every-
thing is going to the bow-wows. The heart of
the various trees in the garden is reasonably sound,
if they do appear to be dying at the top. Not all
churches or church members are objects of re-
proach. There are still to be found Drexels in every
form of sport, who are able to rise up in protest
against what they deem unfairness or meanness.
We have still our Bryans, Roosevelts, Folks,
La Follettes, and a growing army of insurgents in
politics ; our Gaynors, Pingrees, Weavers and
Joneses in every city to cry out for good govern-
ment; a healthy disposition toward being more "on
the square" in commercial transactions and a great
body of sentiment leaning always decidedly toward
better things.

The point is, not that we have no right sentiment
no honesty, no manliness, no justice, but that we
haven't got enough of it to go around ; that a small
proportion even of those who have had a chance,

60 WHY THEY FAIL

are conspicuous for such homely and necessary vir-
tues as honesty, manHness, and beneficence, say
twenty-five per cent, while seventy-five per cent
come short; and that there must therefore have
been some very grave leak somewhere, in our edu-
cational systems, particularly in the methods of the
Church whose peculiar function it is to develop
morally efificient character, when, with all her years
of painstaking, prayerful, conscientions efifort in
training, supplemented by that of the home, the
day-school and the denominational college, she
turns out a moral product which goes down like a
tenpin in the very first horse trade, real estate deal,
or party mix-up in which the dear graduate pupil
finds himself involved.

WHY. ' THEY. FAIL 51

FOREWORD TO CHAPTER II

"If it were possible to sum up in a few words
the one thing that has most impressed me in visit-
ing churches and talking with church leaders in
various parts of the country, I think 1 should say,

" 'The utter confusion of counsel among church
leaders themselves.'

"Upon the seriousness of the crisis which con-
fronts them — the waning influence of the Church
upon the lives of men and women, the tendency of
able young men to avoid the ministry as a pro-
fession— most leaders are quite in agreement, but
as to what to do about it there exist the widest
differences of opinion. The Church to-day is like
a fort under sudden attack — in the night, with many
of the captains fast asleep. There is a common
and overwhelming sense of danger, but the defense
so far has been without common plan or purpose —
sallies here, retreats there, a promiscuous firing of
big and little guns, and an altogether inordinate
amount of noise."

— Ray Stannard Baker, Journalist, in The American
Magazine.

CHAPTER II

THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES

If, now, we enquire why these things are so, a
multitude of voices is at once heard in reply. The
explanations offered are many, varied, interesting
and sincere, but they do not go deep enough. They

m WHY. THEY FAIL

do not find the tap root of the evil and drag it out
clearly into the light. The diagnoses and prescrip-
tions for the most part are not unrelated to the
plant but they concern chiefly the upward, outward
and visible — the bole, stems, leaves and branches
above ground, while the real trouble, the prolific
mother of ills, lurks, unsuspected under ground.

Let us take for illustration some of the diagnoses
and prescriptions which have been made in regard
to the ills which aftiict the Church, and through
the Church, society at large, for woe to the land in
which the temples are polluted or deserted, any
kind of god being better than no god at all, as the
philosophers of Rome long ago pointed out.

It is a hopeful sign that so many thoughtful men
are aware that something is wrong somewhere.
That this is the case is evidenced by the fact that
the so-called secular press has found it worth while
to give serious attention to the matter. Among
others The Delineator, a leading journal of fashion,
took the matter up two years ago or more in a
careful, frank, and, so far as the scope of its inter-
ests allowed, a reasonably scientific fashion. In-
stead of giving forth any half-baked, or even well-
prepared personal opinion on the situation, the
editor wrote a frank, manly letter to a number of
ministers who are particularly prominent in the
religious life of America, and asked them to con-
tribute a brief article on the theme, "What's the
Matter with the Churches?"

Such a symposium may naturally be expected to
carry more weight with it than if the editor had en-
deavored to settle the matter by his ipse dixit.
When an editor gets seriously ill with neuritis he
does not call on a blacksmith or an electrician to
treat him, however skilful or distinguished they
may be along their own lines. He calls for a nerve

WHY THEY FAIL 53

specialist, and if by any chance, being merely an
unworldly-minded editor, whose business is to keep
the crowd straight by telling them what to do, he
has enough hard cash by him to secure a consultation
of leading nerve specialists, he feels, editor though
he may be, that what they tell him is something
he will do well to receive, mark and inwardly digest.
His reason for thinking this is that if they have
given twenty or thirty years of their lives to the study
of the nervous system they are likely to know more
about what ails him than he is ; but when it comes
to harpooning a senator, or to impaling a crooked
congressman on a verbal spear point, the editor
will then explain the rules of the game while the
honorable medical gentlemen sit where he so mod-
estly sat awhile before — on the learner's stool.

Now^ the men to whom the editor of The Deline-
ator appealed for an opinion are specialists in their
line. They are "sun-crowned" leaders in the vari-
ous denominations to which they belong, thought-
ful, erudite, experienced. Moreover they were given
the greater part of a year in which to formulate
their views on the important matter under consid-
eration. It may be taken for granted therefore, that
what they had to say they said in all seriousness —
as indeed they did. No one who reads their words
in The Delineator (October to December, 1909) can
for a moment doubt their deep heart-interest in the
matter they discuss. They are concerned for the
Kingdom of God and as they stand with fingers on
the pulse of the situation, this is what in effect
they have to say as to "What's the Matter with the
Churches?"

Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, the well-known divine
of New York, says: "(1) There is an unwarranted
and embarrassing sharpness of discrimination be-
tween the functions of the clergy and that of the

54 WHY THEY FAIL

laity. (2) There is a large element that properly
belongs inside of the Church, and that would be
a very positive increment of strength to it, but that
remains outside for the reason that the Church has
allowed the opinion to prevail that membership
must be conditioned upon the possession of a certain
amount of moral attainment. (3) The failure to
hold the theological views of the generality of
Church membership. Doctrinal formulas count
very much less with Christians than formerly. Men
who think carefully and feel deeply discriminate
much more sharply than formerly between theology
and religion, between the part the intellect plays
and the part the heart plays and will play in
Christianity."

Dr. Josiah Strong, who is something of an author-
ity on social matters as they effect the Church, adds
another word of wisdom. He says: "Omitting
Roman Catholic statistics, which are made up on
an entirely different basis from the others, the
gains of all other denominations during the past
nine years (1900-1909) have been as follows: In
ministers, 5 per cent; in churches, 12.9 per cent,
and in members 10.4 per cent. That is, the growth
of Church membership has been less than two-thirds
as rapid as that of the population and this notwith-
standing the exceptional evangelistic effort. This
would seem to be conclusive that something ails
the Church. What is it? He points out that the
same general conditions obtain in Europe, that
Churches gained decidedly on population in the
Nineteenth Century, most of it made in the first
half, and goes on to say, "The rate of gain has
been steadily falling since 1850, and in 1900 it had
practically reached the vanishing point. During the
past nine years it has fallen behind the population.

"During the first half of the century an indi-

WHY THEY FAIL 55

vidualistic religion was adapted to an individualistic
civilization and in proportion made rapid growth.
During the last half there was a marked develop-
ment of the social spirit which increasingly checked
the growth of the individualistic churches, because
they did not meet the needs of the new conditions.
What ails the churches is that they have failed to
recognize the social side of their mission. Churches
here and there have gained the social spirit and
have made a surprising groivth, attracting men es-
pecially."

Dr. Len. G. Broughton, of Atlanta, Ga., is one of
the most widely-known and successful Baptist min-
isters in America. In his contribution he says :
"The main deficiency, as I see it, is in its faith ;
which is the result of ignorance of the Bible. This
is particularly true of America. The Bible as a
whole is not studied. The preachers themselves
do not study it. What we want is men in the pulpit
who know the Bible ; not simply texts from the
Bible, not simply the ability to quote accurately
passage after passage, but men who know the Bible
as a whole and are able to teach it in this way.
There will have to be a change in the method of
teaching. We have been too anxious to teach all
about the Bible and neglected the teaching of the
Bible itself. . . . The Church also lacks in ap-
plication. It will never command the respect of
the world until it is keyed so as to respond to every
human need. At present it consents for temporal
needs to be supplied by outside agencies, agencies
that name no religion, that have no Christ, and
yet agencies which could not live but for the in-
fluence of Christianity. The Church must do such
work for itself. It cannot preach sympathy and
friendship and then fold its arms and stand back,
waiting for some other organization to bring the

56 WHY THEY FAIL

supply. It must provide as far as possible to meet
every condition of need. This must be done in the
name of Christ. . . . Many men of brains shun
the pulpit because they are unwilling to be shut out
from an active business life. Let the Church direct
its affairs as it should and there will be the greatest
opportunity for the expression of brains and talents.
The local Church, especially in our cities, must do
this work as far as possible."

Gipsy Smith, the noted evangelist, who has come
into touch with more churches than most pastors,
would suggest a general house-cleaning in the
churches. He speaks out like a man and presents
some plain facts for plain people as follows : "The
Church to-day instead of being a place where every-
body has the spirit and power to seek and to save
that which was lost, is more of a mutual congratula-
tion society where we fuss and fondle those we have
already found. We have culture and refinement
and organization, art, music, position and money,
but we have lost touch with the common people,
and are losing the common people, who are the
coming people, and we have lost our grip on God.
I know churches so-called, where if Christ himself
came to preach, there would be nothing done until
the atmosphere and the conditions changed, and
there are churches where Jesus himself would not
be wanted if he came as a preacher ; the fact is
we are playing at church."

Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, Rabbi of the Sinai Congre-
gation in Chicago, called on for his opinion, finds
the trouble to be in natural history and science de-
veloping the ultra-critical spirit ; higher criticism
underming the teachings of orthodoxy ; the shifting
of the emphasis from the beyond as of yore to the
present life; the impression that the Church is op-
posed to progress; more justice and less charity;

WHY THEY FAIL 57

the Church on the side of the upper dog; too much
distinction between clergy and laity and pandering
to wealth.

Dr. Charles F. Aked, ex-pastor of the Fifth Ave-
nue Baptist Church, New York City, finds the sec-
ret of decadence in a poorly-paid ministry. He does
not see how ministers who are paid less than labor-
ing men and artisans, while obliged to keep them-
selves and their families and their homes on a plane
above that of the classes mentioned, can command
the respect of men intellectually. They cannot
grow because they cannot buy the necessary books
on which to feed their minds; they cannot educate
theii children because it takes all they make to keep
the wolf from the door; they see no hope for the
days of the "sere and yellow leaf," and so they drop
out of a calling which no longer allows them to so
develop with their congregations as to properly dis-
charge their duties as ministers to the people and
to discharofe their duties as fathers and husbands
to their families. Dr. Aked says: "The nearest,
most important single reform to be attempted by the
religious people of his country is to double the salary
of every preacher upon the continent."

So much for the opinions of ecclesiastical gen-
erals. If now we turn to the pews we shall find
there another grist of answers to the question,
"What ails the Church?" We can get it any day at
first hand by taking a walk of six blocks and talking
with the people we meet. They are always ready
to discuss the theme. An ounce of soot on a white
garment always attracts more attention and excites
more remark than a pail full of soot on black trous-
ers. There is not a preacher in Christendom who has
not heard the growls. They run something like this :

Poor preaching in the pulpit; the rise of intel-
ligence in the pew; rented pews in the House of

58 WHY THEY FAIL

God (a travesty on God's hospitality, sure enough) ;
want of cordiality; too much cordiality; inconsist-
ency of church members ; no enthusiasm ; too much en-
thusiasm (noise) ; absence of members and so on.
Aside from the question of literacy in the pulpit the
objections filed resolve themselves for the most part
into one word, "inconsistency." When church mem-
bers are inconsistent in their lives, the whole structure
of Christianity is imperilled and apt to go down about
their ears. This is the view of Rev. Clyde Elbert Ord-
way who writes in the Arena (1910) on the theme
"Will the Church Survive?" As the article faithfully
reflects the mind of many laymen a portion of it may
be quoted here.

Mr. Ordway notes the slackening grip of the
Church upon "the life of the time as manifested by
the resort to cheap, superficial attractions "rang-
ing from the Seven-Cent Social to Chain W^hist ;
from Circle Suppers to Amateur Dramatics ; from
Ping-Pong Parties to Three-Day Fairs or Sales
with their exorbitant prices and guessing contests
(which under worldly auspices would be called lot-
teries)."

He sees her losing ground both at the top and
the bottom — over wealthy men and working men,
and he quotes Dr. Thomas, of Chicago, pastor of
The People's Church.

"Somehow the churches have lost their hold upon
the confidence, sympathies and almost the respect
of the laboring people. I asked a leader of a labor
union of three hundred members, how many at-
tended church. 'Practically none,' he said. 'A few
women may go, but not half a dozen men in a year.'
Whether right or wrong the laboring men feel that
the churches in general are not their friends: that
they are for the rich ; that money controls both the
pulpit and the pew; that the preachers as a rule

WHY THEY FAIL 59

either do not care for the rights of the laboring
man or that they dare not plead his cause.

"A further fact that keeps the world aloof from
the churches, and distrustful of them, if not bitterly
antagonistic to them, is the evil that exists in their
own ranks. For example their quarrels among them-
selves and their individual members; the hypocrisy
and meanness of some of their members ; their fail-
ure in general to live up to and exemplify the prin-
ciples they profess. The church people claim a
higher life and better principles than the world,
their outside friends possess, and when this great
body of outsiders who make no profession of holi-
ness or superior character or principles, see within
the church people as bad or worse than their own
(at least no better than their own in a multitude
of cases) they naturally look with distrust upon
the whole institution and entertain but little re-
spect for it either as sincere or efficient. The
churches have done more to kill themselves, es-
pecially in the eyes of the outside world, by their
quarrels, bigotry, narrowness and littleness ; their
hypocritical members, questionable morals and
various exhibitions of an unchristian spirit than
all their enemies have done. One member in a
church who has a character which the outside world
cannot respect, or one such church quarrel as we
often witness, does the churches more harm than
all the good preaching and faithful service can over-
come in many years."

We have heard from the pew and heard from the
pulpit ; let us now hear from the professors. Let
Prof. Rauschenbusch, of Rochester Theological
Seminary, whose notable book, "Christianity and
the Social Crisis," has brought him prominently be-
fore the public eye, speak. But, instead of gleaning
his sentiments from his lengthy and luminous

60 WHY THEY FAIL

treatment of the subject in his book, let us for
brevity's sake gather a few paragraphs from a later
utterance as given to Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, the
well-known writer, for the American Magazine of
December, 1909. Incidentally, it may not be amiss
to run in a sentence or two from Mr. Baker him-
self.

After noting some of the remedial measures be-
ing employed — revivalism in the West "under the
spirited, if spectacular, leadership of men of the
type of Billy Sunday" ; in the East "Immanuelism
to counteract the steady encroachments of Chris-
tian Science and the New Thought," and every-
where, "a still larger and more active group of lead-
ers absorbed in building new outworks — parish
houses and gymnasiums, bowling alleys and club
rooms, carpenter shops, shooting galleries and
dance halls to counteract or at least to parallel the
advance of the social settlement idea and the ex-
pansion of functions of the public schools and other
municipal institutions," there follows the report
of an interview with Prof. Rauschenbusch and a
well-merited appreciation of that gentleman and his
work. The article proceeds :

"In my conversation with Prof. RauschenbuscH
I endeavored to draw out just what he meant by the
'new evangelism' and what in his opinion the future
of the churches in this country would be.

"The new evangelism is made up of the same ele-
ments as the old : First it seeks to convict other
men of sin ; second to reconstruct their lives. But
the conception of both sin and reconstruction in the
new evangelism is immensely broader and deeper
than in the old. It is as wide as humanity, with
a vision and a message calculated to fire the souls
of men as nothing in the past has ever fired them.

*'The new evangelism greatly intensifies our con-

WHY THEY FAIL 61

ception of sin. It shows how impossible it is to sin
any sin which does no# pass along to others. It
shows how all men are linked together, and that the
sin of one injures all, so that each man realizes that
he is involved in the whole sin of mankind."

I asked Prof. Ratischenbusch for specific in-
stances as to how the conviction of social sin ought
to be brought about. He gave me as a single ex-
ample the problem of the wage worker.

"An idle woman living in wasteful luxury," he
said, "wants more beautiful clothing, more jewelry.
She has no thought of what her selfish wastefulness
may cost. In order to get it her husband pinches
his workingmen to the lowest possible wage. Let
us say that one of these workingmen has a sick
child and because he is so poor that he cannot get
a doctor promptly, the child dies. Unconsciously,
but with the certainty of cause and effect that
wasteful and luxurious woman has helped to kill
the child."

In the same way Prof. Rauschenbusch would
show that the crowded and unsanitary tenement is
a "sin for which the whole city suffers the punish-
ment of tuberculosis and other diseases. The pun-
ishment of the ruined woman infects the homes of
the rich equally with those of the poor. The pun-
ishment of debauched politics finally but inevitably
leads to the ruin of the fairest city and the finest
civilization. No man can sin by himself nor be
saved by himself. "It is not Christianity to pay the
lowest wages to the man who has the hungriest
family.

"All the present teaching, whether within the
churches or outside of them, of the responsibility
of society for the ruin of the child-workers, for low-
paid women, for the criminals, for the wasteful
rich man, for sickness, for want and shame and ugli-

152 WHY. THEY FAIL

ness, are all in the way of convicting humanity of
its social sins. The present moral wave, which is
beginning to sweep over this country, is an evi-
dence of such a conviction of sin."

The next step in the religious life after the con-
viction of sin, is "salvation," a turning about, a new
life. Just as in the old evangelism the individual
has to be "born again," so the new evangelism
demands a new birth for society. A complete
change must take place; a new spirit must fire hu-
manity. And every man and every organization,
whether church leader or socialist, or labor agitator
or publicist, or business man, who has a vision of
the new time and is working toward it, is a new
evangelist.

But what will this regenerate society be like?
What is then, the vision of the prophets? I give
here the conviction of Prof. Rauschenbusch.

In the old society, the society we know now —
the greatest sins are war, strife, competition — with
the resulting luxury for a few and want for the
many. The new social life then, should change all
this, should be a right-about face — if it is to be a
true re-birth. There must be peace, not war; co-
operation, not competition; and in place of ex-
tremes of luxury and want, a distribution of prop-
erty which will assure every human being upon
this earth a chance to make the most of the facul-
ties God has given him. . . . Such is the new
evangelism. What part must the Church and re-
ligious leaders play in it? A very great part Prof.
Rauschenbusch believes. The present decadence
of Church influence and leadership he attributes
to the lack of the new vision, so that much of the
prophecy, many of the noblest works in the new
evangelism, have been left to men and women who
are outside of the churches. The trouble has been

WHY THEY FAIL 63

that the Church has been too anxious to magnify
itself, too little concerned in humanity.

"The mischief begins when the Church makes
herself the end. She does not exist for her own
sake ; she is simply a working organization to create
the Christian life in individuals and the Kingdom
of God in human society."

Religion in short must become, "less an institu-
tion and more a diffused force." More and more
the state, society at large, will be shot through and
through with the spirit of religion, and yet there
will never be a time, says Prof. Rauschenbusch,
when there will not be a wide field of activity for
the religious leader and teacher.

Two great functions will occupy his attention.
He will always fill the office of prophecy; he should
be sensitized morally so that he will be the first to
discern wrong and evil, and his visions will fire
the souls of men. And he will also follow behind
the rumbling wheels of the chariot of state and
gather up the wounded and comfort the broken-
hearted— Jesus perfectly combined both of these
offices."

Now no one who reads the foregoing reasons for
failure on the part of the Church to realize her
possibilities for good on the life of our time can
help being impressed with the trenchant nature of
the criticisms made. There is not one of those
remarks but is significant because all are more or
less true. Not one of them is an idle shot. We
feel that the archers have done well — and yet "in-
ners" as they are, most of them, we somehow feel
that not one has hit the bull's eye.

For if we examine these splendid and truly help-

64 WHY THEY FAIL

ful criticisms we find that even when the lance goes
deepest and cuts to the very bone it yet fails to
do its work because the trouble lies deeper than the
bone ; it lies hidden in the very marrow thereof.
For instance when Prof. Rauschenbusch tells us
that the present decadence of the Church's influ-
ence is due to a lack of the social vision, which
lack he would remedy with up-to-date information
as to social conditions ; and due to pure egoism
or selfishness, making herself an end instead of a
means to an end, and that end the uplift of human-
ity, its salvation, pbysicially, morally and mentally
as well as spiritually — when he tells us all this we
feel the weight of his words and acknowledge the
justice of his cause.

And when Dr. Hirsch comes forward with his
subtle observations as to the efifect of natural
science methods which count nothing settled until
settled by an appeal to blowpipe or scalpel; when
he tells of the loosening of the guy ropes of faith
by the antics of a coterie of reckless and unreliable
exponents of the "Higher Criticism"; when he
points to the shifting of emphasis in a generation
from the unseen and eternal futurity to the present
and visible and sordid but tremendously real actu-
ality; when he speaks of the need of more of that
"justice" which would make the work of the Asso-
ciated Charities so much easier, and when he men-
tions the worship of Mammon and Rank, we feel
somehow deeply impressed and are apt to say to
ourselves, "That's it. That's it."

Then comes along Dr. Josiah Strong to reinforce
Prof. Rauschenbusch's finding by telling us that
the Church is out of the procession because she
has been too individualistic in a social age, and
the venerable Dr. Parkhurst chimes in with a senti-
ment to the effect that the hard-headed, busy man

WHY. THEY FAIL 65

of to-day cares more for the deed than the creed,
which sentiment is endorsed with loud applause
by the people in the pew — with sundry additions
of their own, as Mr. Ordway tells us and as, indeed,
we all very well know. And to all this in shame
and candor, we bow a melancholy assent.

Dr. Aked comes up with his case of a scandal-
ously underpaid ministry and that, too, we admit
is a factor, though not nearly so close to the heart
of the situation as some other factors. The ferv-
ent and not impractical Dr. Len G. Broughton calls
for more comprehensive Bible study and what is
apparently an institutional church, not hearing the
equally fervent, devoted and gifted Dr. A. C. Dixon
telling us that the institutional church, as he found
it, is a mistake and a boomerang, since the man
recommended by the employment bureau not turn-
ing out very well, the employer blames the Church,
and therefore contracts a prejudice; the man hav-
ing lost his job blames that on the Church by some
strange process of reasoning and also goes away
offended, while the loaves and the fishes attracting
a multitude of proletariats, the self-respecting
artisan goes off "huffed" in his turn, lest he be
taken for one of them ; and so the Church, with the
best intentions in the world, by her institutional-
ism finds herself alienating the very classes she
would seek to help.

Lastly, Mr. Gipsy Smith in telling us that we are
only "playing at church" and in virtually writing
"Ichabod" above the doors, indirectly hints at the
solution of the difficulty as he sees it. His remedy
would be: Back to God! All of you. Down on
your knees. Cry aloud for forgiveness and a real
baptism of the Holy Ghost and everything else will
take care of itself.

And Gipsy Smith, the great evangelist, is un-

66 WHY THEY FAIL

doubtedly right. That is he is right from his stand-
point, which is also a pivotal one in the Church.
When it comes to the choice of medicines purport-
ing to be able to heal the acrid humors of the blood
there is none like his. Dr. Len G. Broughton's pre-
scription, allopathic doses of the Bible, goes well
with it, and those two items are the mightiest in
the whole foregoing program of social redemption.
He who would seek to belittle them knows not
what he does nor whereof he affirms. Important as
the other considerations are they do not begin to com-
pare with these two as a basis of treatment for what
ails us all. But the trouble is they, too, come short.

Theoretically and ideally, Gipsy Smith's remedy
is sufficient. Were all church members living all
the time in the atmosphere of a spirit-filled revival
in which that chosen instrument of God passes his
days, the world would be heaps better than it is.
But the fact is we cannot all live all the time at
the fever-heat of a genuine revival. It has never
yet been done in the mass. The cares of life are
too numerous and too insistent. The mightiest
revivals the world has ever known have been but
as great tidal waves from heaven's shores — waves
which left the individual and the community on a
higher plane of life than before, it is true, but left
them also to take up "the trivial round, the common
task" again as before. Great good is done in these
revival times ; many crooked things are straightened
out while they last, for it is then easier to do right
all round; but alas! the impulse passes and all too
soon things are pretty much as they were before.
Fifty thousand head of stolen cattle may be re-
stored through Evangelist Abe Mulkey's sermon
on "Restitution," but he cannot be preaching that
sermon all the time, and if he could, they would
soon get tired of it and count it a bore. Evan

WHY THEY FAIL 67

Roberts', Dwight L. Moody's and Charles G. Fin-
ney's appeals did much to clean things up in their
day, but many of the very converts who in those
days kissed their worst enemies and threw their
pipes into the ditch in an outburst of real Christian
piety, have long since taken to buying new pipes
and saying uncharitable things about the people
they don't happen to like, whether in the Church or
out of it.

For all that revivals are blessed experiences.
Don't take this word as in any sense a reflection
on them. They are of God and there is no life that
has been touched by them but must feel the healing
in that touch. The point is that they do not last.
They may bear us on their crest into the Kingdom
of God, and they may give us a mighty boost
heavenward when we are already in the Kingdom,
but alas! the wave recedes and we are left on the
strand, pilgrims as before, staff in hand, to go on as
ordained of old, day by day struggling slowly, fal-
teringly up the steep and rugged pathway of the
Right and Duty, while the easy grades of Inclina-
tion and Pleasure pass ever so appealingly near
that we fervently wish, and often try, to travel with
one foot on each, to the great discomfiture of our
peace of mind.

Yes, yes, there is Divine grace and all that; but
it is that same all-wise Divine grace which, point-
ing to the course we have to cover, said "they shall
mount up on wings as eagles ; they shall run and not
be weary; they shall walk and not faint." There
is Divine grace all the way through ; but it isn't a
revival all the way through by any means. Mount-
ing up on wings as eagles is all very beautiful, and,
praise be, it is a fact ; but we soon come down
to a run, and then to a walk, and even as Paul

68 WHY. THEY FAIL

gently hints to the Ephesians, it may even take us
all our time to "stand."

That's where we come down — in the Christian
walk and in the hour of pressure. We find we can-
not "stand" against the temptation. The mounts
of transfiguration and the soaring like eagles are
blessed incidents, but incidents merely ; the more
just and comprehensive figure is that of the long
campaign which knows no truce, and the long,
long way which cannot be taken on the run.

The problem in its last analysis has in none of
these contributions been either squarely stated or
met. They tell us specifically of a good many things
which ought not so to be. They tell us what the
Church is not and what she reprehensibly is; they
point out many blemishes and in some instances
they point to a remedy, but the remedy is the
wrong remedy for this particular case, since there is
one factor which has been overlooked, viz., a grave
error in the diagnosis.

As a single error in his calculations may throw
an astronomer out a billion miles in his results,
and negative a lifetime of perfectly correct work:
as in fact, the heavens were for centuries a Chinese
puzzle because Ptolemy and his followers over-
looked one simple little factor in the equation, that the
sun and not the earth is the center of our planetary
system, even so has the great and beautiful, the
persistent, the magnificent, the truly glorious en-
deavor of the Church and her allied forces steadily
failed of attaining the goal toward which she
panted, because they have never yet clearly recog-
nized why it is that they do fail. The real trouble
lies, not in the fact that those whom the Church
and her allied forces have trained will not do the
good, or do not knozv the good, but that they do
not find themselves able to do the good they know.

WHY THEY FAIL 69

There is an ethical insufficiency, and that ethical in-
sufficiency is born of an oversight in our methods
of education, which has sent childhood and youth
out into the stern world of facts and action like
Richard III, "but half made up." This it will con-
tinue to do, with the certainty of death and taxes,
until we wake up to the fact that the brain in a
boy's skull is as directly and importantly related to
his present and future moral action as it is to his
present and future mental action, and consequent
success in life, and begin to take notice of what
goes on there and make some such intelligent and
persistent efifort to help the boy build an ethically
sufficient brain as we now take to help him build
one that is mentally sufficient for life's demands.

There is need of more social information it is
true ; and there is need of a more comprehensive
knowledge of the word of God ; but the supreme
need of our day is neither the one nor the other,
valuable as is the one and indispensable as is the
other. Neither the Church nor society is languish-
ing for lack of knowledge as to what we ought to
do. politically, socially or ethically. They are lan-
guishing because knowing the good they find them-
selves somehow unable to do it. There's the rub
and there's the hint, the Ariadne clue which will,
if we follow it faithfully, lead us out of our laby-
rinth of difficulties into the clear air of reasonably
irreproachable lives.

So general has been the failure to develop a type
of character which will stand the shock and strain
of temptation in our day that thoughtful men have
been at times much exercised thereby. And not
without profit. Help seems coming from a most
unexpected quarter. As fraternal societies have
undertaken to relieve the Church of much of her
social burden, and as a brood of temperance and

70 WHY THEY FAIL

moral reform organizations have arisen to lead the
charge against entrenched evils, so the public
school is now rising up to essay the task in which
the Church as distinctively such, has once more
failed, viz., the task of producing a type of char-
acter which is ethically strong enough to stand in
commerce, politics and civic relations generally.

The most prominent educators of the land, look-
ing at the lives that go down, and looking at the
Church and her affiliated societies wringing their
hands in helpless, confessed inability to cope with
the situation, are saying to themselves: "Some-
thing must be done. We have the children in our
care; we have a costly plant ready to hand; we have
a vast army of trained assistants; maybe it is our
business to do more than we have been doing to
help prepare the child to play his or her part in the
drama of life, to help make a higher, stronger, truer
type of citizenship.

But it is not with that conception as a concep-
tion we are concerned. That is not new either as
a theory or in practice. Other nations have even
shown us the way — the imperfect way — and good
men and women have zealously striven in our
schools, even beyond what was written, to instruct
the boys and girls in those guiding principles of
conduct, a knowledge of which is supposed to be
all that is necessary to produce the desired ethical
result on the street.

France and Germany, and even Japan, have all
labored real hard at this. They take the work seriously
over seas and attend to it religiously. In France,
for instance, children from seven to eleven are
given two thirty-minute doses of moral instruction
per week. From eleven to thirteen years they get
three doses of the same size, nor is there any let-up
in the high school. And should the pupil be an

WHY THEY FAIL 71

aspirant for pedagogical honors then the medicine
must be given four times a week throughout the
subsequent two-year course at the Normal School.

If we turn to Germany we find that they are
even more determined and thoroughgoing in this than
the French. They take no chances. They give
the youngsters four hours a week throughout the
entire course. In Germany the teaching is apt to
be administered by the Church, which is as truly
a state institution over there as are the schools.
No use in the state having priests if it doesn't
make use of them. But in France the case is dif-
ferent. They get along without God in their moral
instruction in the schools. Duty and conscience
will do, they say. And what is the result? Ger-
many "reacts" unfavorably, going off in whole land-
slides toward socialism, which in that country
means atheism, while France for the most part
deems it immaterial whether there be a God in the
heavens at all or not.

What is wrong then? Is it not admirable to have
the state schools endeavor to turn out the very
highest type of moral character? It is wholly ad-
mirable so to do. And how shall the child becorne
a moral man unless he be well instructed in his
duties to his parents, brothers, neighbors, the state
and humanity at large? True enough. It looks
likeaQ.E.D., doesn't it? But

The evil spot is in the way in which it is being
done. If a boy be nothing more than a quart jug
which invariably gives out precisely what has been
put into it, no more, no less, then that logic is
unassailable. But if the boy be not a quart jug,
but a certain marvellous protean something which
is sensitive as a photographer's plate and uncertain
as a yearling colt, always breaking out in a new
place in spite of all that can be done apparently

72 WHY THEY FAIL

to prevent him, then it is possible there may be
something wrong with our methods of handling
him. It begins to dawn upon us as possible that
loading him down with nice moral precepts may
no more serve to change his innermost moral being
than stringing buck-eyes on a cat's tail will change
the nature of a feline veteran.

