PRACTICAL ETHICS
BY
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE, D. D.
President of Bowdoin College
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. I.
PREFACE.
THE steady stream of works on ethics during
the last ten years, rising almost to a torrent within
the past few months, renders it necessary for even
the tiniest rill to justify its slender contribution
to the already swollen flood.
On the one hand treatises abound which are exr
haustive in their presentation of ethical theory.
On the other hand books are plenty which give
good moral advice with great elaborateness of
detail. Each type of work has its place and
function. The one is excellent mental gymnastic
for the mature; the other admirable emotional
pabulum for the childish mind. Neither, however,
is adapted both to satisfy the intellect and quicken
the conscience at that critical period when the youth
has put away childish things and is reaching out after
manly and womanly ideals.
The book which shall meet this want must have
theory; yet the theory must not be made obtrusive,
nor stated too abstractly. The theory must be
deeply imbedded in the structure of the work; and
must commend itself, not by metaphysical deduction
from first principles, but by its ability to compre-
IV PREFACE.
hend in a rational and intelligible order the con
crete facts with which conduct has to do.
Such a book must be direct and practical. It
must contain clear-cut presentation of duties to be
done, virtues to be cultivated, temptations to be
overcome, and vices to be shunned : yet this must be
done, not by preaching and exhortation, but by
showing the place these things occupy in a coherent
system of reasoned knowledge.
Such a blending of theory and practice, of faith
and works, is the aim and purpose of this book.
The only explicit suggestions of theory are in the
"'ntroduction (which should not be taken as the first
lesson) and in the last two chapters. Religion is
presented as the consummation, rather than the
foundation of ethics; and the brief sketch of re
ligion in the concluding chapter is confined to those
broad outlines which are accepted, with more or less
explicitness, by Jew and Christian, Catholic and
Protestant, Orthodox and Liberal.
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE.
Bownow COLLEGE,
BRUNSWICK, ME. May 10, 1892.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION, ------ i
I. FOOD AND DRINK, - 9
II. DRESS, X9
III. EXERCISE, ------- 25
IV. WORK, -------- 32
V. PROPERTY, ------- 4°
VI. EXCHANGE, - - - - - - -46
VII. KNOWLEDGE, ------ 53
VIII. TIME, 6o
IX. SPACE, - - - - - - 65
X. FORTUNE, - - - - - - 7°
XI. NATURE, 81
XII. ART, 89
XIII. ANIMALS, ------- 98
XIV. FELLOW-MEN,- - - - - - I04
XV. THE POOR, - ------ n?
XVI. WRONGDOERS, - - - - - - 127
XVII. FRIENDS, "'".•" I37
XVIII. FAMILY, *44
XIX. STATE, *57
XX. SOCIETY, l67
XXI. SELF, - 179
XXII. GOD, J94
VI
OUTLINE OF
SEE LAST
Object.
Duty.
Virtue.
Reward.
Food and drink, .
Vigor, ....
Temperance,
Health, . . .
Comeliness, . .
Neatness, . .
Respectability, .
Exercise, . . .
Recreation, . .
Cheerfulness, .
Energy, . . .
Work, ....
Self-support, .
Industry, . . .
Wealth, . .
Property, . . .
Provision, . .
Economy, . .
Prosperity, . .
Exchange, . . .
Equivalence,
Honesty, . . .
Self-respect,
Sex,
Reproduction, .
Purity, . . .
Sweetness, , .
Knowledge, . .
Truth, . . .
Veracity, . . .
Confidence, . .
Co-ordination, .
Prudence, . .
Harmony, . .
Space, ....
System, . . .
Orderliness, . .
Efficiency, . .
Fortune, . . .
Superiority, . .
Courage, . . .
Honor, . . .
Nature, ....
Appreciation, .
Sensitiveness, .
Inspiration, . .
Art
Beauty, . . .
Simplicity, . .
Refinement, .
Animals, . . .
Consideration, .
Kindness, . .
Tenderness, . .
Fellow-men, . .
Fellowship, . .
Love
Unity, . . .
The Poor, . . .
Help
Benevolence,
Sympathy, . .
Wrong-doers,
Justice, . . .
Forgiveness,
Reformation,
Friends, . . .
Devotion, . .
Fidelity, . . .
Affection, . .
Family, ....
Membership,
Loyalty, . . .
Home, . . .
State, ....
Organization, .
Patriotism, . .
Civilization, . .
Society, . . .
Co-operation, .
Public Spirit, .
Freedom, . .
Self,
Realization, .
Conscientiousness
Character, . .
God,.
Obedience, . .
Holiness, ...
Life, . . . .
PRACTICAL ETHICS.
Vll
PARAGRAPH OF INTRODUCTION.
Temptation.
Vice of Defect.
Vice of Excess.
Penalty.
Appetite, . . .
Asceticism, . .
Intemperance, .
Disease.
Vanity, . . .
Slovenliness,
Fastidiousness, .
Contempt.
Excitement, . .
Morbidness,
Frivolity, . . .
Debility.
Ease, ....
Laziness, . . .
Overwork, . .
Poverty.
Indulgence, . .
Wastefulness, .
Miserliness, . .
Want.
Gain, ....
Dishonesty, . .
Compliance, . .
Degradation.
Lust, ....
Prudery, . . .
Sensuality, . .
Bitterness.
Ignorance, . .
Falsehood, . .
Gossip, . . .
Distrust.
Dissipation, . .
Procrastination,
Anxiety, . .
Discord.
Disorder, . . .
Carelessness,
Red Tape, . .
Obstruction.
Risk
Cowardice, . .
Gambling, . .
Shame.
Utility, ....
Obtuseness, . .
Affectation, . .
Stagnation.
Luxury, . . .
Ugliness, . . .
Ostentation,
Vulgarity.
Neglect, ...
Cruelty, . . .
Subjection, . .
Brutality.
Indifference, . .
Selfishness, . .
Sentimentality, .
Strife.
Alienation, . .
Niggardliness, .
Indulgence, . .
Antipathy.
Vengeance, . .
Severity, . . .
Lenity, . . .
Perversity.
Betrayal, . . .
Exclusiveness, .
Effusiveness,
Isolation.
Independence,
Self-sufficiency,
Self-oblite ration ,
Loneliness.
Treason, . . .
Ambition, . .
Anarchy.
Self-interest, . .
Meanness, . .
Officiousness, .
Constraint.
Pleasure, . . .
Unscrupulousness
Formalism, . .
Corruption.
Self-will, . . .
Sin, ....
Hypocrisy, . .
Death.
INTRODUCTION.
ETHICS is the science of conduct, and the art of
life.
Life consists in the maintenance of relations; it
requires continual adjustment ; it implies external
objects, as well as internal forces. Conduct must
have materials to work with ; stuff to build charac
ter out of; resistance to overcome; objects to con
front.
These objects nature has abundantly provided.
They are countless as the sands of the seashore,
or the stars of heaven. In order to bring them within
the range of scientific treatment we must classify
them, and select for study those classes of objects
which are most essential to life and conduct. Each
chapter of this book presents one of these funda
mental objects with which life and conduct are im
mediately concerned.
A great many different relations are possible be
tween ourselves and each one of these objects. Of
these many possible relations some would be injuri
ous to ourselves; some would be destructive of the
object. Toward each object there is one relation,
and one only, which at the same time best promotes
2 INTRODUCTION.
the development of ourselves and best preserves the
object's proper use and worth. The maintenance
of this ideal union of self and object is our duty
with reference to that object.
Which shall come first and count most in deter
mining this right relation, self or object, depends on
the character of the object.
In the case of inanimate objects, such as food,
drink, dress, and property, the interests of the self
are supreme. Toward these things it is our right
and duty to be sagaciously and supremely selfish.
When persons and mere things meet, persons have
absolute right of way.
When we come to ideal objects, such as knowl
edge, art, Nature, this cool selfishness is out of place.
The attempt to cram knowledge, appropriate nature,
and "get up" art, defeats itself. These objects
have a worth in themselves, and rights of their own
which we must respect. They resent our attempts
to bring them into subjection to ourselves. We
must surrender to them, we must take the attitude
of humble and self-forgetful suitors, if we would win
the best gifts they have to give, and claim them as
our own.
As we rise to personal relations, neither appropria
tion nor surrender, neither egoism nor altruism, nor
indeed any precisely measured mechanical mixture
of the two, will solve the problem. Here the recog
nition of a common good, a commonwealth in which
each person has an equal worth with every other, is
the only satisfactory solution. "Be a person, and
INTRODUCTION. 3
respect the personality of others," is the duty in
this sphere.
As we approach social institutions we enter the
presence of objects which represent interests vastly
wider, deeper, more enduring than the interests of
our individual lives. The balance, which was evenly
poised when we weighed ourselves against other
individuals, now inclines toward the side of these
social institutions, without which the individual
life would be stripped of all its worth and dig
nity, apart from which man would be no longer
man. Duty here demands devotion and self-
sacrifice.
Finally, when we draw near to God, who is the
author and sustainer of individuals, of science and
art and nature, and of social institutions, then the
true relation becomes one of reverence and worship.
In each case duty is the fullest realization of
self and object. Whether self or the object shall
be the determining factor in the relation depends
on whether the object in question has less, equal,
or greater worth than the individual self.
If we do our duty repeatedly and perseveringly in
any direction, we form the habit of doing it, learn
to enjoy it,. and acquire a preference for it. This
habitual preference for a duty is the virtue corre
sponding to it.
Virtue is manliness or womanliness. It is the
steadfast assertion of what we see to be our duty
against the solicitations of temptation. Virtue is
mastery; first of self, and through self-mastery, the
4 INTRODUCTION.
mastery of the objects with which we come in
contact.
Since duty is the maintenance of self and its
objects in highest realization, and virtue is constant
and joyous fidelity to duty, it follows that duty
and virtue cannot fail of that enlargement and en
richment of life which is their appropriate reward.
The reward of virtue will vary according to the
duty done and the object toward which it is
directed. The virtues which deal with mere things
will bring as their rewards material prosperity. The
virtues which deal with ideal objects will have
their reward in increased capacities, intensified
sensibilities, and elevated tastes. The virtues which
deal with our fellow-men will be rewarded by
enlargement of social sympathy, and deeper tender
ness of feeling. The virtues which are directed
toward family, state, and society, have their reward
in that exalted sense of participation in great and
glorious aims, which lift one up above the limitations
of his private self, and can make even death
sweet and beautiful — a glad and willing offering to
that larger social self of which it is the individual's
highest privilege to count himself a worthy and
honorable member.
Life, however, is not this steady march to victory,
with beating drums and flying banners, which, for
the sake of continuity in description, we have thus
far regarded it. There are hard battles to fight ;
and mighty foes to conquer. We must now return
to those other possible relations which we left when
INTRODUCTION. 5
we selected for immediate consideration that one
right relation which we call duty.
Since there is only one right relation between self
and an object, all others must be wrong. These
other possible relations are temptations. Tempta
tion is the appeal of an object to a single side of our
nature as against the well-being of self as a whole.
Each object gives rise to many temptations. "Broad
is the way that leadeth to destruction."
Just as duty performed gives rise to virtue, so
temptation, yielded to, .begets vice. Vice is the
habitual yielding to temptation.
Temptations fall into two classes. Either we are
tempted to neglect an object, and so to give it too
little influence over us; or else we are tempted
to be carried away by an object, and to give it an
excessive and disproportionate place in our life.
Hence the resulting vices fall into two classes.
Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation
are vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter
form of temptation are vices of excess. As one of
these temptations is usually much stronger than the
other, we will discuss simply the strongest and
most characteristic temptation in connection with
each object. Yet as both classes of vice exist with
reference to every object, it will be best to consider
both.
Vice carries its penalty in its own nature. Being
a perversion of some object, it renders impossible
that realization of ourselves through the object, or
in the higher relations, that realization of the object
6 INTRODUCTION.
through us, on which the harmony and completeness
of our life depends. In the words of Plato: "Virtue
is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul,
and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity
of the soul."
Each chapter will follow the order here devel
oped. The outline on pp. x, xi shows the logical
framework on which the book is constructed. Un
der the limitations of such a table, confined to a
single term in every case, it is of course impossible
to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and
inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry
bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a
glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole
of interrelated members : a conception it would be
impossible to present in any other form without
entering upon metaphysical inquiries altogether
foreign to the practical purpose of the book.
PRACTICAL ETHICS.
PRACTICAL ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.
ffoofc ant) H>rfnfe.
THE foundations of life, and therefore the first
concerns of conduct, are food and drink. Other
things are essential if we are to live comfortably and
honorably. Food and drink are essential if we are to
live at all. In order that we may not neglect these
important objects, nature has placed on guard over
the body two sentinels, hunger and thirst, to warn
us whenever fresh supplies of food and drink are
needed.
THE DUTY.
Body and mind to be kept in good working
order. — In response to these warnings it is our
duty to eat and drink such things, in such quanti
ties, at such times, and in such ways as will render
the body the most efficient organ and expression of
the mind and will.
Hygiene and physiology, and our own experience
and common sense, tell us in detail what, when, and
how much it is best for us to eat and drink. Ethics
presupposes this knowledge, and simply tells us
10 FOOD AND DRINK.
that these laws of hygiene and physiology are our
best friends ; and that it is our duty to heed what
they say.
THE VIRTUE.
Temperance is self-control. — These sentinels
tell us when to begin ; but they do not always tell
us when to leave off : and if they do, it sometimes
requires special effort to heed the warning that they
give. The appetite for food and drink, if left to it
self, would run away with us. Our liking for what
tastes good, if allowed to have its own way, would
lead us to eat and drink such things and in such
quantities as to weaken our stomachs, enfeeble our
muscles, muddle our brains, impair our health, and
"shorten our lives. Temperance puts bits into the
mouth of appetite ; holds a tight rein over it ; com
pels it to go, not where it pleases to take us, but
where we see that it is best for us to go ; and trains
it to stop when it has gone far enough.
Virtue means manliness. Temperance is a virtue
because it calls into play that strong, firm will
which is the most manly thing in us. The temper
ate man is the strong man. For he is the master,
not the slave of his appetites. He is lord of his
own life.
THE REWARD.
The temperate man has all his powers per
petually at their best. — Into work or play or study
he enters with the energy and zest which come of
good digestion, strong muscles, steady nerves, and a
THE TEMPTATION. II
clear head. He works hard, plays a strong game,
thinks quickly and clearly ; because he has a surplus
of vitality to throw into whatever he undertakes.
He prospers in business because he is able to pro
secute it with energy. He makes friends because
he has the cheerfulness and vivacity which is the
charm of good-fellowship. He enjoys life because
all its powers are at his command.
THE TEMPTATION.
The pleasures of taste an incidental good,
but not the ultimate good. — Food tastes good to
the hungry, and to the thirsty drinking is a keen
delight. This is a kind and wise provision of
nature; and as long as this pleasure accompanies
eating and drinking in a normal and natural way it
aids digestion and promotes health and vigor. The
more we enjoy our food the better ; and food, well-
cooked, well-served, and eaten in a happy and
congenial company, is vastly better for us than the
same food poorly cooked, poorly served, and de
voured in solitude and silence.
Yet it is possible to make this pleasure which
accompanies eating and drinking the end for the
sake of which we eat and drink. The temptation
is to eat and drink what we like and as much as we
like ; instead of what we know to be best for us.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The difference between temperance and
asceticism. — Asceticism looks like temperance,
12 FOOD AND DRINK.
People who practice it often pride themselves upon
it. But it is a hollow sham. And it has done
much to bring discredit upon temperance, for which
it tries to pass. What then is the difference be
tween temperance and asceticism ? Both control
appetite. Both are opposed to intemperance. But
they differ in the ends at which they aim. Tem
perance controls appetite for the sake of greater
life and health and strength. Asceticism is the
control of appetite merely for the sake of control
ling it. Asceticism, in shunning the evils to which
food and drink may lead, misses also the best bless
ings they are able to confer. The ascetic attempts
to regulate by rule and measure everything he eats
and drinks, and to get along with just as little as
possible, and so he misses the good cheer and
hearty enjoyment which should be the best part of
every meal.
Let us be careful not to confound sour, lean,
dyspeptic asceticism with the hale, hearty virtue of
temperance. Asceticism sacrifices vigor and vitality
for the sake of keeping its rules and exercising self-
control. Temperance observes the simple rules of
hygiene and common sense for the sake of vigor
and vitality ; and sacrifices the pleasures of the
palate only in so far as it is necessary in order to
secure in their greatest intensity and permanence
the larger and higher interests of life.
THE VICES OF EXCESS. 13
THE VICES OF EXCESS.
Intemperance in eating is gluttony. Intem
perance in drinking leads to drunkenness. —
Instead of sitting in the seat of reason and driving
the appetites before him in obedience to his will,
the glutton and the drunkard harness themselves
into the wagon and put reins and whip into the
hands of their appetites.
The glutton lives to eat ; instead of eating to
live. This vice is so odious and contemptible that
few persons give themselves up entirely to gluttony.
Yet every time we eat what we know is not good
for us, or more than is good for us, we fall a victim
to this loathsome vice.
The drunkard is the slave of an unnatural
thirst. — Alchoholic drink produces as its first effect
an excitement and exhilaration much more intense
than any pleasure coming from the normal gratifica
tion of natural appetite. This exhilaration is pur
chased at the expense of stimulating the system to
abnormal exertion. This excessive action of the
system during intoxication is followed by a corre
sponding reaction. The man feels as much worse
than usual during the hours and days that follow
his debauch, as he felt better than usual during the
brief moments that he was taking his drinks. This
depression and disturbance of the system which
follows indulgence in intoxicating drink begets an
unnatural and incessant craving for a repetition of
the stimulus ; and so in place of the even, steady
14 FOOD AND DRINK.
life of the temperate man, the drinking man's life is
a perpetual alternation of brief moments of un
natural excitement, followed by long days of un
natural craving and depression. The habit of in
dulging this unnatural craving steals upon a man
unawares ; it occupies more and more of his
thought; takes more and more of his time and
money, until he is unable to think or care for
anything else. It becomes more important to him
than business, home, wife, children, reputation, or
character; and before he knows it he finds that his
will is undermined, reason is dethroned, affection is
dead, appetite has become his master, and he has
become its beastly and degraded slave.
Total abstinence the only sure defense. —
This vice of intemperance is so prevalent in the com
munity, so insidious in its approach, so degrading
in its nature, so terrible in its effects, that the only
absolutely and universally sure defense against it is
total abstinence. A man may think himself strong
enough to stop drinking when and where he pleases ;
but the peculiar and fatal deception about intoxicat
ing drink is that it makes those who become its vic
tims weaker to resist it with every indulgence. It
enfeebles their wills directly. The fact that a man
can stop drinking to-day is no sure sign that he can
drink moderately for a year and stop then. At the
end of that time he will have a different body, a
different brain, a different mind, a different will from
the body and mind and will he has to-day, and would
have after a year of abstinence.
THE VICES OF EXCESS. 15
As we have seen, with every natural and healthy
exercise of our appetites and faculties moderation is
preferable to abstinence. It is better to direct
them toward the ends they are intended to accom
plish that to stifle and suppress them. But the
thirst for intoxicating drink is unnatural. It
creates abnormal cravings ; it produces diseased
conditions which corrupt and destroy the very
powers of nerve and brain on which the faculties
of reason and control depend. " Touch not, taste
not, handle not," is the only rule that can insure
one against the fearful ravages of this beastly and in
human vice.
Responsibility for social influence.— A strong
argument in favor of abstinence from intoxicating
drink is its beneficial social influence. If there are
two bridges across a stream, one safe and sure,
the other so shaky and treacherous that a large pro
portion of all who try to cross over it fall into the
stream and are drowned ; the fact that I happen to
have sufficiently cool head and steady nerves to walk
over it in safety does not make it right for me to
do so, when I know that my companionship and
example will lead many to follow who will certainly
perish in the attempt.
Mild wines and milder climates may render the
moderate use of alchoholic drinks comparatively
harmless to races less nervously organized than ours.
And there doubtless are individuals in our midst
whose strong constitution, phlegmatic temperament,
or social training enable them to use wine daily for
1 6 FOOD AND DRINK.
years without appreciable injury. They can walk
with comparative safety the narrow bridge. There
are multitudes who cannot. There are tens of thou
sands for whom our distilled liquors, open saloons,
and treating customs, combined with our trying cli
mate and nervous organizations, render moderate
drinking practically impossible. They must choose
between the safe and sure way of total abstinence,
or the fatal plunge into drunkenness and disgrace.