Prof. John Dewey, of Chicago University, puts
the matter very nicely when he observes "the incul-
cation of moral rules is no more likely to make
character than is that of astronomical formulae."

Within the past ten years there has arisen not
only a new demand for a general tightening-up of
the fibers of moral character in the embryonic citi-
zenship coming forth from our schools but there has
happily also come to pass the discovery of a prin-
ciple which is revolutionary and well adapted to
produce the desired results in so far as the public
school has to do with them. That principle is after
all not a new principle. It has been in use in our
schools for over a hundred years. What is new is
its application. And it is revolutionary, because,
as it revolutionized the system of acquiring an edu-
cation when Froebel and Pestalozzi first preached
it in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, so
now it will revolutionize the acquisition of moral
character as it comes to be more and more generally
and intelligently applied.

Possibly the greatest deliverance on education
ever made by man was that given by Froebel when
he set forth his doctrine that self-activity is the
creative factor in the child's life, urging that the child's
whole self be active, not merely some special faculty,
and that this activity, calling for the use of all its
senses and powers, be stimulated and directed by
the teacher in an environment adapted to the end
in view.

WHY THEY FAIL 73

The great, earnest thinkers of the educational
world on this side of the water have noNv begun to
clearly recognize that the same great principle applies
to ethical education. And while it is as yet only
at the top that this perception has become quite
clear and the great body of the teaching profession
as yet knows little of it, yet the day is not far
distant when they will. No great discovery can
be kept hidden from the world at large, and this new
light is breaking in on ever lower strata of the
profession, till, in twenty years from now or less,
every cross-roads schoolhouse in the land will have
seen the great light and begun to work effectively
in the making of men and women.

While this is not the place for any extended dis-
cussion of this principle as it relates itself to our
public school system, a paragraph or two may not
be amiss at this point. The new conception of edu-
cation exalts character where the old exalted
scholarship. Of course the old did not despise char-
acter. As has been said, it was far from doing so.
Next to scholarship it thought upon character-
building. Unfortunately it didn't know just how to
build, so that the attempts were in the main fruit-
less, as illustrated in the case of the boy who was
expelled from a certain high school for misconduct
and went forth exultantly remarking: 'T got fired,
but I got ninety-eight per cent in ethics." Now
there is a radical change not only of aim but of
method. Not only is moral character to be put
before scholarship, but the whole curriculum of
studies is to ethicized and the whole school is to
be turned into an ethical workshop and the campus
into a training school of virtue. No more filling
with moral maxims w^hich "rattle around in human
skulls like dried seeds in poppy heads." No more
squaring of the boy by the yardstick of a man's

74 WHY THEY FAIL

world ; no more filling him up with information as
to what voters and other functionaries (who are
about as real to him as troglodytes) are expected
to think and do; no more telling him to be, morally,
a man when he is only a little boy. He is now to be
regarded as a real boy in a real world — a boy's
world it is true, but a world which is just as tre-
mendously real, and just as important to him for
all that, as is any other world he will ever inhabit
in this life.

This world, it is found, is, after all, but a minia-
ture of our own. It is therefore a social world, and
the unit in it has pretty much the same kind of re-
lations to his fellows as he will have in the larger
world outside later on. Hence as his brain is plastic
in the boy-world and very susceptible to impres-
sions he is to be got ready now for the big world's
race of to-morrow, not by being made to wear
his father's ethical boots, but by being made to
wear his own of proper size and quality. As he
grows they grow, and so wdien he gets into a man's
world of action he will walk without a limp, for
behold ! his feet and his boots and his father's boots
are all of a size.

Now the same principles run through boy-world
that run through our own. And what is it we
desire to see in our own? Is it not justice, kindness,
helpfulness, courage, manliness, honesty and the
like? Certainly it is. Then let us get our boys at
it, say the teachers, and keep them at it, since
their faculties are bound to "grow to the mode in
which they are exercised." If we have to teach
this boy to be helpful to others, the best way is
to have him go at it and do it. Hence in his reading
lesson he is to read something for the benefit
of the school which the others do not know. If
they don't know, he feels that he is doing something

WHY THEY FAIL 75

for the good of his kind and his soul is filled with
a glow of altruistic pleasure. Incidentally he learns
how to read. Does he write? Then it is no dry-as-
dust and hateful composition about something in
which nobody under heaven is, or ever was, in-
terested; he must write something that will be of
use to somebody, for instance, an invitation to
father or brother to come to the next ball game
or Friday exercises. Of course, it has to be done
in proper form. And so, incidentally he learns to
write — but mostly he has learned to help — for has
he not done something which has social meaning?
And so on with the whole gamut of school studies.

And the playground becomes another part of his
moral training school. He is brought face to face
there with his deed and with that thing that all
men fear — public opinion. There it is just as real
and just as dreadful as it is down at the club or in
the sewing circle. "You may send your boy to the
master," says Emerson, "but the boys will educate
him." Now that education is to be supervised,
that is all, tactfully, kindly, unobtrusively, but none
the less truly, so that the bad impulses get nipped
in the bud and the good ones are encouraged in
the sunshine of a smile of public recognition, and
the boy learns team play without crookedness;
learns by something swifter, mightier, more living
than any precepts he ever heard ; learns and is not
laid by the heels when later he meets the old
tricks in new forms. Everything he will ever do
in manhood he is doing as a boy, and learning it
by the doing of it. Therefore, our educational pow-
ers are saying, let us see to it that he is kept busy,
by one means or another, always doing the right
thing, which in other words is the just thing or the
altruistic thing.

Now this is a glorious thought. It needs no

76 WHY THEY FAIL

prophet's vision to see the mighty impetus toward
righteousness this new conception is destined to
bring in its wake. Its influence will be simply-
revolutionary, as may possibly be more clearly dis-
cerned in the light of succeeding pages. But the
question arises, is this new and tremendously ef-
ficient instrument to be left wholly to the far-seeing,
patient and in every way splendid body of men and
women who have charge of our secular education?

They have been driven by the need of the hour
and by ecclesiastical inefficiency to assume the re-
sponsibility of character-building for the nation.
They have taken the initial steps toward that end
and they will yet accomplish wonders, for theirs
is the longest grip of all on child life, on the man of
to-morrow. For the greater part of the waking
hours of five days in seven the boy is in the hands
of the day-school teacher. For one, two, or three
hours in the seven days of the week the Church gets
his ear ; therefore the chief sphere of ethical training
must be in the day-school.

Yet the whole burden should not be, can not be,
laid on the public-school teachers, because in the
first place the rank and file of them are not as yet
wiser than their forbears in this matter. Three-
fourths of them it is said have not even had a
normal school training. And in the second place,
character-building is the essence of church work
and responsibility. The first school, God Al-
mighty's school, is the home, and the Church stands
more nearly related to the home than does the state
school. Man's relations to his Maker must ever
take precedence of his relations to his fellow. So
long as man remains "incurably religious" the
church spire must remain in men's thought nearer
to the family altar than "the little, red school-
house."

WHY THEY FAIL 77

Moreover, the Church is able to teach with some-
thing more than the authority of the teachers of this
world, and if she will only be wise enough to
adopt their methods on occasion she will be able
to improve on their work. The children of this
world (darlings they are, some of them) are in their
generation wiser than the children of light, but
their reach does not extend so far in this case as
docs that of the Church, functioning as the Sunday-
school. They lack the compelling imperative which
in the last analysis constrains us all, however we
may brag and blow.

The day-school will teach morals, but what are
its sanctions? Conscience; Duty; Your Best Self;
Humanity. But just why we should be constrained
to unpleasant courses for those things is not clear
to all men. If death end all, a short life and a merry
one will suit some people who think "One crowded
hour of glorious life is worth an age without a
name." Moreover, who is to choose for us in the
matter? By what authority does any man tell us
that we must follow conscience, duty, our best
selves or humanity? When someone told the great
agnostic, Huxley, of August Comte's Positivist phil-
osophy which teaches the worship of humanity, he
said he would as soon worship a wilderness of apes
as worship humanity. Who has authority to im-
pose these standards upon us with authority? If
it be said that happiness lies that way, then we say,
"Permit us to judge as to what is happiness for us."
And so it goes. But if we say, "Do these things
because they are right, because they are fixed prin-
ciples in the constitution of a universe which is at
the bottom moral, based on righteousness, and be-
cause there is One above us and outside of us who
is both able and determined to see that each dere-
liction shall meet with its due recompense of re-

.78 WHY THEY FAIL

ward, then, and then only have we got an impera-
tive of life binding upon all men.

It is the business of the Church to bring the soul
face to face with God, who requires us to do justly,
love mercy and walk humbly with Him. It is the
business of the Church, knowing this dread sanction
as no other institution does or can know it, to
train up the child in the fear and knowledge of that
Name, remembering that "the fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom." The new life it is not
ours to impart. That comes only from the Source
of all life ; but it is ours to prepare the soul of
the boy for its reception and development. To say
otherwise is to discredit and decry the Sunday-
school and the instruction we received at our
mother's knee. No one is so idiotic as to advocate
that. No one wants to say that the work of the
Sunday-school is useless, or that what it already
has, is, and is doing should be changed.

What is said here is that its work has largely
failed because it is incomplete. It is not a change
that is needed ; it is an addition. And that addition
is one of principle and method — the addition of a
principle and method so common, so simple, so in-
dispensable that no day-school teacher, no house-
keeper, no farmer, no artisan, no business man, no
preacher, no professor, no cook, no seamstress, no
singer, no doer that ever did since "Adam delved
and Eve span" has ever presumed to think that he
or she could get along without it — none but the
Church and her workers charged with the highest
of all commissions, that of perfecting humanity in
the fear of God.

WHY. THEY FAIL 79

Foreword to Chapter III

"Action is education," — Emerson.

"The chief end of man is an action, not a
thought." — Carlyle.

"The harper is not made otherwise than harping,
nor the just man otherwise than by doing just
deeds." — Aristotle.

CHAPTER III

WHY THEY FAIL

In the last analysis there are but two fundamental
principles of education, viz., impression and reflex
action. Church, homes, schools have lamentably
failed in the supreme task of turning out an ethic-
ally sufficient character for the simple reason that
they have, ethically, all but ignored the second of
these principles in their educational work. Once
the Almighty ordains that a man shall walk on two
legs it takes a very smart man to make equal prog-
ress on one, and he is a mighty clever oarsman
indeed, who can win a race with one oar, while the
birdman or bird has yet to be found that can rise
by the use of only one wing. When men can run
on one foot and scull with one oar, then, and then
only, may we hope to make adequate progress in
ethical education by doing as we have been wont —
using impression only where the Almighty has

80 WHY. THEY FAIL

ordained the use of impression in conjunction with
its necessary correlate, reflex action.

Talk about why the Church fails ! There is no
mystery about it. It is all plain as a pike staff.
If there is any mystery about it the mystery is
as to how she has managed to do, under the cir-
cumstances, as much as she has accomplished.
None but the Church could have done it under
a similar handicap, and after all, she has done it
because instinctively, blindly, she has in a small
way made use of this secondary principle of educa-
tion, otherwise she could hardly have lived in more
than name. Without the great reflex of missions,
home and foreign, the Church would long ago have
been bundled to the scrap heap, or have dwindled
into a social club — which is about what some of
it3 branches are as it is. But what we have been
doing blindly, instinctively in a small way, and for
the most part not doing at all, it behooves us to do
now intelligently, systematically and universally.
We have found the leak that has been threatening
to sink the ship in spite of all our pumping and
baling; let us arise and heal the breach, and she
will soon be riding the waves in her true char-
acter as the white-winged messenger of heaven. In
plain English, let the Church find adequate means of
expression for the good impressions she has been creat-
ing in such variety and profusion, and in less than
two decades her reproach will have been taken
away, for she will then have turned out the kind
of citizen who will be able to discharge like a man
his obligations to his home, his Church and his
country. The Church's intentions are all right; she
gets a black eye only because about three-fourths
of all her effort is lost while only one-fourth of it
comes to fruition.

It was stated on a previous page that the reason

WHY THEY FAIL 81

for our widespread failure lies in the fact that we
have turned our boy out into the stern world of choice
and action ethically "but half made-up" ; that we
have been at little or no pains to develop intelli-
gently the ethical action cells in his brain, for lack
of the development of which he found himself un-
able to do in manhood the good he knew and felt he
ought to do. And the reason of that is found in the
further fact that we have neglected the second, and,
one might also say the more powerful, principle of
all education, reflex action, without which it is
absolutely impossible to build a brain capable of
standing up against the odds of this highly refined
and more exacting age.

Were we living in an age of less social com-
plexity and lower social ideals — such an age for
instance as that which produced, not the barons of
corporate greed, but the real, old-fashioned armor-
plate kind who held that might is the right of the
strongest; the age when men sold their lives for
a pound and were hanged for the theft of a shilling,
we might worry along very well without this doc-
trine. But we are not living in such an age. We
are living at a time when the complexities of eco-
nomic life and its concentrations of capital not only
afford strange temptations to financial delinquency
but cause anxious quest to be made for uprightness
in character, and anxious scrutiny to be made of all
candidates presenting themselves for positions of
trust, in hope that they may indeed be found worthy
of the confidence of the thousands whose interests
are necessarily placed in their hands, the days when
John Doe could run his business to suit himself
and keep his money in a sock, having some time
ago departed.

Business men naturally looked to the Church and
the Sunday-school to produce the required brand of

82 WHY THEY FAIL

character, but there are not wanting signs that their
eyes fail of looking. The writer on one occasion
went to eight of the leading business men of a cer-
tain town in which he was staying and asked them
this question : "If two men come to you asking
for credit and absolutely all you know about them
is that the one is a professing Christian and the
other is not, would you give accommodation to
the one who is a professing Christian any more
quickly than you would to the other?"

Five out of the eight said "No." One or two of
the others thought they would rather trust the man
who made no profession, and not one of them
offered his opinion with the slightest sign of inward
satisfaction. In fact, most of them were church
members, and one of them, since gone to his re-
ward, stands out in memory as a rare jewel in the
Kingdom of God. With deep sadness in his voice
he said, "I was not always thus, but I have learned
in the hard school of bitter experience that church
membership doesn't count for much in business."

One may not make a general inference from so
slight an induction it is true, but it cannot be denied
that the foregoing incident is at least symptomatic.
And when we place it alongside the conditions out-
h'ned in Chapter I. it appears "all of a piece" — quite
germane to the situation: it does not look like a
soiled patch on an otherwise fair garment.

Again we ask, Why are these things thusly? Why
is that there are such moral landslides? Parents
wonder, preachers wonder, teachers wonder, and all
mourn because of it, for it has not come without
the most heroic efforts to avert the disaster. Only
heaven can properly appraise the volume of prayer,
instruction and effort which has gone unselfishly
outward and upward in behalf of the young.

To understand properly the why of this immeas-

WHY THEY FAIL 83

urably significant question, let us follow the physi-
ologist, the neurologist and the psychologist into
their secret chambers and shut-to the door behind
us. The laboratory we shall find is a temple of
learning in which they are the priests and we the
acolytes. Sitting at the feet of these priests of the
temple who offer up Hfe itself as the incense of their
worship and the price of the information they
would gain, we shall learn many things. Or to
change the figure, we are the jury and these high
priests of science are the experts who shall lay be-
fore us their expert testimony, and we shall then
be able to judge in the premises before us by the
light of their evidence as to what is right and what
is wrong in the case in hand. And so, calling up
our Grays, our Carpenters and Alaudsleys, our
Wundts, our ATossos and Schiaperellis, our Jameses
and Baldwins, our Miinsterbergs, Thorndykes and
Titcheners, our Goes and Deweys, our Judds and
our Jastrows, we find that they bear explicit and
eloquent testimony to the place and power of re-
flex action in every manifestation of human life.

But in order to understand this reflex action
some knowledge of that most marvellous of all ma-
chines, the human body, is necessary. Particularly
must we know something of that superior order of
the physical parts known as the nervous system.
Skin, bone, sinew, gland and muscle fiber are all
dependent for nutrition, action and their very life
on that. Yea, the very thoughts we think in our
present sphere of existence are conditioned by it.
It is that, therefore, with which we shall have to
do if we would understand why it is we have failed
in our efforts at ethical education.

Putting it as simply as possible, the nervous
system of man is encased for the most part, like the
delicate parts of a watch, in a hard covering, and for

84 WHY THEY FAIL

the very same reason, that they may, as being so
very important, be protected from injury. That hard
covering is of bone and we call it the skull and the
spinal column. The headquarters of the nervous
system are not only in the brain but they consti-
tute the brain and they have branch offices, so to
speak, of varying importance in the back of the
head and at intervals down the spinal column to
the last vertebra. The substance of the brain and
the spinal cord is essentially the same, a soft pulpy
mass very unlike anything else in the body. Under
the microscope it is found to be vastly different in
structure from all the other tissues. It is stringy
and in the backbone the strings run in well-defined
bundles, much as fifty independent wires are bound
together in a leaden tube on entering a telephone
exchange. Having more space in the brain they are
spread out and crossed and interlaced in all con-
ceivable directions until they look under the micro-
scope like nothing so much as an infinitely fine and
infinitely diversified network of lace. Then, too,
there is another reason why they should be differ-
ently arranged in the skull. In the spinal column
they are chiefly conducting wires running to and
from the brain; but the brain is (as has more than
once been said, because the likeness is inescapable)
like a telephone exchange. There is one important
difiference, however, between a nerve and a telephone
wire — the wire is inert, but the nerve-fiber is not.
It is alive in every part, and not only alive but every
part of it is, so to speak, a battery, so that a sens-
ory impulse is not only carried but reinforced as it
is carried along to the brain.

Like the tissues of all other living things, the
nervous system is built up of cells, only the cells
are not just what one might expect from a study
of the vegetable, or other parts of the animal or-

WHY THEY FAIL 85

ganism. When we think of a cell the image of some-
thing like the cells made by bees for the secretion of
their honey comes into mind. Such a conception may
do for the sacs of irregular shape which form the
structural units of other parts of the human body and
other bodies, but it would be entirely misleading
so far as the nervous system is concerned. In the
nervous system, leaving out of count the purely-
subsidiary blood vessels, lymphatics and connective
tissue which nourish and support them, the nerve
cells are sometimes quite lengthy bodies resembling
a string which has been frayed out at both ends.
Somew^here along that string there is a thickened
part which is known as the nucleus or cell-body.
Through it its parts seem to receive nourishm'ent ;
apart from it they die. Sometimes the string is very
short, may be an eighth of an inch in length ; again
it is a yard long. From the thickened part or cell-
body, the string goes in two directions. One sec-
tion is longer than the other; it diminishes in size
slowly and throws off a branch at odd intervals
till it reaches the frayed-out end. That part is
called the axis-cylinder process, or for short, the
neuraxon or axone. The section of the string on
the other side of the cell-body or nucleus is much
shorter. It gets rapidly smaller and branches again
and again till we have something very like a peach
or apple tree. On this side of the cell-body there
may be more than one such piece of the string, and
with their branches they are called the dendritic
processes or dendrites. The branches from the ax-
one are called collaterals, and the frayed-out ends
are called the terminal arborization, the likeness to
the tree having been particularly strong in the mind
of one of the earliest observers. Sometimes, though,
the processes end in discs or plates. No collateral,
no neurone, no dendritic process is isolated. Each

86 WHY THEY FAIL

one is connected with contiguous fibers, not or-
ganically but as one wire might touch another to
form a contact and complete the circuit ; and so,
theoretically at least, every part of the brain is in
connection with every other part, associative, sen-
sory or motor.

The longer, or axis cylinder process, acquires, as
the body grows and education advances, a pro-
tecting sheath called the medullary sheath, and
often when the fiber has to fare forth outside its
bony protection into the softer parts of the body
where it would be more exposed to injury, it ac-
quires on top of that one another sheath, called after
its discoverer, the sheath of Schwann.

So much for the structure of the nerve cell. A
queer-looking cell it is but divinely well adapted to
the lofty part it has to play in the economy of life,
for there is not less difference between the nerve
cells and other cells in the body than there is be-
tween the function of the nervous system and that
of the circulatory, respiratory or digestive systems.
It controls them all if it does in turn depend on
them.

Like all the other tissues of the body the nerve
substance has the power of taking up from the blood
whatever it needs to build itself and to keep itself
in repair; but in addition to these powers it is dis-
tinguished by certain other remarkable qualities
which are peculiar to itself. One of these is sensi-
tiveness. And here again we have functional dif-
ferentiation. The fibers which make us sensible of
heat and cold are not those which enable us to hear
or see. Touch the optic nerve and we feel nothing
but we see a light, as most people whose knowledge
of astronomy has been gained in a roller skating
rink will be ready to avow. Touch the auditory
nerve and we feel no pain, but we hear a sound.

WHY THEY FAIL 87

the volume of which is related to the violence of
the irritation. And so on with the gustatory, ol-
factory and other nerves of special function. Widely
distributed over the body are those sensory nerves
which have to do with temperature, touch and pain.
Tiiese with their companions guard well the citadel
of life, so that we are enabled to keep constantly
in touch with our environment and adjusted to its
changes. Meyer distinguishes sixteen diflferent
varieties of sensation. Were it not for these mar-
vellous guides and monitors we should not last long,
and in fact, were it not for them, if we did manage
to live it would be a mere existence for we should
be without ideas and without enjoyment, mere bits
of animated clay. The tutors of the mind are those
impressions which stream into our consciousness
over the sensory wires without one second's cessa-
tion from the moment of waking till long after we
close our eyes to sleep at night. Yes, even into our
shnnbers they pursue us sometimes, as when on a
chilly night, the covering off our poor little feet,
we dream that some powerful enemy is holding us
down in a snowbank with intent of freezing us to
death ; or the cook rattling and slamming the fur-
nace at an unchristian hour of the morning, as only
graceless cooks know how to do, makes us dream
we have found employment in a stamp mill or a
box factory.

A second functional characteristic of the nerve
fiber is that whenever an irritation, stimulation or
excitement is stirred up at one end of it, a similar
disturbance is immediately caused at the other end.
That is, the nerve has the power of transmitting
its excitement throughout its length and on to other
fibers connected with it. Often the excitement is
so small that we are not conscious of it, but never-
theless it is there as the delicate instruments of the

88 WHY THEY FAIL

laboratory clearly show, and what is more, these
subconscious stimulations are often found to be
humble servitors of some more dignified conscious
activity that is going on, as when for example it is
not for nothing a man without knowing it clenches
his teeth, contracts his eyebrows and grunts, on
tackling a lift which he thinks may be if anything
a little beyond him. In fact, his very scalp moves
helpfully in the effort.

The third peculiarity of the nervous system is
that these living wires which transmit the impres-
sions that come to them are essentially modifiable.
They "grow to the modes in which they are exer-
cised," and in the most uncanny way imaginable
they learn to form and break connections among
themselves, in the interests of the preservation of
the individual. The three-year-old who is to-day
attracted so strongly by the buzz-saw that he gets
his fingers in it, w^ill, when he hears that same buzz
to-morrow be seen to make tracks in the direction
of the next county.

Neurologists tell us that these nerve cells (don't
forget the elongated shape of them) are thus of
three kinds (a) sensory or environment cells, bear-
ing impulses or messages to the brain; (b) motor
or muscular contraction cells, which send out im-
pulses or orders to the muscles, and (c) associative
or connective cells, the "central" of the brain, by
which incoming sensory impulses are transformed
into outgoing motor impulses destined to move
some muscular fiber in muscle or gland, as good
soldiers are moved at the word of command.

The discovery of these association cells and their
approximate location in the center of the brain
was one of the greatest triumphs of modern psy-
chology. What was conjectured and postulated be-
fore now became verifiable and more exact as a,

WHY THEY FAIL 89

basis of knowledge and further investigation. In
that large group of neurones or cells which consti-
tutes at once the storehouse and the clearing-house
of human life, lies the key to the solution of our
problem in ethical education and the reason for
our humiliating failures in the past. As Prof. Thorn-
dyke, of Columbia University, says: "The bulk
of the brain is given up to these connecting cells
and the more important part of the work of the
nervous system is the work, not of receiving stimuli
from sensitive parts of the body, nor of discharging
stimuli to the muscles, but of turning stimulus into
discharge, connecting outgo properly with income,
suiting expression to impression, action to circum-
stances. Counting fifty a minute, it would take a
man working twelve hours a day over two hundred
years to merely count the nerve cells of one man."

Mention has been made in the foregoing of reflex
action. A muscular reflex action "is the result of a
peripheral stimulation reaching motor spinal cen-
ters and thence centrifugally manifest in a reaction.
Thus in the pupil the stimulation caused by light
falling on the retina travels by the sensory limb of
the reflex arc to the medullary center and there
calls forth energy which flows down the motor limb
and causes pupillary contraction." Everyone knows
the blinking and squinting that follow when we step
out of darkness into a very bright light. Now the
body is full of such unconscious and irrepressible
actions as that. For instance, we know what is
going to happen when some villain sprinkles red
pepper on the hot stove. That irritation of the
outward ends of the olfactory nerve produces, in
spite of all we can do, a paroxysm of the respiratory
tract which we call a sneeze. It is nature's prompt
effort to expel the possibly dangerous intruder from
(he sacred temple of aeration on which life depends.

,90 WHY THEY FAIL

Coughing is the reflex action consequent upon the
irritation of another nerve, and its response comes
back swiftly to another set of muscles which quickly-
clear the precious bronchial tubes of the gathering
phlegm. Irritate still another nerve with a dose
of mustard and water, ipecac, or atro-morphine, and
the response is felt immediately in violent vomiting.
Other reflexes there are which have not such a
direct bearing on the preservation of life perhaps,
but which are yet truly reflex actions. For example,
snoring. We could do very well without that.
"Spittin' an' gaggin' '' to use Eben Holden's expres-
sion ; sighing like a furnace, sobbing, blushing, pal-
lor, snuffling, tickling, tasting and sniffing are other
illustrations of the same thing.

In fact, moment by moment we are dependent on
reflex action for our very lives. The beating of the
heart, the circulation of the blood, the assimilation
of our foovl and all the marvellous details of elimina-
tion, waste and repair, depend upon an elaborate
and balanced adjustment of reflexes, according to
the gentle and predetermined mutual interaction
of a vast complex of nerves, each doing its own
particular work so quietly, swiftly and exactly that
we do not even know they are at work till one of
them is interrupted. The vagus nerve for instance,
controls the beating of the heart. The latter most-
important organ is like a race-horse, all the time
ready to run away and dash itself and all its ruddy
connections to destruction at the slightest release
of control. It is for this reason the surgeon holds
his breath when he operates in the region traversed
by the vagus nerve. He knows that one un-
fortunate slip severing that white thread and the
heart would be like a hound out of leash, up and
away to that land toward which the mournful un-
dertaker leads the way.

WHY THEY FAIL 91

The special business of the vagus nerve is to keep
the heart down to an even pace, and, if we irritate
it, instead of accelerating the pace of the heart as
one might by analogy expect, we depress the heart's
action. The respiratory rhythm affects the vaso-
motor system of nerves — those nerves threading
the velvet coats of the arteries to help the pumping
heart lift the crimson tide throughout the body ;
and in turn both the vaso-motor and the respiratory
react upon the vagus and the whole sympathetic
system, so that there is going on within us all
the time a most elaborate and curious system of
automatic reflexes from sensory nerve end to center,
and back through motor nerve to muscle, without
which we should immediately have to vacate the
premises.

Is this clear then? Over the sixteen or more dis-
tinct varieties of nerve wires with their millions
of branches, impression impulses keep pouring into
the centers. In the "central" or its branch offices
these impressions are handled and a reply is in-
stantly flashed back over another wire, the motor
nerve, telling the muscles what to do. That is re-
flex action.

Now the head office (no joke) for this kind of
business is the brain (leaving out of count of course
the blood vessels, lymphatics, connective tissue,
etc., in which it rests) and the branch offices are
located in the spinal cord and at the top of the spinal
column in the back of the head. By far the most
important branch office is that in the back of the
head — seat of the quadrigemina, optic thalamus, etc.,
etc. The other centers are at regular intervals down
the spinal cord, where the thirty-one pairs of nerve
bundles sally forth from, or return to and enter
the backbone, as one chooses to look at it.

As in a large business enterprise the central of-

92 WHY THEY FAIL

fice looks after the higher matters, policy, litigation,
administration and so on, leaving to the branch
offices the less important and the well-established
or routine ; and as in that office business is handed
over to the subordinate officials just as rapidly as
they are able to take it on and handle it, so in the
nervous system there goes on incessantly, the psy-
chologists and neurologists tell us, a delegation by
the brain to the lower centers of the care of a multi-
tude of details in order that it may be free to attend
to the higher things of life, thought processes, shap-
ing of life policies, the cerebral litigations we call
doubts, questionings, judgments, and so on. When
we were babies we said "go to, now ; let us walk,"
and it took the central office with all hands busy and
keyed-up to the last thread of attention all its time
to commandeer the muscles to that end. Now we
say, "Let us go downtown," and the thought of
how we are to get there does not so much as once
enter out thoughts in the head office, so completely
have the details been handed over to the offices be-
low. The thought of going, the word of command
is enough to start up all the machinery.

Schrader illustrated this process when he ab-
stracted the hemispheres of a frog's brain and found
it could move of its own accord, eat flies and bury
itself in the mud. Vulpian found that brainless
carp, three days after operation, would make di-
rectly for food thrown into the water in front of
them, bite at a knotted cord and even show a ten-
dency to defend their rights when menaced by other
fish. Goltz experimented with dogs, and when he
had destroyed both hemispheres, and practically
also the corpora striata and thalami, found the dog
lived for fifty-one days and was able to stand and
walk. The lower centers had taken over the task

WHY THEY FAIL 93

which once required the directive action of the
brain proper.

Experimental interference with the brain hemi-
spheres of the lower animals shows that it is the
higher functions such as inhibition, resourcefulness,
etc., which are eliminated when the brain is re-
moved. But the subordinate centers themselves
seem to have acquired a certain amount of inhibi-
tory control, too. The brain itself has in the highest
degree this power of inhibition as one of its grand
prerogatives, but when it delegates its powers to
lower centers they seem to take over something of
the inhibitory functions at the same time.

This wonderful and significant phase of our ner-
vous activities is beautifully presented to us in Prof.
Mark Baldwin's "Hand-Book of Psychology" as
follows :

"Of these general statements the first concerns
what has already been called the integrating func-
tion of nerve centers. By this is meant the build-
ing up of a center to greater complexity of structure
through new stimulations. It takes place by reason
of the extreme plasticity of the nervous elements
in taking on arrangements suited to more habitual
and, at the same time more complex, reactions.
The center becomes the theater of multiple and
conflicting stimulations; its reaction is the outcome
of a warfare of interests, and the pathway of dis-
charge is a line of conduction most favorable to
future similar outbursts. A center gains by such
complex activities in two ways; first its habitual
reactions become a rock-bed or layer of elements,
so to speak, of fixed function issuing in established
paths of least resistance ; and second, the center
grows, gaining new and more mobile elements, and
responding to more complex and difficult motor in-
tentions. For example the center for the move-

94 WHY THEY FAIL

ment of the hands is educated from the early, pain-
ful lessons of the baby's finger movements to the
delicate and rapid touch of the skilled musician.
Not only has the center become fixed and auto-
matic for movements at first painfully learned, but
it has become educated by learning-, so that it
acquires new^ combinations more easily. This two-
fold growth becomes the basis of the sentient ap-
paratus into centers and ganglia. The 'rock-bed'
elements, so-called, fall into fixed ganglionic con-
nections, and the new and free cells take up the
higher function, only in their turn to become
'fixed' by habit and to give place to other and
yet more complex combinations. This integrating
process is what gives the hierarchal order to the
system and throws the law of development into
fine relief. . . . This principle of integration
covers in its two aspects, the law of growth in liv-
ing tissue in general. Exercise tends always both
to enlarge and to consolidate an organ. A muscle
becomes more ready and exact, as well as larger
and more capable with frequent use, and the same
application has been made of the principle to
mental functions, notably to the memory. The
striking peculiarity of the case in regard to nervous
activities is the excessively detailed differentiations
it works; we have here not only the rise of new
centers from old ones, but organic pathways de-
veloped between them and a progressive advance
secured throughout the system, from the spinal
ganglia up to the cerebral cortex.

"Each of the segments of the spinal cord has its
own reactions apart from its brain connection. In-
deed, reflex actions are most perfect and pure when
cues in the form of attention are not directed to the
movements. These facts tend to throw reflexes
rather on the side of the downward growth spoken

WHY THEY FAIL 95

of and assimilate them to automatic reactions.
The well-known phenomena presented by a brain-
less frog illustrates pure reflexes very clearly.

''The downward growth appears in that many of
our reflexes are acquired from habit and repetition.
Motor processes at first difficult and simple, are
welded together in complex masses, and the whole
becomes spontaneous and reflex. The case is cited
of a musician who was seized with an epileptic at-
tack in the midst of an orchestral performance and
continued to play the measure quite correctly while
in a state of apparently quite complete unconscious-
ness. This is only an exaggerated case of common
experience in walking, writing, etc. It represents
from the standpoint of body, the motor organiza-
tion in consciousness already pointed out under the
head of 'motor intuition.' Just as a number of
single experiences of movement become merged
in a single idea of the whole, and the impulse to
begin the combination is sufficient to secure the
performance of all the details, so single elementary
nervous reactions become integrated in a compound
reflex.

"Negative reaction or inhibition. Under the name
of inhibition or arrest, a class of phenomena is in-
cluded which are, as far as our knowledge goes,
peculiar to nervous activities. Every positive re-
action is accompanied by a reverse wave, an arrest,
so to speak, of its full effect. It is analogous to a
negative force acting to counteract and neutralize
the outgoing discharge. It seems to take place in
the center. The effective force of a reaction, there-
fore, is always less by the amount of the nervous
arrest. This neutralizing factor has been measured
in certain conditions of nerve reaction.

(a) "The kind of reaction showing least arrest
is the reflex; and in general the more consolidated

96 WHY. THEY FAIL

a nerve tract or center, the less exhibition do we
discover of the reverse wave. This would seem to
indicate that inhibition is not a phenomenon at-
taching to 'paths of least resistance' and does not
belong on the side of so-called 'downward' growth.

(b) "Inhibition is at its maximum in reactions
which involve centers of more complex activity.
The phenomena of voluntary control — inhibition
by the will — are in evidence here, however we
may construe the will. For it should be remem-
bered that we must find a mechanical basis for
muscular control even though we advocate a di-
rective and selective function of the will.

(c) "Hence inhibition is a concomitant of insta-
bility and complexity of nervous tissue; it belongs
on the side of the "upward" growth of the sys-
tem. . . . This general view is also sustained
by the fact now established that each segmental
reflex in the spinal cord is subject to inhibition
from the higher segments and in turn inhibits those
lower down. The reflexes of a frog's legs immersed
in dilute acid are more rapid and violent after the
hemispheres have been removed — showing the
normal inhibitive function of the cortex; and the
reflexes of a lizard's tail have been shown to in-
crease in vigor as the segments of the spinal cord
are successively removed."

And similarly also in the case of lesions of the
motor zone of the cortex (central office) in man.

Now the essential thing about a reflex action is
that something occurs in the nerve center whereby
the impulse coming in through the sensory nerve
is transformed into an impulse or order going out-
ward to gland or muscle. The pivotal transaction
which results in such a transformation is called
by the specialists a "motor discharge." Mark well
the word. For the lack of it in our dictionaries of

WHY THEY FAIL 97

religious education, society goes haltingly as did
the patriarch Jacob when the Angel touched his
sciatic nerve long ago. We may therefore adopt the
term and use it as being the essential thing about a
reflex so far as this discussion is concerned.

So profoundly, so truly at the heart of things
lies this great fact of reflex action in relation to
the reception of impressions from without that
psychologists now affirm "all consciousness leads
to action." That is, every thought zve think
struggles to break out into a complementary action.
And it generally succeeds. If it does not get
a right channel of discharge, it will discharge
through a wrong one. Its influence will be
felt somewhere. We may not be at all conscious
of it, yet it is there. Prof. Sanford will put his little
instrument on your throat and show you that while
you are reading this page silently in your room
the muscles of the larynx are moving almost as
perceptibly as if you were whispering to 3^our neigh-
bor in church.

Prof. Mosso, an ingenious Italian physiologist,
has demonstrated in his laboratory that we can
think no thought, be moved by no feeling, be in-
spired by no motive which does not immediately
result in a motor discharge which is felt along
many different avenues, viz., the pulse rate, the qual-
ity of the heart beat, the blood pressure and its
distribution in the body, the glandular secretions,
the respiration and the muscular tension. This is
not supposition; it is a fact shown daily in the
psychological laboratories of a hundred well-
equipped universities, by means of a score of deli-
cate instruments measuring to ten-thousandths of
an inch in space and thousandths of a second in
time.

In this inveterate tendency of every thought to

98 WHY THEY FAIL

reproduce itself in a corresponding action we have
the sufficient explanation of the miraculous cures
wrought by Christian Scientists, notwithstanding
its fantastic jumble of phrases in "Science and
Health." No wonder Mark Twain said that book
reminded him of "a dictionary with the colic." Im-
manuel movement, Saint's bones, "absent healers,"
et id onme genera depend for what success they
may have on that great law — a law which, by the
way, is like water and air, as free to the atheist
as to the believer, as many of the former have
proved by their use of it in clinics, regular and
otherwise.

If you don't believe that the secretions are al-
fected by a thought, nor the muscles, shut your
eyes and imagine someone is squeezing a lemon
into your mouth and see if the parotid and submax-
illary glands do not begin work and ''make your
mouth water," Ordinarily they are excited to ac-
tion only by the presence of food in the mouth.
Or ask yourself what would happen if just as you
were sitting down to a banquet with the most wolf-
ish appetite you ever had, a telegram was handed
you announcing the death of your dearest. That
thought would reach your stomach via the pneumo-
gastric nerve before you had time to reach the sig-
nature in your reading. Or, again, stand up, shut
your eyes and concentrate your attention on the
sensation of falling backward, at the same time let-
ting yourself go, and see if a hundred muscles are
not constrained to action in a moment in response
to that thought. Babies have been poisoned at
the breast because their mothers did not know that
it is possible for anger to change to poison even the
nutritive secretions of the body. "Melancholia"
is, etymologically, black bile.

Drug healing gets the reflex without the thought

WHZ TMEY. FAIL 99

and brings us down as by a slung shot, and the
doctor's superiority over the rest of us lies chiefly
in that he knows what part of the nervous system
this, that, or the other drug will irritate, for these
drugs seem to be highly selective. One will fly
at the vagus, another at the pneumogastric, another
at the vaso-motor nerves, and so on. But old practi-
tioners get tired of these bludgeon methods, except
in emergency cases, and more and more come to
think in pensive moments about what lies behind
that bread pill, or that "jag" of water instead of
the regulation "eighth" of morphia, that it should
induce the blessed oblivion of sleep. Frpsh air, rest,
proper food, cleanliness and suggestive therapeutics,
the marvellous power of mind over matter; of
thoughts to produce internal motor discharges and
physiological reflexes — of fear to contract and hope
to expand, or anger that poisons in the human
body — all this inclines many to beHeve that in fifty,
or one hundred years people will have attained such
a knowledge of the laws of life as will enable them
to do what we would often long to do — "throw
physic to the dogs." "We would if we dast, but
we dassent."

So then every thought from within or impression
from without is "handled" promptly in the central
oflice — thrown off, as it were, down one line or an-
other as promptly as ever pitcher sent the ball to
first base in the ninth inning with two out and
an even score. From this there is no escape, and
the finding or making the right path of discharge
is the main thing in education. Says Prof. James,
of Harvard, whose monumental work "Psychology"
in two large volumes will presently yield us some
further light, "The currents once in must find a
way out. In getting out they leave their traces in
the paths which they take. The only thing they

100 WHY THEY FAIL

can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make
new ones; the whole plasticity of the brain sums
itself up in two words when we call it an organ in
which currents pouring in from the sense-organs
make with extreme facility paths which do not
easily disappear."

Now it is just at this point of finding the proper
channels of discharge that we have shown the in-
tellectual "blind spot." We have ignored it almost
wholly in our ethical education, not so much in
our "secular" education and not at all, one may
say, in our practical education. That is, in our
religious education as ministered in the home, the
Church and the Sunday-school, we have pinned our
faith to the first half of this process and let the
other slide. We have devoted all our time to creat-
ing good impressions in Sunday-school and pulpit
and apparently cared not a whit as to what became
of them when they were made. We just trusted
that somehow Providence would "bless the seed
sown" and make it bear fruit in after years, for-
getting that we must not only broadcast the seed
but harrow it in, then wait for God. Providence
does not usually do for us what we can do for our-
selves. He may provide a primer but he certainly
will not learn the lesson for us ; he may give us a
farm but nothing will come of that if we don't get
up before breakfast in the morning and work it.

Look over the Sunday-schools and congregations
of the land. What a wealth of the very noblest in-
struction is there. What heartfelt prayers! What
lofty and inspiring songs ! Genuine too, whatever
the sneering critic on the street may say. The
trouble is not there. The Church is God's institu-
tion and it still pleases God "by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe." The Sunday-
school as an organization, numerically and in the

WHY THEY FAIL 101

elaborate and painstaking care with which it is
carried on, has no parallel in the world, the Church
alone excepted. To think on the multitudes of tired
men and women who study to prepare their lessons
and then drag their wearied bodies out to the ser-
vice of children whom they would never otherwise
have known ; and to see them follow those children
of other people through the week with prayer and
anxious solicitude, without thought of pecuniary
remuneration, while parents and their Epicurean
detractors steep their senses in slumber or loll
dawdling in hammocks slung in the shadiest cor-
ner of the veranda, is a sight calculated to help
restore one's faith in God and human nature.

And their work is, on the whole, very well done
too. The weakness is not there. It is not that
we need to cease what we have been doing or to
blame ourselves for it. Our sin is not one of com-
mission, but of omission. What the Sunday-schools
and pulpits have been doing is their own proper
work ; but it is only a part of it, and we have mis-
taken the part of education for the whole, that is
all.

But this business of creating good impressions con-
tinuously and stopping there, is, as it happens, by
the constitution of nature, which is the fiat of God,
an extremely vicious procedure. It produces a lop-
sided brain and it occasions an enormous waste.
It is because of these two items that about three-
fourths or two-thirds of our teaching and preaching
never accomplishes anything — a fact which causes
the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.

Those impression cells of emotion and knowledge
have grown to their normal capacity in a reasonable
average of the cases. People brought up in church
and Sunday-school do not fall down ethically be-
cause they do not know what is right in dicker

103 WHY THEY FAIL

and bargain ; they fall down because knowing, they
cannot somehow do it when it comes to the scratch,
any more than they can paint a portrait of the
mayor, and for the very same reason, because they
have never done it, or the like of it. That is,
because in their brains there have never taken place
the correlative nervous discharges of the emotion
into the act that should go with it. Hence it is
that we have produced a race of men who are
good in a prayer meeting, but bad in a horse trade,
and marvels of beneficence with the million they
haven't got, but misers with the sou they have.

What then has become of the nervous impulses
created by those good impressions? Alas, they have
been "drained off" into unproductive channels.
Nay, worse — they have not only been drained off
unproductively, but what is worse, they have made
it easy, not to say imperative, that every other simi-
lar good impression following shall run into the
same unproductive channels. That is why the
preacher's sermon, be it never so powerful, produces
so little effect on the conduct of the man before
him. It seems to have no "clutch." He sheds it
as naturally as a duck sheds water, and he is not
to blame any more than the duck or the faithful
minister who has just spoken. The fault is in the
early education we gave him. We have educated
him to shed his good impressions or impulses ; we
have developed the wrong neurones in his brain,
and so there he is. As we made him so we have
him.

Hear the great psychologist of Cambridge speak-
ing to this point. It is the voice of a scientist who
yet has the heart of a man, and he is speaking of
what he calls "the obstructed will."

"Those ideas, objects, considerations, which (in
these lethargic states) fail to get to the will, fail

WHY THEY FAIL 103

to draw blood, seem, in so far forth, distant and
unreal. The connection of the reality of things with
their effectiveness as motives is a tale that has
never yet been fully told. The moral tragedy of
human life comes almost wholly from the fact that
the link is ruptured which normally should hold
between vision of the truth and action, and that this
pungent sense of effective reality will not attach
to certain ideas. Men do not dift'er so much in their
mere feelings and conceptions. Their notions of
possibility and their ideals are not as far apart as
might be argued from their differing fates. No
class of them have better sentiments or feel more
constantly the dift'erence between the higher and the
lower path in life, than the hopeless failures, the
sentimentalists, the drunkards, the schemers, the
"dead-beats" whose life is one long contradiction
between knowledge and action, and who, with full
command of theory, never get to holding their limp
characters erect. No one eats of the fruit of the
tree of knowledge as they do ; as far as moral
insight goes, in comparison with them the orderly
and prosperous Philistines whom they scandalize,
are sucking babes. And yet their moral knowledge
always there rumbling and grumbling in the back-
ground— discerning, commenting, protesting, long-
ing, half resolving — never wholly resolves, never
gets its voice out of the minor into the major key,
or its speech out of the subjunctive mood into the
imperative mood, never breaks the spell, never takes
the helm into its hands. In such characters as
Rousseau and Restif it would seem as if the lower
motives had all the impulsive efficacy in their hands.
Like trains with the right of way, they retain an ex-
clusive possession of the track. The more ideal
motives exist alongside of them in profusion, but
they never get switched on and the man's conduct

104 WHY THEY FAIL

is no more influenced by them than an express train
is influenced by a wayfarer standing by the roadside
and calling to be taken aboard. They are an inert
accompaniment to the end of time; and the con-
sciousness of inward hollowness that accrues from
habitually seeing the better only to do the worse,
is one of the saddest feelings one can bear with him
through this vale of tears."

In our practical education in its two phases, the
intellectual and the manual, we have not dared to
despise this great, fundamental, indispensable prin-
ciple, reflex action, or expression. Not for a minute.
We insist on a motor discharge directly related to
the instruction given. We make it our business to
furnish the opportunity. In our day-schools, so far
as the intellectual training of the children is con-
cerned, no teacher could hold her situation a week
if she did not find ways for the children to give out
what she had just rammed in. She may or may
not be able to tell you the psychological reason for
it, but she feels and knows that the methods of the
average Sunday-school would never get her little
charges anywhere. However church-people may
slight the word, she feels "in her bones" that Prof.
James knows what he is talking about in his "Talks
to Teachers on Psychology."

At the request of the Corporation of Harvard
University, Prof. James a few years ago addressed
the teachers of Cambridge on psychology as it re-
lates itself to their daily work. In the course of
his address on "The Necessity of Reactions" he took
occasion to lay down what he considered "the one
general aphorism which ought by logical right to
dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in the
class-room" — "the great maxim which the teacher
ought never to forget." And what is this great,
fundamental law of the profession which the teacher

WHY THEY F'AIL 105

of our day schools must never, under any circum-
stances forget, if she would do her work as a
teacher? He puts it in italics, that they may not
forget. Would that we might have it on the wall
of every Sunday-school in letters a yard long, so
that no leader could miss it. This is it:

"No reception without reaction, no impression with-
out correlative expression."

Now what does he mean by that? This we take
it. He would say something like this. You are
a teacher. As you stand there before that class
remember that each of those little vulgar fractions
6i humanity is simply a bundle of reactions. The
boy's optic nerve is reacting all the time to the
stimulus from the sentence on the board, the colors
of your dress, the light in your eye, the kindli-
ness of your smile or the frown on your brow:
his auditory nerve is reacting to the sound of
your voice, to the other voices, to the noises on the
street, to the buzz of the blue-bottle fly he holds
prisoner in his hand ; his olfactory is gladly recog-
nizing the scent of a toothsome apple under the
desk, or the odors of flowers in a neighboring win-
dow; his sensory nerves report a very high reading
where he sits near the register ; also the discomfort
from the perspiration caused by a motor order to
his sweat glands to open up, in the interest of his
general well-being, and so on with all his senses.

In addition to the other impressions he is listen-
ing to your voice. You are trying to impress upon
his brain the fact that the United States once be-
longed to Great Britain but that they broke away,
and why they broke away and how they broke away.
Or being desirous of giving him some idea of the
location of the republic you have told him about its
shape ; of the peoples living on the north and south
and of the two oceans east and west. You are not

106 WHY THEY FAIL

to think your work as a teacher is done when you
have done that, no matter how clearly and simply
you have put it and no matter how intently he
followed your story. As a matter of fact your
work as a teacher is scarcely half done. If you are
to develop that boy's brain 3^ou will have to re-
member that it is not so much what you do as what
he does that counts. You are there mainly to di-
rect him in his doing. He must build his own
brain under your supervision. If, therefore, you wish
him to incorporate into his own make-up what you
have just given him you must make him tell you
that story of the great struggle, in writing it may
be, or verbally, but in his OAvn language, and you
must make him draw a map of this country showing
its boundaries. As he prints the map on the paper
he will automatically print it on his own brain by
reflex action.

Of course Prof. James did not say that. He did
not say it because there was no more need of say-
ing it to that audience than there would have been
for his showing them how to spell "cat" if he had
asked them to write the word. All that, however
timely it may be for the average Sunday-school
teacher (and it would be timely) is but the alphabet
of the teacher's profession. What that prince of
psychologists did say to those professionals was
this. Would that the words might be written on
the sky for all to read.

"An impression which simply flows in at the
pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modifies his
active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is
physiologically incomplete. It leaves no fruits be-
hind it in the way of capacity acquired. Even as
mere impression it fails to produce its proper ef-
fect upon the memory: for, to remain fully among
the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be

WHY THEY FAIL 107

wrought into the whole cycle of our operations. Its
motor consequences are what clench it. Some effect
due to it in the way of an activity must return to the
mind in the form of the sensation of having acted
and connect itself with the impression."

And again. "Seize the very first possible oppor-
tunity to act on every resolution you make, and on
every emotional prompting yon may experience in
the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." He
underlines those words and then goes on. "It is not
in the moment of their forming but in the moment
of their producing motor effects, that resolves and
aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain.

"No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one
may possess, and no matter how good one's senti-
ments may be, if one have not taken advantage of
every concrete opportunity to act, one's character
may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With
good intentions hell proverbially is paved. . . .
When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed
to evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is
worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively
to hinder future resolutions and emotions from tak-
ing the normal path of discharge. . . . Don't
preach too much to your pupils or abound in good
talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the
practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as
they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils
both to think, to feel, and to do. The strokes of
behavior are what give the new set to the character,
and work the good habits into its organic tissue.
Preaching and talking too soon become an inef-
fectual bore."

All too soon, dear reader, as most of us can testify
from experience. But why is it a bore? Read the
foregoing once more — "the strokes of behavior are

108 WHY THEY FAIL

what give the new set to the brain and work the
good habits into its organic tissue."

"It is not in the moment of their forming but
in the moment of their producing motor effects that
resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set'
to the brain."

Nay, more. If the "aspiration," the "resolve,"
"the fine glow of feeling" is allowed to "evaporate,"
"it is worse than a chance lost; it zwyrks so as posi-
tively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from
taking the normal path of discharge."

Let Prof. James explain himself even more fully.
The quotation is from the chapter on Habit in
Volume I of his "Psychology." "The entire ner-
vous system is nothing but a system of paths be-
tween a sensory terminus a quo and a muscular,
glandular or other terminus ad quem. A path once
traversed by a nerve current might be expected to
follow the law of most of the paths we know, and to
be scooped out and made more permeable than be-
fore ; and this ought to be repeated with each new
passage of the current. Whatever obstructions
may have kept it at first from being a path should
then, little by little and more and more, be swept
out of the way, until at last it might become a
natural drainage channel. This is what happens
where either solids or liquids pass over a path;
there seems no reason why it should not happen
where the thing that passes is a mere wave of re-
arrangement in matter that does not displace itself,
but merely changes chemically, or turns itself round
in place, or vibrates across the line. The most
plausible views of the nerve current make it out to
be the passage of some such wave of rearrange-
ment as this."

Observe from the foregoing that the mischief of
our unilateral system of ethical education is more

WHY THEY FAIL 109

than negative. It is not merely that g-ood impres-
sions created by preaching and teaching in the
Church and out of it, fail to work themselves out
into good conduct — the failure to give them a
chance results in a positive injury; it produces a
malformed brain. That "natural drainage channel"
is the Great Leak that has cost humanity so dear,
and it is just as really a pathological condition as is
the channel which makes it so easy to get drunk,
and therefore so hard to keep sober; so easy to
gamble and therefore so hard to be honest. It is
a case of wrong channels scooped out — with the
help of society.

Prof. Thorndyke is of the same opinion as Prof.
James. In his chapter on "Laws of Brain Action"
he says: "These stimuli cannot come to nothing.
Their energy must either be transmitted on to other
cells and eventually out through the efferent (ac-
tion) cells to the muscles or else cause modifica-
tions— do work — in cells of the central system.
Just as in a storage battery electric charges coming
in must sooner or later be discharged out or modify
the battery itself, so the stimuli coming into the
brain must transform it or be conducted out and
cause the muscles to contract. Every stimulus
has its result somehow, somewhere."

So also Prof. G. E. Muller, as construed by Prof.
James. In speaking of the miller's awaking when
the mill stops, and of the phenomenon presented
by a rustic coming into the city who is first sleep-
less because of the roar and presently finds himself
indifferent to it, he says : "Impressions which come
to us when the thought centers are preoccupied
with other matters may thereby be blocked or in-
hibited from invading these centers, and may then
overflow into lower paths of discharge. And he
further suggests that if this process recur often

110 WHY THEY FAIL

enough, the side-track thus created will grow so
permeable as to be used no matter what may be
going on in the centers above. In the acquired
inattention mentioned, the constant stimulus always
caused disturbances at first, and consciousness of it
was extruded successfully only when the brain was
strongly excited about other things. Gradually the
extrusion became easier and at last automatic."

Therefore it is that many beside Tennyson's
northern farmer "hear parson abummin' awa," and
so also it is that manv a man becomes "gospel hard-
ened" under the fervent and faithful preaching of his
minister. Had he only allowed that impulse to
arise and follow Christ its natural motor response,
and kept on doing so, what a vastly different char-
acter and destiny he might have achieved ! He
did not know that he was in his own brain locking
himself out of the Kingdom of Heaven. "How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven," said Jesus. Why? Because
their motor channels are well developed in direc-
tions very remote from those of repentance, need,
lowliness and altruism.

Prof. Hugo Mimsterberg, of Harvard, who has
perhaps done more than any other man in America
to relate psychology as a science to the practical
affairs of life, and to gear it to our every-day needs,
goes even further for he finds serious consequences
resulting from what he terms a "strangulated emo-
tion." The instances he cites are pathological and
therefore extreme ; but they may serve neverthe-
less to illustrate what goes on when nature doesn't
get a chance to find any motor discharge at all for
some overpowering emotion.

From his clinic (for both himself and Prof. James
are doctors of medicine as well as of philosophy,
laws and literature) he brings forth cases which

WHY THEY FAIL 111

have come to him for treatment. Here is a girl
standing" in a public waiting-room which is filled
■with tobacco smoke. She is very fatigued and be-
low par nervously. She is engaged to a young man.
Presently she hears a girl nearby tell her friend
that this young man is in love with another young
lady. Instantly there is a powerful emotional dis-
turbance within. The natural impulse is to cry out,
deny it, or do something else by way of protest.
That is the normal path of discharge. But she is
in a public place among strangers and that impulse
is strangled. Ever after the smell of tobacco smoke,
bringing up that scene by association of ideas, up-
sets her nervously and makes her ill. Dr. Miinster-
berg by hypnotic suggestion opens up the proper
channel of discharge and she is freed from her
disability.

Here is another case from the same author's
"Psychotherapy." The case is that of a young
woman of twenty-five, a school teacher of pure char-
acter and hating the very thought of immorality of
any kind. She is obsessed by the idea that at any
time she may become a mother. Life is a burden on
account of this thought, which she recognizes as
foolish yet cannot shake off. She shuns society
because of the embarrassment caused by this
thought when in company. She had had this
thought as long as she could remember, and suffered
from it even when among her girl pupils in the
private institution in which she taught.

Prof. Miinsterberg, shrewdly inferring that there
must have been some emotional shock in her past
life, obliges her to burrow into the years gone be-
fore. Finally she tells him of an experience she had
when about thirteen years of age. At that time a
beautiful girl whom she admired very much, sud-
denly got a baby which died in a few days. At that

113 WHY THEY FAIL

time no thought of wrong-doing seems to have en-
tered into the news. She was at that time com-
pletely naieve. "She received an intense shock at
the thought that an unmarried girl might suddenly
get a child which might then as suddenly die."

Prof. Miinsterberg reckoned that this was the
cause of the trouble — "a deep, physiological brain ex-
citement which had irradiated toward the ideas of
her personality. It had stirred up there associations
which kept their psychological character while the
primary disturbance had long lost its psychical ac-
companiment." So he sets to work to side-track
that association by linking it with appropriate as-
sociations, thus setting it right in the whole system
of her thoughts. Inducing a hypnotic state he asks
her to think backward as vividly as she can to that
experience of her youth and to fancy meeting that
pretty girl once more, and to imagine that
she speaks with her. Then he makes her talk with
him. She assures him that she sees the scene dis-
tinctly. She believes she sees the girl on the street.
He suggests that she tell her just what she thinks
of her; to tell her that she understands now what
she did not understand in her childhood and that
she knows she must have lived an immoral life and
that no pure girl could ever find herself in such a
case. She expresses her disapproval in the strong-
est possible terms (this time the natural comple-
mentary motor discharge) and likewise expresses
her own feeling of happiness that such a thing
could never happen to her. She awakes quite ex-
hausted from her nervous excitement. The power
of the obsessing idea is weakened; in four more
treatments it is entirely gone and the young woman
goes on her way rejoicing. A new and natural
channel of motor discharge has been opened.

Other cases Prof. Miisterberg cites, cases of

WHY THEY FAIL 113

capable men as well as cases from the ranks of "the
weaker sex," in which life was a burden and a
nightmare simply because in some moment of physi-
cal depletion an idea had become "insistent" be-
cause of "a. strangulated emotion." He adds:
"Subtle analysis has repeatedly shown that many
of the gravest hysteric symptoms result from such
a suppression of the emotions at the beginning, and
disappear as soon as the primary experience comes
to its right motor discharge and gains its normal
outlet in action. The whole irritation becomes
eliminated, the emotion is relieved from suppression
and the source of the cortical uproar is removed
forever." So also Freud, of Vienna, Bleuler, Jung,
Stekel and others of the Old World. All of these
cases were cured when the balance was restored to
the brain by opening up the proper path of motor
discharge.

What need is there to say more? Is it not now,
in the light of the foregoing pages, backed as they
might be by others from the greatest scientists of
Europe, clear as the noonday sun just why we
have failed to turn out an ethically sufficient char-
acter, notwithstanding all our tireless effort and
costly machinery? Is it not clear that it is utterly
impossible to produce anything else but an ethically
insufficient character if we reject the voice of science,
endorsed as it is by the dictates of common sense,
and go on as we have been doing, using but one
principle of education where the Almighty has or-
dained two? The times of this ignorance God may
have overlooked, but who will be responsible if the
Sunday-school children of to-morrow grow up full
of ideas of goodness which they are physically un-
able to make effective; and if the more favored of
them grow up only to find themselves with a brain

114 WHY THEY F'AIL

that sheds its good impressions as inevitably as a
duck's back sheds water? Who will be responsible
for the abnormally developed "drainage channels"
which should never have been so deep, and for the
atrophied ethical action cells, the beneficent neu-
rones, which should have been enlarged to effective
capacity by a long and carefully supervised training
in the art of doing the good? Who but we, upon
whom the end of the ages is come and in whose
hands are the flaming torches of the priests of
science?

Knowledge brings with it both opportunity and
responsibility. Give this particular spark of knowl-
edge an ethical application but half as great as it
receives in the intellectual and practical affairs of
life, and in a generation you will have a race of men
who will measure up to Holland's ideal of men:

"Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready
hands.

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will ;

Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And scorn his treacherous flatteries without wink-
ing;

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog

In public duty and in private thinking."

WHY. THEY. FAIL 115

Foreword to Chapter IV

"What care I for caste or creed?
It is the deed, it is the deed.
What for class or what for clan?
It is the man, it is the man.
Heirs of love and joy and woe,
Who is high and who is low?
Mountain, valley, sky and sea,
All are for humanity."

— N. O. Creed.

CHAPTER IV:

THE REMEDY

The rem'edy for what ails us as a Church and
as a people stands out very distinctly in the light
of Chapter HI. It is this — an ethical manual train-
ing department in home and Sunday-school — a de-
partment which shall have as its special function the
translating of the good impressions now being re-
ceived into their correlative good actions. The re-
flexes will do the rest. Automatically, silently, ir-
resistibly, inevitably as disease, doctor's bills and
gravitation, there will be built up in the boy's brain
a group of neurones or cells which will give him
power to respond effectively to his good impres-
sions, and power to respond not only effectively
but as easily and as naturally and as pleasurably
as he now responds to a call to go in swimming in
dog-days. There are no "ifs" nor "buts" about this.
It is all as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun,
or the gathering of the wheat and apple crops in the

116 WHY THEY FAIL

Fall, for we are dealing with the Law of God.

The truth of this will be more apparent perhaps
if we look at one or two phases of life in which
this law of reflex action in the brain get a chance
to show what it can do there. Theoretically at least
the law of the land obliges every man to send his
children to school from the ages of say six to fifteen.
Why? In order that the coming man may know
a few things which are necessary to the getting
along in the struggle of life. Yes, but that is
the shallow conception of education. The deeper
conception of our educators has been that he goes
to school, not so much to absorb a few facts, how-
ever important, as to acquire the ability to think.
The ability to think constitutes the chief difference
between an Edison and a savage. Now our educa-
tionists know there is only one way by which a man
Of a boy can acquire the power to think, and that is
by thinking; thinking long and hard. When the
teacher, therefore, wishes to teach your boy to think
she does not regale him with fairy stories ; she asks
him how much nine hogs will cost at five dollars a
hog. If he doesn't know she shows him how to find
out, and then requires him to find out how much
all the hogs on the farm are worth, to say nothing
of the neighbors' hogs and the hens and ducks.
As fast as the power tu do these problems passes
into the sphere of the automatic and easy she gives
him new and larger ones and he has to keep on
thinking hard along those lines every day, till he
longs for the time when he will be done with it
all; which day proves always a to-morrow, for,
thirty years after, if you run across him, he will
confide in you that the problems he is working on —
state-craft, corporation law, or high finance it may
be, are the longest and most twisted problems he
ever laid eyes on; but he loves his school so much

WHY THEY FAIL 117

now he wouldn't run away from it for all the fish
in the sea, to say nothing of the added artful en-
ticements of certain beautiful girls the neigh-
bors speak of as his wife and his daughters.

Meanwhile his old playmate, Billy Bray, who had
"jumped" the school after two weeks of "durance
vile" and never built up a proper thought-machine,
is breaking stones on the road which runs out to
his old comrade's suburban palace and ruminating
on the wisdom of his friend Pat, who on being
asked by a stranger if he wasn't afraid his brains
would melt that hot day if he didn't keep his hat
on, replied, "Bedad, sor, if I had any brains to
melt do yez suppose I'd be wurkin' here?"