And if those who are endowed with cooler heads
and stronger nerves are mindful of their social duty
to these weaker brethren, among whom are some
of the most generous and noble-hearted of our ac
quaintances and friends, then for the sake of these
more sorely tempted ones, and for the sake of their
mothers, wives, and sisters to whom a drunken son,
husband, or brother is a sorrow worse than death,
they will forego a trifling pleasure in order to avert
the ruin that their example would otherwise help
to bring on the lives, fortunes, and families of
others.
Fatal fascination of the opium habit.— What
has been said of alcoholic drink is equally true of
opium. The habit of using opium is easy to form
and almost impossible to break. The secret work
ings of this poison upon the mind and will of its
victim are most insidious and fatal.
Tobacco a serious injury to growing persons.
— On this point all teachers are unanimous. Statis
tics taken at the naval school at Annapolis, at Yale
College, and elsewhere, show that the use of
THE PENALTY. I?
tobacco is the exception with scholars at the
head, and the rule with scholars at the foot of
the class.
Shortly after we began to take statistics on this
point in Bovvdoin College I asked the director of
the gymnasium what was the result with the Fresh
man class? " Oh," he said, " the list of the smokers
is substantially the same as that which was reported
the other day for deficiencies in scholarship." A
prominent educator, who had given considerable at
tention to this subject, after spending an hour in my
recitation room with a class of college seniors, indi
cated with perfect accuracy the habitual and exces
sive smokers, simply by noting the eye, manner, and
complexion.
Tobacco, used in early life, tends to stunt the
growth, weaken the eyes, shatter the nervous system,
and impair the powers of physical endurance and
mental application. No candidate for a college
athletic team, or contestant in a race, would think
of using tobacco while in training. Every man who
wishes to keep himself in training for the highest
prizes in business and professional life must guard
his early years from the deterioration which this
habit invariably brings.
THE PENALTY.
These vices bring disease and disgrace. —
These vices put in place of physical well-being the
gratification of a particular taste and appetite.
Hence they bring about the abnormal action of
1 8 FOOD AND DRINK.
some organs at the expense of all the rest ; and this
is the essence of disease.
A diseased body causes a disordered mind and an
enfeebled will. The excessive and over-stimulated
activity of one set of organs involves a correspond-
ing defect in the activity and functions of the other
faculties. The glutton or drunkard neglects his
business ; loses interest in reading and study ; fails to
provide for his family ; forfeits self-respect ; and
thus brings upon himself poverty and wretchedness
and shame. He sinks lower and lower in the social
scale ; grows more and more a burden to others and
a disgrace to himself; and at last ends a worthless
and ignominious life in an unwept and dishonored
grave.
CHAPTER II.
Dress,
NEXT in importance to food and drink stand
clothing and shelter. Without substantial and per
manent protection against cold and rain, without
decent covering for the body and privacy of life,
civilization is impossible. The clothes we wear ex
press the standing choices of our will ; and as clothes
come closer to our bodies than anything else,
they stand as the most immediate and obvious ex
pression of our mind. " The apparel oft proclaims
the man."
THE DUTY.
Attractive personal appearance.— Clothes that
fit, colors that match, cosy houses and cheery
rooms cost little more, except in thought and at
tention, than ill-fitting and unbecoming garments
and gloomy and unsightly dwellings. Attractive
ness of dress, surroundings, and personal appearance
is a duty ; because it gives free exercise to our higher
and nobler sentiments ; elevates and enlarges our
lives; while discomfort and repulsiveness in these
things lower our standards, and drive us to the
baser elements of our nature in search of cheap
forms of self-indulgence to take the place of that
19
26 DKESS.
natural delight in attractive dress and surroundings
which has been repressed. Both to ourselves and
to our friends we owe as much attractiveness of
personal surroundings and personal appearance as a
reasonable amount of thought and effort and ex
penditure can secure.
THE VIRTUE.
Neatness inexpensive and its absence inex
cusable. — No one is so poor that he cannot afford
to be neat. No one is so rich that he can afford to
be slovenly. Neatness is a virtue, or manly quality ;
because it keeps the things we wear and have about
us under our control, and compels them to express
our will and purpose.
THE REWARD.
Dress an indication of the worth of the
wearer. — Neatness of dress and personal appearance
indicates that there is some regard for decency and
propriety, some love of order and beauty, some
strength of will and purpose inside the garments.
If dress is the most superficial aspect of a person,
it is at the same time the most obvious one. Our
first impression of people is gained from their gen
eral appearance, of which dress is one of the most
important features.
Consequently dress goes far to determine the es
timate people place upon us. Fuller acquaintance
may compel a revision of these original impressions.
First impressions, however, often decide our fate
THE TEMPTATION. 21
with people whose respect and good-will is valuable
to us. Important positions are often won or lost
through attention or neglect in these matters.
THE TEMPTATION.
Dress has its snares. — We are tempted to care,
not for attractiveness in itself, but for the satisfac
tion of thinking, and having others think, how fine
we look. Worse still, we are tempted to try to look
not as well as we can, but better than somebody
else ; and by this combination of rivalry with van
ity we get the most contemptible and pitiable
level to which perversity in dress can bring us.
There is no end to the ridiculous and injurious
absurdities to which this hollow vanity will lead
those who are silly enough to yield to its de
mands.
Cynicism regarding appearance. — Vanity may
take just the opposite form. We may be just as
proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks.
This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason
why almost every town has its old codger who seems
to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving
the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated
shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as
much pride in their mode of life as the devotee of
fashion does in hers. One of these Cynics went to
the baths with Alcibiades, the gayest of Athenian
youths. When they came out Alcibiades put on the
Cynic's rags, leaving his own gay and costly apparel
for the Cynic. The Cynic was in a great rage, and
22 DXESS.
protested that he would not be seen wearing such
gaudy things as those. " Ah ! " said Alcibiades ; " so
you care more what kind of clothes you wear than I
do after all; for I can wear your clothes, but you
cannot wear mine." Another of the Cynics, as he en
tered the elegant apartments of Plato, spat upon the
rug, exclaiming: "Thus I pour contempt on the
pride of Plato." "Yes," was Plato's reply, "with a
greater pride of your own." Since pride and vanity
have these two forms, we need to be on our guard
against them both. For one or the other is pretty
sure to assail us. An eye single to the attractive
ness of our personal appearance is the only thing
that will save us from one or the other of these lines
of temptation.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Too little attention to dress and surroundings
is slovenliness. — The sloven is known by his dirty
hands and face, his disheveled hair, and tattered gar
ments. His house is in confusion ; his grounds are
littered with rubbish; he eats his meals at an untidy
table ; and sleeps in an unmade bed. Slovenliness
is a vice ; for it is an open confession that a man
is too weak to make his surroundings the expres
sion of his tastes and wishes, and has allowed his
surroundings to run over him and drag him down
to their own level. And this subjection of man to
the tyranny of things, when he ought to exercise a
strong dominion over them, is the universal mark of
vice.
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 23
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Too much attention to dress and appearance
is fastidiousness. — These things are important ;
but it is a very petty and empty mind that can
find enough in them to occupy any considerable por
tion of its total attention and energy. The fastidi
ous person must have everything "just so," or the
whole happiness of his precious self is utterly
ruined. He spends hours upon toilet and wardrobe
where sensible people spend minutes. Hence he be
comes the slave rather than the master of his dress.
The sloven and the dude are both slaves ;
but in different ways. — Slovenliness is slavery to
the hideous and repulsive. Fastidiousness is slavery
to this or that particular style or fashion. The free
dom and mastery of neatness consists in the ability
to make as attractive as possible just such material
as one's means place at his disposal with the amount
of time and effort he can reasonably devote to
them.
THE PENALTY.
Fastidiousness belittles : slovenliness de
grades. Both are contemptible. — The man who
does not care enough for himself to keep the dirt off
his hands and clothes, when not actually en
gaged in work that soils them, cannot complain if
other people place no higher estimate upon him than
he by this slovenliness puts upon himself. The
woman whose soul rises and falls the whole distance
24 DKESS.
between ecstasy and despair with the fit of a glove or
the shade of a ribbon must not wonder if people rate
her as of about equal consequence with gloves and
ribbons. These vices make their victims low and
petty ; and the contempt with which they are re
garded is simply the recognition of the pettiness and
degradation which the vices have begotten.
CHAPTER III.
Ejercise.
WHEN the body is well fed and clothed, the next
demand is for exercise. Our powers are given us to
be used ; and unless they are used they waste away.
Nothing destroys power so surely and completely
as disuse. The only way to keep our powers is
to keep them in exercise. We acquire the power
to lift by lifting; to run, by running; to write,
by writing ; to talk, by talking ; to build houses,
by building ; to trade, by trading. In mature
life our exercise comes to us chiefly along the
lines of our business, domestic, and social rela
tions. In childhood and youth, before the pres
sure of earning a living comes upon us, we must
provide for needed exercise in artificial ways. The
play-impulse is nature's provision for this need. It
is by hearty, vigorous play that we first gain
command of those powers on which our future abil
ity to do good work depends.
THE DUTY.
The best exercise that of which we are least
conscious. — It is the duty of every grown person as
well as of every child to take time for recreation.
Exercise taken in a systematic way for its own sake
M
26 EXERCISE.
is a great deal better than nothing ; and in crowded
schools and in sedentary occupations such gymnastic
exercises are the best thing that can be had. The best
exercise, however, is not that which we get when we
aim at it directly; but that which comes incidentally
in connection with sport and recreation. A plunge
into the river ; a climb over the hills ; a hunt through
the woods ; a skate on the pond ; a wade in the
trout brook ; a ride on horseback ; a sail on the
lake ; camping out in the forest ; — these are the best
ways to take exercise. For in these ways we have
such a good time that we do not think about the
exercise at all ; and we put forth ten times the
amount of exertion that we should if we were
to stop and think how much exercise we proposed
to take.
Next in value to these natural outdoor sports
come the artificial games ; baseball, football, hare
and hounds, lawn tennis, croquet, and hockey. When
neither natural nor artificial sports can be had, then
the dumb-bells, the Indian clubs, and the foils be
come a necessity.
Everyone should become proficient in as many
of these sports as possible. These are the resources
from which the stores of vitality and energy must
be supplied in youth, and replenished in later life.
THE VIRTUE.
The value of superfluous energy. — The person
whose own life-forces are at their best cannot help
flowing over in exuberant gladness to gladden all he
THE REWARD 2 7
meets. Herbert Spencer has set this forth so
strongly in his Data of Ethics that I quote his
words: " Bounding out of bed after an unbroken
sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming
down with beaming face ready to laugh at the
slightest provocation, the healthy man of high
powers enters on the day's business not with repug
nance but with gladness ; and from hour to hour
experiencing satisfaction from work effectually
done, comes home with an abundant surplus of
energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Full of
vivacity, he is ever welcome. For his wife he has
smiles and jocose speeches ; for his children stories
of fun and play ; for his friends pleasant talk inter
spersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoy
ancy."
THE REWARD.
" Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he
shall have abundance." The reward of exertion is
the power to make more exertion the next time.
And the reward of habits of regular exercise and
habitual cheerfulness is the ability to meet the
world at every turn in the consciousness of power
to master it, and to meet men with that good
cheer which disarms hostility and wins friends.
THE TEMPTATION.
Excitement not to be made an end in itself.—
The exhilaration of sport may be carried to the point
of excitement ; and then this excitement may be made
an end in itself. This is the temptation which be«
28 EXERCISE.
sets all forms of recreation and amusement. It is
the fear of this danger that has led many good
people to distrust and disparage certain of the
more intense forms of recreation. Their mis«
take is in supposing that temptation is peculiar to
these forms of amusement. As we shall see before
we complete our study of ethics, everything brings
temptation with it ; and the best things bring the
severest and subtlest temptations ; and if we would
withdraw from temptation, we should have to with
draw from the world.
We must all recognize that this temptation to
seek excitement for its own sake is a serious one. It
is least in the natural outdoor sports like swimming
and sailing and hunting and fishing and climbing and
riding. Hence we should give to these forms of re
creation as large a place as possible in our plans for
exercise and amusement. We should see clearly that
the artificial indoor amusements, such as dancing,
card-playing, theater-going, billiard-playing, are
especially liable to give rise to that craving for
excitement for excitement's sake which perverts
recreation from its true function as a renewer of
our powers into a ruinous drain upon them. The
moment any form of recreation becomes indispensa-
able to us, the moment we find that it diminishes
instead of heightening our interest and delight in
the regular duties of our daily lives, that instant we
should check its encroachment upon our time and,
if need be, cut it off altogether. It is impossible
to lay down hard and fast rules, telling precisely
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 29
what forms of amusement are good and what are
bad. So much depends on the attitude of the in
dividual toward them, and the associations which
they carry with them in different localities, that
what is right and beneficial for one person in one
set of surroundings would be wrong and disastrous
to another person or to the same person in other
circumstances. To enable us to see clearly the im
portant part recreation must play in every healthy
life, and to see with equal clearness the danger of
giving way to a craving for constant and unnatural
excitement, is the most that ethics can do for us.
The application of these principles to concrete
cases each parent must make for his own children,
and each individual for himself.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Neglect of exercise and recreation leads to
moroseness. — Like milk which is allowed to stand,
the spirit of man or woman, if left unoccupied, turns
sour. One secret of sourness and moroseness is the
sense that some side of our nature has been re
pressed; and this inward indignation at our own
wrongs we vent on others in bitterness and complain
ings. Moroseness is first a'sign that we ourselves are
miserable ; and secondly it is the occasion of mak
ing others miserable too. Having had Spencer's ac
count of the benefits of the cheerfulness that comes
from adequate recreation, let us now see his de
scription of its opposite. " Far otherwise is it with
one who is enfeebled by great neglect of self. Al-
30 EXERCISE.
ready deficient, his energies are made more deficient
by constant endeavors to execute tasks that prove
beyond his strength, and by the resulting discourage
ment. Hours of leisure, which, rightly passed, bring
pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the
powers of work, cannot be utilized : there is not
vigor enough for enjoyments involving action, and
lack of spirits prevents passive enjoyments from be-
ing entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes
a burden. The irritability resulting now from ail
ments, now from failures caused from feebleness, his
family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy
for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid in
terest in the amusements of his children ; and he is
called a wet blanket by his friends."
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Perpetual amusement-seeking brings ennui,
satiety, and disgust— " All play and no work
makes Jack a mere toy," is as true as that " All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The
constant pursuit of amusement makes life empty
and frivolous. Rightly used recreation increases
one's powers for serious pursuits. Pursued wrongly,
pursued as the main concern of life, amusement
makes all serious work seem stale and dull ; and
finally makes amusement itself dull and stale too.
Ennui, loathing, disgust, and emptiness are the marks
of the amusement-seeker the world over. "Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity. All things are full of
wearKiess. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor
THE PENALTY. 31
the ear filled with hearing" — this is the experience
of the man who " withheld not his heart from any
joy." It is the experience of everyone who exalts
amusement from the position of an occasional
servant to that of abiding master of his life.
THE PENALTY.
The penalty of neglected exercise is con
firmed debility. — " Whosoever hath not, from him
shall be taken away even that which he hath."
Enfeebled from lack of exercise a man finds himself
unequal to the demands of his work ; and soured by
his consequent dissatisfaction with himself, he be
comes alienated from his fellows. The tide of life
becomes low and feeble ; and he can neither over
come obstacles in his own strength nor attract to
himself the help of others.
CHAPTER IV.
Morfc.
FOOD, clothes, shelter, and all the necessities of
life are the products of labor. Even the simplest
food, such as fruit and berries, must be picked be
fore it can be eaten : the coarsest garment of skins
must be stripped from the animal before it can be
worn : the rudest shelter of rock or cave must be
seized and defended against intruders before it can
become one's own. And as civilization advances, the
element of labor involved in the production of
goods steadily increases. The universal necessity
of human labor to convert the raw materials given
us by nature into articles serviceable to life and
enjoyment renders work a fundamental branch of
human conduct. Regular meals, comfortable
homes, knowledge, civilization, all are the fruits of
work. And unless we contribute our part to the
production of these goods, we have no moral right
to be partakers of the fruits. " If any will not
work, neither let him eat." "All work," says
Thomas Carlyle, " is noble : work alone is noble.
Blessed is he that has found his work ; let him ask
no other blessedness. Two men I honor, and no
third. First, the toilworn craftsman who with
33
THE DUTY. 33
earth-made implement laboriously conquers the
Earth, and makes her man's. A second man I
honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toil
ing for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily bread,
but the bread of life. These two in all their de
grees I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let
the wind blow whither it listeth. We must all toil,
or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is
worse."
THE DUTY.
Every man lives either upon the fruit of his
own work, or upon the fruit of the work of
others. — In childhood it is right for us to live upon
the fruits of the toil of our parents and friends.
But to continue this life of dependence on the work
of others after one has become an able-bodied man
or woman is to live the life of a perpetual baby.
No life so little justifies itself as that of the idle rich.
The idle poor man suffers the penalty of idleness
in his own person. He gives little to the world ;
and he gets little in return. The idle rich man
gives nothing, and gets much in return. And while
he lives, someone has to work the harder for his
being in the world ; and when he dies the world is
left poorer than it would have been had he never
been born. He has simply consumed a portion of
the savings of his ancestors, and balanced the
energy and honor of their lives by his own life of
worthlessness and shame. Inherited wealth should
bring with it a life of greater responsibility and harder
34 WORK.
toil ; for the rich man is morally bound to use his
wealth for the common good. And that is a much
harder task than merely to earn one's own living.
An able-bodied man who does not contribute to the
world at least as much as he takes out of it is a
beggar and a thief ; whether he shirks the duty of
work under the pretext of poverty or riches.
Every boy and girl should be taught some
trade, business, art, or profession. — To neglect
this duty is to run the risk of enforced dependence
upon others, than which nothing can be more de
structive of integrity and self-respect. The in
creasing avenues open to women, and the fact
that a woman is liable at any time to have herself
and her children to support, make it as important
for women as for men to have the ability to earn an
honest living.
Woman's sphere is chiefly in the home and
the social circle. — Provided she is able to earn her
living whenever it becomes necessary, and in case her
parents are able and willing to support her, a young
woman is justified in remaining in the home until her
marriage. Her assistance to her mother in the domes
tic and social duties of the home, and her prepara
tion for similar duties in her own future home, is often
the most valuable service she can render during the
years between school and marriage. In order, how
ever, for such a life to be morally justified she must
realize that it is her duty to do all in her power to
help her mother ; to make home more pleasant ; and
to take part in those forms of social and philan-
THE VIRTUE. 35
thropic work which only those who have leisure can
undertake.
The son or daughter who is to inherit wealth,
should be trained in some line of political, scientific,
artistic, charitable, or philanthropic work, whereby
he may use his wealth and leisure in the service of
the public, and justify his existence by rendering to
society some equivalent for that security and enjoy
ment of wealth which society permits him to pos
sess without the trouble of earning it.
All honest work, manual, mental, social, domestic,
political and philanthropic, scientific and literary, is
honorable. Any form of life without hard work of
either hand or brain is shameful and disgraceful. The
idler is of necessity a debtor to society ; though
there are forms of idleness to which, for reasons of
its own, society never presents its bill.
THE VIRTUE.
Industry conquers the world. — Industry is a
virtue, because it asserts this fundamental interest of
self-support in opposition to the solicitations of idle
ness and ease. Industry masters the world, and
makes it man's servant and slave. The industrious
man too is master of his own feelings ; and compels
the weaker and baser impulses of his nature to stand
back and give the higher interests room. The in
dustrious man will do thorough work, and produce a
good article, cost what it may. He will not suffer
his arm to rest until it has done his bidding ; nor
will he let nature go until her resources and forces
have been made to serve his purpose. This mastery
over ourselves and over nature is the mark of virtue
and manliness always and everywhere.
THE REWARD.
Industry works; and the fruit of work is
wealth. — The industrious man may or may not have
great riches. That depends on his talents, oppor
tunities, and character. Great riches are neither to
be sought nor shunned. With them or without them
the highest life is possible ; and on the whole it is
easier without than with great riches. A moderate
amount of wealth, however, is essential to the fullest
development of one's powers and the freest enjoy
ment of life. Of such a moderate competence the
industrious man is assured.
THE TEMPTATION.
Soft places and easy kinds of work to be
avoided. — Work costs pain and effort. Men natu
rally love ease. Hence arises the temptation to put
ease above self-support. This temptation in its
extreme form, if yielded to, makes a man a beggar
and a tramp. More frequently the temptation is to
take an easy kind of work, rather than harder work ;
or to do our work shiftlessly rather than thoroughly.