When the public-school teacher wishes to develop
a memory in your boy she leaves the hogs alone and
begins to "soar fancy's flights above the pole." She
gives him poetry and spelling and history and other
things to memorize and then sees that he gives it
all out again in due time. And as he memorizes
and then tugs and tugs to get it all fished up again
for exhibition purposes, somehow, it sticks to him,
he knows not how. But his teacher knows that the
"effort," the motor discharge does it, and that that
is simply another name for the difficulty of plowing
a new track through his brain, and that once that
track is well made it will surprise him how easily
those things, and other more or less related things,
will stick and come forth on demand.

Or maybe it is the power of observation the
teacher wishes to develop in your boy. She knows
she might as well "bay the moon," or try to hold a
tidal wave as to try to give him that power by any-
thing she can say or do. However, what she knows
she can do is to stimulate him to observe for him-
self. That, dear reader, constitutes her work as a
teacher just there, and the more she stimulates him

118 WHY THEY FAIL

along that great law of our being which advises us
that "all consciousness leads to action," the better
teacher she is. So she asks him to tell her how
many things he saw along the road as he came to
school that day, or how many objects he saw in the
store-window as he valked by it at noon without
stopping. For she knows that the boy's brain grows
by its own activity and in the precise direction in
which it is exercised, and if ever a Buffalo Bill or a
Kit Carson is to be made out of this lump of human-
ity before her, it will be only because he has been
taught that seeing he shall see and likewise per-
ceive. Most of us, alas, go through life purblind
because the teachers of our day did not know how
easy and how profitable it is to build up observation
neurones in a boy's head.

Thus, then, we see that our state schools recognize as
fundamental and absolutely essential in education this
great law of reflex action in the brain of the pupil —
that "the motor limb of the reflex arc" is fully as
important as the sensory or impression limb. So
also with the parents in the practical education
which they all insist on giving their children. Not
one of them ignores or neglects it. Not one of
them can be found in America to maintain that a
boy can be taught to swim without swimming;
skate without skating; write without writing; walk
without walking; talk without talking, or fiddle
without fiddling, much less to learn the printing,
weaving, mining, painting, brakeing, stenography,
book-keeping or other art, trade or profession, with-
out actually and in dead earnest doing it with his
own brain and body. The only things that don't re-
quire this particular kind of "eddication" are farm-
ing, preaching and running a newspaper, and there
seems to be some doubt even about them.

That is, the motor areas of the brain which con*

WHY THEY FAIL 11^

trol hand and foot and eye; reflection, memory and
hearing, etc., have to be slowly and carefully, and if
need be, painfully, built up through years of patient
action, which is just as patiently supervised, but
when it comes to making that part of a man which
is the highest and noblest and most important of
all — yea, the man himself, why then we can do that
very well on wind. Just blow him full of good
sentiments; tell him what and how and where and
when ; inspire him with the vision of the ideal,
move him with the story of the heroes gone, and the
future will take care of itself.

Not so. We shall not travel far if we do not
distinguish more sharply than has been our wont
between a boy's soul and his intellect. Metaphysi-
cal and psychological hair-splitting aside, we know
that a boy's soul is not his intellect. We build his
intellect even more by the reflexes of impression
than we do by impression itself. We do not dream
of, we do not dare to, neglect the development of
the action neurones in public school or private life.
The struggle to survive would soon be over if we
did. The cry is rather for more and ever more em-
phasis on that line. W'hen Prof. James was asked
by certain educational authorities of international
standing w^hat reforms he would introduce in
courses of study, or in educational organization, or
otherwise, if he had a free hand, in order to increase
the ethical efficiency of school training, he replied :

"I should increase enormously the amount of
manual or motor training relatively to the book-
work, and not let the latter preponderate until the
age of fifteen or sixteen."

That statement squares very well with the con-
viction he has elsewhere expressed that, "The most
colossal improvement which recent years have seen
in secondary education lies in the introduction of

120 WHY THEY FAIL

the manual training schools ; not because they will
give us a people more handy and practical for do-
mestic life and better skilled in trades, but because
they will give us citizens with an entirely different
intellectual fiber."

If there is need of a new type of "entirely differ-
ent intellectual fiber" what shall be said for the
need of a new and "entirely different" type of moral
fiber? And if the new and "entirely different" type
of intellectual fiber can be developed only by a large
use of the principle of reflex action already in evi-
dence at every turn, how sore is the need that we
should at least make some kind of start ethically
in the direction of an initial application of so puissant
a principle?

The land does not suffer so much from lack of
brains as from lack of moral character. "A man
may smile and smile and be a villain." College
degrees are no guarantee of integrity in a land or
stock deal. An eminent professor, himself a gradu-
ate of Harvard, stated not so long ago in lecturing
before the students of Chicago University, that in
his time no form of public iniquity had been found
in eastern Massachusetts but had a Harvard gradu-
ate at the head of it, and an eminent barrister of
Ohio in his plea in a notorious school case, tritely
observes, "Why should I be taxed to educate my
neighbor's child if the education you give him only
makes the little rascal twice as sharp without any
additional protection to my throat?" What we
want is greater protection for our throats, and our
notes, and our grocer's bills, and our pastor's sal-
aries, and the internal revenues of our civic, state
and federal governments.

But how to get it is the question. To get it we
must do at least four things. We must

(1) Stop the Great Leak. This we may do nega-

WHY THEY FAIL 121

lively, as indeed we have been doing, by using"
the method of inhibition. The priests of science
who roam at will through the sacred temples of the
skull, tell us that on the heels of every outgoing
or motor impulse there goes an impulse to arrest it.
This is very strange but so it is they say. The order
is no sooner given than another countermanding it
is on the way. It attends the other "like a shadow."
By training, by attention, by association, that in-
hibitory officer may be reinforced and speeded up
so that he can overhaul the first official and deprive
him of his power to act, as when for example, in
response to a blow or a vile epithet, a man raises
his arm to strike and then suddenly remembers and
refrains.

Or again, Johnny has unlawfully annexed the
shilling he found on the sideboard, and subsequently
sought refuge in the devious paths of high finance.
There ensues a strict maternal investigation in
which he is found guilty and duly punished with
that ancient and handy, if humble, instrument, the
maternal slipper. As the crime of theft has been
aggravated by promiscuous and ingenious lying to
his best friend, the punishment is so proportionately
severe that for two days he dispenses with a chair at
meal time, eats off a shelf and evinces but a languid
interest in anything that looks like manly sport.

A week later another golden, no silver, oppor-
tunity to become suddenly rich by predatory means
presents itself, and his little palm is about to reach
out once more to gather in the spoils, when by the
blessed law of association of ideas, memory brings
up what happened after his last offence. Then a
battle rages within his breast. A vision of all the
gum and candy and marbles and tops he could buy
with that half dollar rises before him. Were that
all, he would have it — but it isn't. The stern,

123 WHY THEY FAIL

grieved look of his immediate maternal ancestor
comes up before his face. In her hand is the slab
of doom ; in the cast of her jaw is the determination
that knows no parley and stands no monkeying;
in his imagination he feels a tingling gluteus maxi-
mus and sees another period of two days without
any special interest in life, and, he capitulates. "The
native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale
cast of thought" and he is constrained to "let I dare
not wait upon I would."

His mother's training has saved him. The wrong
motor impulse has been inhibited from behind and
above. A new "association complex" in which pain
is the dominant note gathers itself about the thought
of taking what doesn't belong to him and stops his
hand just in time, and so he is saved more than a
peck of trouble in later life. Not all in one treat-
ment of course. A Hartford woman may have mirac-
ulously cured her young hopeful of the tobacco
habit by the laying on of hands, but it probably re-
quired more than one application.

Who, but the recording angel can tell how much
of human honesty is of just that kind — a negative
kind. We are restrained from evil not by love of the
good but by fear of the consequences — what the law
says, the neighbors will say, or wife or sweetheart
will think. All that is good in so far as it goes and
it should in no wise be neglected, as wise old Solo-
mon advised when he said something about sparing
the child and spoiling the rod — or was it the other
way about? Undoubtedly the maternal slipper is
one of the very mightiest institutions in the land.
If it were not for it Dr. Wiley's pure food law would
be a joke, civilization would wane, barbarism recru-
desce and every man be for his own hand. Our
mother's slipper ! All honor to it ! No small part
of all the real honor we've got rests ultimately on it.

WHY THEY FAIL 123

But there is a more excellent way, the positive.
To "be not overcome of evil" is well; but it is not
half so well as to be able "to overcome evil with
good." To have the power of inhibition is some-
thing. Let us not despise or think of abandoning
it. It has its place. Fear is useful sometimes.
It is better to be saved by fear that chokes a
wrong impulse than not to be saved at all : but it
is better far to have opened wide the channel of
right action so that friction there is reduced to a
minimum and nervous impulses just take naturally to
it as the path of least resistance.

The way to inhibit a movement is to do the oppo-
site. That closes the door quite effectually. You
cannot both open and shut so much as your eye at
the same time, nor your hand, nor your lips. The
true education will seek to be positive rather than
negative ; constructive rather than destructive. It
will seek to "increase enormously the manual or
motor training relatively to the book work." Apropos
of this, hear what Professor John Dewey, of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, has to say in his "Ethical Principles
Underlying Education."

"We cannot secure the development of positive
force of character unless we are willing to pay the
price psychologically required. We cannot smother
and repress the child's powers, or gradually abort
them (from failure to permit sufficient opportunity
for exercise) and then expect to get a character with
initiative and constructive industry. I am aware
of the importance attaching to inhibition, but mere
inhibition is valueless. The only restraint, the
only holding-in that is of any worth is that which
comes through holding all the powers concentrated
in devotion to a positive end. The end cannot be
attained excepting as the instinct and impulse are
kept from discharging at random and from running

124 WHY THEY FAIL

off on side tracks. In keeping the powers at work
upon their relevant ends there is sufficient oppor-
tunity for genuine inhibition. To say that inhibi-
tion is higher than power of direction morally, is
like saying that death is worth more than life, nega-
tion worth more than affirmation, sacrifice worth more
than service. Morally educative inhibition is one of
the factors of the power of direction."

So then the mere cry of "down ! down !" to our
vicious impulses is not enough, no matter how stern
and inflexible the command. We must do some-
thing more if we are to stop the Great Leak. The
water that is dammed up at the crack and the bung
hole will overflow at the sides of the reservoir. It is
our business both to seal the crack and to find a
natural outlet.

(2) We must open tip the right channels of dis-
charge for ethical emotions and ideas. This is the
grand imperative, the conditio sine qua non of suc-
cess in ethical education. The diffusive emotional
discharges must be conserved and rightly directed.
There is enough energy going to waste to save the
man so far as his human relationships are con-
cerned, if we can but make proper outlets for it.
The larger part, the more important part of ethical
education consists in finding and making the right
channels of discharge. So strongly does Professor
James feel on this subject that he delivers himself
as follows. The further quotation may be pardoned
in view of the importance of the theme, and of the
fact that Professor James may be regarded as in some
sense the dean of American psychologists and there-
fore speaking for them all.

"The habit of excessive novel-reading and thea-
tre-going will produce true monsters in this line.
The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious
personages in the play while her coachman is freez-

WHY THEY FAIL 125

ing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing
that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale.
Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music,
for those who are neither performers themselves
nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely
intellectual way has probably a relaxing effect upon
the character. One becomes filled with emotions
which habitually pass without promptings to any
deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is set
up. The remedy would be never to have an
emotion at a concert without expressing it after-
wards in soine active way. Let the expression be
the least thing in the world — speaking genially to
one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if
nothing more heroic offers — but let it not fail to
take place.

"These latter cases make us aware that it is not
simply particular lines of discharge, but also general
forms of discharge, that seem to be grooved out by
habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our emotions
evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so
there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch
from making an effort, before we know it the effort-
making capacity will be gone, and that if we suffer
the wandering of our attention, presently it will
wander all the time."

If we turn aside to see how Dame Nature teaches
her human progeny we shall see that this great
principle of reflex action is the right arm in her
progress. Watch the children at play and ask the
biologist why they play and he will tell you that
their play is their great school of education wherein
their senses and other powers become developed
through their own activities. The baby is to all
intents and purposes a lump of putty. The new-
born babe can neither see nor hear. His main line
of communication with the outside world is the

126 WHY. THEY FAIL

sense of taste. That is the one most important to
him at that time. Gradually, however, as his body-
grows the other lines of communication become
established. The motor neurones in his brain
begin to myelinate, or take on the protecting
sheath, and things are got ready for ever enlarging
motor responses to the impressions coming to his
brain through his sense organs. Says Prof. Carl E.
Seashore, of Iowa University, in "The Biblical World"
for October, 1910 :

"Play is self-expression for the pleasure of ex-
pression, . . . The senses develop largely through
play with them. Watch the infant discover his
ears, investigate his nose, pat-a-cake with his hands,
splash in the water, grope, reach, grasp and fumble
in all sorts of ways with touch and muscle sense.
These semi-random touch plays refine the sense
of touch, develop the ability to locate touch,
and give meaning and pleasure to these experiences
by founding and enriching association. Basking
in the sun is a temperature play. . . . Capacity
for using tools develops through a hierarchy of
plays. Handling is notorious with children. Watch
the picking, tearing, lifting, shaking and throwing
movements of the baby. See him lead the dog,
the bird, the kite, and even his own playmates,
thereby enjoying the pleasure of being a cause and
feeling an extension of personality."

If we are to do our work in moral education we
must therefore take a hint from Nature as she seeks
to fit your boy for the lower struggle to survive.
Let us find some definite activity which will be
immediately and directly related to the good im-
pulses we have stirred within him in the Sunday-
school and in the quiet hour at home. If we do
that to the same degree, systematically, intelli-
gently and persistently, we shall find as much moral

WHY THEY FAIL 127

readiness and moral executive capacity as we find
Nature has produced of power and skill in his
games and meclianical arts, for we are working by
the same law and dealing with exactly the same
brain ; and law is no respecter of persons or creeds,
theological or psychological.

So profound and immeasurably significant is this
principle of motor activity in its relation to char-
acter-building that one kindergarten teacher, whose
school existed in the slum district of San Francisco
as a kind of missionary institution, affirms that
only an inappreciably small number of her boys
became subject to arrest because of misdemeanors
notwithstanding the highly unfavorable environ-
ment in which their lives were placed. Evidently
manual training does help to produce citizens with
an entirely different moral as well as entirely differ-
ent intellectual fiber.

Higher up on the long spiral of human education
we find the same idea efiiorescing. In Harvard
Law School they teach young men law by the
actual practice of law. They let theory wait on
practice. As the young man "does" the law so to
speak, he learns it. So also in Plartford School of
Religious Pedagogy. Dr. George A. Dawson, of
that institution, in speaking of this principle of re-
flex action and motor expression observes :

"This self-expression is the vitalizing principle
of life and mind. According to neurology the brain
has been developed largely through the motor re-
sponses to sensation. The relatively large motor
areas of the latter prove how great has been the
influence of expression in developing the organ of
the mind, and how important must be this expres-
sion daily and hourly determining its blood supply
and the resultant nourishment and the elimination
of waste. The conclusion is irresistible that the ner-

128 WHY THEY FAIL

vous system is fashioned racially and individually
according to the types and degrees of self-expres-
sion. . . . The individual was not only born a
man, he becomes a man by fashioning for himself
a brain that can feel the feelings and think the
thoughts that are human. This he does, in a large
measure, according as he lives or is allowed to
live, on the level of most-complete-self-expression.
. . . Finally greater emphasis will be laid on
motor expression in religious education. That is
to say, attention will more and more be directed
to the executive function of righteousness. It is
all very well to feel righteously and to think right-
eously but the final test of both is the deed. Relig-
ious educators must, and will, devise some means
of helping boys and girls to work out their religious
feelings and ideas. The heterogeneous manual ex-
ercises over sand maps, the singing in choirs, the
taking part in prayer-meetings will not suffice.
These activities may be valuable or next to worth-
less, according to the spirit and conditions under
which they are performed. Motor or executive
righteousness must come nearer to life than these
activities can possibly come. It must be of a type
that affects the life of the doer and that of his
fellowman. It must take the form of doing deeds
of virtue, honesty, kindness, patriotism and the like.
A church or Sunday-school that can make their
religious instruction efficient through an organized
body of righteous workers, in the home, business,
politics, and throughout the social life everywhere,
will have realized this ideal."

This tendency of our emotions to find some chan-
nel of discharge is so marked that a man can't enjoy
a chocolate but his whole being is affected ; and on
the other hand, the colored man, overcome by sleep,
into whose open mouth a wag dropped two grains

WHY THEY F'AIL 129

of quinine, had some physiological basis for his
hurried and terrified inquiries for a physician on
the ground that he had "dun busted his gall." Prof.
Lange, the Danish physiologist, tells us that a man's
outward arm movements are longer than usual in
response to a sweet taste in the mouth, and con-
trariwise if one gives the subject a bitter taste or
a wretched sensation of any sort, the flexor move-
ments will be sensibly increased and the outward
movements correspondingly short^ened.

Prof. Miinsterberg illustrated this interesting
fact by an ingenious device which he attached to
the lower part of his vest. After learning to adjust
a slide to a nicety automatically, he began a six-
months' series of experiments. "My diary," he says,
"indicated essentially three fundamental pairs of
feeling in the course of time. There was pleasure
and displeasure, there was excitement and depres-
sion, and there was gravity and hilarity. The fig-
ures showed that in the state of excitement both the
outward and inward movements became too long,
and in the state of depression both became too short;
in the state of pleasure the outward movements be-
came too long, the inward movements too short; in
the state of displeasure the opposite — the outward
movements too short and the inward movements too
long. In the case of gravity or hilarity no constant
change in the lengths of the movements resulted;
but the rhythm and rapidity of the movements was
influenced by them."

One naturally clenches the hands in anger or
shouts and throws up his cap in extremes of joy.
Whatever strongly awakens a feeling starts mus-
cular action toward that particular end. These ac-
tions are generally sub-conscious but none the less
real for that. Prof. Miinsterberg did not know he
was sliding his slide too far in his pleasant moments

130 WHY THEY FAIL

or coming short of the mark when he was depressed,
till he examined his little instrument. So it is that
one may have converse with his subconscious self
by means of the ouija board of the spiritualists and
be "dead certain" he is not talking to himself. Think
of a letter of the alphabet and the registering at-
tachment of the plate on which the hand rests, im-
mediately flies toward it as by an uncanny agency.
The operator is prepared to swear that he did not do
it, and so a mes-iage will be spelled out that ap-
parently must have come from another world. When
scientists make an instrument of that kind, they call
it an automatograph, and tell us that if the arm be
suspended through a loop it will move with much
greater freedom. "And if a witness or a criminal,
in front of a row of a dozen men, claims that he
does not know any one of them, he will point on
the automatograph, nevertheless, toward the man
whom he really knows and whose face brings him
thus into emotional excitement."

Similarly the eyes may be made to betray us by
turning while we know nothing about it, or if one
will attach a ring or a coin to a string a foot long,
and hold it out and then "will" it to move backward
and forward or round and round, it will presently
begin to obey although there may be absolutely no
conscious efifort, nor any visible effort to move it.
That is caused by what the physiologists call uncon-
scious cerebration.

Opening up the right motor channels for our
ethical emotions and ideas is desirable still further
because, as Prof. Miinsterberg and others tell us,
in order that an idea may attain to full "vividness"
it is necessary to have a motor discharge, i. e., an
action of some sort connected with it. To use
Prof. Miinsterberg's own expression — "Full vivid-
ness belongs only to those sensations for which the

WHY THEY FAIL 131

channels of motor discharge are open." We want
our boys to have vivid ideas about the essentials of
character; we must therefore see that the higher
aspirations find an outlet in such activities as they
will feel are not "empty gesture-making," but of
that hard quality which their hard-headed fathers
and other grown-ups cannot despise.

We need some kind of ethical manual training
department for the boy because it is only in such a
world he can make his ethical ideas have reality to
himself. When he finds that ethical ideas may have
a vital connection with things in the world of things
in which he finds himself, he gets a new respect for
them and a new interest in them. What we write,
or make, or own, is of much greater interest to us
than what other people make or write or own for us.
The reflex of an act tends to deepen the interest in
that act. If you nurse a sick child or bind up the
broken leg of a dog they will never again be to
you the objects of indifference they were before you
did the kindly deed. It was for this reason that
shrewd old Benjamin Franklin used to borrow books
of his enemies. He knew that when they had done
him a kindness they had largely disarmed them-
selves, and could not have the same heart to attack
him again.

Apropos of this deepening of interest by the re-
flex of one's own activities a further paragraph from
'Prof. Baldwin may be of interest.

"Purely intellectual interest is therefore tem-
porary. It does not attach itself firmly enough to
its object to cause the latter to become one of our
interests or goods. I am interested in the morning
paper, the street sights, my afternoon drive and the
debating society; but to-morrow a set of new en-
gagements carries my interest, and the engagements
of yesterday now past, only furnish one or two

132 WHY THEY FAIL

points at which my permanent hfe-interests have
been touched. What then constitutes more per-
manent interest, over and above the simple interest
of the intellectual art of discrimination? Emotional
and active interest. So far interest simply repre-
sents a tendency to know. Its objects are mere ob-
jects that come and go indifferently to us; when we
have learned what they are and how they act our
curiosity is satisfied. But bring them within the
line of our emotional or volitional reactions and
everything is changed. Does their being what they
are or doing what they do have an effect on me?
That is the vital question. The errand boy in an
office carries fifty letters a day to his employer, and
they have no interest for him ; he knows them to
be letters for X, Y and Z, and his curiosity is satis-
fied. But let one letter come to himself and then
not the words it contains or the love it brings inter-
ests him alone ; but the envelope, its sides and cor-
ners, the stamp, the address, the very odor of it fairly
burn him with their interesting aspects. Anything
in short gets interesting which has besides its re-
lation to other things and people, a power to make
me feel and act. I may know the presence of a thing
and not be interested but I cannot feel its presence,
and much less can I act upon its presence without
coming to think it worth my close attention. . . .
Ordinarily we act in reference to a thing because we
are interested in it, which means because we are
impelled by intellectual or emotional interest. But
it is still true that, after acting our interest is greater
than before. Any effort expended on a thing makes
it more worthful to us."

The reflex of an ethical action not only deepens
the interest in that act, creates a tendency to do it
again, gives vividness to the idea of it, and affords
pleasure in the doing of it, but it also builds up by

WHY THEY FAIL 133

so much the power of moral discrimination as noth-
ing else can.

It is painfully illuminating to talk with retail mer-
chants and other business men on the conscience of
the other fellow. When it comes to business deal-
ings the characters of men of the greatest piety
seem to be sadly vulnerable. No one can well
doubt that they are Christian men, and yet there
is the exasperating hiatus between what they are
in action and what they ought by their profession to
be. Their consciences seem to be blunted and ut-
terly oblivious of the fine points of honor in business
on which the children of this world, who make honor
a religion, pride themselves so highly.

This undoubtedly is because they have never had
a proper ethical-action training. It is not merely
that the ethical action neurones are undeveloped,
but that other neurones which have to do with dis-
crimination are not developed. And the only way
they can be developed is by actually discriminating.
As we discriminate in any field of thought a new
group of judgment neurones is built up there which
enables one to judge ever more accurately. The
reflexes do it automatically. But they are the re-
sults of so many separate acts of judging.

We talk of educating our senses and our fingers,
etc., but that is, strictly speaking, wide of the truth.
The fact is that no sense can be developed; what
is developed is the power of discriminating between
the sensations of sound in case of the musician, of
taste with the tea sampler, of color with the sales-
man. Where there is anything wrong with the
nerve of transmission going to the brain there is no
cure for the ill by any amount of training. One
who has a false ear for musical tones and cannot
distinguish "Home, Sweet Home" from the national
anthem will never make a Mozart, while, as for

134 WHY THEY FAIL

color-blindness, the only way to cure that is by three
generations of intermarriage with hawk-eyes.

Why do we go to the financier for advice in a
business tangle? Because the reflexes of forty years
of judging in the counting-room have built a power-
ful group of financial judgment neurones, which it is
needless to say, were not and could not be produced
in any other workshop than that of the counting-
house. When we want a judgment on a master-
piece of art, we go to another man who has had forty
years of judging colors and canvasses. As he mixed
his paints and wielded his brush he built the brain
that could be judge par excellence of lights and
shades and hues of beauty. But when we get ap-
pendicitis we don't want either of them. The man
who for forty years has been judging symptoms of
disease is the man we want, and maybe after him
the preacher, the lawyer and the undertaker.

Why do we do so many fool things in our "tender
teens" and "teachable twenties?" Because we do
not know that they are fool things. And why do
we not know? Because we have never been over the
trail before and have therefore built up no adequate
judgment neurones and no power of judging as to
what is correct or otherwise in the premises.

Moral judgment, or the power of accurate dis-
crimination between right and wrong in conduct,
like any other judgment, physical, intellectual, aes-
thetic or spiritual, can be acquired only by inducing
a long series of judgments on the part of the boy.
He must be led into situations where he is "hard up
against it" and must make choice for himself. In-
formation without judgment is useless. Judgment
is the art of applying information to life's problems.
As his choices make him there must be oversight
that he may be encouraged to make the right ones,
and whenever he has done otherwise that he may be

WHY THEY FAIL 135

encouraged to undo the wrong by making it right
in so far as he can, by other right choices. To
make the new, right choices is the only possible
way of neutralizing the evil effects of the old wrong
ones in his soul and in his brain.

It will not do to reply just here that conscience
which "doth make cowards of us all" is enough if
we will but heed it. Conscience, in so far as it de-
pends on brain action for effective operation, is sub-
ject to the general laws of brain action, and can
therefore, like any other faculty, be educated. If
there is a sense in which it cannot be educated there
is another equally important sense in which it can.
The thugs of India who murdered travelers as a
pious act; Sicilian bandits who invoke the Virgin's
blessing before embarking on a predatory expedi-
tion ; Paul, hounding innocent people to dungeons
and death, and church members who grind the faces
of the poor that they may endow charities and build
churches for the worship of a God who hates in-
iquity, are cases in point.

Heeding our consciences is beyond question ex-
ceedingly important; but the conscience must be
enlightened by the word of God. This work our
Sunday-schools aud churches are doing very well ;
but it is advisable also now to find for our boys and
girls an arena into which they may be prematurely
and deliberately thrown, somewhat as Emerson
intended in another sphere when he counselled us
to "cast the bantling on the rocks." In that arena,
in that stern world of hard, cold business, facts and
things, conscience will find some strenuous exercise
when it gets mixed up in the tussle with a brood of
lusty, red-blooded and rampageous feelings such as
My Lord Pride ; My Lord Pleasure ; My Lord
Avarice, and others which need not be named. Con-
science as we have it, dilettanti, supine, lily-fingered,

136 WHY THEY FAIL

delicate, will wake up to consciousness of its own
royal state and dignity when it suddenly finds it-
self struggling for supremacy in that den of wild-
cats. Give us neurones of moral discrimination, and
neurones of moral action, and we shall have men of
moral power fitted to respond valiantly to any new
moral impression which comes to them from with-
out. And the way to get those neurones in the
amoeba or the man, as that ingenious investigator,
Prof. Elmer Gates, has shown, is by reflex action.
Immeasurably significant is his experiment with the
seven pups. Two were brought up in utter dark-
ness ; two were given the ordinary dog-life on the
farm, and three were given two hours' training daily
in distinguishing colors, by walking over colored
copper plates, some of which were electrified and
others not. The shock became a stimulus, the color
a guide. In a year they could distinguish hundreds
of colors and their mind activity was greatly in-
creased. Then all were chloroformed for examina-
tion of their visual centers. The first two had no
more well-developed cells than a pup a day old; the
second two averaged eighty-nine well-developed cells
per square millimeter, while the third group approxi-
mated the human brain with twelve hundred to four-
teen hundred per square millimeter of surface. That
is, a year of intelligent and systematic training by
reflex action did more for the dog than six hundred
generations of training without it. How much bet-
ter is a boy than a dog!

(3) WE MUST DEVELOP MORAL ASSO-
CIATION NEURONES connecting the good im-
pression and impulse neurones zvith the correlative
good action neurones.. In the craniums of the present
generation these links seem sadly broken. The great
problem of church life which has never yet been
solved is how to get the preaching and teaching of

WHY TH.EY FAIL 137

the Church on Sunday translated into the life of
Monday ; how to get religion out of the cloister and
into the market-place. In spite of all that has been
said about it, we seem to persist in living in a dual
world. We do our religion, and that seems right
enough. Then we do our business, and that also is
beyond question necessary, but when it comes to doing
both together, the thing seems quixotic and even im-
possible.

The reason for that is that we have never done the
two together. If we had often mixed religious ideas
and impulses with business, especially in our early
years, there would be nothing grotesque or impos-
sible, or even unpleasant, about doing so now. If
a long series of religious impulses had found motor
channels of discharge into those areas of the brain
given over to business considerations and actions,
they would find them to-day, not only easily but
pleasurably, since whatever promotes the progress
of an idea into consciousness is pleasurable, and
whatever impedes its progress is unpleasant and
sometimes painful.

Now it is a law of brain action that "when two
elementary brain processes have been active to-
gether or in immediate succession, one of them on
recurring, tends to propagate its excitement into
the other." That constitutes what is known as the
law of association of ideas ; and habit, recency, vivid-
ness and emotional congruity determine what comes
next in the ordinary weaving of the mind. Ideas
which have entered the mind at the same time, or
nearly so, are so linked that they tend to bring
one another "into mind" whenever the one or the
other is mentioned. If, on going down the street
of a strange city you see on the one hand a striking
statue and on the other a royal palace, and twenty
years later you return, the sight of the statue will

138 WHY THEY FAIL

bring before your mind's eye the royal palace. Eb-
binghaus has shown by experiments that an idea
is associated not merely with the one that follows it,
and with the rest through that, but that it is asso-
ciated in varying degrees with all the others near
it. In nonsense rhymes he found that syllables as
far away as the seventh were influenced and there-
fore learned more rapidly again than others which
had no such associations.

Someone hands you a fragrant flower and at the
same time tells you that it is called a rose. After-
ward when you think of that odor the name comes
up of itself, or when you think of the name you can
recall the odor. Prof. Miinsterberg very nicely tells
us about the "why" of it in his "Psychotherapy,"
p. 42f.

"The excitement of each of these two brain cells,
the one in the olfactory center, the other in the audi-
tory center, irradiates in all directions through the
fine branches of the nerve fibres. Each cell has re-
lations to every other cell in the brain, thus there is
also one connecting path between those cells which
were stimulated at once. Now if the two ends of
an anatomical path are excited at the same time, the
path itself becomes changed. The connecting way
becomes a path of least resistance, and that means
that if, in future, one of the two brain cells becomes
excited again, the overflow of the nervous excite-
ment will not now go on easily in all directions, but
only just along that one channel which leads to
that other brain cell. A theory like this explains in
real explanatory terms, in ways which physics and
chemistry can demonstrate as necessary, that any
excitement of the odor cell runs into the sound cell
and vice versa. ...