Young men are tempted to take clerkships where
they can dress well and do light work, instead of
learning a trade which requires a long apprenticeship,
and calls for rough, hard work. The result is that
the clerk remains a clerk all his life on low wages,
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 37
and open to the competition of everybody who can
read and write and cipher. While the man who has
taken time to learn a trade, and has taken off his
coat and accustomed himself to good hard work,
has an assured livelihood ; and only the few who
have taken the same time to learn the trade, and are
as little afraid of hard work as himself, can compete
with him. This temptation to seek a " soft berth,"
where the only work required is sitting in an office,
or talking, or writing, or riding around, is the form
of sloth which is taking the strength and independ
ence and manliness out of young men to-day faster
than anything else. It is only one degree above the
loafer and the tramp. The young man who starts in
life by seeking an easy place will never be a success
either in business or in character.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The slavery of laziness. — Laziness is a vice be
cause it sacrifices the permanent interest of self-
support to the temporary inclination to indo
lence and ease. The lazy man is the slave of his own
feelings. His body is his master ; not his servant.
He is the slave of circumstances. What he does de
pends not on what he knows it is best to do, but on how
he happens to feel. If the work is hard ; if it is cold
or rainy ; if something breaks ; or things do not go
to suit him, he gives up and leaves the work undone.
He is always waiting for something to turn up ; and
since nothing turns up for our benefit except what
we turn up ourselves, he never finds the opportunity
38 WORK.
that suits him ; he fails in whatever he undertakes:
and accomplishes nothing. Laziness is weakness,
submission, defeat, slavery to feeling and circum
stance ; and these are the universal characteristics
of vice.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The folly of overwork. — Work has for its end
self-support. Work wisely directed makes leisure
possible. Overwork is work for its own sake ; work
for false and unreal ends ; work that exhausts the
physical powers. Overwork makes a man a slave
to his work, as laziness makes him a slave to his
ease. The man who makes haste to be rich ;
who works from morning until night "on the
clean jump " ; who drives his business with the
fierce determination to get ahead of his competi
tors at all hazards, misses the quiet joys of life
to which the wealth he pursues in such hot haste is
merely the means, breaks down in early or middle
life, and destroys the physical basis on which both
work and enjoyment depend. To undertake more
than we can do without excessive wear and tear
and without permanent injury to health and
strength is wrong. Laziness is the more ig.
noble vice ; but the folly of overwork is equally
apparent, and its results are equally disastrous.
Laziness is a rot that consumes the base ele
ments of society. Overwork is a tempest that
strikes down the bravest and best. That work alone
is wrought in virtue which keeps the powers up
THE PENALTY. 39
to their normal and healthful activity, and is subordi
nated to the end of self-support and harmonious
self-development. The ideal attitude toward work
is beautifully presented in Matthew Arnold's sonnet
on " Quiet Work " :
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown ;
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity —
Of toil unsevered from tranquillity ;
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
THE PENALTY.
Laziness leads to poverty. — The lazy man does
nothing to produce wealth. The only way in which
he can get it is by inheritance, or by gift, or by theft.
Money received by inheritance does not last long.
The man who is too lazy to earn money, is gen
erally too weak to use it wisely ; and it soon slips
through his fingers. When a man's laziness is once
found out people refuse to give to him. And the
thief cannot steal many times without being caught.
Industry is the only sure and permanent title to
wealth ; and where industry is wanting, there, soon
or late, poverty must come.
CHAPTER V.
property,
THE products of labor, saved up and appro
priated to our use, constitute property. Without
property life cannot rise above the hand-to-mouth
existence of the savage. It is as important to save
and care for property after we have earned it, as it is
to earn it in the first place. Property does not stay
with us unless we watch it sharply. Left to itself
it takes wings and flies away. Unused land is over
grown by weeds ; unoccupied houses crumble and
decay; food left exposed sours and molds; un
used tools rust ; and machinery left to stand
idle gets out of order. Everything goes to rack
and ruin, unless we take constant care. Hence the
preservation of property is one of the fundamental
concerns of life and conduct.
THE DUTY.
Provision for family and for old age. — Childhood
and old age ought to be free from the necessity of
earning a living. Childhood should be devoted to
growth and education ; old age to enjoyment and
repose. In order to secure this provision for old age,
for the proper training of children and against sick
ness and accident, it is a duty to save a portion
THE VIRTUE.- 4»
of one's earnings during the early years of active
life. The man who at this period is not doing more
than to support himself and family, is not providing
for their permanent support at all. They are feast
ing to-day with the risk of starvation to-morrow.
In primitive conditions of society this provision
for the future consisted in the common ownership
by family or clan of flocks and herds or lands,
whereby the necessities of life were insured to each
member of the clan or family from birth to death.
THE VIRTUE.
The importance of systematic saving. — In the
more complex civilization of to-day, property
assumes ten thousand different forms ; is held
mostly by individuals ; and has for its universal
symbol, money. Hence the practical duty is to lay
aside a certain sum of money out of our regular
earnings each month or week during the entire
period of our working life, or from sixteen to sixty.
Persons who acquire a liberal education, or learn a
difficult trade or profession, will not be able to
begin to save until they are twenty or twenty-five.
Whenever earning begins, saving should begin.
If earnings are small, savings must be small too.
He who postpones saving until earnings are large
and saving is easy, will postpone saving alto
gether. The habit of saving like all habits must be
formed early and by conscious and painful effort,
or it will not be formed at all. Saving is as much a
duty as earning ; and the two should begin together.
4* PROPERTY.
Earning provides for the wants of the individual
and the hour. It requires both earning and saving
to provide for the needs of a life-time and the wel
fare of a family. Savings-banks and building and
loan associations afford the best opportunities for
small savings at regular intervals ; and no man has
any right to marry until he has a savings-bank
account, or shares in a building and loan associ
ation, or an equally regular and secure method of
systematic saving. In early life, before savings
have become sufficient to provide for his family in
case of death, it is also a duty to combine saving
with life-insurance. Both in investment of savings
and in life-insurance, one should make sure that the
institution or organization to which he intrusts his
money is on a sound business basis. All specula
tive schemes should be strictly avoided. Any
company or form of investment that offers to give
back more than you put into it, plus a fair rate of
interest on the money, is not a fit place for a man
to trust the savings on which the future of himself
and his family depends. Security, absolute security,
not profits and dividends, is what one should
demand of the institution to which he trusts his
savings.
Economy eats the apple to the core.; wears
clothes until tfyey are threadbare; makes things
over ; gets the entire utility out of a thing ; throws
nothing away that can be used again ; gets its
money's worth for every cent expended ; buys
nothing for which it cannot pay cash down and
THE REWARD. 43
leave something besides for saving. It is a manly
quality, or virtue, because it masters things, keeps
them under our control, compels them to render all
the service there is in them, and insures our last
ing independence.
THE REWARD.
The savings of early and middle life support
old age in honorable rest, and give to children
a fair start in life. — All men are liable to misfor
tune and accident. The improvident man is
crushed by them ; for they find him without re
served force to meet them.
The economical man has in his savings a balance
wheel whose momentum carries him by hard places.
His position is independent and his prosperity is
permanent. For it depends not on the fortunes of
the day, which are uncertain and variable ; but on
the fixed habits and principles of a life-time, which
are changeless and reliable.
THE TEMPTATION.
Living beyond one's income: running in
debt. — Income is limited; while the things we
would like to have are infinite. We must draw the
line somewhere. Duty says, draw it well inside of
income. Temptation says, draw it at income, or a
trifle outside of income. Yield to this temptation,
and our earnings are gone before we know it, and
debt stares us in the face. Debts are easy to con
tract, but hard to pay. The debt must be paid
44 PROPERTY.
sometime with accumulated interest. And when
the day of reckoning comes it invariably costs more
inconvenience and trouble to pay it than it would
have cost to have gone without the thing for the
sake of which we ran in debt.
Never, on any account, get in debt. Never spend
your whole income. These are rules we are con
stantly tempted to break. But the man who yields
to this temptation is on the high road to financial
ruin.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Wastefulness. — The wasteful man buys things
he does not need ; spends his money as fast as he
can get it ; lives beyond his means ; throws things
away which are capable of further service ; runs in
debt ; and is forever behindhand. He lives from
hand to mouth ; is dependent upon his neighbors
for things which with a little economy he might
own himself; makes no provision for the future,
and when sickness or old age comes upon him, he is
without resources.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Miserliness. — Economy saves for the sake of fu
ture expenditure. Miserliness saves for the sake of
saving. The spendthrift sacrifices the future to
present enjoyment. ?The miser sacrifices present
enjoyment to an imaginary future which never
comes ; and so misses enjoyment altogether. The
prudent man harmonizes present with future enjoy
ment, and so lives a life of constant enjoyment.
THE PENALTY. 45
The spendthrift spends recklessly, regardless of con-
sequences. The miser hoards anxiously, despising
the present. The man of prudence and economy
spends liberally for present needs, and saves only
as a means to more judicious and lasting expendi
ture. The miser is as much the slave of his money
as is the spendthrift the slave of his indulgences.
Economy escapes both forms of slavery and main
tains its freedom by making both spending and
saving tributary to the true interests of the self.
THE PENALTY.
The thing we waste to-day, we want to-mor
row. — The money we spend foolishly to-day we have
to borrow to-morrow, and pay with interest the day
after. Wastefulness destroys the seeds of which
prosperity is the fruit. Wastefulness throws away
the pennies, and so must go without the dollars
which the pennies make. Years of health and
strength spent in hand-to-mouth indulgence inevi
tably bear fruit in a comfortless old age.
CHAPTER VI.
THE jack-of-all-trades is a bungler in every one
of them. The man who will do anything well must
confine himself to doing a very few things. Yet
while the things a man can produce to advantage
are few, the things he wants to consume are many.
Exchange makes possible at the same time concen
tration in production and diversity of enjoyment.
Exchange enables the shoemaker to produce shoes,
the tailor to make coats, the carpenter to build houses,
the farmer to raise grain, the weaver to make cloth,
the doctor to heal disease ; and at the same time
brings to each one of them a pair of shoes, a coat,
a house, a barrel of flour, a cut of cloth, and such
medical attendance as he needs. Civilization rests
on exchange.
THE DUTY. •
It is the duty of each party in a trade to give
a fair and genuine equivalent for what he ex
pects to receive. — Articles exchanged always rep
resent work. And it is our duty to make sure that
the article we offer represents thorough work.
Good honest work is the foundation of all righteous
ness. Whatever we offer for sale, whether it be our
THE VIRTUE. 47
labor for wages, or goods for a price, ought to be
as good and thorough as we can make it. To sell a
day's work for wages, and then to loaf a part of that
day, is giving a man idleness when he pays for work.
To sell a man a shoddy coat when he thinks he is
buying good wool, is giving him cold when he pays
for warmth. To give a man defective plumbing in
his house when he hires you for a good workman,
is to sell him disease and death, and take pay for it.
Selling adulterated drugs and groceries is giving a
man a stone when he asks for and pays for bread.
If, after we have done our best to make or secure
good articles, we are unable to avoid defects and
imperfections, then it is our duty to tell squarely
just what the imperfection is, and sell it for a re
duced price. On no other basis than this of mak
ing genuine goods, and representing them just as
they are, can exchange fulfill its function of mutual
advantage to all concerned.
THE VIRTUE.
Honesty looks people straight in the eye,
tells the plain truth about its goods, stands on
its merits, asks no favors, has nothing to con
ceal, fears no investigation. — This bold, open, self-
reliant quality of honesty is what makes it a manly
thing, or a virtue. To do thorough work ; to speak
the plain truth ; to do exactly as you would be done
by; to put another man's interest on a level with
your own ; to take under no pretext or excuse a
cent's worth more than you give in any trade you
48 EXCHANGE.
make, calls out all the strength and forbearance and
self-control there is in a man, and that is why it
ranks so high among the virtues.
THE REWARD.
The honest man is the only man who can re
spect himself. — He carries his head erect, and no
man can put him down. Everything about him is
sound and every act will bear examination. This
sense of one's own genuineness and worth is
honesty's chief reward*
THE TEMPTATION.
Every one-sided transaction dishonest. — In
fair exchange both parties are benefited. In unfair
exchange one party profits by the other's loss. Any
transaction in which either party fails to receive an
equivalent for what he gives is a fraud ; and the man
who knowingly and willfully makes such a trade is a
thief in disguise. For taking something which be
longs to another, without giving him a return, and
without his full, free, and intelligent consent, is
stealing.
The temptation to take advantage of another's
ignorance ; to palm off a poor article for a good one ;
to get more than we give, is very great in all forms
of business. Cheating is very common, and one is
tempted to do a little cheating himself in order to
keep even with the rest. The only way to resist it
is to see clearly that cheating is lying and stealing
put together ; that it is an injury to our fellow- men
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 49
and to society ; that it is-playing the part of a knave
and a rascal instead of an honest and honorable
man.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The meanest and most contemptible kind of
cheating is quackery. — The quack is liar, thief, and
murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do
things for which he has no adequate training and
skill, he pretends to be what he is not. He takes
money for which he is unable to render a genuine
equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their
lives in his incompetent and unskilled hands he
turns them aside from securing competent treat
ment, and so confirms disease and hastens death.
The dishonest man a public nuisance and a
common enemy. — He gets his living out of other
people. Whatever wealth he gets, some honest
man who has earned it is compelled to go without.
Dishonesty is the perversion of exchange from its
noble function as a civilizing agent and a public
benefit, into the ignoble service of making one man
rich at the expense of the many. It is because the
dishonest man is living at other people's expense,
profiting by their losses, and fattening himself on
the earnings of those whom he has wronged, that
dishonesty is deservedly ranked as one of the most
despicable and abominable of vices.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
It is as important to protect our own interest,
as to regard the interests of others. — No man
SO EXCHANGE.
has any more right to cheat me than I have to cheat
him ; and if he tries to take advantage of me it is
my duty to resist him, and to say a decided " no " to
his schemes for enriching himself at my expense.
One rule in particular is very important. Never
sign a note for another in order to give him a credit
which he could not command without your name.
That is a favor which no man has a right to ask, and
which no man who regards his duty to himself and to
his family will grant. If a man is in a tight place and
asks you to lend him money, or to give him money,
that is a proposition to be considered on its merits.
But to assume an indefinite responsibility by sign
ing another man's note, is accepting the risk of ruin
ing ourselves for his accommodation. We owe it
to ourselves and our families to keep our finances ab
solutely under our own control, free from all com
plication with the risks and uncertainties of another's
enterprises and fortunes.
Our own rights are as sacred as those of another.
There are two sides to every bargain ; and one side
is as important as the other. The sacrifice of a
right may be as great an evil as the perpetration of
a wrong.
THE PENALTY.
Dishonesty eats the heart out of a man. — The
habit of looking solely to one's own interest deadens
the social sympathies, dwarfs the generous a flec
tions, weakens self-respect, until at length the dishon
est men can rob the widow of her livelihood ; take
an exorbitant commission on the labor of the
THE PENALTY. $1
orphan ; charge an extortionate rent to a family of
helpless invalids ; sell worthless stocks to an aged
couple in exchange for the hard earnings of a life
time, and still endure to live. Dishonesty makes
men inhuman. The love of gain is a species of
moral and spiritual decay. When it attacks the
heart the finer and better feelings wither and die ;
and on this decay of sympathy and kindness and
generosity and justice there thrive and flourish
meanness and heartlessness and cruelty and inhu
manity.
Hereditary effects of dishonesty.— So deeply
does the vice of dishonesty eat into the moral nature
that mental and moral deterioration is handed down
to offspring. The scientific study of heredity
shows that the deterioration resulting from this
cause is more sure and fatal than that following
many forms of insanity. The son or daughter of a
mean, dishonest man is handicapped with tenden
cies toward moral turpitude and anti-social conduct
for which no amount of his ill-gotten gains, received
by inheritance, can be an adequate compensation.
Says Maudsley, " I cannot but think that the ex
treme passion for getting rich, absorbing the whole
energies of a life, predisposes to mental de
generacy in the offspring, either to moral defect, or
to intellectual deficiency, or to outbursts of positive
insanity." And the same author says elsewhere:
" The anti-social, egoistic development of the indi
vidual predisposes to, if it does not predetermine,
the mental degeneracy of his progeny ; he, alien
5* EXCHANGE.
from his kind by excessive egoisms, determines
an alienation of mind in them. If I may trust in
that matter my observations, I know no one who is
more likely to breed insanity in his offspring than
the intensely narrow, self-sensitive, suspicious, dis
trustful, deceitful, and self-deceiving individual, who
never comes into sincere and sound relations with
men and things, who is incapable by nature and
habit of genuinely healthy communion with himself
or with his kind. A moral development of that
sort, I believe, is more likely to predetermine in
sanity in the next generation than are many forms
of actual derangement in parents : for the whole
moral nature is essentially infected, and that goes
deeper down, and is more dangerous, qud heredity,
than a particular derangement. A mental alienation
is a natural pathological evolution of it."
CHAPTER VII.
TknowleDge.
WHAT food is to the body, that knowledge is to
the mind. It is the bread of intellectual life. With
out knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic arts
we should be unable to provide ourselves with food
and clothing and houses and ships and roads and
bridges. Without knowledge of natural science we
should be strangers in the world in which we live,
the victims of the grossest superstitions. Without
knowledge of history and political science we could
have no permanent tranquility and peace, but should
pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and
violence, rapine and revolution. Knowledge un
locks for us the mysteries of nature ; unfolds for us
the treasured wisdom of the world's great men ; in
terprets to us the longings and aspirations of our
hearts.
Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good :
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
THE DUTY.
The severity of truth. — Things exist in precise
and definite relations. Events take place according
53
54 KNOWLEDGE
to fixed and immutable laws. Truth is the percep
tion of things just as they are. Between truth and
falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact
is so, or it is not. " Truth," says Ruskin, " is the one
virtue of which there are no degrees. There are some
faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight
in the estimation of wisdom ; but truth forgives no
insult, and endures no stain." Truth does not al
ways lie upon the surface of things. It requires
hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the super
ficial crust of appearance to the solid rock of fact
on which truth rests. To discover and declare truth
as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of the
scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what
other people will be pleased to hear, not what will
be popular or profitable ; but what as the result of
careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged
reflection he has learned to be the fact ; — this,
nothing less and nothing more, the scholar must
proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact ; it plants itself
upon reality ; and hence it speaks with authority.
The truthful maivis one whom we can depend upon.
His word is as good as his bond. " He sweareth to
his own hurt, and changeth not." The truthful
man brings truth and man together.
THE VIRTUE.
Veracity has two foundations : one reverence
for truth ; the other regard for one's fellow-men.
— Ordinarily these two motives coincide and re-en
force each other. The right of truth to be spoken, and
THE VIRTUE. 55
the benefit to men from hearing it, are two sides of
the same obligation. Only in the most rare and ex
ceptional cases can these two motives conflict. To
a healthy, right-minded man the knowledge of the
truth is always a good.
Apparent exceptions to the duty of truthful
ness. — We owe truth to all normal people, and
under all normal circumstances. We do not neces
sarily owe it to the abnormal. In sickness, when
the patient cannot bear the shock of distressing
news ; in insanity, when the maniac cannot give to
facts their right interpretation ; in criminal perver
sity, when knowledge would be used in furtherance
of crime, the abnormal condition of the person
with whom we have to deal may justify us in with
holding from him facts which he would use to the
injury of himself or others. These are very rare and
extreme cases, and are apparent rather than real
exceptions to the universal rule of absolute truth
fulness in human speech. For in these cases it is
not from a desire to deceive or mislead the person,
that we withold the truth. We feel sure that the
sick person, when he recovers ; the insane person
when he is restored to reason ; the criminal, if he is
ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the
kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed.
To the person of sound body, sound mind, and
sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of
circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict
requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie
anything but base, cowardly, and contemptible.
56 KNO WLEDGE
THE REWARD.
Societyis founded on trust. — Without confidence
in one another, we could not live in social relations
a single day. We should relapse into barbarism,
strife, and mutual destruction. Since society rests
on confidence, and confidence rests on tried veracity,
the rewards of veracity are all those mutual advan
tages which a civilized society confers upon its
members.
THE TEMPTATION.
The costliness of strict truthfulness. — Truth
is not only hard to discover, but frequently it is costly
to speak. Truth is often opposed to sacred tradi
tions, inherited prejudices, popular beliefs, and
vested interests. To proclaim truth in the face of
these opponents in early times has cost many a man
his life ; and to-day it often exposes one to calumny
and abuse. Hence comes the temptation to conceal
our real opinions ; to cover up what we know to be
true under some phrase which we believe will be
popular ; to sacrifice our convictions to what we
suppose to be our interests.