"The whole theory of physiological associationism
works evidently with two factors. First there are

WHY THEY FAIL 139

millions of brain cells of which each one may have
its particular quality of sensation, and second, each
brain cell may work with any degree of energy to
which the intensity of the sensation would corre-
spond. If I distinguish ten thousand pitches of tone,
they would be located in ten thousand different cell
groups, each one connected through a special fiber
with a special string in the ear. And each of these
tones may be loud or faint, corresponding to the
amount of excitement in the particular cell group.
Every other variation must result from the million-
fold connections between the brain cells. Indeed,
the brain furnishes all possibilities for such a theory.
We know how every cell resolves itself into tree-like
branch systems which can take up excitements from
all sides, and how it can carry its own excitement
through long connecting fibres to distant places, and
how the endings of these fibres clasp into the
branches of the next cell, allowing the propagation
of excitement from cell to cell. We know further
how large spheres of the brain are confined to cells
of particular function; that for instance cells which
serve visual sensations are in the rear part of the
brain hemispheres, and so on. Finally we know
how millions of connecting fibres represent paths in
all directions, allowing very well a co-operation by
association between the most distant parts of the
brain. The theories found their richest develop-
ment when it was recognized that large spheres of
our brain centers evidently do not serve at all merely
sensory states, but that their cells have as their func-
tion only the intermediating between different sens-
ory centers. Such so-called association centers are
like switchboards between the various mental cen-
ters. Their own activity is not accompanied by any
mental content, but has only the function of regu-
lating transmission of the excitement from the one

140 WHY THEY FAIL

to the other. Above all their operation would make
it possible that through associative processes the
wonderful complexity of our trains of thought may
be reached."

These association tracts are almost entirely absent
at birth, but they develop in the "handling" of the
streams of sensation pouring in through the vari-
ous senses of the body. As Edinger observes:
"They extend everywhere from convolution to con-
volution, connecting parts which lie near each other
as well as those which are widely separated. They
are developed when two different regions of the cor-
tex are associated in a common action."

The italics are mine for the point is of vital import-
ance to us as character builders. In order to de-
velop ethical association neurones we simply must,
therefore, have action outlets for the myriads of
good impressions we are daily creating in youthful
minds. We have had the "impressions" in profusion
all along; if we can only now get the boy engaged
in the correlative action, the association neurones
will grow like mushrooms without our bidding. Na-
ture takes care of that without our further aid.

It is not because our people are misers that the
great cause of missions for which the Church ex-
ists, has to go halting and begging; it is because
our system of education has failed to provide them
with the necessary beneficent action association
neurones. The very same people have an abund-
ance of money for everything else under heaven
that comes along, and they have it for the reason
that years of opened channels in those other di-
rections make it easy to part with their ducats in
those ways when called on to do so.

We want this man to go down into his jeans to
help us out religiously; but how can he when he has
never done it before? Take an illustration. There

WHY THEY FAIL 141

on a rickety, rural wharf stand two men in ex-
cellent health. Presently a tramp steamer crashes
into it violently on the crest of an unlooked-for
wave. It goes down and both men are precipitated
into deep water. The one gurgles and gasps and
goes down throwing his arms out wildly; the other
shuts ofif his wind automatically, makes a few or-
derly strokes and is presently shaking himself like
a spaniel on the bank. To explain their differing
fates one has to go back into their lives fifteen years.
Doing so we find that the first man, as a boy, never
went near the water; the second man did, and he
did then the "spittin' an' gaggin' " act in the very
same way the other man so fatally exemplified it
later ; but as he was where he could get his toes
on the bottom before his wind was clean cut off,
there was no funeral at his father's house next
day. Many times this occurred until there was final-
ly an association path opened up between the
sensory impression of cold-fluid-medium-coming-up-
about-the-neck-mouth-and-nose, and, shut-off-wind,
and throw-out-legs-and-arms-so. This association after
a time became so well established as a reflex,
automatic circuit that it was physically impossible
to take him off his guard. The cold-medium-sensa-
tions coming to the brain from the danger zone,
found the motor channel to the superior laryngeal
nerve which controls the breathing, and the other
motor nerves controlling arms and legs, wide open,
and the muscles were savingly commandeered to
action in an instant. The other man had all the
required nerves and muscles and they were in good
working order too, but not having any neurones of
connection, the brain could not get its violent dan-
ger signals translated into the proper action, and the
lack cost him his life. The man who died had every
idea the other man had and a lot more. He knew

142 WHY THEY FAIL

he was in imminent dang'er just as well as the other,
and that he ought to make an effort to save himself,
but when it came to action he went down. His
brain under impulse of i. greater fear suddenly gen-
erated even more energy than the other man's, but
unfortunately it "irradiated" into the wrong chan-
nels opened by previous movements, which, how-
ever desirable they might have been under other
circumstances, were not adapted to this particular
situation. Failure to co-ordinate his knowledge to
action cost him his life.

Even so neurones of business, politics, art, letters,
and craftsmanship, with their varied connecting neu-
rones, are valuable enough, and all but indispensable
to the world, but severally or collectively they avail
little or nothing when the superintendent of mis-
sions faces their owners with his plea for China or
the slums of the home city. Another distinct set of
association neurones is needed there, and the failure
to co-ordinate knowledge and action there costs the
lives of many and the happiness of millions every
year.

A fourth essential feature of this remedy for the
relaxed and inefficient moral conditions which pre-
vail and must continue to prevail as long as we
go on in the same old way is this.

(4) The remedy must be applied in youth if it is
to be most efEcacioiis. The reason for that also is
physiological. It rests in the peculiar nature of
the brain tissue and the laws which govern it. In
a general way we are all familiar v^^ith the state-
ment that "youth is the time for improvement,"
but it may be well to refresh our minds as to why
that is so. To gain a just appreciation of that is to
redouble our efforts in behalf of the bo3^s and girls of
to-day. The}^, as the men and women of to-morrow,

WHZ THEY FAIL 143

will be largely what we make them. The future is,
therefore, in our hands, and we being dead must yet
go on speaking. How great is our responsibility and
how glorious is our opportunity!

If you were to follow in the footsteps of the heroes
and heroines of the Cross and go into the heart of
heathen China with those two dear little children of
yours, who are just now preparing to enter a kin-
dergarten school, you would find that though you
labored diligently with all your full-blown powers
for many hours each day on that marvelously
crooked and difficult language, that long before you
had begun to do anything with it those flaxen-haired
pets would be exchanging confidences over their
mud pies with their diminutive almond-eyed neigh-
bors. And if you stayed there all the rest of your
life and devoted yourself assiduously to the study
of that tongue, the chances are you would never
have as fluent a command of it as would your chil-
dren to whom it came like their food and raiment,
without worry or toil.

Now why is that? The reason is found in the fact
that your brain, by the time it got to China, was not
only tougher and less impressionable than those of
the children, but that it had already gotten a great
number of tracks ready-made into which nervous
influences easily slipped, according to that law which
orders that all forces shall take the path of least
resistance. Your brain, by years of training has
been built and shaped to receive western sounds and
western ideas. As it is thus, from a Chinese lan-
guage standpoint not only malformed, but older and
tougher, and less responsive to and less retentive of,
the new thing whatever it be, the child has naturally
a long advantage. Any piano teacher will tell you
that he or she would rather have as a pupil a child

144 WHY THEY FAIL

which had never seen a piano than to have one vi^ho
had been wrongly instructed.

It is amazing and mortifying to find how the
habits of early childhood cling to us and trip us up
in manhood. Years of vigilance and self-control
will be undone in some exciting moment by a word
that betrays the plebeian origin. The burr will stick
in the speech, the gaucherie will come out in some
ill-chosen article of dress. "If the period between
twenty and thirty is the critical one in the forma-
tion of intellectual and professional habits," says
an eminent psychologist, "the period below twenty
is more important still for the fixing of personal
habits, properly so-called, such as vocalization and
pronunciation, gesture, motion and address. Hardly
ever is a language spoken after twenty spoken with-
out a foreign accent ; hardly ever can a youth trans-
ferred to the society of his betters unlearn the na-
sality and other vices of speech bred in him by the
associations of his growing years; hardly ever in-
deed, no matter how much money there be in his
pocket can he learn to dress like the gentleman
born."

Leland tells us the like thing regarding other mus-
cles. From seven to fourteen years of age, he says,
(the most active period of growth of that part of the
brain co-ordinating the muscles of the hand) a
dexterity is acquired which diminishes with suc-
ceeding years. This is the golden age of education.
The body is being built and what you v/ant in it in
manhood should be built into it then. The child that
goes through those years suffering from malnutri-
tion will never have the body in adult life which it
would have had had it been well fed, no matter
how carefully it may be fed and tended in later life.
The metabolism of the body is changed. It has an
altered set which is not what it should and would

WHY THEY FAIL 145

otherwise have been. Nature will do the best pos-
sible for us every time, but once she has done the
best with the materials we have given her during
those tender years of construction, she will never
pull down the house to build it again, however she
may labor to modify some of its parts. The body
receives its shape during the construction period.

Dr. Carpenter, the eminent physiologist and
anatomist, has given us words of wisdom on this
point in his "Mental Physiology," p339f.

"It is a matter of universal experience that every
kind of training for special aptitudes is both far
more effective, and leaves a more permanent im-
press, when exerted on the grozving organism than
when brought to bear on the adult. The effect of
such training is shown in the tendency of the or-
ganization to 'grow to' the mode in which it is
habitually exercised; as is evidenced by the in-
creased size and power of particular muscles, and
the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are ac-
quired by such as have been early exercised in gym-
nastic performances. There is no part of the organ-
ism of man in which the reconstructive activity is
so great, during the whole period of life, as it is in
the ganglionic substance of the brain. This is in-
dicated by the enormous supply of blood which it
receives. . . . It is moreover a fact of great
significance that the nerve substance is especially
distinguished by its reparative power. For while
injuries of other tissues (such as the muscular)
which are distinguished by the specialty of their
structure and endowments, are repaired by sub-
stance of a lower or less specialized type, those of
nerve svibstance are repaired by a complete repro-
duction of the normal tissue ; as is evidenced by the
sensibility of the newly-formed skin."

After noting that this reconstruction is always

146 WHY THEY FAIL

according to a "determinate type" he says: "But
this type is pecuHarly liable to modification during
the early period of life, in which the functional
activity of the nervous system (and particularly of
the brain) is extraordinarily great, and the recon-
structive process proportionately active. . . .

"There is no reason to regard the cerebrum as an
exception to the general principle, that, while each
part of the organism tends to form itself, in accord-
ance with the mode in which it is habitually ever-
cised, this tendency will be especially strong in the
nervous apparatus, in virtue of that incessant re-
generation which is the very condition of its func-
tional activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits of doubt
that every state of ideational consciousness which
is very strong or is habitually repeated leaves an
organic impression on the cerebrum ; in virtue of
which that same state may be reproduced at any
time, in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite
it. . . . The strength of early association is a
fact so universally recognized that the expression
of it has become proverbial; and this precisely ac-
cords with the physiological principle that, during
the period of growth and development, the formative
activity of the brain will be most amenable to direct-
ing influences. It is in this way that what is early
learned 'by heart' becomes branded in (as it were)
upon the cerebrum ; so that its traces are never lost,
even though the conscious memory of it may have
faded out. For when the organized modification
has been once fixed in the growing brain, it becomes
a part of the normal fabric, and is regularly main-
tained by nutritive substitution; so that it may en-
dure to the end of life like the scar of a wound."

It would certainly not be fair to the fact to say
that the importance of childhood has been sadly
overlooked. This century has been more than once

WHY THEY FAIL 147

hailed as belonging to the children so far as edu-
cation is concerned ; but all the extra energy born
of the shifting emphasis has gone down the same old
unprofitable hole. What we need is to hear more
about the unbounded opportunities afifordcd us to
shape the destinies of to-morrow and then get wiser
in shaping the character of its men to-day. For there
is absolutely no day like this one. The chances we
lose can never be regained. If we fail the failure is
most deplorable because no after years can, under
any possible circumstances, do so much for the man
who must follow us and take up our burdens. The
brain receives its "set" while it is growing. There
is so much solemn meaning in this fact, such dread
significance, that a second quotation from Dr. Car-
penter will surely not be out of the way.

"From the time that the brain has attained its
full maturity, the acquirement of new modes of ac-
tion and the discontinuance of those which have
become habitual, are alike difficult. Both the in-
tellectual and moral character have become in a
great degree fixed ; so that although new impres-
sions are being constantly received, they have much
less power in directly psychical action than they
had at an earlier period — that course being hence-
forth rather determined by the established uniformi-
ties, and by the volitional power of selected atten-
tion. The readiness with which new knowledge is
now acquired depends much more on the degree
in which it "fits in" with those previous habits of
thought, which are the expression of the nutritive
maintenance of the cerebral mechanism, than it does
upon the recording power which expresses a new
formation."

The confirmation of that paragraph is not far to
seek. Recall, if you can, one new idea countering
the received ideas of its time which did not have to

148 WHY THEY FAIL

fight for its life. And the older we get the harder
it is to get a new idea into the warp and woof of
our natures — unless of course they "fit in" with our
preconceived notions. People are "strangers" to us
simply because they have to be "fitted in" to our
modes of thought and feeling. To be the friend of
a friend is a mighty help toward our acquaintance
for that very reason.

Apropos of the thought expressed by Dr. Car-
penter, a very terse and pungent paragraph from
Prof. Starbuck may be made. He is speaking of the
importance of youth as the time to get in our work
of moral training in the public school.

"It is next to impossible to reform an old, ex-
perienced sinner, a political traitor, or a social
grafter of threescore years. His spinal cord is thor-
oughly organized around evil and all the atoms of
his being play in tune to unworthy impulses. To
make him over into a righteous citizen is about as
impossible as to hope to harvest luscious fruit from
a gnarled and blasted tree. Nothing short of fire
in this world or the next will purge him ; and when
the purging is done, there is left no more of good
than is to be found in the little child and that with-
out promise of a rich and beautiful future. The
one great hope of social evolution is in beginning
afresh with each new generation of children."

And if anything further be needed to prove the
unparalleled meaning of youthful years, the reader
is referred to the inductive studies of conversion and
religious experience as presented by men like Prof.
Starbuck, Coe and Lancaster. They will tell you
that the cold facts gathered up by them show that
all years are not the same when it comes to entering
the Kingdom of God. That belongs very largely to
the years between ten and twenty-five, with the
majority of conversions occurring under sixteen.

WHY THEY FAIL 149

From sixteen they decline rapidly to twenty and
beyond thirty are rare occurrences. Out of 1784 con-
versions, Prof. Coe found the average age of con-
version to be 16.4 years. It is at this age, i. e., just
before and including sixteen "there takes place a
transformation more profound than any other be-
tween birth and death."

However, this book is concerned with education,
not evangelism. Let no one confuse the issue and in
haste throw the book down under the impression
that the writer has missed the mark entirely and
is preaching a gospel of culture instead of a gospel
of regeneration by the Spirit of God. It is pre-
cisely because he does believe in the great atoning
Cross as the only hope of the world that he has
been at pains to write these lines.

The old system of education has failed, not be-
cause it is wrong, but because it is incomplete. In
the high places they have discovered this and are
seeking to add to their pedagogical arsenal the new
weapon of reflex action. Prof. Shailer Matthews,
Dean of the Divinity School of Chicago University,
urges that seminary students spend less time, say
twelve to sixteen hours a week, in the class-room,
and most of the balance of the time in practical re-
ligious work under a director of practical work —
boys' club, settlement work, charity organizations,
or other form of social action. What is that but
the manual training principle (that we best learn
anything by doing it) applied to theological
training?

In Forman College, India, students are being
similarly taught practical Christianity by social ac-
tion. In national calamities, such as earthquakes or
famines, they are sent out collecting grain or find-
ing out who are really most needy. Is it malaria
that oppresses the poor? Then they find them out

150 WHY THEY FAIL

and administer practical Christianity in the form of
quinine. Is it the plague? Then they inoculate the
people wholesale, write letters for the sick in the
hospital, and when they go home for the vacation,
open up a school for the illiterate. Is it any wonder
Prof. D. J. Fleming, M.A., of that institution should
say, "This experience better than any lecture
brought before those students the poverty and suf-
fering of the submerged classes and inspired them
with a desire to alleviate their social, moral and
physical condition."

But why, we ask, did that "inspire" them? Be-
cause correlated motor discharges give "vividness"
to any idea; because action is the normal comple-
ment to every impression ; and because pleasure at-
tends the natural functioning of any part of our
physical nature, being in line with growth and prog-
ress. Who can but praise the wisdom of those
educators who are thus indeed trying to get their
religion out of the cloister and into the market-place,
and what man is there but feels in his soul that what
they have done is right and bound to produce a bet-
ter type of parson than the one whose nose has been
screwed down to books throughout his theological
covirse ?

Even the very penitentiaries are catching a gleam
of the coming day and preaching a new gospel of
hope — that the criminil be taught to respect him-
self, being made worthy of his own self-respect by
the mastery of a trade which will give him the means
of livelihood when he gets out, and while he is in
will enable him to discharge in some measure as a
man, those obligations to support his family from
which he cannot be absolved by the accident of
his incarceration. As Warden McClaughrey, of
Fort Leavenworth, Kas., puts it: "The new crimi-
nology aims at nothing less than the suppression of

WHY THEY F'AIi: 151

evil habits and the replacing of them by their op-
posites ; in other words the wearing of paths in the
brain which shall ofifer less resistance than the old
familiar paths ; the creation of new habits of thought,
speech and action, wnth or without the consent of
the convict himself. This is a task of tremendous
difficulty. It is revolution by means of evolution."

Shall seminaries and penitentiaries, belated fol-
lowers of all who have taught in practical fields from
the days of Tubal Cain to our own, hear the une-
quivocal dictum of that Voice which speaks with an
authority that no man can gainsay or resist, and
our churches and Sunday-schools alone remain deaf
as an adder to the cry? We believe not.

"The chief end of man is an action not a thought,"
says Carlyle, and Emerson, his friend, adds, "Ac-
tion is education." So it is, and right action is right
education. It is our business, if we would truly ed-
ucate the young, to map out for them those courses
of action which will not only give practical content
and value to our precepts, but by their reflex action
give power and disposition to do the like when they,
have come to man's estate.

152 WHY THEY FAIL

Foreword to Chapter V

"Every mason in the quarry, every builder on the

shore,
Every chopper in the palm grove, every raftsman

at the oar;
Hewing wood or drawing water, splitting stones

or cleaving sod,
Fill the dusty ranks of labor in the regiment of God ;
March together toward his triumph, do the task

his hands prepare,
Honest toil is holy service, faithful work is praise

and prayer."

CHAPTER V

A CONTRIBUTION

It is one thing to recognize a need but quite an-
other to see just how that need is to be met. Men
in all ages have recognized the fact that to be able
to fly would be highly advantageous. Many vain
attempts to do so were made by the Darius Greens
of invention, but the essential principle of levita-
tion escaped them until very recently, and even
then, when that principle was discovered, it re-
mained a useless bit of information till the Lang-
leys, Wrights, Curtisses, and others found tangible
means of linking it with human affairs. Mechanical
principles are of little use unless we know how to
apply them. And so with these principles under
discussion. The need has been made manifest, the
principles calculated to meet it have been set forth,

WHY THEY FAIL 153

but we shall not on that account get any "forrader"
unless we find helpful ways of applying the one to
the other.

Now that is not perhaps so simple as it looks.
Years of patient, painstaking toil were spent in per-
fecting the first heavier-than-air flying machine
after it was discovered that that was the thing to
have, and there is still much to be done to it before
it becomes dangerous to steam and electric trac-
tion dividends. So it may be that the finding of the
proper means of expression for the ethical emotions
and ideas we have been creating in the home, the
church and its subsidiary organizations, particu-
larly the Sunday-school, will not be apparent at a
glance. That must come by a process of intel-
lectual evolution, by a long process of intellectual
invention. There must be the usual experience of
elimination and a growing scrap-heap. Better
methods can be built only on the ruins of the old.
Natural selection and survival of the fit will here,
as elsewhere, operate to produce ever finer types,
so that our best attempts will appear in twenty
years or less almost grotesque, and much as a Watt
engine looks beside a Corliss. But no one on that
account despises the Watt or forgets that it was a long
advance on the traction methods of its day.

In this chapter the writer presents for what it is
worth a small contribution toward that great sec-
ondary problem of finding adequate means of trans-
lating good impression into correlative good action
in order that the brain of the pupil may achieve a
balanced ethical development, ethical action and
association neurones being built up to correspond
in number, variety and power to those ideational
and emotional cells we have endeavored so assidu-
ously and successfully to create. Can we but ac-
complish that we shall find the world immeasurably

154 WHY THEY FAIL

the better for our having done it. Our successors in
ofifice will find it much easier to be good than we
ever found it, and if they be not ungrateful they
will bless us accordingly. The new contribution
comes in the shape of a new organization.

"Mercy on us!" "Heaven help us!" 'The
dear saints forgive him!" do we hear you cry?
Dear, distracted, overburdened worker, stooping
now under the burden of more meetings than you
can carry, wait a bit. Do not hang the writer till
you have read this chapter through. The case is
really nothing like so bad as it looks — mainly be-
cause he was a fellow sufferer with you and there-
fore was able to sympathize with those who are
overburdened.

Perhaps it would be correct to say that the new
comer is an institution rather than an organization.
It has a name, of course, since it couldn't get along
very well without one. It is called The Industrial
Guild of the Great Commission. That is a pretty
big name to be sure ; but then "there are others."
For instance, The Baptist Young People's Union of
America; The Epworth League of Christian En-
deavor; The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals ; The Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Distant Parts ; The Independent Order of
Good Templars ; The Ancient Order of Free and
Accepted Masons, to say nothing of a score of others
more or less renowned. In fact, it v^ould seem that
a society to make progress at all must spread a good
deal of sail to the breeze.

The emblem of the Industrial Guild of the Great
Commission is the world upon a coin and its motto
consists of the two simple and significant words of
cur Savior in his last Great Commission, "Go Ye."
The Guild is therefore, as its name would imply, a
missionary institution. The reason for that is, that,

WHY THEY FAIL 155

as its work is mainly educational, it is necessary to
give it the proper horizon. Any education which
does not embrace the world, is, in this twentieth
century, incomplete and insufficient for the needs
of the day. The very clerks in the business houses
down town must now do their work with one finger
on an atlas of the world. Nothing so lifts the soul
out of itself as the challenge of a great enterpri .
As James ]\Iartineau observes, " A soul occupied
with great ideas best performs small duties." If we
would raise a race of imperial men we must set be-
fore them an imperial horizon. The parish boun-
dary will not do. Hence, the world is our domain.
I The I. G. G. C. is therefore a missionar} institu-
tion. It seeks to give effect to the Savior's parting
injunction, "Go ye into all the world, and make dis-
ciples of all nations." This it seeks to accomplish
in two ways (a) by making some ready money for
the purpose, ince that is an imperative need of the
hour, and (b) by helping to raise a new race of men
and women who shall recognize their world obliga-
tions and stand up to them. That is, the I. G. G. C.
has two functions, one of which is financial and the
other educational. In it we make money for mis-
sions it is true, but we make money in order to
make men and women in the making of it. The
making of the money is, with us, so far as our
juniors are concerned, everything; the money itself,
if it goes to that, is a mere incidental, though poten-
tially by no means a small one.

The I. G. G. C. recognizes several great facts such
as these as fundamental reasons for its existence ;
That the ^Master said, ''Go ye into all the world."
That we have not gone. After nineteen centuries
he still waits for his wishes to be given effect. That
back of that Great Task which he has given us there
lies a great Problem, that of finance. That the Task

156 1VHY THEY FAIL

will never be done till we first solve that problem
of finance. That it is possible to solve that great
problem of finance without burdening anybody, and in-
deed, without making any one any poorer. And that if
this Task is ever to be done, it will be done by a
race of men who have been properly trained to the
Task, i. e,, by men who not only know what they
ought to do but are ethically, and shall we not say
physically, able to do it.

That the Master told us to go, that we haven't
yet gone effectively, and that we cannot go without
money needs no discussion, but a word or two may
be said about some of the other propositions. For
instance, this one, that the problem of missions is
chiefly one of finance to-day. Were our Mission-
ary Boards able to say, we have fifty millions in
our treasury and we want men and women to give
their lives to the carrying out of Christ's last
command, candidates would come forward in swarms.
They would rise up in every hamlet and offer
themselves. When Dr. A. B. Simpson, of the Chris-
tian and Missionary Alliance, made one of his
great appeals for money, and seventy thousand dollars
was laid on the altar in one day, he followed it
with an appeal for men and women to devote their
lives to the Great Task, and one hundred men and
■women in that one congregation rose up saying,
"Here am I, send me."

And it will not do to say that such mushroom
candidates are not fit for the work. Who is, in his
raw state when he is first caught? But they could
be trained and made fit to serve in some capacity.
One of the chief needs of China at the present hour
is that of Christian public-school teachers.

Another statement which probably requires eluci-
dation is that one to the effect that this money could
be raised without making anybody the poorer. The

WHY THEY FAIL 157

basis of that statement is this: There is enough
time and economic opportunity going to waste
every year to evangehze the world if we would
simply organize our forces sufficiently to put them
to economic use. It is that great fund of spare time
which the Industrial Guild proposes to tap to
profit withal. This for two reasons, first because
it ought to be tapped, and secondly because incomes
and bank-accounts belong by prior right to the other
organizations. That is their legitimate field and it
would not be fair to encroach on it. Again, there
would be no sense in raising up another organiza-
tion to do what is already being done, or what others
already in existence are well calculated to do. More-
over, the I. G. G. C. would defeat its own ends if
it sought to work by their methods. It is only
as it sticks religiously to its own field of action and
does its work in its own way that it has any
meaning at all, or any right to exist. It is not de-
signed to take the place of any organization already
existing or to interfere with them in any way. It is
in no sense a substitute for anything we have and
its sphere of action is quite distinct from that of
the ordinary church activities. So much might be
expected from the nature of the fundamentum, its
express purpose of educating not by precept but by
action.

In its present stage of development the I. G. G. C.
is adapted to the rural and semi-rural communities
rather than to the urban. No serious attempt has
yet been made to apply it to the conditions pre-
vailing in our congested centers of population. To
meet those highly specialized and difficult condi-
tions radical changes would no doubt have to be
made in its method of working, if indeed, something
entirely difi"erent would not be better. But for rural
and semi-rural conditions, the I. G. G. C. seems

158 WHY THEY FAIL

peculiarly well fitted. Of course there is a section
of the city-church constituency in which it would
be possible to operate the Guild, but so far as we are
concerned just now the big cities may be left out
of count.

Perhaps they won't mind being left out of count
for once while their rural neighbors for once get a
chance. The country church and district have never
yet come to their own. Everything good seems
to go to the city ai.d the city church, passing
through the rural districts just as fast as the ex-
press trains can carry them ; and apparently the
only reason why they don't go through faster is
because the express trains haven't the steam. Of
course the reason for that is that more ears can
be had in a day in the city than could be reached in
a week in the country. The neighbors are close
together, and if not, they have means of rapid tran-
sit which amounts to the same thing so far as a
meeting is concerned.

For all that, it is time the rural districts got a
chance. The cities and the nation are immeasurably
indebted to them. Many of the very finest people
on God's green earth live in the country. There
are myriads of noble hearts there. The country boy
may or may not have burrs in his hair and in his
speech, but he is apt to have a heart of gold, and
it is much better for humanity that a boy should
have burrs in his manners and be golden at heart
than to be golden in manners and have a heart
full of weeds.

The fact is we have never yet sufficiently recog-
nized the value of our rural inheritance nor planned
adequately for its development. The best that is
in our cities has come from the country districts,
not from foreign ports, and the biggest balance
wheel the nation has is its farmer's vote, whatever

WHY, THEY FAIL 159

may be said to "tickle the ears of the groundlings. '
When the Anti-Saloon League set out to down
the liquor octopus which has been slowly strangling
the nation in her cities, they began in the country.
They recognized that the cities were corrupt and
controlled by graft, vice and whiskey, and that
the only possible source of cleansing the slime was
by turning into them the purer waters from the
waving cornfields and upland meadows. They
recognized the fact that three votes to one are rural
in this country after all, notwithstanding the smoke
from mighty chimneys darkening the sky, and the
masts of our commerce in city ports, and all the
uproar of traffic and the great power wielded by
city dailies and city-made magazines. The vote
is what counts in the last analysis, and the League
did a shrewd stroke of business when it began to
cinch up the cities with that rural vote. The result
of the policy has been felt in too many states to
need Turther comment here.

Three things the L G. G. C. takes into account
in selecting, like the x*\nti-Saloon League, the rural
districts and small towns for its chief sphere of
action ; the first is that the country has been rela-
tively neglected; the second is that it is the chief
source of the nation's wealth in manhood, in food-
stuffs, in raw material, and also from our stand-
point, in economic opportunities ; and the third is
that the ethical and spiritual dry rot is extending
downward and outward till it invades that last cita-
del of the nation's righteousness, the country home.
iThe hired man has about quit going to church.

It is not an idle thing that President Roosevelt's
Rural Commission should, in its finding, tell us that
the country school and the country church are
the centers from which psychical helpfulness must
come to the rural neighborhood. But if the country

160 WHZ THEY FAIL

church is to be most helpful she must herself be
helped. Some way must be found by which the
inspiration of our great gatherings and our great
leaders can be brought to bear more directly on the
rural neighborhood through the rural church. A
colossal task that beyond question, chiefly because
of the long hours on the farm and the endless
chores.

Perhaps in this case "the longest way 'round"
may be found "the shortest way home" and the
I. G. G. C. policy of saving the man of to-morrow
by going after the boy of to-day may be the truest
solution of the difficulty. If we can only once get a
race of men who will be delivered from the thrall-
dom of mere things, everything else will fall into its
right place and there will be found time for the
higher goods.

That is one of the ends the I. G. G. C. has in
view so far as the juveniles of our extra-urban com-
munities are concerned. And when we speak for
extra-urban communities, that is for communities
having anywhere up to eight thousand population,
we are speaking, according to the United States
census of ten years ago, of two-thirds of the popu-
lation of the United States. Also, when speaking
generally of the I. G. G. C. work it will be under-
stood of course that whatever is said of the boy
applies, mutatis mutandis, to his sister. Since it is
inconvenient to be saying the boy and the girl all
the time, we shall let the boy do as his father
has had to do in politics, but as he assuredly by
the drift of things will not have to do later — let
him represent the girl also.

In its conception of ethical education the I. G.
G. C. recognizes four great qualities as being the
cardinal points in the compass of an imperial char-
acter. These are manliness, honesty, beneficence

WHY THEY FAIL 161

and practicality. There are of course many other
shining qualities, such as industry, neatness, accur-
acy, punctuality, obedience, regularity, etc. but
these points are merely supplementary; they are
not the grand essentials. Abe Reuf or a highway-
man might and probably does, possess them all.
Incidentally they are valuable in life's training but
they do not make the man. They adorn him ; they
make him more efficient, but they do not constitute
his manhood and character. On the other hand,
if you get a man in whom manliness, honesty, bene-
ficence and practicality are well developed you have
a man indeed, a man whom all must respect and
even love. Those four qualities are the four corner-
stones of an imperial character, speaking from the
standpoint of the home and the Sunday-school.

Elsewhere it was pointed out that if we are to
remedy the moral conditions prevailing, we must
distinguish sharply between the boy's soul and his
intellect. Intellect surely does count in the make-up
of an imperial character; but as that part of the
business is being admirably attended to in the vari-
ous orders of state school it has not seemed neces-
sary to speak of it here particularly — especially
since it is not the business of the home and the
Sunday-school to do that work. It has been dele-
gated to others. Church and Sunday-school may
and undoubtedly do aid in the intellectual develop-
ment of their youthful charges, but that is not their
purpose in life. They exist to help the homes in
the making of men and women, leading them to
Christ, the Savior of men, and then helping to fash-
ion their characters into His image.

"Intellect like ice, is colorless, no one has more of
it than the Devil," said Dr. Cunningham Geikie
once, and there is profound meaning in the remark.
Development of a boy's intellect doesn't necessarily

162 WHY THEY FAIL

mean development of good character. A man might
have a brilHant intellect cultivated to the nth de-
gree and yet be sadly lacking in every one of the
four cardinal qualities mentioned above. We must
recognize that at any rate three of those qualities
belong to the soul of your boy, that is to the boy
himself, as distinguished from that functioning of
his soul which we call intellect, the boy observing,
memorizing, discriminating, etc., etc. ; and the care of
the boy's soul, that is himself, God Almighty en-
trusts primarily to teachers who hold their certifi-
cates not from any college or state board of
education, but directly from heaven. That responsi-
bility cannot be delegated to others, howsoever the
shift may be attempted. Incidentally the public
school may help, but the help at present is only
incidental for it takes that institution about all its
time to load your boy up with certain necessary
information, and to sharpen his wits in order that
he may live and make his way creditably in his day
and generation. The Church and the Sunday-school
may help at the task and are anxious to do so.
That is what they are there for. In fact it is their
main business to help ; but to help to do a thing
is not to do it, it is only to help ; and so the burden
of the development of the four chief pillars of
character in your boy's soul falls back on those
whom God has ordained and commissioned to the
task — a task which none other may so well do.

Let us now consider at close range the I. G. G. C.
in its practical working and its educational bear-
ing on the problem before us, that of turning out a
man who shall be as

"A tower of strength
That stands four square to every wind that blows."

WHZ THEY F'AIL 163

The Industrial Guild of the Great Commission
has two functions and two classes of members. Its
functions are financial and educational and its mem-
bers are seniors and juniors. The juniors range in
age from five to sixteen ; the seniors may be any-
where from sixteen to one hundred and sixteen. The
membership is broken up into small group units
of production that we call firms. One or more may
constitute a firm. If they are under sixteen we like
to see two, three, four or even in exceptional cases
five, in a firm. Where they are under sixteen we
like to see some adult hooked up with them, and
if not, there must be some older one who will have
a kindly supervision of what the firm is doing.
Judgment is exercised in the organization of these
partnerships to let them be insofar as possible, con-
genial groups and competent. Care is taken on the
one hand to see that the group is not so small as to
make the work it undertakes a burden, and on the
other to see that the group is not so large that the
members feel no sense of individual responsibility
and are falling over one another. The firms, like
the big firms downtown, go under firm names, such
as "James Cook & Co."; "Brown & Brown"; "Hess
& Son" ; "The Red Deer Trading Co." ; "Summer-
land Supply Co."; and so on. From the merchants'
signs in the village or town the children soon catch
the idea. Maybe in the talk that goes with the
search for a satisfactory firm name they get a grain
of commercial education and their first introduction
to the business world. As the youngsters are am-
bitious to be and do like grown-up folk they absorb
the information greedily.

Each firm has a goal of endeavor for the year;
it sets out to make a sum equal to one cent a day
for every working day of the year, that is $3.12.
If the members of a firm are over sixteen, that is

164 WHY THEY FAIL

the goal for each member of the firm, but where
juniors are concerned the burden would generally
be too much for one, and hence the requirement
of two or more, and preferably three or four, to
raise that amount. The reason for this is that our
work is primarily and fundamentally educational
so far as they are concerned, and we are dealing
with a very powerful instrument of education, viz.,
reflex action. "Action and reaction are equal and
opposite," and it would therefore be very bad busi-
ness to overwork the boy. If little Billy lifts so
hard to-day that he bursts his suspenders the
chances are he won't lift at all to-morrow. Action
and reaction will be equal and opposite. Therefore
we seek to give him just such a task as he will be
able to accomplish comfortably and yet feel that he
has accomplished something worth while. It is not
what he makes that matters but how he makes it
and why he makes it, and what he thinks and feels
about it while he is making it.

There is another reason for introducing the co-
operative idea ; it not only strengthens the firm
from a commercial standpoint, since the threefold
cord is not quickly broken, but it gives play to the
social instincts which need developing on that
plane. Boys, like all good birds, are gregarious.
Buzzards may go alone but boys wont. They crave
companionship. This they usually get so far as
their play and their studies are concerned, but so
far as their commercial instincts are concerned
there has been little opportunity to travel together.
Yet the day comes when it will be on that plane
almost wholly he will be rubbing shoulders with
his fellows. The play will have dwindled to an
occasional hour in the evening or of a Saturday after-
noon ; the books will have become only an indistinct
dream, and a bad one at that it may be, and the

WHY THEY FAIL 165

man's days and nights will be given up to scheming
ways of overreaching his competitors.

We all recognize the value of team-play in a boy's
life and can readily see how it rubs the corners ofif
him. To have the other fellow's elbows in his ribs —
especially if, as generally is the case, the other
fellow be a bigger boy; and to be "called down"
in the remorseless, inconsiderate, and highly un-
parliamentary language which characterizes the vo-
cabulary of youth in its more savage moments, is a
social education which is just as valuable as any
other he gets from the teachers his father so cheer-
fully supports. It is not of the north wind that
at a certain age boys begin to develop the gang
spirit. It is nature's way of preparing them for the
citizenship of the future. Were we all living in a
state of nature we might let it go at that, but in-
asmuch as we are not and never shall be, in all
probability, but are destined to a future of marvel-
ous commercial adjustments and interplay of com-
mercial feelings, would it not be well for us to
provide some kind of small theater on which those
instincts might become operative under a just,
liberal and kindly management? The boy who is
all the time "swapping" jack-knives will get along
well anyhow in this commercial age, if by the term
"well" we mean simply the piling up around him of
this world's goods ; but there are only a few such
born traders in every school-room; the majority
have to be made later on.

"Woe unto him that is alone when he falleth,"
and "How can one be v\^arm alone?" So we intro-
duce the co-operative principle, introduce the gang
spirit, turn work into play, strengthen our combina-
tion and prepare our bo)^s by the requirement of
justice, foresight, and attention to a business that
is real and their very own if small, better to under-

166 WHY THEY FAIL

stand and better to carry themselves in the larger
but not essentially different affairs of to-morrow
into which most of them will certainly be plunged.
We say not essentially different, but possibly that
requires a word of qualification. It may be that
to-morrow we shall see a new kind of commercial
co-operation — one based on justice and kindness,
not on wolfish repacity — such as Kipling describes
when he says :

"Now this is the law of the jungle as old and as

true as the sky ;
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but

the wolf that shall break it must die,
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law

runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the zvolf, and the

strength of the wolf is the pack.
Now these are the laws of the jungle, and many

and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the law and the haunch

and the hump is 'Obey!' "

There are not wanting signs in the sky that a
change is at hand, and our boys may yet see the
industrial group selfishness which is built on the
ruins of the old individualistic, competitive selfish-
ness, give place to co-operative-group industrial ac-
tion which will be based on the divine right of
every man and every woman to "life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness."

As the firms in the Industrial Guild are real firms,
they go into real business for the express purpose of
making that cent a day to help carry out the last
wish and command of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In
order that there may be no danger of interfering
with the revenues of other missionary organizations
it is very clearly understood that what they do in

WHY THEY FAIL 167

the ^iiild is not to be made a substitute for any
other giving. It is impressed upon them that this is
an "extra mile of service" for the Master as a per-
sonal love token to Him, or as an effort to help
those whom He would help. In fact the enroll-
ment card reads as follows:

"I promise to endeavor to make one cent a day
EXTRA this year toward carrying out the Great
Commission of Jesus Christ. By extra, I under-
stand new money made for that express purpose,
and I further understand that it is not to be a sub-
stitute for, or to stand in the way of any other giving."

The reasons for this are economic, politic and
educational. We take no gifts save time from any-
body. Gifts of money are always refused. We
say, "Give them to the others; that's their line."
As for ourselves we say, "We want money; let
us go out and make it. They are making money all
around us for everything else ; let us make sortie for
this. We can do it in our spare time, and if ex-
penses be a first charge against the product then
we shall be nothing out of pocket — nothing except
a little spare time, which would have been lost any-
how." If a man says, "I am doing all I can now,"
we say, "then the guild is no place for you ; it is only
for some of the rest of us who haven't been doing
as much as we might and are going to take another
turn at it this year."

But it is chiefly because our work is educational
that we insist most strenuously on this method of
procedure. That will be more apparent in a mo-
ment or two as the application in concrete cases
comes into view. The firms go into all kinds of
business, but in every instance before a cent is
given to missions the expenses of operation must
be taken out and paid back to whoever put up the
money. In some lines of business the time element

168 WHY THEY FAIL

is very large and raw material costs little or noth-
ing; in others the raw material costs quite a little
while the time is not so prominent. Activities are very
varied in adult membership, and the money is made
in a score of different ways; gifts, aptitudes, train-
ing and opportunity determining the route taken
as in ordinary every-day life. Here is a music
teacher who looks up an extra pupil for a quarter's
lessons and so makes her money ; here is a book-
keeper who keeps an extra set of books on purpose
to help extend the Kingdom of God ; here is another
doing some tutoring at so much per toot ; and so
on with painting, sewing, singing, typewriting, bak-
ing, scrubbing, knitting, darning socks for bachelor
friends or even playing the angel of mercy and clean-
ing up their shacks occasionally. Carpenters look
up an extra job fixing fences or making hen coops
or bookcases ; and so on with plumbers, painters,
printers and other craftsmen and laborers. One man
writes that he made his extra contribution by
"digging a grave on Sunday." Others of a more
sporty turn take to the woods with gun or rod and
sell the product, but the simplest, and, so far as
our juniors are concerned, the most general and
possibly the most ideal lines of business, are those
afforded by agriculture and horticulture, though
poultry, stock raising, hog raising and such kindred
pursuits as the breeding of canaries, pigeons, etc.,
for market, are almost equally good. Other things
being equal, or even tolerable, the most valuable
lines of activity for boys and girls are those which
not only call them out of doors but which make the
strongest appeal to the altruistic in their natures,
and which afford the greatest number of reflexes.
For this reason whatever may be said of adults it
would be a mistake so far as a boy is concerned
to put a premium on hunting and trapping rather

WHY THEY FAIL 169

than on the other quieter pursuits named; for while
the hunting may not be unprofitable, and while it
certainly is good for his health, and educative of
some of his faculties, such as observation and prac-
tical judgment, it may have a tendency to empha-
size the destructive and the heartless, which quali-
ties in many boys are already so strong as to need
no encouragement.

A few illustrations drawn from life now will
serve to set forth in clear relief our I. G. G. C.
education in the school of things as they are. It
will be remembered that the problem before us is
that of turning out a man who is ethically fit, i. e.,
one who not only knows the good but finds him-
self both able and willing to do it. That is a
consummation devoutly to be wished for, and the
first step toward the goal will be to do just as we
have been trying to do — hold up the ideal before
him. Only, as our Sunday-school teachers are tell-
ing us, let us have more of it. There is no substitu-
tion for that. It is God's first principle of education
and it is absolutely indispensable. In the second
place, let us get the boy to do the good we would
have him do in manhood, and as he does it, silently,
unconsciously, he will gain not only the power
to do it but also the disposition to do it. And this
is the way it works. Let us take those four cardinal
qualities of an imperial character, manliness, hon-
esty, beneficence and practicality — seriatim, and
use the I. G. G. C. intelligently as one means of
applying the reflex principle to the building up of
those ethical action and association neurones in
the boy's brain, without which he must go through
life ethically halting — one of those "who with full
command of theory never get to holding their limp
characters erect," never get beyond the stage of
"empty gesture-making."

170 WHY THEY FAIL

MANLINESS

The problem then is to make a manly man. Well,
in the first place preach it, everybody, all the time,
just as usual. Secondly get your boy to do the
manly deed. And that is precisely what we seek
to do in the I. G. G. C. We say "Now boys we are not
going around this time with our hats in our hands
to ask money for the collection from anybody. We
will stand on our feet and do business like men."
And so we do, and this is how it works out :

Here are three boys let us say, of fourteen, twelve
and ten in one home. They are on the Guild books
the firm of James Cook & Co. James Cook & Co.
are going into the potato business, as a discussion
of the local trade conditions, climate, soil, adapta-
bility, etc., indicates that that would be more likely
to be a profitable line than beans, onions, straw-
berries or anything else. The firm decides to plant
a bushel of potatoes, nurse them along through the
Summer, dig them and sell them in the Fall, and,
after deducting all expenses, give the proceeds as a
special contribution toward sending someone out
to the less-favored places of the earth with the tid-
ings of salvation. Should the proceeds, after pay-
ing all expenses, amount to more than ^^.12, then
the balance belongs to the firm to do with as it
pleases. But care should be taken that that balance
be not excessive lest the egoistic come to supplant
the altruistic and the latter become even irksome.
This has happened in actual experience. So little
does greed need cultivation.

Well, the firm has been organized, the firm style
has been adopted, the planting-time has come and
the firm proceeds to business. But they no sooner
proceed to business than they learn, as their father
learned a long time before they made his acquaint-
ance, that business won't do itself. Unfortunately

WHY THEY FAIL 171

there are difficulties in the way. They have no seed.
Where shall they get it? Get it? Why get it from
father of course, whv.. they have been getting
things all their lives. So off to their father they go.
But there they run against a snag. The old gentle-
man, who is our coadjutor in this work and recog-
nizes that the cost of the potatoes is neither here
nor there in this process of education, but that how
they are obtained is very important, says very
suavely:

"Well, now boys, that is fine. I am in hearty
sympathy with the purpose your firm has in view,
and I would gladly give you the potatoes for such
a noble cause, but unfortunately I cannot, because,
you see, that institution doesn't take any gifts ex-
cept time from anybody. Now what are you going
to do about that?"'

Then there ensues a palaver with their "guide,
philosopher and friend," the upshot of which is they
get the potatoes on time with the understanding
that they pay for them in the Fall; so the firm
hands over its note for the fifty cents or whatever
it may be, with interest at six per cent, pater meas-
ures out a scripture measure bushel to them (ex-
ample being better than precept, especially where
we are the beneficiaries) and the boys start ofif with
a war-whoop for the garden back of the house
in which potatoes have been raised from time imme-
morial, and maybe from the time of Adam down,
for all they know to the contrary.

So far the affair is a perfectly legitimate business
transaction, for character is capital, dear reader,
down at the bank. A clean man can get an ac-
commodation when a crooked man can't, and their
clean young lives are good for the necessary capital
till their crop comes in in the Fall. But on the way
to the potato patch, a road that it has taken an

172 WHY THEY FAIL

hour and a half to cover, for perfectly valid reasons
known only to boys, they run into their paternal
ancestor once more, and he enquires where they
are going to plant their potatoes.

"In the potato patch, o' course." "Well, boys,
does your firm own that land on which you propose
to plant them?" Well, no, they can't just say that
their firm exactly owns the land, no, but — "Well,
now boys, you know the Industrial Guild is a busi-
ness institution which accepts no gifts except time,
and I'm afraid, therefore, I cannot give you the
land, much as I should like to do so, were the case
otherwise. Now what are you going to do about it?"

So another palaver ensues as a result of which
the boys agree to rent the land, at such a figure,
be it said entre nous, as will be reasonable from the
standpoint of their limited financial vision and re-
sources, however nominal it might appear to a rep-
resentative of Bradstreet's or Dun Wiman & Co.
This point is important though apparently trivial.
To rent the land at a price which they feel is purely
nominal is to subvert the very end we have in
view by putting a premium on trickery in helping
them to evade the conditions under which, in join-
ing the I, G. G. C., they have agreed to work.
We must remember it is not what we think but
what they think that counts, and doing is vastly
more significant than either hearing or seeing when
it comes to character building.

By this time the potatoes have been honorably
acquired and the rent obligation has been duly as-
sumed. Now they are sure that they are out of the
woods, so they sit down on the bag to rest once
more and talk matters over. Then they suddenly
remember that hoes are necessary and set off in a
race to the granary to .,^.t them. Armed with these
weapons they are marching back to the field when

WHY THEY FAIL 173

once more they run into their fi^ther. He wants to
know who owns those hoes. This time it doesn't
take long to explain just why he asks or what is
wanted. The boys are learning fast in that dearest,
hardest and best of all the schools in which we
acquire information, and they tell him they will
settle for that too, when their crop comes in in the
Fall.

And so at every turn they are obliged to stand on
their own feet and do business like men ; and when
in the Fall those boys come in with their three or
four or five dollars that they have won by the grace
of their own right arms, you will see, if you observe
them very closely, that their heads are up a little
higher in the air, their feet are planted a little more
firmly on the floor, and their little bosoms are heav-
ing and glowing with a new emotion. They feel
like men. And why do they feel like men? Be-
cause they have done like men. Every act we ever
do, be it good or bad or indififerent, is attended by
its own characteristic reflex which builds by so
much the cells in the brain that give power to do
that particular act next time a little more easily,
a little more readily and a little more pleasurably.
When a man does a mean act he feels mean inside;
when he does a generous act he feels "good" inside ;
when he does a manly act he feels himself rightly
more of a man, and when he acts like a hound he
feels like one and tends to skulk out of the way
of his fellows.

Thus if you keep your boy not only hearing about
standing on his own feet, but actually doing it
through the ten most important formative years of
his life, you will turn out a manly man as inevitably
as you turn out a carpenter by ten years of shoving
the saw and plane, and for precisely the same rea-
son, viz., that action and association neurones of

174 WHY THEY FAIL

whatever kind are built, and can be built, only by
the reflexes of our own activity. There is no mys-
tery in it when one thinks about it.

HONESTY

Again, take that second corner-stone of an im-
perial character, honesty. "An honest man is the
noblest work of God," but apparently a fire-proof
honesty is all too hard to find. Were it otherwise
we should be willing to trust our ten thousand dol-
lars with a greater number of people in the dark.
Why do we have locks on our doors, watchmen in
our warehouses, and policemen on every other cor-
ner if people can be universally trusted? The fact
is a great deal of our honesty is of that negative
type which merely lacks a perfectly safe oppor-
tunit5^ How many people are restrained from petty
dishonesty by fear of detection, law, public opinion,
reputation generally, who can tell? Of course there
are those who would not forget to make good the
nickel fare the street railway conductor overlooked,
however they might suspect the company had un-
righteously annexed one or more of their dollars by
those indirect methods best known to corporations
and their lawyers. But that is not the point ; the
point is that there is not a sufficient number of them
and that you want to make sure that boy of yours
will be of their sort.

How shall that be accomplished? The answer
is by getting your boy to actually do the scrupu-
lously honest thing through ten or more formative
years of his life. If you can do that Nature will
take care of the rest. God always does his part
when we do ours. Now, in his Industrial Guild
operations your boy suddenly finds himself in a
world that is vastly different from that of his Sun-
day-school. The temptation to put in doubtful po-

WHY THEY FAIL 175

tatoes to fill up that bag, putting them well down
out of sight of course, (since they wouldn't look
well on top) comes to him with something of the
compelling force of an electric shock. The fierce,
unholy impulses which are native to the human
soul, rise up with all the suddenness and fury
of a Euroclydon tempest, and all the good things he
has heard at his mother's knee and from his Bible-
school teacher, and other good people, seem far
off and unreal.

Brother, were you ever there? If you have not
been, don't talk. You have no idea how subtle and
how strong is the tug toward gaining an advantage
by departing just a little from the straight path
of rectitude. It is not that he does not know he
would be doing wrong to scamp the measure, or
to put those doubtful potatoes in. He does know,
for, thank the Lord, he has been to Sunday-school
and there he learned the right ; the trouble comes at
the point of translating the good teaching into the
correlative good action.

But it is precisely into that stern school of choice
and action we must plunge the boy thus prema-
turely that while his brain is forming it may be
formed aright, and it is here he needs the kindly
oversight of which we spoke. For the principle of
which we speak and with which we deal, will work
just as powerfully and readily to ruin your boy as
it will to make him. Those ten years of crooked
dealing will turn out a crook just as surely as the
ten years of scrupulously just dealing will turn
out an honest man. Therefore, since we are deal-
ing with edged tools, we require that some adult
shall keep an eye on the doings of that firm of
juniors. It is here the boy meets his Waterloo.
Whether he shall stand or fall is very apt to depend
on whether Blucher comes toward the close of the

176 WHY THEY FAIL

day or not. It must be our business to see that he
does. In the first experiment of this kind the
writer made, Blucher came in this way at marketing
time.

"Now boys, whatever you do be careful about
those potatoes. Remember that we are doing busi-
ness for Jesus Christ, and he hates anything that
is crooked, or shady or mean. Whatever you do
don't put a bad potato into His barrel. He would
rather you would throw away two good potatoes ; yes,
rather you threw away the whole lot than that you
should compromise him by putting one bad one into
His barrel.

And they didn't. The purchasers afterward ex-
pressed their pleasure at receiving such good stock
and were open to do business with those firms the
next year.

Here is another illustration of the modus operandi
from the fertile province of Saskatchewan. A
mother lets her little girl go into the hen business
with a partner. They buy a couple of hens say at
fifty cents each, let them lay their own eggs, set
them on their eggs when they have laid them, take
ofif the heads of the whole lot in the Fall, get back
the price of the hens and whatever it cost to feed
them, and the rest, up to the one cent a day limit,
goes to missions. It so happens that the little girl's
hen, much to her chagrin, hatches out only seven
chickens while her mother's hatch ten. Immedi-
ately she begins to cast covetous eyes on those
ten chickens, being naturally ambitious to come out
a winner and to make a big showing. Then she
worries her mother till the mother, loving not
wisely but too well, trades her ten for the child's
seven.

Now the pater familias allows this little drama
of life to work itself out and then he makes it his

WHY THEY FAIL 177

business, in a quiet evening hour, to have a Httle
chat with Mary about her firm's business, and she tells
him all about it. Then he goes over the ground
again with her somewhat after this fashion:

"Now Mary let's understand this transaction.
Your firm bought a hen from your mother for fifty
cents." "Yes." "And your hen hatched out only
seven chickens while your mother's hatched ten."
"Yes." "And then you traded your seven for her
ten." "Yes." "Well, were your chickens any bet-
ter than your mother's — thoroughbreds, for in-
stance?" "Oh, no. They were all the same." "Then
you got three chickens for nothing in that deal,
didn't you. Alary?" "Well, yes, guess I did." And
Mary rather thinks it was smart to have over-
reached her mother by so much.

"Well now Mary, look here. As I understand
things your firm in the Industrial Guild is doing
business for Jesus Christ; and you know he doesn't
like it if we don't do what is right, and I'm afraid
in the I. G. G. C. they couldn't take those three
chickens because you see your firm didn't pay for
them, and in the Industrial Guild you know they do
business and don't take any gifts except time. They
can take the seven chickens but not the three.

"And Mary, your firm in buying made a bargain
■with your mother for so much, didn't you?" "Yes,"
"Well, Mary, a bargain is a bargain, isn't it? You
know God's idea of an honest man is a man who
swears to his own hurt and changes not; that is,
one who makes a bad bargain and sticks to it be-
cause his word is passed, because his word is him-
self, and if his word is no good, he's no good, is he?
I guess, Mary, you had better stick to your bar-
gain, hadn't you?"

You give Mary ten years of that kind of training
jn honesty, not hearing about it, or dreaming about

178 WHY THEY FAIL

it, but actually doing it to the division of a hair and
the fraction of a cent, and depend upon it, when
she comes to do business in your store the eleventh
year she will do honest business as easily as she
writes her name, and for exactly the same reason —
because she has been doing it for ten years already.
She has the honesty action cells and the honesty
association cells so well developed in her brain that
it is easy for her to do the right and doubly hard
for her to do the wrong. To do the crooked thing
now would be about as difficult for her as to write
with her left hand.

In this incident we see again the imperative need
of some kind of gracious oversight of the way in
which the firm is doing its business. The reflex of
a bad act makes a bad boy if anything more quickly
than the reflex of a good act makes a good one, since
we seem to have a kind of natural bias toward evil
rather than good. This point is so important that
the I. G. G. C. generally refuses to have juniors as
members unless someone of mature years can be
found who will be sponsor for them.

A further illustration will perhaps show more
clearly the wisdom of this. In a certain town in
Manitoba two small boys decided to go into busi-
ness in the I. G. G. C. for the good of the world.
Their enterprise was quite successful, netting them
the sum of five dollars. But the sun of prosperity
brought out the weeds in their souls. The actual
sight, feel and possession of this amount of real
money was too much for them to stand, unaided in
the crisis by any stronger, truer hand, and so they
annexed the money and bought a dog instead.
Manifestly it does not require any occult power to
see that that way over the hill the penitentiary lies.
Misappropriation of funds people would call it in

WHY THEY FAIL 179

the case of their fathers, would they not — with
no end of evil reports to the third generation?

How much better for those two boys had there
been some wise friend or elder brother to help them
through that crisis, to help them achieve the right
motor discharge instead of the wrong one for the
ethical ideas and impulses they had duly received
in home and in Sunday-school ! After a few ex-
periences it would have been so much easier to do
the right that supervision would be reduced to
a minimum, and by the time they reached man's
estate they would have been strongly entrenched
in this cardinal virtue of simple, common, every-day,
homely old honesty, so much needed by the world
and so sorely needed by the Church. Who can
tell how many preachers, Sunday-school officers and
teachers, and other Christian workers, have seen
their work all undone by the unrighteousness con-
cealed in a barrel of potatoes, a tub of butter, a
basket of eggs or a bag of wheat coming from some
professedly Christian home? And it is not because
the people are religious hypocrites either, but all
because they have never had this kind of ethical
training which alone can build those cells in the
brain that give us the power to do what we know
and feel we ought to do. As M. J. Bahnsen, the
philosopher, tells us : "The actual presence of the
practical opportunity alone furnishes the fulcrum
upon which the lever can rest by means of which
the moral will may multiply its strength and raise
itself aloft. He who has no solid ground to press
against will never get beyond the stage of empty
gesture-making."

BENEFICENCE
The third corner-stone of an imperial character
is beneficence. And by beneficence is not meant

180 WHY THEY FAIL

benevolence. There is a world of difference be-
tween the two words. Benevolence means to wish
well or the good ; beneficence means to do it. The
world is full of benevolent people who wish every-
thing well ; it is dying for lack of beneficent people
who not only know the good but find themselves
able to do it. "If wishes were horses beggars might
ride," observes Portia, and we may add that if
wishes were dollars our Mission Board secretaries
would not be l)ing awake nights trying to figure
out how to make one dollar do the work of ten
on fields at home and abroad.

The shame of Christianity is her failure to pro-
vide. She boasts her added light beside which,
as she tells us, the light of former days was but
as twilight or day dawn, and yet our beneficence
is as nothing to that of ancient Israel. Among the
Jews before Christ, he was no giver who gave but
a tenth; they were more likely to give a fifth or
even a third. The heathen of southern China give
one-fourth to their gods. But among Christian
people to-day how few there are who have attained
even the minimum of Judaism in that regard !

In 1890 Mr. Robert E. Speer estimated the wealth
of the Christian portion of the population of the
United States at twenty billion dollars and that
perhaps one-fiftieth of what she adds to her wealth
each year in addition to that now given, would sup-
port a sufficient number of missionaries to evangel-
ize the world. How much greater must be her
wealth to-day!

Mr. G. T. Manley reckons that one hundred
thousand workers extra would be the very outside
number required to evangelize the world in this
generation, and that if one-fourth of the Protestants
of Europe and America gave one cent a day it
would amount to one hundred million dollars a year.

IVHY THEY FAIL 181

Dr. Strong in "Our Country" says there is money
enough in the hands of church members to sow
every acre of the earth with the seed of truth but
it is being misappHed. "Indeed, the world would
have been evangelized long ago if Christians had
perceived the relation of money to the Kingdom,
and had accepted their stewardship."

Were the Sunday School children of the world to
put up but two cents per capita per week for mis-
sions we should have more money than the entire
church puts up, including the noble work of The
Laymen's Movement. The fact is the church has
largely lost the power to give normally. There is
here the same delinquency as is evident in the more
patent shortcomings of manliness and honesty, and
for the very same reason. There has not been a
proper motor discharge ; there has been insufficiency
of eleemonsynary activity. Of what we did give in
our youth the far greater part cost us nothing and
therefore achieved nothing of beneficence in us. In-
deed, it is quite possible the reflex of our giving was
as mischievous as helpful, for what we gained in
promotion of the idea of giving was lost in the
promotion of a mendicant spirit. Personal and family
pride rather than missionary interest probably ac-
count for a large fraction of the receipts on Sunday.

It follows that if the church is ever to correct
this she must find some better way of developing
beneficence. The old way has had a fair trial and
it has manifestly failed. Let us now try a new plan.
Let us add something. Let us induce the children
to bring their youthful active powers to bear on
the Task. Let us develop in their brains a direct
and powerful set of association neurones leading
directly from the benevolent impulse to the benefi-
cent action cells developed by self-activity, and we
shall then have educationally fitted them to go again

182 WHY THEY FAIL

with profit to church and Sunday-school and Mis-
sionary lecture. The new benevolent impulse cre-
ated will then find a natural, healthful and pleasure-
able outlet in a response which will be adequate to
the stimulus, instead of being, as it is with us,
strangled, aborted, drained off ineffectively, to leave
behind it a kind of feeling of demerit, of failure, of
shame for not having done what we felt somehow
we ought to have done. We shall then have the
blessed circle of a complete education — good impres-
sion— good impulse — correlative action — consequent
enlargement as a preparation for the reception and
more prompt and effective execution of the next
good impulse that comes along.

It will be understood of course, that like any
other education which has to do with the building
of brain cells by reflex action, the business can not
be done at one stroke. The public school teacher
cannot make your boy a mathematician or a pen-
man in an hour, or a day, or a week. It is "the
repeated strokes of behavior" which alone, under
her guidance can do it. So also we cannot expect
the boy to become morally fit by sporadic attempts
to translate good impulses into their correlative
good actions. There must be some such continuity
of training as we see in the day school. He must
be inspired to keep at the good work. Then his
moral action cells have a chance to grow. It is im-
portant not to drop the knitting. Thus Bain ob-
serves:

"The peculiarity of the moral habits as contra-
distinguished from the intellectual acquisitions, is
the presence of two hostile powers, one to be grad-
ually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is
necessary above all things in such a situation never
to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side un-
does the effect of many conquests on the right. The

WHY THEY F'AIL 183

essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the
two opposing powers that one may have a series of
uninterrupted successes, until repetition has forti-
fied it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with
the opposition under any circumstances. This is
the theoretically best career of mental progress."

Again, if we are to produce a race of men who
will adequately appreciate their world wide rela-
tions and responsibilities, we must give the boy a
world-wide horizon. Herbert Spencer points out
that the growth of civilization depends on the
widening of the individual's horizon. The savage
whose life circles about a very limited territory and
the immediate enjoyment of objects, gradually
evolves into the half civilized man who thinks of
larger territory, larger groups of individuals and
longer periods of time. Finally we have the fully
civilized man, the sweep of whose political vision is
a hundred 3^ears or more, and who builds buildings
that endure for generations. But this, he points
out, is an achievement conditioned on the enlarge-
ment of his mental horizon as much as on any con-
ditions outside of himself.

A very serious and noble effort is being made
along this line by the present missionary educa-
tional policy, but to give it full ethical content it
must be more directly related to practical activity
on the part of the young or it will go the way of
the rest of our teaching — only a small proportion
of it will come to any adequate fruitage. The In-
dustrial Guild of the Great Commission is designed
to help at just this point. In this wise:

Here is a mother who has a five-year-old son. He
is her partner and they are the firm of Mary Cook &
Son. She is a very busy woman with her arms full
of household cares like other women, but because

184 WHY THEY FAIL

she loves that boy she finds time to devote a few
minutes occasionally to the development of the high-
est thing about him, his soul, which is, indeed, the
boy himself. And because she is such a very busy
woman she buys a hen and sets her on a dozen eggs,
with a view to ultimate profit for the Kingdom, as
described on a former page. Her small partner is in
the onion business and has a bed of onions which
is about two feet square. It is small but it is his
own and more important to him than his father's
whole farm.