Especially when we have done wrong the temp
tation to cover it up with a lie is very great.
Deception seems .so easy; it promises to smooth
over our difficulties so neatly ; that it is one of the
hardest temptations to resist. Little do we dream,
What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 57
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The forms of falsehood are numberless.—
We may lie by our faces ; by our general bearing;
by our silence, as well as by our lips. There is " the
glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy;
the patriotic lie of the historian ; the provident lie
of the politician ; the zealous lie of the partisan ;
the merciful lie of the friend ; the careless lie of each
man to himself." The mind of man was made for
truth: truth is the only atmosphere in which the
mind of man can breathe without contamination.
No passing benefit which I can secure for myself or
others can compensate for the injury which a false-
hood inflicts on the mind of him who tells it and on
the mind of him to whom it is told. For benefits and
advantages, however great and important, are what
we have, and they perish with the using. The mind
is what we are ; and an insult to our intelligence, a
scar upon ourselves, a blow at that human confidence
which binds us all together, is irremediable.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The mischievousness of gossip and scandal. —
We are not called upon to know everything that is
going on ; nor to tell everything that we cannot help
knowing. Idle curiosity and mischievous gossip re
sult from the direction of our thirst for knowledge
toward trifling and unworthy objects. There is
great virtue in minding one's own business. The
tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed
58 KNOWLEDGE.
moral sensibility. The gossip, the busybody, the
scandalmonger is the worst pest that invests the
average town and village. These mischief-makers
take a grain of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a
bushel of fancies, suspicions, surmises, and inuendoes,
and then go from house to house peddling the pro
duct for undoubted fact. The scandalmonger is the
murderer of reputations, the destroyer of domestic
peace, the insuperable obstacle to the mutual friend
liness of neighborhoods. This " rejoicing in in
iquity " is the besetting sin of idle people. The
man or woman who delights in this gratuitous and
uncalled-for criticism of neighbors thereby puts him
self below the moral level of the ones whose faults
he criticises. Martineau, in his scale of the springs of
action, rightly ranks censoriousness, with vindictive-
ness and suspiciousness, at the very bottom of the
list. Unless there is some positive good to be gained
by bringing wrong to light and offenders to justice
we should know as little as possible of the failings
of our fellow-men, and keep that little strictly to
ourselves.
THE PENALTY.
Falsehood undermines the foundations of so
cial order. — Universal falsehood would bring social
chaos. The liar takes advantage of the opportunity
which his position as a member of society gives him
to strike a deadly blow at the heart of the social order
on which he depends for his existence, and without
whose aid his arm would be powerless to strike.
THE PENALTY. 59
The liar likewise loses confidence in himself. —
He cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, he has
so frequently confounded them. He is caught in his
own meshes. A good liar must have a long memory.
Having no recognized standard to go by, he cannot
remember whether he said one thing or another about
a given fact ; and so he hangs himself by the rope of
his own contradictions. Worse than these outward
consequences is the loss of confidence in his own
integrity and manhood. In Kant's words, " A lie is
the abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of
the dignity of man."
CHAPTER VIII.
Uime,
EVERY act we do, every thought we think, every
feeling we cherish exists in time. Our life is a suc
cession of flying moments. Once gone, they can
never be recalled. As they are employed, so our
character becomes. To use time wisely is a good
part of the art of living well, for " time is the stuff
life is made of."
THE DUTY.
The duty of making life a consistent whole. —
Life is not merely a succession of separate mo
ments. It is an organic whole. The way in which
we spend one moment affects the next, and all that
follow; just as the condition of one part of the
body affects the well-being of all the rest. As we
have seen, dissipation to-day means disease to-mor
row. Work to-day means property to-morrow.
Wastefulness to-day means want to-morrow. Hence
it should be our aim so to co-ordinate one period of
time with another that our action will promote not
merely the immediate interests of the passing mo
ment, but the interests of the permanent self through
out the whole of life. What we pursue on one day
must not clash with what we pursue the next ; each
69
THE VIRTUE. 6 1
must contribute its part to our comprehensive and
permanent well-being.
THE VIRTUE
Prudence is the habit of looking ahead, and
seeing present conduct in its relation to future
welfare. — Prudence is manly and virtuous because it
controls present inclination, instead of being con
trolled by it. A burning appetite or passion springs
up within us, and demands instant obedience to its
demands. The weak man yields at once and lets
the appetite or passion or inclination lead him
whithersoever it listeth. Not so the strong, the
prudent man. He says to the hot, impetuous pas
sion: "Sit down, and be quiet. I will consider
your request. If it seems best I will do as you
wish. If it turns out that what you ask is not for
my interest I shall not do it. You need not think
that I am going to do everything you ask me to,
whether it is for my interest to do it or not. You
have fooled me a good many times, and hereafter I
propose to look into the merits of your requests
before I grant them." It takes strength and cour
age and determination to treat the impulses of our
nature in this haughty and imperious manner. But
the strength and resolution which it takes to do an
act is the very essence of its manliness and virtue.
THE REWARD.
The life of the prudent man holds together,
part plays into part, and the whole runs
smoothly. — One period of life, one fraction of time,
62 TIME.
does not conflict with another. He looks on the
past with satisfaction because he is enjoying the
fruit of that past in present well-being. He looks
to the future with confidence because the present
contains the seeds of future well-being. Each step
in life is adjusted to every other, and the result is a
happy and harmonious whole.
THE TEMPTATION.
Time tempts us to break up our lives into
separate parts. — " Let us eat and drink, for to
morrow we die," " After us the deluge." These are
the maxims of fools. The reckless seizure of the
pleasures of the present hour, regardless of the days
and years to come, is the characteristic mark of
folly.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
"Procrastination is the thief of time." — The
particular impulse which most frequently leads us to
put off the duty of the hour is indolence. But any
appetite or passion which induces us to postpone a
recognized duty for the sake of a present delight is
an invitation to procrastination.
The fallacy of procrastination, the trick by which
it deceives, is in making one believe that at a differ
ent time he will be a different person. The pro-
crastinator admits, for instance, that a piece of work
must be done. But he argues, "Just now I would
rather play or loaf than do the work. By and by
there will come a time when I shall rather do the
work than play or loaf. Let's wait till that time
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 63
comes." That time never comes. Our likes and
dislikes do not change from one day to another.
To-morrow finds us as lazy as to-day, and with the
habit of procrastination strengthened by the indul
gence of yesterday. Putting a 'duty off once does
not make it easier: it makes it harder to do the
next time.
Play or rest when we ought to be at work is
weakening and demoralizing. Rest and play after
work is bracing and invigorating. The sooner we
face and conquer a difficulty, the less of a difficulty
it is. The longer we put it off the greater it seems,
and the less becomes our strength with which to
overcome it.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Anxiety defeats itself. — Anxiety sacrifices the
present to the future. When this becomes a habit
it defeats its own end. For the future is nothing
but a succession of moments, which, when they are
realized, are present moments. And the man who
sacrifices all the present moments to his conception
of a future, sacrifices the very substance out of
vhich the real future is composed. For when he
reaches the time to which he has been looking for
ward, and for the sake of which he has sacrificed all
his early days, the habit of anxiety stays by him
and compels him to sacrifice that future, now be
come present, to another future, still farther ahead ;
and so on forever. Thus life becomes an endless
round of fret and worry, full of imaginary ills, des-
64 TIME.
titute of all real and present satisfaction. It is a
good rule never to cross a bridge until we come to
it. Prudence demands that we make reasonable
preparation for crossing it in advance. But when
these preparations are made prudence has done its
work, and waits calmly until the time comes to put
its plans into operation. Anxiety fills all the inter
vening time with forebodings of all the possible
obstacles that may arise when the time for action
comes.
Procrastination, anxiety, and prudence. — Pro
crastination sacrifices the future to the present.
Anxiety sacrifices the present to the future.
Prudence co-ordinates present and future in a con
sistent whole, in which both present and future have
their proper place and due consideration.
THE PENALTY.
Imperfect co-ordination, whether by procrastina
tion or by worry, brings discord. The parts of life
are at variance with each other. The procrastinator
looks on past indulgence with remorse and disgust;
for that past indulgence is now loading him dowi
with present disabilities and pains. He looks on
the future with apprehension, for he knows that his
present pleasures are purchased at the cost of misery
and degradation in years to come.
The man in whom worry and anxiety have be
come habitual likewise lives a discordant life. He
looks out of a joyless present, back on a past devoid
of interest, and forward into a future full of fears.
CHAPTER IX.
Space,
As all thoughts and actions take place in time, so
all material things exist in space. Everything we
have must be in some place. To give things their
right relations in space is one of the important aspects
of conduct.
THE DUTY.
A place for everything, and everything in its
place. — Things that belong together should be kept
together. Dishes belong in the cupboard ; clothes
in the closet ; boxes on the shelves ; loose papers in
the waste basket ; tools in the tool-chest ; wood in
the wood-shed. And it is our duty to keep them in
their proper place, when not in actual use. In busi
ness it is of the utmost importance to have a precise
place for everything connected with it. The car
penter or machinist must have a place for each tool,
and always put it there when he is through using it.
The merchant must have a definite book and page
or drawer or pigeon-hole for every item which he
records. The scholar must have a set of cards or
envelopes or drawers or pockets alphabetically ar
ranged in which he keeps each class of facts where
he can turn to it instantly. This keeping things of
a kind together, each kind in a place by itself, is
6s
66 SPA CE.
system. Without system nothing can be managed
well, and no great enterprise can be carried on
at all.
THE VIRTUE.
Orderliness is manly and virtuous because it
keeps things under our own control, and makes
them the expression of our will. — The orderly and
systematic man can manage a thousand details with
more ease and power than a man without order and
system can manage a dozen. It is not power to
do more work than other men, but power to do
the same amount of work in such an orderly and
systematic way that it accomplishes a hundred times
as much as other men's work, which marks the dif
ference between the statesman who manages the
affairs of a nation or the merchant prince who handles
millions of dollars, and the man of merely ordinary ad
ministrative and business ability.
THE REWARD.
The orderly man has his resources at his dis
posal at a moment's notice. — He can go directly
to the thing he wants and be sure of finding it in
its place. When a business is thoroughly system
atized it is as easy to find one thing out of ten thou
sand as it is to find one thing out of ten. Hence
there is scarcely any limit to the expansion of
business of which the systematic man is capable.
A business thus reduced to system will almost run
itself. Thus the heads of great concerns are able
to accept public office, or to spend a year in Europe,
THE TEMPTATION. 67
in absolute confidence that the business will be well
conducted in their absence, and that they can take
it up when they return just as they left it. For
they know that each man has his part of the work
for which he is responsible ; each process has its pre
cise method by which it is to be performed ; each ac
count has its exact place where it is to be kept. Order
and system are the keys to business success. Order
liness keeps things under our control, and the con
venience and efficiency with which things serve us
is the direct and necessary consequence of having
them under control.
THE TEMPTATION.
System takes more labor to begin with,
but in the long run system is the greatest labor-
saving device in the world. — It takes ten times as
long to hunt up a thing which we have left lying
around the next time we want it, as it does to put
it where it belongs at first. Yet, well as we know
this fact, present and temporary ease seems of more
consequence at the time of action than future and
permanent convenience. Until by repeated exercise
and painful discipline we make orderliness and
system habitual and almost instinctive, the temp
tation to make the quickest and handiest disposition
of things for which we have no immediate use will
continue to beset our minds and betray our wills.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The careless man lets things run over him. —
They mock him, and make fun of him ; getting
68 SPACE.
in his way and tripping him up at one time ; hiding
from him and making him hunt after them at an
other. Carelessness is a confession of a weak will
that cannot keep things under control. And weak
ness is ever the mark of vice.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The end and aim of system is to expedite
business. Red tape is the idolatry of system. It
is system for the sake of system. — Every rule
admits exceptions. To make exceptions before a
habit is fully formed is dangerous ; and while we
are learning the habit of orderliness and system we
should put ourselves to very great inconvenience
rather than admit an exception to our systematic
and orderly way of doing things. When, however,
the habit has become fixed, it is wise and right
to sacrifice order and system, when some " short
cut" will attain our end more quickly and effec
tively than the regular and more round-about way
of orderly procedure. The strong and successful
business man is he who has his system so thor
oughly under his control that he can use it or
dispense with it on a given occasion, according as it
will further or hinder the end he has in view.
THE PENALTY.
The careless man is always bothered by
things he does not want getting in his way ; and
by things that he does want keeping out of his
way. — Half his time is spent in clearing away ac-
THE PENALTY. 69
cumulated obstructions and hunting after the things
he needs. Where everything is in a heap it is
necessary to haul over a dozen things in order to find
the one you are after. Carelessness suffers things to
get the mastery over us ; and the consequence is that
we and our business are ever at their mercy. And
as things held in control are faithful and efficient
servants, so things permitted to domineer over us
and do as they please become cruel and arbitrary
masters. They waste our time, try our patience,
destroy our business, and scatter our fortunes.
CHAPTER X.
jfortune,
STRICTLY speaking, there is no such thing as for
tune, chance, or accident. All things are held to
gether by invariable laws, Every event takes place
in accordance with law. Uniformity of law is the
condition and presupposition of all our thinking.
The very idea of an event that has no cause is a
contradiction in terms to which no reality can cor
respond, like the nation of two mountains without
a valley between ; or a yard stick with only one end.
Relatively to us, and in consequence of the
limitation of our knowledge, an event is a result
of chance or fortune when the cause which pro
duced it lies beyond the range of our knowledge.
What we cannot anticipate beforehand and what
we cannot account for afterward, we group together
into a class and ascribe to the fictitious goddess
Fortune ; as children attribute gifts at Christmas
which come from unknown sources to Santa Claus.
In reality these unexplained and unanticipated
events come from heredity, environment, social in
stitutions, the forces of nature, and ultimately from
God.
These things which project themselves without
warning into our lives, often have most momentous
70
THE DUTY. 71
influence for good or evil over us; and the proper
attitude to take toward this class of objects is
worthy of consideration by itself.
THE DUTY.
The secret of superiority to fortune. — Some
things are under our control ; others are not. It is
the part of wisdom to concentrate our thought and
feeling on the former; working with utmost dili
gence to make the best use of those things which
are committed to us in the regular line of daily duty,
and treating with comparative indifference those
things which affect us from without. What we are ;
what we do ; what we strive for ; — these are the
really important matters ; and these are always in
our power. What money comes to us ; what peo
ple say about us ; what positions we are called to
fill ; to what parties we are invited ; to what offices
we are elected, are matters which concern to some
extent our happiness. We should welcome these
good things when they come. But they affect the
accidents rather than the substance of our lives.
We should not be too much bound up in them when
they come ; and we should not grieve too deeply
when they go. We should never stake our well-
being and our peace of mind on their presence or
their absence. We should remember that "The
aids to noble life are all within."
This lesson of superiority to fortune, by regarding
the things she has to give as comparatively indiffer
ent, is the great lesson of Stoicism. Marcus Aure-
72 FORTUNE.
lius, Epictetus, and Seneca are the masters of this
school. Their lesson is one we all need to learn
thoroughly. It is the secret of strength to endure
the ills of life with serenity and fortitude. And yet
it is by no means a complete account of our duty to
ward these outward things. It is closely akin to
pride and self-sufficiency. It gives strength but not
sweetness to life. One must be able to do without
the good things of fortune if need be. The really
strong man, however, is he who can use and enjoy
them without being made dependent on them or
being enslaved by them. The real mastery of for
tune consists not in doing without the things she
brings for fear they will corrupt and enslave us ;
but in compelling her to give us all the things we
can, and then refusing to bow down to her in hope
of getting more. This just appreciation of for
tune's gifts is doubtless hard to combine with
perfect independence. The Stoic solution of the
problem is easier. The really strong man, however,
is he who
Gathers earth's whole good into his arms ;
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her,
and the secret of this conquest of fortune without
being captivated by her lies in having, as Browning
telling us,
One great aim, like a guiding star above,
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize.
The shortcoming of the Stoics is not in the super-
THE VIRTUE. 73
iority to fortune which they seek ; but in the fact
that they seek it directly by sheer effort of naked
will, instead of being lifted above subjection to for
tune by the attractive power of generous aims, and
high ideals of social service.
THE VIRTUE.
The virtue which maintains superiority over
external things and forces is courage. — In prim
itive times the chief form of fortune was physical
danger, and superiority to fear of physical injury
was the original meaning of courage. Courage
involves this physical bravery still ; but it has come
to include a great deal more. In a civilized com
munity, physical danger is comparatively rare.
Courage to do right when everyone around us is
doing wrong; courage to say " No " when everyone
is trying to make us say " Yes " ; courage to bear
uncomplainingly the inevitable ills of life ; — these are
the forms of courage most frequently demanded
and most difficult to exercise in the peaceful security
of a civilized community. This courage which pre
sents an unruffled front to trouble, and bears
bravely the steady pressure of untoward circum
stance, we call by the special names of fortitude or
patience. Patience and fortitude are courage exer
cised in the conditions of modern life. The essence
of courage is superiority to outside forces and influ
ences. When men were beset by lions and tigers,
by Indians and hostile armies, then courage showed
itself by facing and fighting these enemies. Now
74 FORTUNE.
that we live with civilized and friendly men and
women like ourselves, courage shows itself chiefly by
refusing to surrender our convictions of what is true
and right just because other people will like us bet
ter if we pretend to think as they do ; and by
enduring without flinching the rubs and bumps and
bruises which this close contact with our fellows
brings to us.
Moral courage. — The brave man everywhere is
the man who has a firm purpose in his own breast,
and goes forth to carry out that purpose in spite of
all opposition, or solicitation, or influence of any kind
that would tend to make him do otherwise. He
does the same, whether men blame or approve ;
whether it bring him pain or pleasure, profit or loss.
The purpose that is in him, that he declares, that he
maintains, that he lives to realize ; in defense of that
he will lay down wealth, reputation, and, if need be,
life itself. He will be himself, if he is to live at all.
Men must approve what he really is, or he will have
none of their praise, but their blame rather. By no
pretense of being what he is not, by no betrayal of
what he holds to be true and right, will he gain their
favor. The power to stand alone with truth and
right against the world is the test of moral courage.
The brave man plants himself on the eternal foun
dations of truth and justice, and bids defiance to all
the forces that would drive him from it.
Wordsworth, in his character of " The Happy
Warrior," has portrayed the kind of courage de
manded of the modern man :
THE REWARD. 75
'Tis he whose law is reason ; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends.
Who if he rise to station of command
Rises by open means, and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire :
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ;
And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ;
Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall
Like showers of manna, if they come at all.
'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a nation's eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,
Who with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won :
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray ;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast :
This is the happy warrior ; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.
THE REWARD.
Courage universally honored. — There is some-
thing in this strong, steady power of self-assertion
that compels the admiration of everyone who beholds
it. When we see a man standing squarely on his own
feet ; speaking plainly the thoughts that are in his
mind ; doing fearlessly what he believes to be right ;
or no matter how widely we may differ from his views,
7$ FORTUNE.
disapprove his deeds, we cannot withhold our honor
from the man himself. No man was ever held in
veneration by his countrymen ; no man ever handed
down to history an undying fame, who did not have
the courage to speak and act his real thought and
purpose in defiance of the revilings and persecutions
of his fellows.
THE TEMPTATION.
To take one's fortune into his own hands and
work out, in spite of opposition and misfortune, a
satisfactory career tasks strength and resolution
to the utmost. — It is so much more easy to give
over the determination of our fate to some outside
power that the abject surrender to fortune is a serious
temptation. Air-castles and day-dreams, and idle
waiting for something to turn up, are the feeble forms
of this temptation. The impulse to run away from
danger, and the impulse to plunge recklessly into
risks, are the two forms of temptation which lead to
the more pronounced and prevalent vices.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to
our own conviction of what is true and right, is
moral cowardice. — In early times the coward was
the man who turned his back in battle. To-day
the coward is the man who does differently when
people are looking at him from what he would do
if he were alone ; the man who speaks what he
thinks people want to hear, instead of what he
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 77
knows to be true ; the man who apes other people
for fear they will think him odd if he acts like him
self ; the man who tries so hard to suit everybody
that he has no mind of his own ; the man who
thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how
things really are. Whenever we take the determin
ation of our course of conduct ultimately from any
other source than our own firm conviction of what
is right and true, then we play the coward. We do
in the peaceful conditions of modern life just what
we despise a soldier for doing on the field of battle.
We acknowledge that there is something outside
us that is stronger than we are ; of which we are
afraid ; to which we surrender ourselves as base
and abject slaves.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
There are forces in the world that can destroy
us ; we must protect ourselves against them. —
To be truly brave, we must be ready to face these
forces when there is a reason for so doing. We
must be ready to face the cannon for our country ;
to plunge into the swollen stream to save the drown
ing child ; to expose ourselves to contagious diseases
in order to nurse the sick.
To do these things without sufficient reason is
foolhardiness. To expose ourselves needlessly to
disease ; to put ourselves in the range of a cannon,
to jump into the stream, with no worthy end in
view, or for the very shallow reason of showing off
how brave we can be, is folly and madness. Doing
78 FORTUNE.
such things because someone dares us to do them
is not courage, but cowardice.
Gambling, the most fatal form of this fondness
for taking needless risks. — The gambler is too
feeble in will, too empty in mind, too indolent in
body to carve out his destiny with his own right
hand. And so he stakes his well-being on the
throw of the dice ; the turn of a wheel ; or the
speed of a horse. This invocation of fortune is a
confession of the man's incompetence and inability
to solve the problem of his life satisfactorily by his
own exertions. It is the most demoralizing of
practices. For it establishes the habit of staking
well-being not on one's own honest efforts, but on
outside influences and forces. It is the dethrone
ment of will and the deposition of manhood.
In addition to being degrading to the individual
it is injurious toothers. It is anti-social. It makes
one man's gain depend on another's loss : while the
social welfare demands that gains shall in all cases
be mutual. It violates the fundamental law of
equivalence.
Since the essence of gambling is the abrogation
of the will, every indulgence weakens the power
to resist the temptation. Gambling soon becomes
a mania. Honest ways of earning money seem slow
and dull. And the habit becomes confirmed before
the victim is aware of the power over him that it
has gained. Every form of gain which is contingent
upon another's loss partakes of the nature of gam
bling. Raffling, playing for stakes, betting, buying
THE PENALTY. 79
lottery tickets, speculation in which there is no real
transfer of goods, but mere winning or losing on the
fluctuations of the market, are all forms of gambling.
They are all animated by the desire to get some
thing for nothing: a desire which we can respect
when a helpless pauper asks for alms ; but of which
in any form an able-bodied man ought to be
ashamed.
THE PENALTY.
The shame of cowardice. — Man is meant to be
superior to things outside him. When we see him
bowing down to somebody whom he does not
really believe in ; when we see him yielding to
forces which he does not himself respect ; when
living is more to him than living well; when there
is a threat which can make him cringe, or a bribe
that can make his tongue speak false — then we
feel that the manhood has gone out of him, and we
cannot help looking on his fall with sorrow and with
shame. The penalty which follows moral cowardice
is nowhere more clearly stated than in these severe
and solemn lines which Whittier wrote when he
thought a great man had sacrificed his convictions
to his desire for office and love of popularity:
So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore !
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore !
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, —
8o FORTUNE.
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone, from those great eyes
The soul has fled :
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead !
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame ;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame.
CHAPTER XI.
mature,
THUS far we have been considering the uses to
which we may put the particular things which
nature places at our disposal. In addition to these
special uses of particular objects, Nature has a
meaning as a whole. The Infinite Reason in whose
image our minds are formed and in whose thought
our thinking, so far as it is true, partakes, has ex
pressed something of his wisdom, truth, and beauty,
in the forms and laws of the world in which we live.
In the study of Nature we are thinking God's
thoughts after him. In contemplation of the glory
of the heavens, in admiration of the beauty of
field and stream and forest, we are beholding a
loveliness which it was his delight to create, and
which it is elevating and ennobling for us to look
upon. Nature is the larger, fairer, fuller expression
of that same intelligence and love which wells up in
the form of consciousness within our own breasts.
Nature and the soul of man are children of the
same Father. Nature is the interpretation of the
longings of our hearts. Hence when we are alone
with Nature in the woods and fields, by the sea-
shore or on the moon-lit lake, we feel at peace with
ourselves, and at home in the world.
81
82 NA TURE.
THE DUTY.
The love of nature, like all love, cannot be
forced. — It is not directly under the control of our
will. We cannot set about it in deliberate fashion,
as we set about earning a living. Still it can be
cultivated. We can place ourselves in contact with
Nature's more impressive aspects. We can go
away by ourselves ; stroll through the woods,
watch the clouds ; bask in the sunshine ; brave the
storm; listen to the not?s of birds; find out the
haunts of living creatures; learn the times and
places in which to find the flowers ; gaze upon the
glowing sunset, and look up into the starry skies.
If we thus keep close to Nature, she will draw us to
herself, and whisper to us more and more of her
hidden meaning.
The eye — it cannot choose but see ;
We cannot bid the year be still :
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress :
That we can feed these minds of ours
In a wise passiveness.
THE VIRTUE.
The more we feel of the beauty and signifi
cance of Nature the more we become capable of
feeling. — And this capacity to feel the influences
which Nature is constantly throwing around us is
an indispensable element in noble and elevated
THE REWARD. 83
character. Our thoughts, our acts, yes, our very
forms and features reflect the objects which we
habitually welcome to our minds and hearts. And
if we will have these expressions of ourselves noble
and pure, we must drink constantly and deeply at
Nature's fountains of beauty and truth. Words
worth, the greatest interpreter of Nature, thus de
scribes the effect of Nature's influence upon a sensi
tive soul :
She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute, insensate things.
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her ; for her the willow bend :
Nor shall she fail to see.
Even in the motions of the storm,
Grace that shall mold the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her ; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And Beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
THE REWARD.
The uplifting and purifying power of nature. —
Through communion with the grandeur and majesty
84 NA TURE.
of Nature, our lives are lifted to loftier and
purer heights than our unaided wills could ever
gain. We grow into the likeness of that we love.
We are transformed into the image of that which
we contemplate and adore. We are thus made
strong to resist the base temptations ; patient to en
dure the petty vexations ; brave to oppose the
brutal injustices, of daily life. This whole subject
of the power of Nature to uplift and bless has been
so exhaustively and beautifully expressed by Words
worth, that fidelity to the subject makes continued
quotation necessary:
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy : for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; well pleased to recognize
In Nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
THE TEMPTATION. 85
THE TEMPTATION.
The very thoroughness and fidelity with
which we fulfill one duty, may hinder the fulfill
ment of another. — We may become so absorbed
in earning a living, and carrying on our business,
and getting an education, that we shall give no
time or attention to this communion with Nature.
The fact that business, education, and kindred ex
ternal and definite pursuits are directly under the
control of our wills, while this power to appreciate
Nature is a slow and gradual growth, only indirectly
under our control, tempts us to give all our time
and strength to these immediate, practical ends,
and to neglect that closer walk with Nature which
is essential to a true appreciation of her loveliness.
Someone asks us " What is the use of spending
your time with the birds among the trees, or on the
hill-top under the stars?" and we cannot give him
an answer in dollars and cents. And so we are
tempted to take his simple standard of utility in
ministering to physical wants as the standard of all
worth. We neglect Nature, and she hides her face
from our preoccupied eyes. In this busy, restless
age we need to keep ever in mind Wordsworth's
warning against this fatal temptation :
The world is too much with us ; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers :
Little we see in Nature that is ours ;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon I
$6 NA TURE.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
This obtuseness does not come upon us suddenly.
All children keenly appreciate the changing moods
of Nature. It is from neglect to open our hearts to
Nature, that obtuseness comes. It steals over us
imperceptibly. We can correct it only by giving
ourselves more closely and constantly to Nature,
and trusting her to win back to herself our be
numbed and alienated hearts.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Affectation the attempt to work up by our own
efforts an enthusiasm for Nature. — True love of
Nature must be born within us, by the working of
Nature herself upon our hearts. By faith, rather
than by works ; by reception, rather than by con
quest ; by wise passiveness, rather than by restless
haste ; by calm and silence, rather than by noise
and talk, our sensitiveness to Nature's charms is
deepened and developed. That enjoyment of
Nature which comes spontaneously and unsought
is the only true enjoyment. That which we work
up, and plan for, and talk about, is a poor and
feeble imitation. The real lover of Nature is not
the one who can talk glibly about her to every
body, and on all occasions. It is he who loves
to be alone with her, who steals away from men
and things to find solitude with her the best
society, who knows not whence cometh nor
THE PENALTY. 87
whither goeth his delight in her companionship,
who waits patiently in her presence, and is content
whether she gives or withholds her special favors,
who cares more for Nature herself than for this or
that striking sensation she may arouse. Affectation
is the craving for sensations regardless of their
source. And if Nature is chary of striking scenes
and startling impressions and thrilling experiences,
affectation, with profane haste, proceeds to amuse
itself with artificial feelings, and pretended raptures.
This counterfeited appreciation, like all counter
feits, by its greater cheapness drives out the'real
enjoyment ; and the person who indulges in affecta
tion soon finds the power of genuine appreciation
entirely gone. Affectation is worse than obtuse-
ness, for obtuseness is at least honest : it may mend
its ways. But affectation is self-deception. The
affected person does not know what true apprecia
tion of Nature is : he cannot see his error; and con-
sequently cannot correct it.
THE PENALTY.
The life of man can be no deeper and richer
than the objects and thoughts on which it feeds.
— Without appreciation and love for Nature we
can eat and drink and sleep and do our work.
The horse and ox, however, can do as much. Obtuse-
ness to the beauty and meaning of Nature sinks us
to the level of the brutes. Cut off from the springs
of inspiration, our lives stagnate, our souls shrivel,
our sensibilities wither. And just as stagnant
88 HA TURE.
water soon becomes impure, and swarms with low
forms of vegetable and animal life, so the stag
nant soul, which refuses to reflect the beauty of
sun and star and sky, soon becomes polluted with
sordidness and selfishness and sensuality.
CHAPTER XII.
Hrt
Nature is incomplete. She leaves man to provide
for himself his raiment, shelter, and surroundings.
Nature in her works throws out suggestions of
beauty, rather than its perfect and complete embodi
ment. Her gold is imbedded in the rock. Her
creations are limited by the particular material
and the narrow conditions which are at her disposal
at a given time and place. To seize the pure
ideal of beauty which Nature suggests, but never
quite realizes; to select from the universe of space
and the eternity of time those materials and forms
which are perfectly adapted to portray the ideal
beauty ; to clothe the abodes and the whole phys
ical environment of man with that beauty which
is suggested to us in sky and stream and field
and flower; to present to us for perpetual contem
plation the form and features of ideal manhood and
womanhood ; to hold before our imagination the
deeds of brave men, and the devotion of saintly
women ; to thrill our hearts with the victorious
struggle of the hero and the death-defying passion
of the lover ; — this is the mission and the signifi
cance of art.
Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with
89
90 ART.
God. To his hands is committed the portion
of the world which God has left unfinished —
the immediate environment of man. We cannot
live in the fields, like beasts and savages.
Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and
houses and halls and streets and cities in which
civilized men pass their days as beautiful and fair,
as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and forests in
which the primeval savage roamed. More than
that, art aims to fill these rooms and halls and
streets of ours with forms and symbols which shall
preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspira
tion, all that is purest and noblest and sweetest in
that long struggle of man up from his savage to his
civilized estate.
THE DUTY.
Beauty is the outward and visible sign of in
ward perfection, completeness, and harmony. —
In an object of beauty there is neither too little nor
too much ; nothing is out of place ; nothing is with
out its contribution to the perfect whole. Each part
is at once means and end to every other. Hence its
perfect symmetry ; its regular proportions ; its strict
conformity to law.
The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in
nothing short of perfection ; and consequently our
hearts are never satisfied until they behold beauty,
which is perfection's crown and seal. Without it
one of the deepest and divinest powers of our nature
remains dwarfed, stifled, and repressed.
THE VIRTUE. 91
How to cultivate the love of beauty. — It is our
duty to see to it that everything under our con
trol is as beautiful as we can make it. The rooms
we live in ; the desk at which we work ; the
clothes we wear; the house we build; the pictures
on our walls ; the garden and grounds in which
we walk and work ; all must have some form or
other. That form must be either beautiful or hide
ous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty to pay
attention to these things; to spend thought and
labor, and such money as we can afford upon them,
in order to make them minister to our delight. Not
in staring at great works of art which we have not
yet learned to appreciate, but by attention to
the beauty or ugliness of the familiar objects
that we have about us and dwell with from day
to day, we shall best cultivate that love of beauty
which will ultimately make intelligible to us the
true significance of the masterpieces of art. Here
as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given.
We must serve beauty humbly and faithfully in
the little things of daily life, if we will enjoy her
treasures in the great galleries of the world.
THE VIRTUE.
Beauty is a jealous mistress. — If we trifle with
her ; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations
and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty
in them, but are simply gotten up to sell ; then the
true and real beauty will never again suffer us to
see her face. She will leave us to our idols : and
92 ART.
our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will
die out.
Fidelity to beauty requires that we have no more
things than we can either use in our work, or enjoy
in our rest. And these things that we do have
must be either perfectly plain ; or else the ornamen
tation about them must be something that expresses
a genuine admiration and affection of our hearts.
A farmer's kitchen is generally a much more attrac
tive place than his parlor; just because this law of
simplicity is perfectly expressed in the one, and fla
grantly violated in the other. The study of a scholar,
the office of the lawyer and the business man, is not
infrequently a more beautiful place, one in which a
man feels more at home, than his costly drawing
room. What sort of things we shall have, and
how many, cannot be determined for us by any
general rule ; still less by aping somebody else. In
our housekeeping, as in everything else, we should
begin with the few things that are absolutely essen
tial ; and then add decoration and ornament only so
fast as we can find the means of gratifying cherished
longings for forms of beauty which we have learned
to admire and love. " Simplicity of life," says
William Morris, " even the barest, is not a misery,
but the very foundation of refinement : a sanded
floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees,
and flowery meads, and living waters outside. If
you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to
hate sham art and reject it. If the real thing is not
to be had, learn to do without it. If you want a
THE REWARD. 93
golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it : Have
nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
useful, or believe to be beautiful."
THE REWARD.
The refining influence of beauty. — Devotion to
art and beauty in simplicity and sincerity develops
an ever increasing capacity for its enjoyment. As
Keats, the master poet of pure beauty, tells us,
A thing of beauty is a joy forever :
Its loveliness increases ; it will never
Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
The refining influence of the love of beauty
draws us mysteriously and imperceptibly, but none
the less powerfully, away from what is false in
thought and base in action ; and develops a deep
and lasting affinity for all that is true and good.
The good, the true, and the beautiful are branches
of a common root; members of a single whole: and
if one of these members suffer, all the members
suffer with it ; and if one is honored, all are honored
with it.
THE TEMPTATION.
Luxury the perversion of beauty. — Luxury is
the pleasure of possession, instead of pleasure in
the thing possessed. Luxury buys things, not
because it likes them, but because it likes to have
them. And so the luxurious man fills his house
94 ART.
with all sorts of things, not because he finds de
light in these particular things, and wants to share
that delight with all his friends ; but because he
supposes these are the proper things to have, and
he wants everybody to know that he has them.
The man who buys things in this way does not
know what he wants. Consequently he gets cheated.
He buys ugly things as readily as beautiful things,
if only the seller is shrewd enough to make him be
lieve they are fashionable. Others, less intelligent
than this man, see what he has done; take forgranted
that because he has done it, it must be the proper
thing to do ; and go and do likewise. Thus taste
becomes dulled and deadened ; the costly and
elaborate drives out the plain and simple ; the de
sire for luxury kills out the love of beauty ; and art
expires.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Ugly surroundings make ugly souls. — The
outward and the inward are bound fast together.
The beauty or ugliness of the objects we have
about us are the standing, choices of our wills.
As the object, so is the subject. We grow into the
likeness of what we look upon. Without harmony
and beauty to feed upon, the love of beauty starves
and dies. Our hearts become cold and hard. Not
being called out in admiration and delight, our feel
ings brood over mean and sensual pleasures ; they
dwell upon narrow and selfish concerns ; they
fasten upon the accumulation of wealth or the van-
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 95
quishing of a rival, as substitutes for the nobler in
terests that have vanished ; and the heart becomes
sordid, sensual, mean, petty, spiteful, and ugly.
The spirit of man, like nature, abhors a vacuum ;
and into the heart from which the love of the beau
tiful has been suffered to depart, these hideous and
ugly traits of character make haste to enter, and
occupy the vacant space. What Shakspere says
of a single art, music, is true of art and beauty in
general :
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils :
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The hollowness of ostentation. — Man is never
proud of what he really enjoys ; never vain of what
he truly loves; never anxious to show off the tastes
and interests that are essentially his own. In order
to take this false attitude toward an object, it is
necessary to hold it apart from ourselves : a thing
which the true lover can never do. He who loves
beautiful things will indeed wish others to share his
joy in them. But this sharing of our joy in beauti
ful objects, is a very different thing from showing
off our fine things, simply to let other people know
that we have them. Ostentation is the vice of
ignorant wealth and vulgar luxury. It estimates
objects by their expensiveness rather than by their
9$ ART.
beauty ; it aims to awaken in ourselves pride rathei
than pleasure; and to arouse in others astonishment
rather than admiration.
THE PENALTY.
Vulgarity akin to laziness.— Art, and the beauty
which it creates, costs painstaking labor to pro
duce. And to enjoy it when it is produced, re
quires at first thoughtful and discriminating atten
tion. The formation of a correct taste is a growth,
not a gift. Hence the dull, the lazy, and the indif
ferent never acquire this cultivated taste for the
beautiful. in art. This lack of perception, this inca
pacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, is vulgarity.
Vulgarity is contentment with what is common, and
to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness.
The mark of it is stupidity.
At great pains the race has worked out beautiful
forms of speech, for communicating our ideas to each
other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe
these precise and beautiful forms of expression ;
it clips its words ; throws its sentences together with
out regard to grammar ; falls into slang ; draws its
figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of
life, instead of from its pure and noble aspects.
Vulgarity with reference to dress, dwellings,
pictures, reading, is of the same nature. It results
from the dull, unmeaning gaze with which one looks
at things ; the shiftless, slipshod way of doing work ;
the " don't care " habit of mind which calls any
thing that happens to fall in its way " good enough."
THE PENALTY. 97
From all that is precious and beautiful and lovely
the vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are
all around him ; but he has no eyes to see, no
taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them.
"All things excellent," so Spinoza tells us, "are
as difficult as they are rare." The vulgar man has
no heart for difficulty ; and hence the rare excel
lence of art and beauty remain forever beyond his
reach.
CHAPTER XIII.
animals*
ANIMALS stand midway between things and per
sons. We own them, use them, kill them, even, for
our own purposes. Yet they have feelings, impulses,
and affections in common with ourselves. In some
respects they surpass us. In strength, in speed, in
keenness of scent, in fidelity, blind instinct in the
animal is often superior to reason in the man.
Yet the animal falls short of personality. It is
conscious, but not self-conscious. It knows ; but it
does not know that it knows. It can perform as
tonishing feats of intelligence. But it cannot ex
plain, even to itself, the way in which it does them.
The animal can pass from one particular experience
to another along lines of association in time and
space with marvelous directness and accuracy. To
rise from a particular experience to the universal
class to which that experience belongs ; and then,
from the known characteristics of the class, to de
duce the characteristics of another particular experi
ence of the same kind, is beyond the power of the
brute.
The brute likewise has feelings ; but it does not
recognize these feelings as parts of a total and per
manent self. Pleasure and pain the animal feels
THE DUTY. 99
probably as keenly as we do. Of happiness or un-
happiness they probably know nothing.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Animals can be trained to do right, but they can-
not love righteousness. They can be trained to
avoid acts which are associated with painful conse
quences, but they cannot hate iniquity. The life
of an animal is a series of sensations, impulses,
thoughts, and actions. These are never gathered
up into unity. The animal is more than a machine,
and less than a person.
THE DUTY.
We ought to realize that the animal has feel
ings as keen as our own. — We owe to these feelings
in the animal the same treatment that we would wish
for the same feelings in ourselves. For animals as
for ourselves we should seek as much pleasure and
as little pain as is consistent with the perform
ance of the work which we think it best to lay upon
them. The horse cannot choose for itself how
heavy a load to draw. We ought to adapt the load
to its strength. And in order to do that we must
stop and consider how much strength it has. The
horse and cow and dog cannot select their own food
and shelter. We must think for them in these
matters ; and in order to do so wisely, we must
consider their nature, habits, and capacities. No
100 ANIMALS.
person is fit to own an animal, who is not willing to
take the trouble to understand the needs, capacities,
and nature of that animal. And acts which result
from ignorance of such facts as can be readily
learned are inexcusable.
THE VIRTUE.