During the Summer evenings that mother often
holds her little partner on her lap and they talk
about what their firm is doing and where their
money is going, and she tells him about the black
skinned boys and girls out in Africa or India, who
don't know who made them and are saying their
prayers to snakes and toads. And maybe she tells
him of the great party which Jesus is going to have
in His beautiful home up there, and how he has
sent out an invitation to all the boys and girls, good
and bad, to come, but the boys and girls out there
haven't yet heard about it. Then they talk about
how the invitation is to be got to them ; who will go,
how he will get there and where the money is to
come from to get his ticket ; and to buy food and
clothing while he is there, since he can't farm or
run a business and go around with the invitation
at the same time ; and how their money is going to
help send him there and help keep him at it. And
as she talks his dear, unselfish, little heart is aflame
with the desire to do something to help.

That, dear reader, is impression, the first prin-
ciple of education and that is, for the most part,
zvhere wc have stopped with our good zvork.. Now,
however, there is a change. The little man jumps

WHY THEY FAIL 185

down off her knee to run around the house to have
another look at that onion bed and to get the sprink-
Hng can to sprinkle those onions once more, or
maybe to pluck a weed he finds there ; and so the
good impression is translated into the correlative
good action, which by its reflex automatically builds
very silently, by so much, that good action cell in
his brain, and at the same time an association track
is laid between the two.

And all Summer long, eveiy time he looks at that
onion bed it preaches to him such a powerful ser-
mon about the great world outside himself that
needs his help, as neither you nor I can preach, and
his little soul is growing outward by its own activ-
ity as God ordained that it should grow.

And the wise mother sees to it that her partner
often relieves her by feeding her chickens, always
keeping alive by some more or less direct allusion
the connection between what he is doing and the
Great Task for which it is done, for she knows the
greater number of beneficent reflexes she can induce
in that growing brain, the more princely man she
shall see coming through her gate by and by.

"I think I am in the ministry to-day because my
mother gave me a missionary hen," said a gentle-
man to the writer one day as he eulogized this
scheme. The hen he fed and because he fed her,
was the greatest preacher he ever knew. Said an-
other, a lady who by her devoted life lifted the moral
tone of the whole settlement in which she lived, as
the I. G. G. C. idea, then in its infancy, was laid
before her: "That is true. If I am anything to-day
it is because my mother gave us a missionary tree
when we were children."

So then you keep that little man not only hearing
about the great world outside himself that needs

186 WHY THEY FAIL

his help, and dreaming about it, but actually doing
something through the ten or more plastic years of
his life to help it out, and when by and by the finger
of God touches him into life and he comes into the
Church, he will know what a Church is for, and he
will hold up his end as naturally as he skates and
walks, and for precisely the same reason — because
he has been doing it for ten years already. Milo of
Crotona carried the full-grown bull around the
walls of the town only because he grew to the
task by carrying it daily, first as a calf and then as
it grew. The Laymen's Movement is a fine thing
to have, but a finer thing still to have is a new
Laymen's Movement that shall begin operations
sixteen years before the members record their first
electoral vote.

Every man's life is dominated in the last analysis
by one of four great motives : Power, pleasure,
pelf or usefulness. Only as a character is shaped
by the last do we have a truly regal man. Tolstoi
forsakes his bowers of ease to live on rude fare,
in a rude hut among the peasants that he may learn
their sorrows and voice their inarticulate cry to the
world; the Countess Schermerhorn, intimate friend
of the Empress of Germany, forsakes the splendor
and admiration of an imperial court that she may
minister to the fisher-folk she finds neglected by all,
and becomes known as the Mother of the sailors of
the world; Dr. Grenfel gives up his brilliant pros-
pects in medicine amid cultured surroundings that
he may through incredible hardships minister heal-
ing to the lonely inhabitants along the inhospitable
shores of Labrador; and as they pass before us we
bow very low, recognizing that a greater than Car-
negie or Rockefeller or Pierrepont Morgan is here,
for the greatest thing in the world is not to have
but to help.

WHY THEY FAIL 187

"They soon grow old that grope for gold

In marts where all is bought and sold ;

Who live for self, and on some shelf

In darkened vaults hoard up their pelf;

Cankered and crusted o'er with mold,

F'or them their j-outh itself is sold" — if the

poet will forgive the prefixing of the letter "s" to

the last word of the last line.

PRACTICy\LITY

The fourth corner-stone of an imperial character
is practicality. Practicality is that quality in a
man which enables him to see things as they are
and to turn them to good account. Strictly speak-
ing it is not an ethical but rather an intellectual
quality, a characteristic of mind rather than of
soul ; but it is so essential to an imperial character
that we have to consider it. It bears a very direct
relation to the theme before us, for it is conceivable
that a boy might be honest, manly and generous,
and yet be of that dreamy, visionary type which
never sees things as they are and is always slip-
ping a cog when it comes to the final test of action.
The imperial man is a man who has power to bring
things to pass in that sphere in which God has
placed him, and practicality is that mental gearing
in him which profitably links his will, purpose,
knowledge and character to the thing to be done.

As some boys have those sections of the brain
which give power to draw or remember musical
tones, unusually well developed, so others have the
practical action cells unusually strong as a native
endowment. They are given to dicker and bargain
and whether it be alleys, tops, knives or rabbits
they "swap" they never have reason to repent at
leisure. It is pleasant to see boys of that make-up.
It is from their ranks our captains of industry are

188 WHY THEY FAIL

recruited and also many of their lesser satellites,
whose daily routine of business is so bewildering
in its detail it makes us dizzy to merely contem-
plate it. But that kind of boy needs the Industrial
Guild training in order that he may achieve a bal-
anced character. Where any faculty is excessively
strong there is a persistent tendency to exercise
it for the sheer joy we derive from doing so.
Millionaires care very little for the money; it is
for the game they care. There is always a joy born
of the exercise of power, and power is one of the
most intoxicating cups ever poised in human hand.

It follows that boys of particularly strong com-
mercial instincts will be subject to a peculiar cor-
relative temptation — that of over-reaching their fel-
lows. The wise father will see at once that such a
disposition requires as a corrective, a course in al-
truism and honesty. The boy must be given op-
portunity to go wrong that he may know himself,
and then be brought face to face with his deed and
with the right, while there is yet time to reshape his
conduct, and before "his spinal cord is thoroughly
organized around evil and all the atoms of his being
play in tune to unworthy impulses." It may seem
hard to thus talk of deliberately exposing the boy
to temptation, but life is doing it for him every
day, with or without our consent, and a little of
the serum by way of moral vaccination will not do
him any harm, provided there be reasonable care
in the surgery and proper nursing.

But where there is one boy of that sort there are
a dozen who are not of a sufficiently practical turn.
They are fond of books and fond of fun but they
don't take to work. And if they do have to do busi-
ness the last state of it is apt to be worse than
the first. It is only when they have all but ruined
their employers and blighted their own reputations

WHY THEY FAIL 189

in the commercial world that they attain to a sav-
ing degree of that sagacity, which in their success-
ful rivals seems to be an instinct. They never get to
that point where they can honestly say they love
their work, and yet their rivals would rather work
than eat.

Is it not thus with them because they were
caught too late? "It is hard to learn an old dog
new tricks," runs a homely old adage. If we had
taken the boy in his tender years and given him a
little business of his own — an altruistic business
lest his soul grow inward and selfish — instead of
waiting till he graduated from high school or col-
lege, might we not have helped him very materially
along the thorny way he had to tread?

Now that is precisely what the Industrial Guild
of the Great Commission is calculated to do. The
boy has his own business which he is obliged, once
he undertakes it, to conduct in a thoroughly busi-
ness-like way. It may be a very small afifair but
the wise father will see that it is run just as if
it were a ten thousand dollar concern. The boy
early learns by experience about business forms
and business honor. He gives and takes receipts,
learns what thousands of good church members of
twenty years' standing have apparently yet to learn,
that the date of maturity of a note is of as much
importance to the holder as the date of the signa-
ture, and that the evil day cannot with honor be
ignored ; that a note must be met or otherwise
provided for on maturity; that no man has a right
to use another man's money without paying the
tax we call interest; that there may be such a thing
as deferred payments where there is a reasonable
expectation of meeting them, etc., etc. Such a business
course covering ten years will make the boy so
familiar with ordinary business procedure that the

190 WHY THEY FAIL

smoothest green goods agent in the land will find
him anything but the fool he looks.

Boys who have a business of their very own will
learn more about that business in a week by a kind
of mental absorption than we could have prodded
into them with a sharp stick in a year. They may
not be particularly interested in their father's busi-
ness or in that of anyone else, but the horse is of
another color when it is their own. They have in
that a proprietary interest, and so deeply rooted
is that instinct in human nature that Prof. James
says of it: "It seems essential to mental health
that the individual should have something beyond
the bare clothes on his back to which he can assert
exclusive possession and which he may defend
adversely against the world. Even those religious
orders which make the most stringent vows of
poverty have found it necessary to relax the rule a
little in favor of the human heart made unhappy
by reduction to too disinterested terms. The monk
must have his books; the nun must have her little
garden, and the images and pictures in her room."

The practical as well as the mental value of
our course of training may be made clearer by an
illustration. Here is a firm of boys living in a fruit-
raising district. They go to their father or their
uncle or anyone else, and say: "Our firm would
like to buy that apple tree in your orchard. We
will pay you so much this year and so much each
year for the following five years, interest at six per
cent." "All right," he says, and the tree passes
over to the boys. What then? Those boys im-
mediately develop a marvellous interest in the tree
business that they never had before, and their ears
are wide open whenever their elders are talking
about fruit soil, fruit markets, fruit packing, fruit
picking, tree pests and tree fertilizers, etc., and they

WHY THEY FAIL 191

begin to absorb information which used to pass by
them Hke "the idle wind which we respect not."
Give the boy ten or more years of that kind of
intelhgent absorption and he will know a whole
lot more about his future business than he would
have known if he had not begun to take a living
interest in it till he was a man full grown.

It is of the nature of a healthy, growing boy to
be active. There are physiological reasons for this.
The heart almost doubles in size and the blood is
driven like a roaring Niagara through his veins.
Frictional energy of reflex origin is developed in
the form of nervous stimuli that pour into the
brain incessantly, so that he is driven as by a very
demon of restlessness to action of some sort. This
is the stage of his existence of which the great
philosopher-humorist of America, Dr. Robert J.
Burdette, speaks in his famous lecture on "The
Rise and Fall of the Moustache" when he tells us
that the boy "converses in ordinary confidential
moments in a shriek," and "wears his hat more in
the air than on his head." His activity may be either
vicious or harmless, but action of some sort there
will be, and we might just as well get a corner on
some of this surplus energy and turn it to good
account.

In giving this energy a practical turn we are doing
much to sharpen the boy's wits for the grim struggle
later on. The careful conduct of his own business
will not only awaken dormant powers which other-
wise might have atrophied, but it will by a kind of
assimilative reflex action develop the power to ab-
sorb and apply the worldly wisdom which he is
destined to pick up in various w^ays later on in life.

An illustration from Prof. Judd's laboratory work
may serve to make clear what is meant by this. In
the "Educational Review" of 1908, writing on "Special

193 WHY THEY FAIL

Training and General Intelligence" he describes an
experiment made to determine the value of theory
as related to practice. Two groups of boys were
required to hit a target under twelve inches of water
with a dart. One group was given theoretical in-
struction regarding the difficulty of hitting a target
under water because of the deflection caused by
refraction of the light rays. The other group was
left in ignorance of refraction.

In the first series of trials the first group had no
advantage over ^he others who were uninstructed.
"All the boys had to learn to use the dart and
theory proved to be no substitute for practice. At
this point the conditions were changed. The twelve
inches were reduced to four. The difference be-
tween the two groups of boys now came out very
strikingly. The boys without theory were very
much confused. The practice gained with twelve
inches of water did not help them with four inches.
Their errors were large and persistent. On the
other hand the boys who had the theory fitted them-
selves to four inches very rapidly. Their theory
evidently helped them to see why they must not
apply the twelve-inch habit to four inches of water.
Note that the theory was not of value till it was
backed by practice ; but when practice and theory
were both present the best adjustment was rapidly
worked out. Such experiences as this," Prof. Judd
adds, "make it clear that every experience has in
it the possibilities of generalization."

"It is not a pound of theory to an ounce of prac-
tice that is wanted," says Prof. Legge, Director of
Education in Liverpool, England, "but rather a
pound of practice to an ounce of theory; and so
in the Reformatory and Industrial Schools, the in-
dustrial training will generally be found to con-
sist of one severe theoretical session a week, fol-

WHY. THEY F'AIL 193

lowed by four or five sessions of constructive work
in the actual workshop."

It frequently occurs that firms fail because of
circumstances over which they have no control.
The like thing is not unknown among more import-
ant firms downtown. This may be anything but a
calamity to one who thinks more of his boy than he
does of a few paltry dollars. Defeat is often more
valuable than success. It affords the opportunity to
pluck a crown from the spear. Some boys are
naturally so buoyant that they are no sooner keeled
over than they are right-side up again. That is
a blessed disposition to have, and the boy who is
so fortunate as to be built that way, provided he
has the necessary balance of other required char-
acteristics, is starred for success. Unfortunately
many boys are not so constructed. When they get
knocked down they are disposed to lie there or to sit
up and cry. Under proper guidance firm failure
may be the best possible thing that could happen
to a boy like that. He must be led to see that such
things as that are merely incidental in our progress
through life ; that they happen repeatedly to grown
folk, who do not therefore throw up the sponge and
weep uselessly over their losses. Farmers lose their
crops through frost, hail or drought, but they plant
them again next year just as usual; firms fail in
business but they start up again ; others see their
homes, representing the savings of years, go up in
smoke, but they don't go to the poor-house on that
account; they set out to retrieve their fallen for-
tunes and build another one. To do less is the
only shameful failure, and hence the firms must stay
with it till they "make good," carrying over their
expenses and charging them up against next year's
operations.

Prof. Titchener in his "Experimental Psychology,"

194 WHY THEY FAIL

a work given up chiefly to laboratory methods,
talks to the students as follows :

"Do not call upon the instructor at every hitch;
try to overcome the difficulties for yourself. If,
however, after you have completed an experiment,
you find that you have passed over some essential
point of method, or neglected some source of error,
consult with the instructor before repeating it. The
record of the experiment as performed, with em-
phatic statement of mistakes, may be considered
by him as more valuable to you than the same ex-
periment correctly performed at a double expense
of time."

It has been said that the Industrial Guild has
two classes of members, seniors and juniors. If,
so far as the juniors are concerned, its primary
function is educational and its secondary function
is finance, the case is just the reverse so far
as the seniors are involved. It has educational
value to them also, though on account of the in-
creased induration of the brain tissues it is not so
striking as in the case of the others. Yet it is very
considerable too, for an adult no sooner begins
action in this way than he becomes conscious of
a new glow within him. He finds the new doctrine
of motor discharges is revolutionary, changing en-
tirely the polarity of his life on that small scale
in which he is active. All his life he has been
making money for himself and giving some of it to
the Lord; in this he turns that right about and
makes money for the Lord while he keeps some of
it for himself, i. e., the expenses which come back
to him. He realizes on a small scale the ideal of
stewardship, and whereas all his life it has been
self first and the Kingdom of God second, it is now
the Kingdom of God first and self second, and so
he swings into line with the Sermon on the Mount

WHY THEY FAIL 195

and with the angels and with all Heaven. The
reflex of it is to let a ray of Heaven's glory into
his soul. He is apt to feel that somehow this is the
sweetest money he ever gave. And why? Because
he has given more than money; he has given himself
in the getting of it.

Out on the prairies of the fertile Province of
Manitoba the writer dined one day in a certain
home. In the course of the hour these principles
came up for discussion, and afterward, while "hitch-
ing up" in the yard, a young woman, a domestic
in the home, who had heard the conversation, came
out and offered him a dollar.

"Well, now, the Lord bless your good heart," I
replied, "but I'm afraid I can't take it." She looked
up in astonishment and wanted to know why. It
was probably something new to find a preacher
refusing money for missions, "Now, my dear girl,
you made that money for yourself, didn't you?" She
said, "Yes." "Well," I said, "the only money we
take is new money, made on purpose to extend the
Kingdom of God. We are all working at the task the
Master has left us to do, and if you want to join us
you will have to work at it, too."

So she went away, but in a few moments she re-
turned saying, "You may take my name. I'll work
a month for the Lord Jesus this year."

Do you not think that month v/ould be a blessed
month to her? That service would be a sacrament
to her soul. She would have real fellowship with
Jesus Christ all the time. She was really working
for Him and with Him, working in a way which
cannot be discounted in this world or any other.
Talk may be cheap but actions are the gold coins of
God's realm, and that girl was as really a missionary
as any man who has gone to heathendom. He uses
his gifts and his training and she uses hers, but both

196 WHY THEY FAIL

are working at the same task, and what the King-
dom of God needs to-day more than it needs any-
thing else is an army of men and women bearing the
name of Christ, who will quit talking and address
themselves to the Task along the lines of their own
gifts, training and opportunity, in such homely prac-
tical ways.

The world would speedily be evangelized if we
could get every Christian in America to do as many
of our firms in the Industrial Guild have already
done — make one cent a day extra to give effect to
the Great Commission. Most of the adult members
could easily do it. It is largely a matter of organiz-
ing and getting them at it. And were it done we
should have about four times more money for mis-
sions than the whole Church with all her subsidiary
organizations, including the Laymen's Movement,
has put up, and no one in doing it would be a cent
out of pocket. What is more, the reflex of the activ-
ity on the life of the Church in other ways would be
incalculable. It would immensely deepen the heart
interest in sermons and other religious exercises,
and it would very appreciably enlarge the giving
through the regular channels. The service may be
humble, hard, amusing, or even ridiculous at times,
but there is this about it — the most sneering skeptic
cannot deny its reality. To see that mechanic
or that farmer or that laborer, out there toiling in
the sweat of his face that the Kingdom of One un-
seen may be extended, is to see a new and valid
testimony to the reality of Christianity. The laugh
is on the surface ; behind it there is a new respect
for the sincerity of this man, who, to that extent at
any rate, is living his religion and not giving the
lie to his professed beliefs.

Why should not our forces be organized along this
line? There are swarms of warm-hearted believers

WHY THEY FAIL 197

who are dying because they do not know just
what to do. Here is something they can all do, or
mostly all. They can't all be teachers and officers,
and they get weary of the ordinary routine. Not
that that routine is worthless ; far from it. It is
exceedingly valuable, but it is incomplete and there-
fore insufficient. The motor discharges are not ade-
quate in number, variety or direction, and it is pre-
cisely something like this which is required to give
balance and new life to our Leagues, Endeavors and
young peoples' societies generally.

There is another strong reason why we should
have an adult membership thus putting to the high-
est use economically some of their spare time. It
is not only because of the potential millions involved
but because of the incalculable reflex of their un-
conscious influence, particularly in the lives of the
children. The faculty of imitation is one of the
most persistent and powerful of all the forces that
mold human society, and it fairly fills the sky in
a child's life. Social customs, manners, dress, etc.,
show us how we bow our own necks to the yoke.
If you don't believe that just heave a capacious
yawn and see how many of the company will be
able, without conscious eflfort, to keep from follow-
ing you.

The fact is that the acts of other people furnish
most powerful stimuli to action on our part. If
we find half a dozen people gazing in at a store
window we must stop and have a look too. Ex-
ample is ever so much better than precept, and
therefore if the father and mother really love their
children (big brothers and sisters also) they will
go into the I. G. G. C. if for no other reason than
that their influence may tell in the right direction
on the dear ones coming after.

That this is no theory but a cold fact, Prof. Miin-

198 WHY THEY FAIL

sterberg shows us in his laboratory. The extract
is from his "Psychology and Crime," p. 248.

"We said that crime involves an impulse to action
which is normally to be checked. The checking
will be the more difficult the stronger the impulse.
The psychologist therefore asks: What influences
have the power to reinforce the impulse? Has, for
instance, imitation such an influence? Mere specu-
lation cannot answer such a question, and even so-
called practical experience may lead to very mis-
taken conclusions But the laboratory experiment
can tell the story in distinct figures. I ask my sub-
jects, for instance, to make rhythmical finger move-
ments by which a weight is lifted, and the apparatus
in which the arm rests records exactly the amount
of every contraction. After a while the energy seems
exhausted; my idea has no longer the power to lift
the weight more than a few millimetres ; the re-
corded curve sinks nearly to zero. I try with en-
couraging words or harsh command ; the motor en-
ergies of these word stimuli are not effective ; the
curve shows a slight upward movement but again
it sinks rapidly. And then I make the same rhythmi-
cal movement myself before the eyes of my subject;
he sees it and at once the curve ascends with unex-
pected strength. The movements have now simply
to imitate the watched ones, and this consciousness
of imitation has reinforced the energy of the impulse
beyond any point which his own will could have
reached. It is as if the imitation of the suggestive
sight suddenly brings to work all the stored-up
powers. The psychologist can vary the experiment
in a hundred forms ; always the same result, that
the impressive demonstration of an action gives
to the impulse of the imitating mind the maximum
of force — it must then be the one condition under
which it is the most difficult to inhibit the impulse."

WHY THEY FAIL 199

Physiologists tell us that growth is not a uniform
process. There will be a period of rapid extension
followed by a period in which there is little or
nothing doing in that line. The physical energies
seem to be given up to assimilation and consolida-
tion of what has been acquired. So also in mental
work, such for example as the acquisition of a new
tongue. Psychologists comment on the ease with
which the first few lessons are absorbed and then the
period of more limited progress followed by another
spurt. This caprice of nature leads Prof. James to
say in his own striking way that we "learn to swim
in Winter and to skate in Summer." Hence in our
Industrial Guild work we do not crowd our juniors
all the time. The Winter's rest gives them a new
zest for work in the Spring and so they are happy
all the time. It is of the utmost importance at all
times not to push the boy beyond a natural gait.
As in walking so in other things we have a natural
pace — a limit within which we can do comfortably,
and any labor imposed beyond that is labor indeed,
and apt to react unfavorably on us, especially if
long continued.

A word as to the history and the management of
the Industrial Guild may fittingly conclude this
chapter. It represents so far as the writer is con-
cerned an educational experiment in applied Chris-
tianity which has had three phases. The first was
that in connection with the local church. At Mount
View, N. B., a rural district subsidiary to the church
of which the writer was at the time pastor, the
institution was born in the Spring of 1903. It had
thirty members and a constitution of its own with
the usual frills — but few meetings. The meetings
were left to the others. It met four times, three
times at the close of other meetings. We consid-
ered it our business not to talk but to work. Th§

200 WHY THEY FAIL

returns in the Fall showed $36.64. Not a large
sum it is true, but so astonishingly large in com-
parison with what had been done there for missions, .
that it was written up and given to the Methodist,
Baptist and Presbyterian denominational papers of
the maritime provinces, as well as to several repre-
sentative journals across the line, of which one, the
"Church Economist," of New York, later amalgamated
with the "Record of Christian Work," published it
with favorable comment. $36.64 may not impress
the world very much in itself, but it seemed signifi-
cant as an index of possibilities when we learned
that, so far as church records gave light on the
subject, the community produced less than four
dollars for missions the previous year. Moreover,
the money was obtained so easily they didn't know
how it was done. They did not feel any poorer — at
any rate not till they began to think it over. Which
thing is symptomatic, as the medical gentlemen say,
and in itself the strongest argument which could be
adduced for the existence of the I. G. G. C. It was
precisely that condition which gave rise to the
idea — only as a remedial measure affecting the
Church of to-morrow — a prophylactic affecting the
boy of to-day.

The second experiment was worked out on a
larger scale in the Canadian Northwest in 1905.
This time an attempt was made at organization on
a larger scale. Unless the Spring months, which
meant a year, were to be lost, action had to be
taken somewhat irregularly. The general delib-
erative assembly of the denomination did not meet
until mid-Summer. The executive did not feel free
to initiate the movement, considering it ultra vires
to do so, but they were willing to give their un-
official blessing, the more especially as the repre-
sentatives of their churches in the Province of Al-

WHY THEY FAIL 201

berta, assembled in annual convocation had unani-
mously passed, on motion of Rev. C. W. Corey, and
after two hours' discussion, the following resolu-
tion:

"We have heard with great pleasure the presenta-
tion of the work of the Industrial Guild of the Great
Commission by our brother. A, T. Robinson, and,
believing the principle of the Guild to be sound and
practical, we would commend it and Brother Robin-
son's presentation of it to our churches as a means
fraught with great possibilities both in character
development and in funds for the extension of the
Kingdom. We believe the work of the Guild to be
such that we would call the attention of the Execu-
tive Board of the Northwest Convention to the
same, asking that they might give consideration
to it with a view to having organization along this
line effected at an early date."

This the Executive Board did not feel free to do,
avowing that it was an executive, not a legislative,
body. It became necessary therefore, if a year's
time was to be saved, that action should be taken
somewhat irregularly, trusting to the event to
justify the move. It seemed to be one of those un-
usual occasions which are bound to arise, when
unusual measures have to be adopted if the thing
is not to be sacrificed to the form, the substance
to the shadow, the end to the means. Believing
that all church machinery is only a means to an
end, useful only in so far as it promotes that end,
which end is the extension of the Kingdom of God,
the ultra zires plea of the Executive Board did not
seem very weighty, in view of the fact that the
members were willing, without a dissentient voice,
to say that "unofficially and as men" they could see
no objection to the thing itself.

With an editorial statement to that effect in the

203 WHY THEY FAIL

denominational organ, added to the above resolu-
tion and a sheaf of favorable opinions from men of
standing, a brief campaign of organization was in-
augurated. The new education was discussed with
the sovereign people and approved by them and the
pastors generally. In a few weeks forty-tWo organi-
zations had been effected numbering somewhere
between eight hundred and one thousand members.
At the annual convention, following a presentation
of the Guild, it was moved by Rev. W. J. McCor-
mick, seconded by Mr. W. S. Grover and carried as
follows : "Resolved, that we adopt the Industrial
Guild of the Great Commission and that it be re-
ferred to the Executive Board to work out the de-
tails."

At a convention of Guild delegates which met just
before this, a constitution revised to meet the en-
larged demands of the new day, and to gear the
new society properly into the convention machinery,
was submitted and passed. It provided for a state
commissioner and an advisory council of five, all
to be appointed by the Executive Board of the con-
vention. The Board appointed these officers, but
would assume no financial responsibility in connec-
tion with the thing, notwithstanding the foregoing
warrant. The Guild had its own treasurer, but handed
over its funds when collected to the various denomina-
tional treasurers for detail distribution, as that is a
matter which requires a highly specialized knowledge of
conditions, and as the other Boards were the ones
charged with the responsibilities of administration.

In the Fall the returns coming in showed a gross
output of $1,770.35, of which $294.80 did not appear
on Guild books, as it had been diverted into other
channels in the local churches. That fact in itself
is eloquent as to the need of the Industrial Guild

WHY, THEY F'AIL 203

training. How much better would we all be if we
had had it!

Meanwhile a silent opposition developed among
certain members of the Executive Board. This was
regarded as a hopeful sign, since the Guild could
hardly be regarded as in line of the true order of
succession of great and useful institutions if it got
on without opposition. The China Inland Mission,
the Sunday-school, the Young Alen's Christian As-
sociation, the great missionary societies, and the
very Church itself have all come, not without the
pangs of parturition, and why should this expect
to do so? The only reason assigned was that the
Guild was producing so much for missions on some
fields that the contributions through the regular
channels were being reduced. Were this the case
there certainly would have been need of regulative
action, but when pressed for specific instances but
two fields were adduced, on one of which it trans-
pired that the offerings through the regular channels
were larger than ever before, and in the other case,
the field put up more than ever before, only instead
of giving to missions the money went into a church
building which they had undertaken to erect. One
member who had given five hundred dollars the
year before to missions felt that he should this year
give it to the building fund, and of course other
smaller givers felt as he did in the matter and acted
accordingly, so that any deficiency could hardly
be charged in fairness wholly to the new institution.
In fact, the newcomer was so useful that they seized
on its method as a means of raising money for the
furnishing of the church the next year.

On the other hand, elsewhere the reflex was found
most helpful from the standpoint of missionary of-
ferings. One pastor wrote that the effect was to
treble the offerings through the regular channels,

204 WHY THEY FAIL

as actually doing the little made them sensible of
what they had not been doing and ought to do.

At the convention in Winnipeg the following year
the state commissioner in his report outlined two
policies, a smaller or Mission Band policy, by which
some settled pastor in the field should devote what
time he could spare to the enterprise, and the other,
a larger or business man's policy, according to
which the state commissioner should devote all his
time to the work, developing especially the Isolate
Corps, a company of scattered units sprinkled over
a thousand miles of territory, and related directly
to his office as his own especial charge, till it should
be strong enough to bear all the expenses of the
organization, helpfully exercising them, linking
them to the denominational life and work, and leav-
ing all the local societies made to go to missions.
In case this policy were adopted he was authorized
to state that a group of prominent business men
would be prepared to take care of the state com-
missioner's salary, or, in any event, of that part of
it which remained after taking out of the Guild pro-
ceeds for the purpose that proportion which corres-
ponded to the amount of the receipts of the other
organizations going to pay other official salaries.
They would have cared for it all if necessary, but it
was deemed better from a business and educational
standpoint to have the Guild bear at least a part of
the burden.

The discussion which followed the report was
both lively and favorable. One of the keenest and
most prominent members of the convention, a gen-
tleman of international standing in the educational
world, forgetting in the interest of the moment the
rules of orthodox procedure, jumped up and turning
to the house said, "The question is this: 'Is this
thing worth while?' All in favor say, 'Yes,' con-

WHY THEY FAIL 205

trary, 'No.' " There were only five adverse votes.

But great is politics. In the closing moments of
the hour, when no time was left for discussion, a
member of the convention executive rose up and
read the following resolution, which was typewrit-
ten:

"Whereas the convention which met in Brandon
one year ago endorsed the idea of the Industrial
Guild of the Great Commission and referred the
matter to the consideration of this board. And,
whereas during the year a number of such Guilds
have been in successful operation within the con-
vention field: Therefore, resolved (1) that this con-
vention commend the idea of the Guild to the favor-
able consideration of the churches of this conven-
tion field. (2) That the convention instruct its Exec-
utive Board to appoint a secretary of Guilds whose
duty it shall be to supervise the operations of such
Guilds as are already organized, or shall be organ-
ized, in connection with the churches of this con-
vention, such appointee to be (a) a pastor settled
within the bounds of the convention (b) allowed a
period not exceeding two months each year for or-
ganization work, if necessary in the judgment of
the Executive Board: (c) Remunerated from the
general treasury at a rate not to exceed two hundred
dollars per annum and traveling expenses. (3) That
this convention further instruct its Executive Board
to name an executive council of five members to
co-operate with the secretary of Guilds. (4) That
this convention request that all moneys devoted
to mission objects by the Guilds be sent to the
regular treasurer of this convention to be credited
by him to the Guilds remitting."

This sudden, arbitrary and unannounced inter-
ference with an autonomous, working organization,
and the refusal to allow it to work out its destiny,

206 WHY THEY FAIL

even when means were provided from outside
sources, meant inharmonious relations.

The rest is soon told. The state commissioner
retired from the field to work out the experiment
once more under conditions which would afford less
chance of interruption. No successor was appointed,
as might have been expected, and as might be ex-
pected, the people soon quit work and that was the
last of it. Nothing goes of itself except evil. No
church, no Sunday-school, no lodge runs itself, and
while it was claimed for the Guild that it ran with
less expenditure of energy than anything else we
have, because the burden lay on all shoulders instead
of on the few, it never claimed to be wholly self-
acting.