Kindness is the recognition that a feeling of
another being is of just as much consequence as
a feeling of my own. — Now we have seen that in
some respects animals are precisely like ourselves.
Kindness recognizes this bond of the kind, or kin
ship, as far as it extends. Kindness to animals does
not go so far as kindness to our fellow-men ; because
the kinship between animals and man does not ex
tend as far as kinship between man and man. So
far as it does extend, however, kindness to animals
treats them as we should wish to be treated by a
person who had us in his power. Kindness will
inflict no needless suffering upon an animal ; make
no unreasonable requirement of it ; expose it to no
needless privation.
THE REWARD.
Kindness toward animals reacts upon our
hearts, making them tender and sympathetic. —
Every act we perform leaves its trace in tendency
to act in the same way again. And in its effect
upon ourselves it matters little whether the objects
on which our kindness has been bestowed have
been high or low in the scale of being. In any
case the effect remains with us in increased
THE TEMPTATION. IOI
tenderness, not only toward the particular objects
which have called it forth, but toward all sentient
beings. Kindness to animals opens our hearts
toward God and our fellow-men.
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
THE TEMPTATION.
We are tempted to forget this sensitive nature
of the animal, and to treat it as a mere thing.—
We have a perfect right to sacrifice the pleasure of
an animal to the welfare of ourselves. We have no
right to sacrifice the welfare of the animal to our
capricious feelings. We have no right to neglect an
animal from sheer unwillingness to give it the re-
sonable attention which is necessary to provide it
with proper food, proper care, proper shelter, and
proper exercise. A little girl, reproved for neglect
ing to feed her rabbits, when asked indignantly by
her father, "Don't you love your rabbits?" replied,
" Yes, I love them better than I love to feed them."
This love which doesn't love to feed is sentimental
ity, the fundamental vice of all personal relations,
of which we shall hear more later. The temptation
arises even here in our relations to the animal. It
is always so much easier to neglect a claim made
upon us from without, than to realize and respect it.
102 ANIMALS.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Ignorant or willful disregard of the nature and
welfare of an animal is cruelty. — Overloading
beasts of burden ; driving them when lame ; keep
ing them on insufficient food, or in dark, cold, and
unhealthy quarters ; whipping, goading, and beat
ing them constantly and excessively are the most
common forms of cruelty to animals. Pulling flies
to pieces, stoning frogs, robbing birds' nests are
forms of cruelty of which young children are often
guilty before they are old enough to reflect that
their sport is purchased at the cost of frightful pain
to these poor innocent and defenseless creatures.
The simple fact that we are strong and they are
weak ought to make evident, to anyone capable of
the least reflection, how mean a thing it is to take
advantage of our superior strength and knowledge
to inflict pain on one of these creatures which nature
has placed under the protection of our superior
power and knowledge, and lead us to resolve
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Subjection to animals degrading. — The animals
are vastly inferior to man in dignity and worth.
Many of them have strong wills of their own, and if
we will allow it, will run over us, and have their own
way in spite of us. Such subjection of a man or
woman to an animal is a most shameful sight. To
THE PENALTY. lo^
have dominion over them is man's prerogative ; and
to surrender that prerogative is to abrogate our
humanity.
This subjection of a person to an animal may
come about through a morbid and sentimental affec
tion for an animal. When a man or a woman makes
an animal so much of a pet that every caprice of
the cat or dog is law ; when the whole arrange
ments of the household are made to yield to its
whims ; when affections that are withheld from
earnest work and human service are lavished in
profusion on a pug or a canary ; there again we
see the order of rank in the scale of dignity and
worth inverted, and the human bowing to the
beast.
THE PENALTY.
Inhumanity to brutes brutalizes humanity. —
If we refuse by consideration and kindness to lift
the brute up into our human sympathy, and recog
nize in it the rights and feelings which it has in
common with us, then we sink to the unfeeling and
brutal level to which our cruelty seeks to consign
the brutes. Every cruel blow inflicted on an animal
leaves an ugly scar in our own hardened hearts,
which mars and destroys our capacity for the
gentlest and sweetest sympathy with our fellow-
men.
CHAPTER XIV.
jfellow^men,
" Unus homo, nullus homo " is a Latin proverb
which means that one man alone is no man at all.
A man who should be neither son, brother, husband,
father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable.
To try to think of such a man is like trying to think
of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color.
Man is by nature a social being. Apart from
society man would not be man. " Whosoever is
delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
To take out of a man all that he gets from his rela
tions to other men would be to take out of him
kindness, compassion, sympathy, love, loyalty, de
votion, gratitude, and heroism. It would reduce
him to the level of the brutes. What water is to
the fish, what air is to the bird, that association
with his fellow-men is to a man. It is as necessary
to the soul as food and raiment are to the body.
Only as we see ourselves reflected in the praise or
blame, the love or hate of others do we become
conscious of ourselves.
THE DUTY.
Since our fellow-men are so essential to us and
we to them, it is our duty to live in as intimate
fellowship with them as possible. — The funda-
104
THE DUTY. 105
mental form of fellowship is hospitality. By the
fireside and around the family table we feel most
free, and come nearest to one another. Without
hospitality, such intercourse is impossible. Hospi
tality, in order to fulfill its mission of fellowship,
must be genuine, sincere, and simple. True hospi
tality welcomes the guest to our hearts as well as to
our homes ; and the invitation to our homes when
our hearts are withheld is a hollow mockery. It
is a dangerous thing to have our bodies where our
hearts are not. For we acquire the habit of con
cealing our real selves, and showing only the surface
of our natures to others. We become hollow,
unreal, hypocritical. We live and move
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men and alien to ourselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast.
Fellowship requires not only that we shall be
hospitable and ask others to our homes, but that
we shall go out of our way to meet others in their
homes, and wherever they may be.
The deepest fellowship cannot be made to
order. It comes of itself along lines of com
mon interests and common aims. — The harder
we try to force people together, and to make them
like each other, the farther they fly apart. Give
them some interest or enthusiasm in common,
whether it be practical, or scientific, or literary, or
artistic, or musical, or religious, and this interest,
which draws both toward itself at the same time
Io6 FELLOW-MEN.
draws them toward each other. Hence a person,
who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept
from intimate fellowship with others, will often find
the best way to approach them, not to force
himself into their companionship, against his will
and probably against theirs ; but to acquire skill
as a musician, or reader, or student of science or
letters, or philanthrophy or social problems. Then
along these lines of common interest he will meet
men in ways that will be at once helpful and
natural.
THE VIRTUE.
Love is not soft, sentimental self-indulgence.
It is going out of ourselves, and taking others
into our hearts and lives. — Love calls for hard
service and severe self-sacrifice, when the needs of
others make service possible and self-sacrifice neces
sary. Love binds us to others and others to our
selves in bonds of mutual fidelity and helpfulness.
A Latin poet sums up the spirit of love in the
famous line :
Homo sum : humani nil a me alienum puto.
[I am a man : and I count nothing human foreign to myself.]
Kant has expressed the principle of love in the
form of a maxim : " Treat humanity, whether in thy
self or in others, always as an end, never as a
means." We have seen that the temptation to
treat others merely as tools to minister to our grati
fication, or as obstacles to be pushed out of our
pathway, is very strong. What makes us treat
THE VIRTUE. 107
people in that way is our failure to enter into their
lives, to see things as they see them, and to feel
things as they feel them. Kant tells us that we
should always act with a view to the way others
will be affected by it. We must treat men as men,
not as things. This sympathy and appreciation for
another is the first step in love. If we think of our
neighbor as he thinks of himself we cannot help
wishing him well. As Professor Royce says, " If he
is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as
warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee ; his will is as
full of struggling desires, of hard problems, of fate
ful decisions ; his pains are as hateful, his joys as
dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and
of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred,
realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and
then with clear certainty add : Such as that is for
me, so it is for him, nothing less. Then thou hast
known what he truly is, a Self like thy present
self."
The Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would
that they should do unto you, is the best summary
of duty. And the keeping of that rule is possible
only in so far as we love others. We must put our
selves in their place, before we can know how to
treat them as we would like to be treated. And
this putting self in the place of another is the very
essence of love. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself includes all social law. Love is the fulfill
ing of the law.
Love takes different forms in different circum-
108 FELLO W-MEN.
stances and in different relations. To the hungry
love gives food ; to the thirsty drink; to the naked
clothes ; to the sick nursing ; to the ignorant in
struction ; to the blind guidance ; to the erring re
proof ; to the penitent forgiveness. Indeed, the so
cial virtues which will occupy the remainder of this
book are simply applications of love in differing rela
tions and toward different groups and institutions.
THE REWARD.
Love the only true bond of union between per
sons. — The desire to be in unity with our fellow-
men is, as John Stuart Mill tells us, "already a
powerful principle in human nature, and happily one
of those which tend to become more strong, even
without express inculcation, from the influences of
advancing civilization. The deeply rooted concep
tion which every individual even now has of him
self as a social being, tends to make him feel it one
of his natural wants that there should be harmony
between his feelings and aims and those of his fel
low-creatures." The life of love is in itself a constant
realization of this deepest and strongest desire of
our nature. Love is the essence of social and spirit
ual life ; and that life of unity with our fellow-men
which love creates is in itself love's own reward.
"Life is energy of love." Oneness with those we
love is the only goal in which love could rest satis
fied. For love is " the greatest thing in the world,"
and any reward other than union with its object
would be a loss rather than a gain.
THE TEMPTATION. 109
THE TEMPTATION.
Kant remarks that a dove, realizing that the
resistance of the air is the sole obstacle to its
progress, might imagine that if it could only get
away from the air altogether, it would fly with
infinite rapidity and ease. — But in fact, if the air
were withdrawn for an instant it would fall helpless
to the ground. Friction is the only thing the loco
motive has to overcome. And if the locomotive
could reason it might think how fast it could travel
if only friction were removed. But without friction
the locomotive could not stir a hair's breadth from
the station.
In like manner, inasmuch as the greater part of our
annoyances and trials and sufferings come from con
tact with our fellow-men, it often seems to us that
if we could only get away from them altogether,
and live in utter indifference to them, our lives
would move on with utmost smoothness and serenity.
In fact, if these relations were withdrawn, if we could
attain to perfect indifference to our fellows, our life
as human and spiritual beings would that instant
cease.
The temptation to treat our fellow-men with in
difference, like all temptations, is a delusion and
leads to our destruction. Yet it is a very strong
temptation to us all at times. When people do not
appreciate us, and do not treat us with due kindness
and consideration, it is so easy to draw into our
shell and say, " I don't care a straw for them or their
no FELLOW-MEM.
good opinion anyway." This device is an old one.
The Stoics made much of it ; and boasted of the
completeness of their indifference. But it is essen
tially weak and cowardly. It avoids certain evils, to
be sure. It does so, however, not by overcoming
them in brave, manly fashion ; but by running and
hiding away from them — an easy and a disgraceful
thing to do. Intimate fellowship and close contact
with others does bring pains as well as pleasures. It
is the condition of completeness and fullness of moral
and spiritual life; and the man who will live at his best
must accept these pains with courage and resolution.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The outcome of indifference and lack of sym
pathy and fellowship is selfishness. — Unless we
first feel another's interests as he feels them, we
cannot help being more interested in our own affairs
than we are in his, and consequently sacrificing his
interests to our own when the two conflict. As
George Eliot tells us in "Adam Bede," "Without
this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience
and charity toward our stumbling, falling compan
ions in the long, changeful journey? And there is
but one way in which a strong, determined soul can
learn it, by getting his heart-strings bound round
the weak and erring, so that he must share not only
the outward consequence of their error, but their
inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson."
It is impossible to overcome selfishness di
rectly. — As long as our poor, private interests
THE VICE OF DEFECT. Ill
are the only objects vividly present to our im
agination and feeling, we must be selfish. The only
remedy is the indirect one of entering into fellow
ship with others, interesting ourselves in what inter
ests them, sharing their joys and sorrows, their
hopes and fears. When we have done that, then
there is something besides our petty and narrow
personal interests before our minds and thoughts ;
and so we are in a way to get something besides
mean and selfish actions from our wills and hands.
We act out what is in us. If there is nothing but
ourselves present to our thoughts, we shall be sel
fish of necessity ; and without even knowing that we
are selfish. If our thoughts and feelings are full of
the welfare and interests of others we shall do lov
ing and unselfish deeds, without ever stopping to
think that they are loving and unselfish. Hence
the precept, " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for
out of it are the issues of life." A heart and mind
full of sympathy and fellow-feeling is the secret of
a loving life ; and an idle mind and an empty heart,
to which no thrill of sympathy with others is ever
admitted, is the barren and desolate region from
which loveless looks and cruel words and selfish
deeds come forth.
Love is not a virtue which we can cultivate in
ourselves by direct effort of will, and then take
credit for afterward. — Love comes to us of itself ;
it springs up spontaneously within our breasts. We
can prepare our hearts for its entrance ; we can wel
come and cherish it when it comes. We cannot
112 FELLOW-MEN.
boast of it, for we could not help it. Love is the
welling up within us of our true social nature ;
which nothing but our indifference and lack of
sympathy could have kept so long repressed.
" Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth
not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own."
Love " seeketh not its own " because it has no own
to seek.
Selfishness on the contrary knows all about
itself; has a good opinion of itself; never gets
its own interests mixed up with those of anybody
else ; can always give a perfectly satisfactory
account of itself.
Hence when we know exactly how we came to do
a thing, and appreciate keenly how good it was of
us to do it ; and think how very much obliged the
other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may
be pretty sure that it was not love, but some more
or less subtle form of selfishness that prompted it.
Love and selfishness may do precisely the same
things. Under the influence of either love or sel
fishness I may " bestow all my goods to feed the
poor and give my body to be burned," but love
alone profiteth ; while all the subtle forms of selfish
ness and self-seeking are " sounding brass and
clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does a
service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward
it is to gain. In so doing it forfeits merit and
reward both. Selfishness never succeeds in getting
outside of itself. From all the joys and graces of
the social life it remains in perpetual banishment.
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 113
Love loses itself in the object loved, and so finds a
larger and better self. Selfishness tries to use the
object of its so-called love as a means to its own
gratification, and so remains to the end in loveless
isolation. Many manifestations of selfishness look
very much like love. To know the real difference
is the most fundamental moral insight. On it de
pend the issues of life and death.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The most flagrant mockery of love is senti
mentality. — The sentimentalist is on hand where -
ever there is a chance either to mourn or to rejoice.
He is never so happy as when he is pouring forth a
gush of feeling; and it matters little whether it be
laughter or tears, sorrow or joy, to which he is per
mitted to give vent. On the surface he seems to be
overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He
strikes us at first sight as the very incarnation of
tenderness and love.
And yet we soon discover that he cares nothing
for us, or for our joys and sorrows in themselves.
Anybody else, or any other occasion, would serve
his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copious
ness of sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel,
with its suffering heroine, or a good play with its
pathetic scenes, would answer his purpose quite as
well as any living person or actual situation. What
he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement
and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all
deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's de-
114 FELLOW-MEN.
lights ; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sym
pathetic mood ; not helpfulness, but the sense of
self-importance which comes from being around
when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions
are to be made ; not devotion to others, but the
complacency with self which intimate connection
with others gives: these are the objects at which
the sentimentalist really aims.
The sentimentalist makes himself a nuisance
to others and soon becomes disgusted with him
self. — He cannot be relied upon for any serious
service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a trans
ient and fluctuating thing ; it gives out just as soon
as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacri
fice. And this attempt to live forever on the top
most wave of emotional excitement defeats itself
by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether
in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves
us to be on our guard against this insidious sham
which cloaks selfishness in protestations of af
fection ; pays compliments to show off its own
ability to say pretty things ; and undertakes respon
sibilities to make the impression of being of some
consequence in the world. The man or woman
is extremely fortunate who has never" fallen a
victim to this hollow mockery of love, either in
self or others. The worst effect of sentimentality is
that when we have detected it a few times, either in
ourselves or in others, we are tempted to conclude
that fellowship itself is a farce, love a delusion, and
all sympathy and tenderness a weakness and a sham.
THE PENALTY. 11$
Every good thing has its counterfeit. By all means
let this counterfeit be driven from circulation as fast
as possible. But let us not lose faith in human fellow
ship and human love because this base imitation is
so hollow and disgusting:
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, —
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all.
THE PENALTY.
The penalty of selfishness is strife. — The selfish
man can neither leave men entirely alone, nor can he
live at peace and in unity with them. Hence come
strife and division. Being unwilling to make the
interests of others his own, the selfish man's interests
must clash with the interests of others. His hand is
against every man ; and every man's hand, unless it is
stayed by generosity and pity, is against him. This
clashingof outside interests is reflected in his own con
sciousness ; and the war of his generous impulses
with his selfish instincts makes his own breast a per
petual battlefield. The lack of harmony with his
fellows in the outward world makes peace within his
own soul impossible. The selfish man, by cutting
himself off from his true relations with his fellow-men,
cuts up the roots of the only principles which could
give to his own life dignity and harmony and peace.
tl6 FELLOW-MEN.
Selfishness defeats itself. By refusing to go out of
self into the lives of others, the selfish man renders
it impossible for the great life of human sympathy
and fellowship and love to enter his own life, and fill
it with its own largeness and sweetness and serenity.
The selfish man remains to the last an alien, an out
cast and an enemy, banished from all that is best in
the life of his fellows by the insuperable obstacle of
his own unwillingness to be one with them in mutual
helpfulness and service.
CHAPTER XV.
Ube poor.
OUR fellow-men are so numerous and their con.
ditions are so diverse that it is necessary to consider
some of the classes and conditions of men by them
selves ; and to study some of the special forms which
fellowship and love assume under these differing
circumstances.
Of these classes or divisions in which we may
group our fellow-men, the one having the first claim
upon us by virtue of its greater need is the poor.
The causes of poverty are accident, sickness, in
ability to secure work, laziness, improvidence, in
temperance, ignorance, and shiftlessness. Those
whose poverty is due to the first three causes are
commonly called the worthy poor.
THE DUTY.
Whether worthy or unworthy, the poor are
our brothers and sisters ; and on the ground of
our common humanity we owe them our help
and sympathy. — It is easier to sympathize with the
worthy than with the unworthy poor. Yet the poor
who are poor as the result of their own fault are
really the more in need of our pity and help. The
work of lifting them up to the level of self-respect
1x7
IlS THE POOR.
and self-support is much harder than the mere giv
ing them material relief. Yet nothing less than
this is our duty. The mere tossing of pennies to
the tramp and the beggar is not by any means the
fulfillment of their claim upon us. Indeed, such in
discriminate giving does more harm than good. It
increases rather than relieves pauperism. So that
the first duty of charity is to refuse to give in this
indiscriminate way. Either we must give more than
food and clothes and money ; or else we must give
nothing at all. Indiscriminate giving merely adds
fuel to the flame.
THE VIRTUE.
The special form which love takes when its
object is the poor is called benevolence or
charity. — True benevolence, like love, of which it is
a special application, makes the well-being of its
object its own. In what then does the well-being
of the poor consist ? Is it bread and beef, a coat on
the back, a roof over the head, and a bed to sleep
in ? These are conditions of well-being, but not the
whole of it. A man cannot be well off without these
things. But it is by no means sure that he will be
well off with them.
What a man thinks; how he feels; what he loves;
what he hopes for ; what he is trying to do ; what he
means to be ; — these are quite as essential elements in
his well-being as what he has to eat and wear. True
benevolence therefore must include these things in
its efforts. Benevolence must aim to improve the
THE VIRTUE. 119
man together with his condition or its gifts will be
worse than wasted.
There are three principles which all wise benevol
ence must observe.
First : Know all that can be known about the
man you help. — Unless we are willing to find out
all we can about a poor man, we have no business
to indulge our sympathy or ease our conscience by
giving him money or food. It is often easier to
give than to withhold. But it is far more harmful.
When Bishop Potter says that " It is far better, —
better for him and better for us, — to give a beggar
a kick than to give him a half-dollar," it sounds
like a hard saying, yet it is the strict truth. In a
civilized and Christian community any really de*
serving person can secure assistance through pen
sons or agencies that either know about his needs,
or will take the trouble to look them up. When a
stranger begs from strangers he thereby confesses
that he prefers to present his claims where their
merits are unknown ; and the act proclaims him as a
fraud. To the beggar, to ourselves, and to the really
deserving poor, we owe a prompt and stern refusal
of all uninvestigated appeals for charity. "True
charity never opens the heart without at the same
time opening the mind."
The second principle is : Let the man you help
know as much as he can of you. — Bureaus and
societies are indispensable aids to effective benevol
ence ; without their aid thorough knowledge of
the needs and merits of the ooor would be impossi-
120 THE POOR.
ble. Their function, however, should be to direct
and superintend, not to dispense with and supplant
direct personal contact between giver and receiver.
The recipient of aid should know the one who helps
him as man or woman, not as secretary or agent. If
all the money, food, and clothing necessary to relieve
the wants of the poor could be deposited at their fire
sides regularly each Christmas by Santa Claus, such
a Christmas present, with the regular expectation of
its repetition each year, would do these poor families
more harm than good. It might make them tem
porarily more comfortable ; it would make them
permanently less industrious, thrifty, and self-reliant.
Investigations have proved conclusively that half
the persons who are in want in our cities need no
help at all, except help in finding work. One-sixth
are unworthy of any material assistance whatever,
since they would spend it immediately on their
vices. One-fifth need only temporary help and en
couragement to get over hard places. Only about
one-tenth need permanent assistance.
On the other hand all need cheer, comfort, advice,
sympathy, and encouragement, or else reproof, warn
ing, and restraint. They all need kind, firm, wise,
judicious friends. The less professionalism, the
more personal sympathy and friendliness there is in
our benevolence, the better it will be. In the words
of Octavia Hill : " It is the families, the homes of the
poor that need to be influenced. Is not she most
sympathetic, most powerful, who nursed her own
mother through her long illness, and knew how to
THE VIRTUE. 121
go quietly through the darkened room : who entered
so heartily into her sister's marriage : who obeyed
so heartily her father's command when it was hard
est ? Better still if she be wife and mother herself
and can enter into the responsibilities of a head of
a household, understands her joys and cares, knows
what heroic patience it needs to keep gentle when
the nerves are unhinged and the children noisy.
Depend upon it if we thought of the poor primarily
as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, members of
households as we are ourselves, instead of contem
plating them as a different class, we should recog
nize better how the home training and the high
ideal of home duty was our best preparation for
work among them."
The third principle is : Give the man you help
no more and no less than he needs to make his
life what you and he together see that it is good
for it to be. — This principle shows how much to
give. Will ten cents serve as an excuse for idle
ness ? Will five cents be spent in drink? Will one
cent relax his determination to earn an honest living
for himself and family ? Then these sums are too
much, and should be withheld. On the other hand,
can the man be made hopeful, resolute, determined
to overcome the difficulties of a trying situation ?
Can you impart to him your own strong will, your
steadfast courage, your high ideal? is he ready to
work, and willing to make any sacrifice that is nec
essary to regain the power of self-support ? Then
you will not count any sum that you can afford to
122 THE POOR.
give too great ; even if it be necessary to carry him
and his family right through a winter by sheer
force of giving outright everything they need.
It is not the amount of the gift, but the spirit in
which it is received that makes it good or bad for
the recipient. If received by a man who clings to all
the weakness and wickedness that brought his poverty
upon him, then your gift, whether small or large, does
no good and much harm. If with the gift the man
welcomes your counsel, follows your advice, adopts
your ideal, and becomes partaker in your determina
tion that he shall become as industrious, and prudent,
and courageous as a man in his situation can be,
then whether you give him little or much material
assistance, every cent of it goes to the highest work
in which wealth can be employed — the making a
man more manlike.
THE REWARD,
Our attitude toward the poor and unfortunate
is the test of our attitude toward humanity. —
For the poor and unfortunate present humanity to
us in the condition which most strongly appeals to
our fellow-feeling. The way in which I treat this
poor man who happens to cross my path, is the way
I should treat my dearest friend, if he were equally
poor and unfortunate, and equally remote from per
sonal association with my past life. The man who
will let. a single poor family suffer, when he is able
to afford relief, is capable of being false to the whole
human race. Speaking in the name of our common
THE TEMPTATION. 123
humanity, the Son of Man declares, " Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me." Sympathy
" doubles our joys and halves our sorrows." It in
creases our range of interest and affection, making
" the world one fair moral whole " in which we share
the joys and sorrows of our brothers.
The man who sympathizes with the sufferings
of others seeks and finds the sympathy of others
in his own losses and trials when they come. —
Familiarity and sympathy with the sufferings of
others strengthens us to bear suffering when it comes
to us : for we are able to see that it is no unusual
and exceptional evil falling upon us alone, but accept
it as an old and familiar acquaintance, whom we
have so often met in other lives that we do not
fear his presence in our own.
THE TEMPTATION.
" Am I my brother's keeper ? " — We are com
fortable and well cared for. We are earning our
own living. We pay our debts. We work hard for
what we get. Why should we not enjoy ourselves?
Why should I share my earnings with the shiftless
vagabond, the good-for-nothing loafer? What is he
to me? In one or another of these forms the mur
derous question " Am I my brother's keeper?" is
sure to rise to our lips when the needs of the poor
call for our assistance and relief. Or if we do recog
nize the claim, we are tempted to hide behind some
organization ; giving our money to that ; and send
124 THE POOR.
ing it to do the actual work. We do not like to come
into the real presence of suffering and want. We
do not want to visit the poor man in his tenement ;
and clasp his hand, and listen with our own ears to
the tale of wretchedness and woe as it falls directly
from his lips. We do not care to take the heavy
and oppressive burden of his life's problem upon
our own minds and hearts. We wish him well.
But we do not will his betterment strongly and
earnestly enough to take us to his side, and join
our hands with his in lifting off the weight that
keeps him down. Alienation, the desire to hold
ourselves aloof from the real wretchedness of our
brother, is our great temptation with reference to
the poor.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The reluctant doling out of insufficient aid to
the poor is niggardliness. — The niggard is think
ing all the time of himself, and how he hates to
part with what belongs to him. He gives as little
as he can ; and that little hurts him terribly. This
vice cannot be overcome directly. It is a phase of
selfishness ; and like all forms of selfishness it can
be cured only by getting out of self into another's
life. By going among the poor, studying their
needs, realizing their sufferings, we may be drawn
out of our niggardliness and find a pleasure in giv
ing which we could never have cultivated by direct
efforts of will. We cannot make ourselves benevo
lent by making up our minds that we will be
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 125
benevolent. Like all forms of love, benevolence can-
not be forced ; but it will come of itself if we give
its appropriate objects a large share of our thoughts
and a warm place in our hearts.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Regard for others as they happen to be, instead
of regard for what they are capable of becoming,
leads to soft hearted and mischievous indulgence.
— The indulgent giver sees the fact of suffering and
rushes to its relief, without stopping to inquire in
to the cause of the poverty and the best measures
of relief. Indulgence fails to see the ideal of what
the poor man is to become. Indulgence does not
look beyond the immediate fact of poverty ; and
consequently the indulgent giver does nothing to
lift the poor man out of it. Help in poverty,
rather than help out of poverty, is what indulgent
giving amounts to. The indulgent and indiscrimi
nate giver becomes a partner in the production of
poverty. This indulgent giving is a phase of senti
mentality ; and the relief of one's own feelings,
rather than the real good of a fellow-man is at the
root of all such mischievous almsgiving. It is the
form of benevolence without the substance. It
does too much for the poor man just because it
loves him too little. Indulgence measures benefac
tions, not by the needs and capacities of the re
ceiver, but by the sensibilities and emotions of the
giver. What wonder that it always goes astray,
and does harm under the guise of doing good !
rrt> THE POOR.
THE PENALTY.
Uncharitable treatment of the poor makes us
alien to humanity, and distrustful of human
nature. — We feel that they have a claim upon us
that we have not fulfilled ; and we try to push them
off beyond the range of our sympathy. They are
not slow to take the hint. They interpret our harsh
tones and our cold looks, and they look to us for
help no more. But in pushing these poor ones
beyond our reach, we unconsciously acquire hard,
unsympathetic ways of thinking, feeling, speak
ing and acting, which others not so poor, others
whom we would gladly have near us, also interpret ;
and they too come to understand that there is no
real kindness and helpfulness to be had from us in
time of real need, and they keep their inmost selves
apart, and suffer us to touch them only on the sur.
face of their lives. When trouble comes to us we
instinctively feel that we have no claim on the sym
pathy of others ; and so we have to bear our griefs
alone. Having never suffered with others, sorrow is
a stranger to us, and we think we are the most miser
able creatures in the world.
Humanity is one. Action and reaction are equal.
Our treatment of the poorest of our fellows is
potentially our treatment of them all. And by a
subtle law of compensation, which runs deeper than
our own consciousness, what our attitude is toward
our fellows determines their attitude toward us.
"Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of
these my brethren," says the Representative of our
common humanity, " ye did it not unto me."
CHAPTER XVI.
ANOTHER class of our fellow-men whom it is
especially hard to love are those who willfully do
wrong. The men who cheat us, and say hateful
things to us ; the men who abuse their wives and
neglect their families ; the men who grind the faces
of the poor, and contrive to live in ease and luxury
on the earnings of the widow and the orphan ; the
men who pervert justice and corrupt legislation in
order to make money ; these and all wrongdoers ex
asperate us, and rouse our righteous indignation. Yet
they are our fellow-men. We meet them everywhere.
We suffer for their misdeeds; — and, what is worse,
we have to see others, weaker and more helpless than
ourselves, maltreated, plundered, and beaten by these
wretches and villains. Wrongdoing is a great, hard,
terrible fact. We must face it. We must have
some clear and consistent principles of action with
reference to these wrongdoers ; or else our wrath
and indignation will betray us into the futile attempt
to right one wrong by another wrong; and so drag
us down to the level of the wrongdoers against
whom we contend.
137
X28 WRONGDOERS.
THE DUTY.
The first thing we owe to the wrongdoer is
to give him his just deserts. Wrongdoing
always hurts somebody. Justice demands that
it shall hurt the wrongdoer himself.— The boy
who tells a lie treats us as if we did not belong to
the same society, and have the same claim on truth
that he has. We must make him feel that we do
not consider him fit to be on a level with us. We
must make him ashamed of himself. The man who
cheats us shows that he is willing to sacrifice our in
terests to his. We must show him that we will have
no dealings with such a person. The man who is
mean and stingy shows that he cares nothing for us.
We must show him that we despise his miserliness
and meanness. The robber and the murderer show
that they are enemies to society. Society must
exclude them from its privileges.
It is the function of punishment to bring the
offender to a realizing sense of the nature of his
deed, by making him suffer the natural conse
quences of it, or an equivalent amount of pri
vation, in his own person. Punishment is a favor
to the wrongdoer, just as bitter medicine is a favor
to the sick. For without it, he would not appreciate
the evil of his wrongdoing with sufficient force
to repent of it, and abandon it. Plato teaches the
true value of punishment in the " Gorgias." " The
doing of wrong is the greatest of evils. To suffer
punishment is the way to be released from this evil.
THE DUTY. 129
Not to suffer is to perpetuate the evil. To do
wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils ;
but to do wrong and not to be punished, is first and
greatest of all. He who has done wrong and has
not been punished, is and ought to be the most
miserable of all men ; the doer of wrong is more
miserable than the sufferer ; and he who escapes
punishment more miserable than he who suffers
punishment."
Punishment is the best thing we can do for
one who has done wrong. — Punishment is not a
good in itself. But it is good relatively to the
wrongdoer. It is the only way out of wrong into
right. Punishment need not be brutal or degrad
ing. The most effectual punishment is often purely
mental ; consisting in the sense of shame and sorrow
which the offender is made to feel. In some form
or other every wrongdoer should be made to feel
painfully the wrongness of his deed. To " spare the
rod," both literally and metaphorically, is to " spoil
the child." The duty of inflicting punishment, like
all duty, is often hard and unwelcome. But we
become partakers in every wrong which we suffer
to go unpunished and unrebuked when punishment
and rebuke are within our power.
THE VIRTUE.
Forgiveness is not inconsistent with justice.
It does not do away with punishment. It spirit
ualizes punishment; substituting mental for
bodily pains. — The sense of the evil and shame of
13° WRONGDOERS.
wrongdoing, which is the essence and end of pun
ishment, forgiveness, when it is appreciated, serves
to intensify. Indeed it is impossible to inflict
punishment rightly until you have first forgiven
the offender. For punishment should be inflicted
for the offender's good. And not until vengeance
has given way to forgiveness are we able to care
for the offender's well-being.
Forgiveness is a special form of love. It recog
nizes the humanity of the offender, and treats him
as a brother, even when his deeds are most un-
brotherly. But it cares so much for him that it will
not shrink from inflicting whatever merciful pains
may be necessary to deliver him from his own un-
brotherliness. Forgiveness loves not the offense but
the man. It hates the offense chiefly because it in
jures the man. Its punishment of the offense is the
negative side of its positive devotion to the person.
The command " love your enemies" is not a hard
impossibility on the one hand, nor a soft piece of
sentimentalism on the other. It is possible, because
there is a human, loveable side, even to the worst
villain, if we can only bring ourselves to think on
that better side, and the possibilities which it in
volves. It is practical, because regard for that bet
ter side of his nature demands that we shall make
him as miserable in his wrongdoing as is neces
sary to lead him to abandon his wrongdoing, and
give the better possibilities of his nature a chance to
develop. The parent who punishes the naughty
child loves him not less but more than the parent
THE REWARD. I31
who withholds the needed punishment. The state
which suffers crime to go unpunished becomes a
nursery of criminals. It wrongs itself; it -wrongs
honest citizens; but most of all it wrongs the crimi
nals themselves whom it encourages in crime by un
due lenity. The object of forgiveness is not to take
away punishment, but to make whatever punishment
remains effective for the reformation of the offender.
It is to transfer the seat of suffering from the body,
where its effect is uncertain and indirect, to the mind,
where sorrow for wrongdoing is powerful and effi
cacious. Every wrong act brings its penalty with it.
In order to induce repentance and reformation that
penalty must in some way be brought home to the
one who did the wrong. Vengeance drives the
penalty straight home, refusing to bear any part of
it itself. Forgiveness first takes the penalty upon
itself in sorrow for the wrong, and then invites the
wrongdoer to share the sorrow which he who for
gives him has already borne. Vengeance smites the
body, and often drives in deeper the perversity.
Forgiveness touches the heart and gently but firmly
draws the heart's affections away from the wrong,
into devotion to the right.
THE REWARD.
Forgiveness, rightly received, works the ref
ormation of the offender. — And to one who ardently
loves righteousness there is no joy comparable to that
of seeing a man who has been doing wrong, turn from
it, renounce it, and determine that henceforth he will
13 2 WRONGDOERS.
endeavor to do right. Contrast heightens our emo-
tions. And there is "joy over one sinner that re-
penteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous
persons that need no repentance." Deliverance from
wrong is effected by the firm yet kindly presentation
of the right as something still possible for us, and into
which a friend stands ready to welcome us. Refor
mation is wrought by that blending of justice and
forgiveness which at the same time holds the wrong
abhorrent and the wrongdoer dear. Reformation
is the end at which forgiveness aims, and its ac
complishment is its own reward.
THE TEMPTATION.
The sight of heinous offenses and outrageous
deeds against ourselves or others tempts us to
wreak our vengeance upon the offender. — This
impulse of revenge served a useful purpose in the
primitive condition of human society. It still
serves as the active support of righteous indignation.
But it is blind and rough ; and is not suited to the
conditions of civilized life. Vengeance has no con
sideration for the true well-being of the offender.
It confounds the person with the deed in wholesale
condemnation. It renders evil for evil; it provokes
still further retaliation ; and erects a single fault
into the occasion of a lasting feud. It is irra
tional, brutal, and inhuman ; it is dangerous and de
grading.
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 133
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The absence of forgiveness in dealing with
wrongdoers leads to undue severity. — The end
of punishment being to bring the offender to realize
the evil of his deed and to repent of it, punishment
should not be carried beyond the point which is
necessary to produce that result. To continue
punishment after genuine penitence is manifested is
to commit a fresh wrong ourselves. " If thy brother
sin, rebuke him ; and if he repent, forgive him. And
if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and
seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou
shalt forgive him." To ignore an unrepented wrong,
and to continue to punish a repented wrong, are
equally wide of the mark of that love for the offender
which meets out to him both justice and forgiveness
according to his needs. All punishment which is not
tempered with forgiveness is brutal ; and brutalizes
both punisher and punished. It hardens the heart of
the offender; and itself constitutes a new offense
against him.
These principles apply strictly to relations between
individuals. In the case of punishment by the state,
the necessity of self-protection ; of warning others;
and of approximate uniformity in procedure; added
to the impossibility of getting at the exact state of
mind of the offender by legal processes, render it
necessary to inflict penalties in many cases which
are more severe than the best interest of the individ
ual offenders requires. To meet such cases, and to
134 WRONGDOERS.
mitigate the undue severity of uniform penalties
when they fall too heavily on individuals, all
civilized nations give the power of pardon to the
executive.
Whetherthe penalty be in itself light or severe,
it should always be administered in the endeavor
to improve and reform the character of the of
fender. — The period of confinement in jail or prison
should be made a period of real privation and suffer
ing; but it should be especially the privation of op
portunity for indulgence in idleness and vice ; and
the painfulness of discipline in acquiring the knowl
edge and skill necessary to make the convict a self-
respecting and self-supporting member of society,
after his term of sentence expires.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Lenity ignores the wrong ; and by ignoring it,
becomes responsible for its repetition. — Lenity is
sentimentality bestowed on criminals. It treats them
in the manner most congenial to its own feelings,
instead of in the way most conducive to their good.
Forgiveness is regard for the offender in view of his
ability to renounce the offense and try to do
better in the future. Lenity confounds offender
and offense in a wholesale and promiscuous am
nesty. The true attitude toward the wrongdoer
must preserve the balance set forth by the lawgiver
of Israel as characteristic of Israel's God, "full of
compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plente-
THE PENALTY. 135
ous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thou
sands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin :
and that will by no means clear the guilty." Lenity
which " clears the guilty " is neither mercy, nor
graciousness, nor compassion, nor forgiveness. Such
lenity obliterates moral distinctions ; disintegrates
society; corrupts and weakens the moral nature
of the one who indulges in it ; and confirms in per
versity him on whom it is bestowed.
THE PENALTY.
Severity and lenity alike increase the perver
sity of the offender. — Severity drives the offender
into fresh determination to do wrong ; and intrenches
him behind the conception that he has been treated
unfairly. He is made to think that all the world is
against him, and he sees no reason why he should not
set himself against the world. Lenity leads him to
think the world is on his side no matter what he
does ; and so he asks himself why he should take
the trouble to mend his ways. Lenity to others
leads us to be lenient toward ourselves ; and we
commit wrong in expectation of that lenient treat
ment which we are in the habit of according to
others. Severity to others makes us ashamed to ask
for mercy when we need it for ourselves. Further
more, knowing there is no mercy in ourselves, we
naturally infer that there is none in others. We
disbelieve in forgiveness ; and our disbelief hides
from our eyes the forgiveness, which, if we had
I3& WRONGDOERS.
more faith in its presence, we might find. Hence
the unforgiving man can find no forgiveness for
himself in time of need ; he sinks to that level of
despair and confirmed perversity, to which his own
unrelenting spirit has doomed so many of his erring
brothers.
CHAPTER XVII.
tfrien&s.
IN addition to that bond of a common humanity
which ought to bind us to all our fellow-men, there
is a tie of special affinity between persons of con
genial tastes, kindred pursuits, common interests,
and mutually cherished ideals. Persons to whom
we are drawn, and who are likewise drawn to us, by
these cords of subtle sympathy we call our friends.
Friendship is regard for what our friend is ; not
for what he can do for us. " The perfect friend
ship," says Aristotle, " is that of good men who
resemble one another in virtue. For they both
alike wish well to one another as good men, and it
is their essential character to be good men. And
those who wish well to their friends for the friends'
sake are friends in the truest sense ; for they have
these sentiments toward each other as being what
the are, and not in an accidental way; their friend
ship, .herefore, lasts as long as their virtue, and that
is a lasting thing. Such friendships are uncommon,
for such people are rare. Such friendship requires
long and familiar intercourse. For they carrot be
friends till each show anj approve himself 10 the
other as worthy to be loved. A wish to be friends
may be of rapid growth, but not friendship. Those
137
138 FRIENDS.
whose love for one another is based on the useful, do
not love each other for what they are, but only in so
far as each gets some good from the other. These
friendships are accidental ; for the object of affection
is loved, not as being the person or character that he
is, but as the source of some good or some pleasure.
Friendships of this kind are easily dissolved, as the
persons do not continue unchanged ; for if they
cease to be useful or pleasant to one another, their
love ceases. On the disappearance of that which
was the motive of their friendship, their friendship
itself is dissolved, since it existed solely with a
view to that. For pleasure then or profit it is
possible even for bad men to be friends with one
another; but it is evident that the friendship in
which each loves the other for himself is only pos
sible between good men ; for bad men take no
delight in each other unless some advantage is to
be gained. The friendship whose motive is utility is
the friendship of sordid souls. Friendship lies more
in loving than in being loved ; so that when people
love each other in proportion to their worth, they
are lasting friends, and theirs is lasting friendship."