The third experiment was worked out on an inde-
pendent and inter-denominational basis from Sum-
merland, B. C, in 1910. In this the local organiza-
tion in connection with the local church was
dropped and the Isolate Corps feature became the
institution. Every firm was related directly to the
central office. Parents or other interested adults
co-operated in oversight of juvenile members. A
line of communication with them was opened up by
means of a monthly message and a quarterly publi-
cation named "The Missionary Arena," which was
devoted to the work. Mr. Robert Pollock, of Sum-
merland, a splendid young Scotchman of long com-
mercial training, acted as treasurer. The manager
of the Bank of Montreal nominated Mr. I. B. Fulton,
an experienced accountant, as auditor, and thus
the new machinery was made ready for business.

Through the courtesy and candor of Rev. C. A.
Meyers, pastor of the McDougall Avenue Presby-
terian Church in Edmonton, a gentleman of tireless
energy, intense devotion and marked executive abil-
ity, the way was opened to lay the new education

WHY THEY FAIL 207

before the Edmonton-Strathcona Ministerial Asso-
ciation. It received kind treatment at their hands,
and after a general discussion the following reso-
lution was passed unanimously,

"Resolved, that we, the Ministerial Association of
Edmonton and Strathcona, having listened to Mr.
Robinson's splendid address explaining the methods
and working of the I. G. G. C., show our hearty
appreciation and endorsation of this scheme by
commending it to the sympathy and co-operation
of pastors, parents and all Christian workers."

This kindness did much to open the doors for a
presentation of the work in other towns. Union
meetings were held, usually in the largest churches
obtainable. Once again there was the same result.
The people heard gladly the exposition of the prin-
ciples involved in this discussion, and assented cor-
dially. Throughout that tour no voice, so far as the
writer is aware, was raised in depreciation of the
enterprise. Indeed, from the beginning no valid
objection has ever been raised against the Guild.
Its principles commend themselves at once to the
common-sense of mankind, and in practice there is
found after all, a desire in many hearts to do a
little more for Christ and humanity, to say nothing
of the family, when only \hcy know what to do
and have good company on the way. The very
brightest people we met saw great possibilities in
this ethical application of the reflex in education.
One member of Parliament said, "That address of
yours on 'Practicality' last night was worth two
hundred dollars to the people of this town, and it
will bear fruit after you are gone." Another busi-
ness man said, "I would give five dollars to have
those principles pounded out in book-form." Here's
his opportunity. Both went into the Guild with

208 WHY THEY FAIL

their boys, as also scores of other business and pro-
fessional men.

This third experiment was marked by another
change. In order that there might be no ground
for objection the goal of endeavor was limited to
one cent for each working-day of the year, and, as
the enrollment card indicates, it was made very
clear that our work represented an extra effort, and
must not be in any way made an excuse for shirk-
ing obligations in other directions. This policy
also gives definiteress and uniformity of aim. Mem-
bers can do ther work in a short time and be done
with it where that is an object to them. Education-
ally, however, as has been said, it would be a great
mistake to choose a form of action for the juveniles
which would be too swiftly remunerative. The
oftener within reason they do a turn for what one
little fair-haired, five-year-old called "the desperate
women and children," the better.

Unfortunately this experiment was unexpectedly
interrupted by domestic requirements. A physician's
imperative orders to remove at once to Santa ]\Ionica,
Cal., in order to preserve the health of a member
of the writer's household, naturally disturbed the
confidence in the future of the Guild institution and
afforded plausible reasons why the money made
should be diverted into the known and regularly
ordained church channels, as illustrated previously
in the case of the second experiment.

The western business men believed 18.91 per cent
of the people to be unblenchingly upright and 23.01
per cent of the English-speaking male population
to be manly men. In this case twenty-one per cent
of the firms stood up to their pledges and played
the game to a finish while seventy-nine per cent
of them failed to report to the treasurer's office.

Our returns show 52.3 cents per capita for the

WHY THEY FAIL 209

714 members h'lg and little, as compared with the
following denominational returns for foreign mis-
sions furnished by Mr. I. W. Baker, of the Laymen's
Missionary Movement, as quoted in the "Missionary
Review of the World" for July, 1911:

Baptist, 61c.; Methodist Episcopal (South) 46c.;
Disciples of Christ, 40c. ;United Evangelical, 38c. ;
Lutheran General Synod, 36c. ; Reformed Church
in United States, 36c.; United Brethren, 35c.; Luth-
eran (General Council) 12c.

That basis of comparison seems hopeful when we
reflect that the institution was crippled and only
half-worked.

The 102 firms reporting (the firm is the unit of
production) averaged $3.65 per firm, and put up
$373.08 in all. Only fifteen of the firms reporting
fell below the cent a day standard. Were the
churches to take the matter up seriously and bring
a general, organized pressure to bear on the sub-
ject, the growth and results would be amazing.

Something further should be done by way of knit-
ting the L G. G. C. to the Sunday-school. That is
where it properly belongs. Not that it should be
at once absorbed by the Sunday-school. The genius
and work of the Sunday-school are quite different ;
but it should, while maintaining a separate and in-
dividualistic existence, as in this last experiment,
in order to save confusion and keep clear the sense
of individual responsibility in the homes, be yet so
linked to the Sunday-school that the teachers may
tighten up things by keeping a contributory eye
on the work their boys and girls are doing. It is
really a part of their work to do this as it is part of
the work of a day-school teacher to find and super-
vise the means of motor discharge in the intellectual
development of her pupils.

Because it is so vitally related to the work of the

210 WHY THEY FAIL

Sunday-school, being in fact the complementary re-
quirement of the work they are doing, it would
seem the ultimate destiny of the I. G. G. C. to come
under the aegis of its shield. At the present time,
however, because of the wider appeal, because of
the necessity of getting parents interested, and be-
cause of the homely, tangible and practical nature
pf the work in the field as contrasted with the ideal,
idyllic and indoor nature of the work of the Sunday-
school as we have it, it would seem advisable to
let the amalgamation come about gradually by a
process of evolution. This field of action, except in
its ethical bearings, is strange to the genius of the
Sunday-school as it has always been conducted. It
would take some time to accommodate itself to a
thing so_ foreign to its wonted usages. But should
it see this wild creature of the fields running beside
it and doing no harm, it would little by little get
accustomed to the sight, examine it more closely
and say, "That is the very colt I have been looking
for to help me pull this load." Although manual
training is, as Prof. James says, "The most colossal
advance in education in recent years," and the teach-
ing profession is a very wide-awake and progressive
body, it is probable that a good many more techni-
cal and manual training schools will have to be
built before that twin sister of ours realizes that
manual training will give us "an entirely different
type of citizen," and succeeds in taking over and
installing everywhere the manual work.

Under any possible scheme of existence which
might be devised for it, it is evident the I. G. G. C.
could not live without the other organizations. It
is utterly dependent on them. They keep steam in
its boilers. Every sermon, Sunday-school lesson or
insipring Endeavor address is an inspiration to go
out and do more for the Master and His needy

WHY THEY FAIL 211

world. The Guild has no devotional or hortatory
ambitions. It is the homely duckling of the family,
and like most of that kind it seeks to be useful.
It is the foe of none, the handmaiden of all — its
highest glory to give practical expression to those
lofty and ennobling sentiments which the others
know so much better how to declare. Surely some-
where in the great household of Faith there must
be a small corner for it.

212 WHY. THEY FAIL

Foreword to Chapter VI

"We think our Sabbath services, our prayers, our
Bible-reading are our reHgion. It is not so. We do
these things to help us to be religious in other
things. These are the mere meals and a workman
gets no wages for his meals. It is for the work he
does."

— Prof. Henry Drummond.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

It is quite possible that objection will be taken
to this book on at least two grounds, the first that
it ignores, or at least in effect minimizes, the need
of what is known as conversion and is practically a
plea for salvation by culture. In view of what
has been said in the early part of the book no
thoughtful reader will reach such a conclusion, but
for the beuefit of those who have read hastily or
perhaps skipped altogether the few lines devoted
to that point, it may be as well to reaffirm that
this discussion is not directly concerned with evan-
gelism as such. As a matter of fact no one be-
lieves more firmly in the necessity of the new
birth — regeneration by the Spirit of God, as the
great fundamental in the doctrines of Christianity
than does the writer. Cut that out and all we have
left is but a painted picture, beautiful, but lifeless
and powerless so far as weary, sin-sick, sin bur-
dened humanity is concerned. The essence of Chris-

WHY THEY F'AIL 213

tianity is a Life not a creed; it is Christ not culture — •
"Christ in you the hope of glory." If culture could
have saved the world it would have been saved long
before Christ came ; but the beautiful moral pre-
cepts of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Buddha, Con-
fucius and others w^ere but straws when it came to
stemming the turgid, roaring passions of the human
heart. Let us not forget that those so-called re-
ligions of our own day which claim so much and
appear so fair and so effective, are so simply be-
cause they stand in the reflected glory of that divine
institution against which the gates of the grave,
which swallows everything else, shall not prevail.
They are running on the momentum of a tide, the
origin of which they deride, and were the)'' placed
beyond the pale of its influence their salvation-by-
culture doctrine would soon appear at its true
worth ; it would soon show itself the broken reed it
is. When they have tried it successfully on the
fierce cannibal of the South Sea Islands, the de-
graded Hottentot of South Africa and the stranded
wrecks of humanity on the Bowery — when they
have tried it on them and produced the changes
which the simple gospel of the love of God in
Jesus Christ has produced, and is daily producing,
we shall be more disposed to give credence to their
claims. Till then we may well be excused if we say
the gospel of the great atoning Cross is good enough
for us. It proves its divine origin by its works. It
is the greatest thing in the world. At the same
time evangelism is not all ; the teaching, the building
up is hardly less important, since otherwise the
converts must remain babes and each new genera-
tion be of cripples. "Train up a child in the way
he should go," says the Guide Book, "and when he
is old he will not depart therefrom" — and "going"
means action, does it not? It is because we have

214 WHY THEY F/ilL

been reading that, "Train up the child in the way
he should think" that our troubles have come upon
us as they have.

The second objection will be raised in the minds
of the more thoughtful. It is this : "Is not this new
doctrine too materialistic?" In reply to that it may
be said that in the first place the prior question is,
"Are these things so?" We are dealing with alleged
facts. "Facts are the fingers of God." God is
not at war with Himself, and if these things be so
it is our business not to try to fit the facts to our
theories but to fit our theories to the facts. Chris-
tianity is never afraid of the facts, for so far, the
facts have not yet discredited Christianity. Men
have erred in interpreting the facts of nature on the
one hand quite as fully as they have erred in inter-
preting the Word of God on the other, and from
these two astigmatisms of science and theology all
the mischief has come. If the principles on which
this discussion is based are false, then certainly this
book has no value and it should receive short shrift;
but if on the other they be true, then we should
recognize them and order our conduct in harmony,
leaving the results to God. Theories are being ex-
ploded every day, but

"Facts are chiels wha winna ding
An' daur na be disputit."

We need not be alarmed about the foundations
so long as there is so much disagreement among
our adversaries. The tendencies of science are now
more and more toward the spiritual as the ultimate
explanation of all that is. They have swung from
the "fortuitous concourse of atoms" theory to the
supreme and ever-acting Will as the more probable
hypothesis in accounting for this universe. Pure

WHY THEY FAIL 215

evolution has given place largely to the "mixed"
school and God is given a chance to put in a word
in His own way. "Nothing in evolution can ac-
count for the soul of man," says Alfred Russel
Wallace, a president of the British Association of
Science, perhaps the highest scientific body in the
world, "the difference between man and the other
animals is unabridgeable."

Psychologists are also far from agreeing that all
there is of us is finely organized matter. Many of
the most distinguished of them recognize the diffi-
culties attending such a hypothesis, and are there-
fore content to say that there is a psycho-physical
parallelism. A thought is something which is
heavens-wide apart from any conceivable molecular
changes in the gray matter of the skull ; but the
brain may be, and without doubt is, the organ on
which that invisible entity, the soul of man, makes
its music in this sphere of existence in which we
now are. And just as the finest musician in the
world cannot play the masterpieces of Beethoven,
Wagner and Mozart on an organ which has only
three octaves, or has not the required stops, so the
immortal soul is conditioned by the instrument on
which it plays. Who can say that education is not
wholly a brain process? The world would never
have known a Paderewsky or a Paganini if all the
instrument they possessed was a jewsharp. The
brains of idiots are always deficient. If the soul of
a Bonaparte or a Caesar were encased in the skull
of an idiot what could he do? He would be to us
an idiot, producing the jewsharp music because all
he had to play on was a jewsharp. We talk of ed-
ucating the soul of the boy, but whether we can ed-
ucate his soul at all or not, who can tell us? What
we do know is that unless we efifect certain changes
in his brain there will be nothing of what we call ed-

216 WHY THEY FAIL

ucation in his life. If the neurones in his brain
never myeHnate he remains an infant in understand-
ing. All the education in the world is as though it
were not unless it makes brain tracks. It is educa-
tion only as it does make brain tracks, and the more
adaptive, or purposive and extended those tracks are,
the more potent is the education. The kind of ed-
ucation is always determined by the kind of tracks.
Auditory stimuli never by any chance produce acro-
bats, nor olfactory stimuli musicians. There is no
use quarrelling with the facts. At the same time
the tracks do not account for everything. A thought,
a feeling, a volition, the play of fancy, the Sermon
on the Mount, Shakespeare's plays and "Paradise Lost"
represent something more than chemical and electrical
changes. Mere matter won't account for the inte-
grating process, the building up according to certain
definite, wise and beneficent ends. The force of the
teleological in the human body is inescapable.
Nothing we know of matter will sufificiently account
for the forming, breaking and modifying of connec-
tions in the brain to good ends, as when the burnt
child dreads the fire and flees from it.

In his Psychology Vol. 1, page 137, Professor
James, viewing the gulf between mind and matter,
between consciousness or feeling and motion says:

"If this is so, then, common sense, though the
intimate nature of causality and of the connection of
things in the universe lies beyond her pitifully
bounded horizon, has the root and gist of the truth
in her hands when she obstinately holds to it that
feelings and ideas are causes. However inadequate
our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide
of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings
have it, than the Automatists are when they say
they haven't it. As in the night all cats are gray,
so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all

WHY THEY FAIL 217

causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the
pall over the psychic half of the subject only as the
Automatists do, and to say that that causation is
unintelligible whilst in the same breath one dogma-
tizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant
and Lotze had never been born. One cannot thus
blow hot and cold. One must be impartially naif
or impartially critical. li the latter the reconstruc-
tion must be thoroughgoing or 'metaphysical' and
will probably preserve the common-sense view that
ideas are forces, in some translated form. But psy-
chology is a mere natural science, accepting certain
terms uncritically as her data and stopping short
of metaphysical reconstruction. Like physics she
must be naicz'C ; and if she finds that in her very
peculiar field of study ideas seem to be causes, she
had better continue to talk of them as such. She
gains absolutely nothing by a breach with common
sense in this matter, and she loses to say the least,
all naturalness of speech. If feelings are causes, of
course their effects must be furtherances and check-
ings of internal cerebral motions, of which in them-
selves we are entirely without knowledge. It is
probable that for years to come we shall have to
infer what happens in the brain either from our
feelings or from motor effects which we observe.
The organ wmII be for us a sort of vat in which feel-
ings and motions somehow go on stewing together,
and in which innumerable things happen of which
we catch but the statistical results. Why, under
these circumstances we should be asked to for-
swear the language of our childhood I cannot well
imagine, especially as it is perfectly compatible with
the language of physiology. The feelings can pro-
duce nothing new, they can only reinforce and in-
hibit reflex currents which already exist, and the
original organization of these by physiological

218 WHY THEY FAIL

forces must always be the groundwork of the psy-
chological scheme.

"My conclusion is that to urge the Automaton"
theory upon us, as it is now urged, on purely
a priori and gwa^i-metaphysical grounds is an un-
warrantable impertinence in the present state of psy-
chology."

This, Professor James goes on to substantiate by
pointing out that consciousness, whether in the low-
est sphere of sense or the highest sphere of intellec-
tion, is always a selecting agency. Consciousness
is a result, say the materialists ; where the nervous
organism is low it is low and vice versa. But Pflii-
ger, Lewes and James say. Yes, but consciousness
works downward. Determinateness goes with pre-
cision of action ; instability with indeterminateness.
If it were all determinate there would be no choice;
the instability of cerebral action (illustrated by the
adaptation of conduct to the minutest change of
environment, or action determined not by the stimu-
lus of the nearer good) permits choice. And that
choice is aht/ays in favor of the subject's interests.
Consciousness inhibits what is not in the line of its
own interests or the interests it creates. "Survival
can enter into a purely physiological discussion only
as an hypothesis made by an onlooker about the
future."

1. The phenomena of vicarious function. "A
brain with part of it scooped out is virtually a new
machine and during the first days after the operation
functions in a thoroughly abnormal manner. As a
matter of fact, however, its performances become
from day to day more normal, until at last a prac-
ticed eye may be needed to suspect anything
wrong."

2. Consciousness is most vivid where nerve proc-
esses are hesitant, e.g., before a leap; "in rapid,

WHY THEY FAIL 219

automatic action consciousness sinks to a minimum.
Nothing could be more fitting than this, if con-
sciousness have the teleological function we sup-
pose; nothing more meaningless if not." Why?

3. "Pleasures are generally associated with benefi-
cent, pains with detrimental processes." Why not
the other way about? Why should burning not give
"thrills?"

De Sarlo, a leading representative of the school of
Wundt, father of our experimental psychology, says
there can be no science of psychology at all "unless
a real subject exists," and calls attention to the fact
that if psychology postulates mind, every other sci-
ence has progressed in a similar way, as when for
instance, life is postuated in biology, the atom in
chemistry and motion in mechanics.

Thus it will be seen that there is no need of
alarm on our part while the apple of discord still
rolls along in the ranks of the Philistines. Christian
Science may tell us that consciousness is a lie and
there is no such thing as matter and an objective
world; materialism may tell us that consciousness
lies suavely when it tells us that we are free ; but
here are other voices equally prominent crying out
to us to hold fast to our "common-sense" which tells
us both are wrong, for universal consciousness tells
no lie, and that there is both matter and mind,
choice and responsibility, an indestructible entity
perduring through all change, as well as the "bundle
of sensations" which David Hume believed to be all
there is of us.

Some sensitive readers will be asking how this re-
flex action teaching squares with the Word of God.
The reply is, admirably. The Bible is full of it. The
IMaster taught it when He said in His Great Com-
mission, which is the charter of every New Testa-
ment church, "Go ye . . . and lo, I am with

220 WHY THEY FAIL

you" — i. e., when you go. He did not say anything
about motor discharges, it is true, because his hear-
ers knew as little about that as they did about the
differential calculus, and if he had His words would
have been without interest and soon forgotten. The
Bible is full of good psychology, but it is expressed
in terms of the concrete that it might be of use
among all peoples. The end is everything, the
means unimportant as long as they are not vicious.
Indeed, it may be questioned whether vicious means
can attain an ultimately good end. So the incite-
ments are over and over again to right courses of
conduct. The Sermon on the Mount is a disserta-
tion on how to behave as a Christian. The Pauline
writings are full of hortatory applications which go
far toward giving color to the doctrine of pragma-
tism, that Christianity like everything else must
have its value determined by its works. The New
Testament is full of precepts that mean so many
motor discharges in the brain when heeded. These
precepts are very beautiful, but as a general thing
they do not grip the life. Christian people do not
pretend to follow them as they follow their other
guidebooks when going on a journey. The ethical
action and association neurones, you see, have never
been developed, so that all they can do is to make a
stagger at it, beginning late to develop brain tracks
and finding the process one which is both long and
difficult.

This is under ordinary conditions. There are ex-
traordinary circumstances when, under a special ef-
fusion of the divine Spirit, miracles of grace are
performed. The emotional excitement is so great as
to produce such overflows of nervous energy as in-
hibit freely the old impulses and vastly hasten the
development of new brain tracks. This is the re-
vival condition previously referred to. It would be

WHY THEY FAIL 221

very nice to be able to live under such conditions
all the time. Maybe we should ; but the history of
the church thus far does not show that it has been
done by any considerable body of men and women
over long periods of time, especially where a ground-
work has not been laid for it by a careful training
in childhood. It is a proverb with us that good men
come from good homes, and if you investigated the
training in those homes you would probably find
that no small part of it had to do with the actions
of the boy. He was taught to rise up when his
elders entered the room, to lift his cap to the ladies,
to be kind to the dog and the cat, and to help his
little sister put on her coat without at the same time
pulling her hair. And when we say that he was
taught to do so we mean to say that somebody
stood over him and saw that he did these things.
It was the doing rather than the telling that made
the man, and a man who has had such a training as
that in his tender years, though he sink to the abyss
of the social world, will never quite get away from
it. There will always be something more of the
gentleman about him than there is about the sot
beside him who never knew such influences. And
when perchance the Spirit of God creates within him
a new life, that life will find the old channels all
Igouged out and needing but a little renovation,
which is a vastly different thing from having to
make them de novo. He will be ready for a career
of usefulness, and a larger career of usefulness at
that, far earlier than his friend, the sot beside him,
who was converted at the same time.

Prodigies of physical strength and endurance have
been performed by men and women under the stress
of a burning house or some other imminent peril ;
so in things spiritual ; but in both cases the phe-
nomena are abnormal, and it is our business to pro-

222 WHY THEY FAIL

vide for the normal. If we do that the abnormal
will take care of itself when it comes, and do so to
far better advantage than it could otherwise have
done. We may not shirk our plain duty to the
young by trying to foist it all on the revival, God
will be able to work all the better for our having
done our part.

It is of the utmost importance that the Church
make some adequate provision for correlative motor
discharges because in doing so she will find a
mighty reflex that will lift her into new, varied and
vigorous manifestations of life. When the Wes-
leys and Whitfield broke the spell of the formalism
of the established church in the latter half of the
eighteenth century and issued their call to the
masses, it was a call to action — to go out into the
highways and byways with the good tidings, and
to give expression in songs, and pious ejaculations
to their religious feelings. A vast wave of religious
emotion swept over England and on its refluent cur-
rent came a new life that manifested itself in various
ways. The great missionary societies in England
and America were born. Howard and Elizabeth
Fry were moved to examine the festering sores of
the prison pens of England and Europe. Wilber-
force was stirred up to plead "trumpet tongued" for
the abolition of the slave, and the masses were
stirred up to demand the liberties accorded in the
Reform Bill of 1832.

In our own day we have seen something anal-
ogous. When the Christian Endeavor Society was
born it swept over the land and around the world
like a prairie fire, in one form or another. Why?
Because it formed the channel of expression for
those good impressions stored up in young lives
and so long pressing for a natural channel of ex-
pression. June is June and January is January, and

WHY THEY FAIL 223

the two do not travel well together. Youth felt
naturally under some constraint in the presence of
its elders. A deference for age inhibited in the so-
cial meetings; but when the cleavage came the
young people took on new life and became active
in many helpful ways. The movement was opposed
at first of course, but it could not be stopped, and
now no one wants to stop it. Coming closer yet to
our own day we shall find another illustration of
the hunger of young life for motor expression in
that blessed institution known as the Boy Scouts.
Under Mr. Ernest Thompson-Seton in America and
General Sir Baden-Powell in England, the move-
ment has broken all records, enrolling half a million
in a year or two. This is not because the order calls
for an out-of-door life, has a military twist and the
romance of a camp-fire attaching to it, but because
it finds a natural channel of expression for the
swelling energies of youth. The camp-fire means
action to us all, and much more does it mean de-
lightful action to the boys. So far as their leaders
are concerned it means the putting into operation
of the principles underlying the Industr'al Guild of
the Great Commission in another field and for some-
what different though valuable ends. They pro-
pose to develop manliness, hardiness, observation,
physique, practicality and other desirable qualities
by the actual doing of those deeds which alone
will produce them. It is another training in the
school of things as they are. Books are at a dis-
count. It is the deed that counts every time — the
topographical maps and observations made in ac-
tual scouting in strange territory ; the endurance
in the swimming contest ; the actual joints "wiped"
in plumbing; and machines made in mechanics, that
determine the awards of merit and the standing in
the juvenile army.

224: WHY THEY FAIL

No wonder the organization has grown. It will
do immeasurable good in its own way, as the
George Jr. RepubHc is doing for another class, in
another way that is at bottom similar. Books are
good, important, necessary, but the world is tired
of the futility of books and precepts alone. They
create an unreal world and educate away from the
hard world of actual experience when they do not
have with them the corrective of a training with
things that can be measured and handled. The
boy's conception may be that twelve inches are
so long — , but when in the manual training school he
is required to make a foot rule he finds that eleven
and three-quarter inches will not, by any kind of
juggling, make a foot.

"The development of the manual act carries with
it a noble promise," says Professor Holmes of
Swarthmore College, "yet with a sinking heart I
see my little folk gradually turning as they have
been turning in the few years of their school lives,
from things to books. My friends, there is peril
in the printed page. Who shall know this if not
we, who are students and teachers, who have to
fight daily to keep our souls alive in the world of
things from which the world of books invites us."

There is in genetic psychology what is known as
the law of transitoriness of instincts ; that is, that
the active powers, like the flowers of the field, do
not ripen all at once but in a certain orderly suc-
cession. About the first of these we see is the
sucking instinct. Everything the infant gets goes
into his mouth ; if the assay be favorable it is ap-
propriated, if not it is eliminated. A little later he
is seized with a desire to creep ; later still he is
seized with an overmastering impulse to stand up
and to walk, and the leg of the table, a chair, a sofa,
anything which is taller than himself will do, and

WHY THEY FAIL 235

is forthwith commandeered for the attempt. When
he has mastered that art and explored all the little
world about the house, a process which may take
him a year or two, the social impulse becomes dom-
inant; he sighs for other worlds to conquer and it
requires two policemen and a nurse-girl to keep
him within bounds. Imagination becomes rampant
and he sees the thousand cats under the barn, which
on strict analysis turn out to be "something that
looked like a cat, anyway." Then memory takes
the center of the stage and nobody knows how, when
or where he ever learns his lessons. They seem
to come to him in his sleep. And slowly on the
heels of memory judgment enters, halting but sure
and stately, the last and greatest of his powers, save
:will, to mature.

Somewhere along the shining pathway of those
early morning years he will enter the gloomy for-
est aisles of romance. He will be hungry for the
strange, the grotesque, the unknown. Since go seek-
ing it he must, he will go armed to the teeth with
bow and arrow, cutlass and pistol, or Winchester
and the automatic that rains bullets, a thousand
a minute. That is the time to catch him and load
him up with information about the strange man-
ners, dress and customs of the queer peoples our
missionaries know of. He thinks of going among,
them as a bandit or a pirate, but that is only be-
cause he thinks (as we are all for ourselves apt to
think), that every man's hand is against him, till
proof to the contrary is forthcoming, and he had
therefore better be prepared for the worst. To give
him the true account is to disarm his fears and it
may be to enlist his sympathy, especially if it be his
active co-operation that is called for. For, after
all, what he pines for is knowledge and action; not
action without knowledge, nor yet knowledge with-

226 WHZ THEY FAIL

out action, but both together, and if we can only
furnish him with the two in the proper doses, at-
tractively put up, he will swallow them cheerfully
and the rest will take care of itself.

This law of the transitoriness of instincts tells
us that it is at the time that these instincts are
flowering that we should be most active in our
teaching capacity if we would attain the best re-
sults. Just as a boy will drink greedily when he is
very thirsty and absorb much more fluid than he
will at any other time, so mentally he will absorb
most freely and most effectively a particular kind
of training, if we give it to him at the psychological
moment when the instinct is efflorescing.

And if the information the boy receives about the
blacks in Borneo be directly related to some prac-
tical activity on his part which has to do with them
in a real way, the reflex of the act will be to keep
him in living touch with the reality of that very real
world ; and he will have a consciousness of its reality
which he could not otherwise have had. He will
not then find "the peril in the printed page," of
which Professor Holmes speaks, and he will not
have "to fight daily to keep his soul alive in the
world of things from which the world of books in-
vites us," for he has kept a channel of communica-
tion with it open all the time.

Finally, what are we going to do about all this?
If it be true that we have in our Church work
largely failed to turn out a man who is ethically fit
as tested in the market place; if the failure be due
to an oversight — the failure to provide for the
proper expression of ethical emotions and ideas in
the young; if it be possible to provide such chan-
nels of expression ; if the Industrial Guild of the
Great Commission be one such channel, admirably
adapted to the requirements of about two-thirds of

WHY THEY FAIL 237

the population concerned ; if there be financial pos-
sibilities in that institution far beyond its own re-
quirements; and if the imperative need of the hour
be larger means for the "unprecedented advance"
through the open doors set before us in every land,
what, we ask again, are we going to do about all
this?

That question the writer leaves with the Church
and society at large. He feels that he has thus
far done his little part and discharged his moral
obligations to the world as a man in connection with
what has seemed, to him at any rate, a matter of
the very deepest concern to the life of the Church
and the world. This has not been done without
sacrifice, but that is neither here nor there. The es-
sential thing for every man is to find out what
seems the right thing for him to do and then do it.
H'e should not be afraid to stand by the arbitrament
of his own judgment, once a verdict has been care-
fully reached. Having done that the results be-
long to God. He has cleared himself before him-
self, which, next to the judgment seat of the Most
High, is the highest tribunal any man has to face.
If what he has to say be true it will find its re-
sponse in the heart of humanity sooner or later,
and if it be not worth hearing it should fall to the
ground and be allowed to die.

But whether this or that, so long as business men
think they can trust only twenty-five per cent or
less of our Sunday-scool graduates with their
$10,000 in the dark, and would call only about the
same number of men out of the lot, manly men ;
and so long as so-called Christian America is ac-
cused of spending $60,000,000 on laces, $15,000,000
on ostrich plumes, $25,000,000 on chewing gum,
$78,000,000 on candy, $320,000,000 on soda water,
and but $11,000,000 on the task for which Christ

228 WHY THEY FAIL

died and for which we are supposed to be alive,
it would seem that any kind of proposition which
looks Hke a possible solution of the difficulty should
receive a fair hearing, a careful scrutiny, and, if it
bears the examination well, a public discussion and
proper adjudication in every court of competent
jurisdiction. Certainly this book would ask foi;
nothing more.

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Why They Fail

The Argument

The argument in "W/iy They Fail" runs thus:

There exists a widespread moral delinquency. This be-
comes evident on the most cursory examination of our social
life. It is seen in politics, commerce, sports and the courts,
and even in connection with the church itself, which has for
the most part developed a type that is "good in a prayer
meeting but bad in a horse trade," the man on the street
being the judge. This is not because the church has lacked
earnestness in her great work but because she and the rest
of us have overlooked in our educational work the Ethical
application of the second and perhaps more powerful principle
of all education, viz., reflex action. The result of this fatal
oversight is that we turn out a boy "but half made up." He
has a lop-sided brain. He knows well what is right but he
falls down when it comes to doing it. Our system of educa-
tion has built up moral knowledge cells but the correlative
moral action cells, which alone give the power to do the right
he knows, have never been developed in his brain. He knows
the good but finds it so hard to do it, just as he knows about
chop-sticks but finds it so difficult to use them, and for exactly
the same reason, viz., that the group of cells which alone
gives power to do the act has never, by the reflexes of his own
previous similar acts, been built up in his brain. Men fail,
chiefly not because our present system of education is wrong,
but because it is like a one-legged man, woefully incomplete.
We do not dream of ignoring this reflex principle in the de-
velopment of the boy's intellect, or in practical life: it is only
in the education of the soul of the boy we presume to do
without it, and then marvel that in manhood he should so
lamentably fail. The majority must continue to be fore-
doomed to come short ethically as long as the ethical appli-
cation of this reflex principle is ignored. The leading psycholog-
ists and neurologists of the world are cited in support of the
author's main contention Chapter V gives his contribution
to the task of working out the application. This is known as
the Industrial Guild of the Great Commission, an institution
which is specially adapted to rural conditions, or about 60
per cent of the population.

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