THE DUTY.
The interest of our friend should be our inter
est ; his welfare, our welfare ; his wish, our will ;
his good, our aim. — If he prospers we rejoice; if
he is overtaken by adversity, we must stand by him.
If he is in want, we must share our goods with him.
If he is unpopular, we must stand up for him. If he
THE VIRTUE. 139
does wrong, we must be the first to tell him of his
fault : and the first to bear with him the penalty of
his offense. If he is unjustly accused we must be
lieve in his innocence to the last. Friends must
have all things in common; not in the sense of legal
ownership, which would be impracticable, and, as
Epicurus pointed out, would imply mutual distrust ;
but in the sense of a willingness on the part of each
to do for the other all that is in his power. Only on
the high plane of such absolute, whole-souled devo
tion can pure friendship be maintained.
THE VIRTUE.
The true friend is one we can rely upon. —
Our deepest secrets, our tenderest feelings, our
frankest confessions, our inmost aspirations, our
most cherished plans, our most sacred ideals are as
safe in his keeping as in our own. Yes, they are
safer; for the faithful friend will not hesitate to
prick the bubbles of our conceit ; laugh us out of
our sentimentality ; expose the root of selfishness
beneath our virtuous pretensions. " Faithful are the
wounds of a friend." To be sure the friend must
do all this with due delicacy and tact. If he takes
advantage of his position to exercise his censorious-
ness upon us we speedily vote him a bore, and take
measures to get rid of him. But when done with
gentleness and good nature, and with an eye single
to our real good, this pruning of the tendrils of our
inner life is one of the most precious offices of
friendship.
140 FRIENDS.
THE REWARD.
The chief blessing of friendship is the sense
that we are not living our lives and fighting
our battles alone ; but that our lives are linked
with the lives of others, and that the joys and
sorrows of our united lives are felt by hearts
that beat as one. — The seer who laid down so se
verely the stern conditions which the highest friend
ship must fulfill, has also sung its praises so sweetly,
that his poem at the beginning of his essay may
serve as our description of the blessings which it is
in the power of friendship to confer:
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,—
Oh, friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair ;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
THE TEMPTATION. 1*1
THE TEMPTATION.
A relation so intimate as that of friendship
offers constant opportunity for betrayal. —
Friends understand each other perfectly. Friend
utters to friend many things which he would not for
all the world let others know. And more than that,
the intimate association of friendship cannot fail to
give the friend an opportunity to perceive the deep
secrets of the other's heart which he would not speak
even to a friend, and which he has scarcely dared to
acknowledge even to himself.
This intimate knowledge of another appeals
strangely to our vanity and pride ; and we are often
tempted to show it off by disclosing some of these
secrets which have been revealed to us in the confi
dence of friendship. This is the meanest thing one
person can do to another. The person who yields
to this basest of temptations is utterly unworthy
ever again to have a friend. Betrayal of friends is
the unpardonable social sin.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
We cannot find people who in every respect
are exactly to our liking. —And, what is more to
the point, we never can make ourselves exactly
what we should like to have other people intimately
know and understand. Friendship calls for courage
enough to show ourselves in spite of our frailties
and imperfections ; and to take others in spite of the
possible shortcomings which close acquaintance may
reveal in them. Friendship requires a readiness
142 FRIENDS.
to give and take, for better or for worse ; and that
exclusiveness which shrinks from the risks involved
is simply a combination of selfishness and cowardice.
Refusal to make friends is a sure sign that a man
either is ashamed of himself, or else lacks faith
in his fellow-men. And these two states of mind are
not so different as they might at first appear. For
we judge others chiefly by ourselves. And the man
who distrusts his fellow-men, generally bases his dis
trust of them on the consciousness that he himself
is not worthy of the trust of others. So that the real
root of exclusiveness is the dread of letting other
people get near to us, for fear of what they might
discover. Exclusiveness puts on the airs of pride.
But pride is only a game of bluff, by which a man
who is ashamed to have other people get near enough
to see him as he is pretends that he is terribly afraid
of getting near enough to others to see what they
are.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Effusiveness. — Some people can keep nothing to
themselves. As soon as they get an experience, or
feel an emotion, or have an ache or pain, they must
straightway run and.pour it into the ear of some sym
pathetic listener. The result is that experiences
do not gain sufficient hold upon the nature to make
any deep and lasting impression. No indepen
dence, no self-reliance, no strength of character is
developed. Such people are superficial and unreal.
They ask everything and have nothing to give.
The stream is so large and constant that there is
THE PENALTY. 143
nothing left in the reservoir. Friendship must rest
on solid foundations of independence and mutual
respect. With great clearness and force Emerson
proclaims this law in his Essay on Friendship :
" We must be our own before we can be another's.
Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than
that my friend should overstep, by a word or a
look, his real sympathy. Let him not cease an
instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his
being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate
where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least
a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession.
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than
his echo. The condition which high friendship
demands is ability to do without.it. There must be
very two, before there can be very one. Let it
be an alliance of two large formidable natures,
mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they
recognize the deep identity, which, beneath these
disparities, unites them."
THE PENALTY.
If we refuse to go in company there is noth
ing left for us but to trudge along the dreary
way alone. — If we will not bear one another's bur
dens, we must bear our own when they are heaviest
in our unaided strength ; and fall beneath their
weight. Here as everywhere penalty is simply
the inevitable consequence of conduct. The loveless
heart is doomed to drag out its term of years in
the cheerless isolation of a life from which the
light of love has been withdrawn.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THUS far we have considered our fellow-men as
units, with whom it is our privilege and duty to
come into external relations. These external re
lations after all do not reach the deepest center of
our lives. They indeed bind man to man in bonds
of helpfulness and service. But the two who are thus
united remain two separate selves after all. Even
friendship leaves unsatisfied yearnings, undeveloped
possibilities in human hearts. However subtle and
tender the bond may be, it remains to the last phys
ical rather than chemical; mechanical rather than
vital ; the outward attachment of mutually exclusive
wholes, rather than the inner blending of comple-
mental elements which lose their separate selfhood
in the unity of a new and higher life. The beginning
of this true spiritual life, in which the individual
loses his separate self to find a larger and nobler
self in a common good in which each individual
shares, and which none may monopolize ; — the
birthplace of the soul as of the body is in the family.
The nursery of virtue, the inspirer of devotion,
the teacher of self-sacrifice, the institutor of love,
the family is the foundation of all those higher
THE DUTY. 145
and nobler qualities of mind and heart which lift man
above the level of sagacious brutes.
THE DUTY.
The family a common good. — Membership in
the family involves the recognition that the true
life of the individual is to be found only in union
with other members; in regard for their rights;
in deference to their wishes ; and in devotion to that
common interest in which each member shares.
Each member must live for the sake of the whole
family. Children owe to their parents obedience,
and such service as they are able to render. Parents,
on the other hand, owe to children support, training,
and an education sufficient to give them a fair start
in life. Brothers and sisters owe to each other
mutual helpfulness and protection. All joys and
sorrows, all hopes and fears, all plans and purposes
should be talked over, and carried out in common.
No parent should have a plan or ambition or en
thusiasm into which he does not invite the confi
dence and sympathy of his child. No child should
cherish a thought or purpose or imagination which
he cannot share with father or mother. It is the
duty of the parent to enter sympathetically into
the sports and recreations and studies and curiosi
ties of the child. It is the duty of the child' to
interest himself in whatever the father and mother
are doing to support the family and promote its
welfare. Between parent and child, brother and
sister, there should be no secrets; no ground on
146 THE FAMILY.
which one member lives in selfish isolation from the
rest.
The basis of right marriage.— These relations
come by nature, and we grow into them so gradually
that we are scarcely conscious of their existence,
unless we stop on purpose to think of them. Mar
riage, or the foundation of a new family, however, is
a step which we take for ourselves, once for all, in
the maturity of our conscious powers. To know in
advance the true from the false, the real from the
artificial, the genuine from the counterfeit, the
blessed from the wretched basis of marriage is the
most important piece of information a young man or
woman can acquire. The test is simple but search
ing. Do you find in another, one to whose well-
being you can devote your life ; one to whom you
can confide the deepest interests of your mind and
heart ; one whose principles and purposes you can
appreciate and respect : one in whose image you wish
your children to be born, and on the model of whose
character you wish their characters to be formed ;
one whose love will be the best part of whatever
prosperity, and the sufficient shield against what
ever adversity may be your common lot? Then,
provided this other soul sees a like worth in you, and
cherishes a like devotion for what you are and aim to
be, marriage is not merely a duty: it is the open
door into the purest and noblest life possible to
man and woman. Complete identification and de
votion, entire surrender of each to each in mutual
affection is the condition of true marriage. As
THE DUTY. H7
" John Halifax" says in refusing the hand of a noble,
man for his daughter, " In marriage there must be
unity — one aim, one faith, one love — or the marriage
is imperfect, unholy, a mere civil contract, and no
more." This necessity of complete, undivided de
votion of each to each is, as Hegel points out, the
spiritual necessity on which monogamy rests.
There can be but one complete and perfect and
supreme merging of one's whole self in the life and
love of another. Marriage with two would be
of necessity marriage with none. If we apprehend
the spiritual essence of marriage we see that mar
riage with more than one is a contradiction in
terms. It is possible to cut one's self up into frag
ments, and bestow a part here and a part there ; but
that is not marriage; it is mere alliance. It brings
not love and joy and peace, but hate and wretched
ness and strife.
A true marriage never can be dissolved. — If
love be present at the beginning it will grow
stronger and richer with every added year of
wedded life. How far a loveless marriage should
be enforced upon unwilling parties by the state for
the benefit of society is a question which it is foreign
to our present purpose to discuss. The duty of the
individual who finds himself or herself in this dread
ful condition is, however, clear. There is generally
a good deal of self-seeking on both sides at the basis
of such marriages. Getting rather than giving was
the real though often unsuspected hope that brought
them together. If either husband or wife will reso-
148 THE FAMILY.
lutely strive to correct the fault that is in him or her,
ceasing to demand and beginning to give unselfish
affection and genuine devotion, in almost every
case, where the man is not a brute or a sot, and
the woman is not a fashion-plate or a fiend, the life
of mutual love may be awakened, and a true mar
riage may supersede the empty form. Not until
faithful and prolonged efforts to establish a true
marriage within the legal bonds have proved unavail
ing; and only where adultery, desertion, habitual
drunkenness, or gross brutality and cruelty demon
strate the utter impossibilty of a true marriage, is
husband or wife justified in seeking to escape the
bond, and to revert to the lower, individualistic
type of life.
THE VIRTUE.
In the family we are members one of another. —
The parent shows his loyalty to the child by pro
tecting him when he gets into trouble. The loyal
brother defends his brothers and sisters against all
attacks and insults. The loyal child refuses to do
anything contrary to the known wishes of father and
mother, or anything that will reflect discredit upon
them. The loyal child cares for his parents and
kindred in misfortune and old age ; ministering
tenderly to their wants, and bearing patiently their
infirmities of body and of mind which are incidental
to declining powers. The loyal husband and wife
trust each other implicitly in everything ; and refuse
to have any confidences with others more intimate
Tft£ REWARD. 149
than they have with each other. Not that the family
is narrow and exclusive. Husband and wife should
each have their outside interests, friendships, and
enthusiasms. Each should rejoice in everything
which broadens, deepens, and sweetens the life of
the other. Jealousy of each other is the most
deadly poison that can be introduced into a home.
It is sure and instant death to the peace and joy of
married life.
Other relations should always be secondary
and external to the primary and inner relation
of husband and wife to each other. — It should be
the married self; the self which includes in its in
most love and confidence husband or wife ; not
a detached and independent self, which goes out
to form connections and attachments in t'.ie outer
world. Where this mutual trust and confidence
are loyally maintained there can be the greatest
social freedom toward other men and women
and at the same time perfect trust and devotion to
each other. This, however, is a nice adjustment,
which nothing short of perfect love can make. Love
makes it easily, and as a matter of course. Loyalty
is love exposed to strain, and overcoming strain and
temptation by the power which love alone can
give.
THE REWARD.
Loyalty to the family preserves and perpet
uates the home. — Home is a place where we can
rest ; where we can breathe freely ; where we can
have perfect trust in one another ; where we can be
15° THE FAMILY.
perfectly simple, perfectly natural, perfectly frank;
where we can be ourselves; where peace and love
are supreme. " This," says John Ruskin, " is the
true nature of home — it is the place of peace; the
shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror,
doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is
not home ; so far as the anxieties of the outer life
penetrate into it, and the unknown, unloved, or hos
tile society of the outer world is allowed to cross the
threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a
part of the outer world which you have roofed over
and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place,
a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over
by household gods, before whose faces none may
come but those whom they can receive with love, —
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only
of a nobler shade and light, — shade as^of a rock in a
weary land, and light as of a Pharos on a stormy
sea ; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the
praise of home."
THE TEMPTATION.
The individual must drop his extreme indi
vidualism when he crosses the threshold of the
home. — The years between youth and marriage
are years of comparative independence. The
young man and woman learn in these years to
take their affairs into their own hands ; to direct
their own course, to do what seems right in their
own eyes, and take the consequences of wisdom
or folly upon their own shoulders. This period
THE TEMPTATION. IS I
of independence is a valuable discipline. It de
velops strength and self-reliance ; it compels the
youth to face the stern realities of life, and to meas
ure himself against the world. It helps him to ap
preciate what his parents have done for him in the
past, and prepares him to appreciate a home of his
own when he comes to have one. The man and
woman who have never known what it is to make
their own way in the world can never be fully con
fident of their own powers, and are seldom able to
appreciate fully what is done for them.
Many an exacting husband and complaining wife
would have had their querulousness and ingratitude
taken out of them once for all if they could have
had a year or two of single-handed conflict with real
hardship. Independence and self-reliance are the
basis of self-xespect and self-control.
At the same time this habit of independence,
especially if it is ingrained by years of single life,
tends to perpetuate itself in ways that are injurious to
the highest domestic and family life. Independence
is a magnificent foundation for marriage ; to carry
it up above the foundation, and build the main
structure out of it, is fatal. The insistence on
rights, the urging of claims, the enforcement of pri
vate whims and fancies, are the death of love and
the destruction of the family. Unless one is ready
to give everything, asking nothing save what love
gives freely in return, marriage will prove a fountain
of bitterness rather than of sweetness; a region of
storm and tempest rather than a haven of repose.
I5« THE FAMILY.
Within a bond so close and all-embracing there is
no room for the independent life of separated selves.
Each must lose self in the other; both must merge
themselves in devotion to a common good ; or the
bond becomes a fetter, and the home a prison.
Unless one is prepared to give all to the object of his
love, duty to self, to the object of his affections, and
to the blessed state of marriage demands that he
should offer nothing, and remain outside a relation
which his whole self cannot enter. Independence
outside of marriage is respectable and honorable.
Independence and self-assertion in marriage toward
husband or wife is mean and cruel. It is the at
tempt to partake of that in which we refuse to par
ticipate ; to claim the advantages of an organism in
which we refuse to comply with the conditions of
membership. Not admiration, nor fascination, nor
sentimentality, nor flattered vanity can bind two
hearts together in life-long married happiness. For
these are all forms of self-seeking in disguise. Love
alone, love that loses self in its object ; love that
accepts service with gladness and transmutes sacri
fice into a joy; simple, honest, self-forgetful love
must be the light and life of marriage, or else it will
speedily go out in darkness and expire in death.
Of the deliberate seeking of external ends in mar
riage, such as money, position, family connections*
and the like, it ought not to be necessary to say a
word to any thoughtful person. It is the basest act
of which man or woman is capable. It is an insult
to marriage ; it is a mockery of love ; it is treachery
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 153
and falsehood and robbery toward the person mar
ried. It subordinates the lifelong welfare of a
person to the acquisition of material things. It in
troduces fraud and injustice into the inmost center
of one's life, and makes respect of self, happiness
in marriage, faith in human nature forever im
possible. The deliberate formation of a loveless
marriage is a blasphemy against God, a crime against
society, a wrong to a fellow-being, and a bitter and
lasting curse to one's own soul.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Self-sufficiency fatal to the family.— The short
coming which most frequently keeps individuals
outside of the family, and keeps them incomplete
and imperfect members of the family after they
enter it, is the self-sufficiency which is induced by
a life of protracted independence. Marriage is from
one point of view a sacrifice, a giving-up. The
bachelor can spend more money on himself than
can the married man who must provide for wife and
children. The single woman can give to study and
music and travel an amount of time and atten
tion which is impossible to the wife and mother.
Such a view of marriage is supremely mean and
selfish. Only a very little and sordid soul could
entertain it. There are often the best and noblest
of reasons why man or woman should remain single.
It is a duty to do so rather than to marry from any
motive save purest love. Marriage, however, should
be regarded as the ideal state for every man and
154 THE FAMILY.
woman. To refuse to marry for merely selfish
reasons ; or to carry over into marriage the selfish
individualistic temper, which clings so tenaciously
to the little individual self that it can never attain
the larger self which comes from real union and
devotion to another — this is to sin against human
nature, and to prove one's self unworthy of member
ship in society's most fundamental and sacred insti
tution.
The child who sets his own will against his
parent's, the mother who thrusts her child out of
her presence in order to pursue pleasures more con
genial than the nurture of her own offspring, the
man who leaves his family night after night to spend
his evenings in the club or the saloon, the woman
who spends on dress and society the money that is
needed to relieve her husband from overwork and
anxiety, and to bring up her children in health and
intelligence, do an irreparable wrong to the family,
and deal a death blow to the home.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Self-obliteration robs the family of the best
we have to give it. — The man who makes himself
a slave; goes beyond his strength; denies himself
needed rest and recreation ; grows prematurely old,
cuts himself off from intercourse with his fellow-men
in order to secure for his family a position or a for
tune : the woman who works early and late ; forgets
her music, and forsakes her favorite books ; gives up
friends and society ; grows anxious and careworn in
THE PENALTY. 155
order to give her sons and daughters a better start in
life than she had, are making a fatal mistake. In
the effort to provide their children with material
things and intellectual advantages they are depriv
ing them of what even to the children is of far more
consequence — healthy, happy, cheerful, interesting,
enthusiastic parents. To their children as well
as to themselves parents owe it to be the brightest,
cheeriest, heartiest, wisest, completest persons that
they are capable of being. Children also when
they have reached maturity, although they owe to
their parents a reverent regard for all reasonable
desires and wishes, ought not to sacrifice oppor
tunities for gaining a desired education or an advan
tageous start in business, merely to gratify a capri
cious whim or groundless foreboding of an arbitrary
and unreasoning parent. Devotion to the family
does not imply withdrawal from the world outside.
The larger and fuller one's relations to the world
without, the deeper and richer ought to be one's
contribution to the family of which he is a member.
THE PENALTY.
To have no one for whom we supremely care,
and no one who cares much for us ; to have no
place where we can shield ourselves from out
ward opposition and inward despair ; to have no
larger life in which we can merge the littleness
of our solitary selves ; to touch other lives only
on the surface, and to take no one to our
heart ; — this is the sad estate of the man or
156 THE FAMILY.
woman who refuses to enter with whole-souled
devotion into union with another in the building
of a family and a home. — The sense that this lone
liness is chosen in fidelity to duty makes it en
durable for multitudes of noble men and women.
But for the man or woman who chooses such a
life in proud self-sufficiency, for the sake of fan
cied freedom and independence, it is hard to con
ceive what consolation can be found. Thomas Car-
lyle, speaking of the joys of living in close union
with those who love us, and whom we love, says:
" It is beautiful ; it is human ! Man lives not other
wise, nor can live contented, anywhere or anywhen.
Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedness to man.
To be cut off, to be left solitary ; to have a world
alien, not your world ; all a hostile camp for you ;
not a home at all, of hearts and faces who are yours,
whose you are ! It is the frightfullest enchantment ;
too truly a work of the Evil One. To have neither
superior, nor inferior, nor equal, united manlike to
you. Without father, without child, without brother.
Man knows no sadder destiny."
CHAPTER XIX.
Ube State*
OUT of the family grew the state. The primitive
state was an enlarged family, of which the father
was the head. Citizenship meant kinship, real or
fictitious. The house or gens was a composite fam
ily. Houses united into tribes, and the authority of
the chieftain over his fellow-tribesmen was still based
on the fact that they were, either by birthright or
adoption, his children. The ancient state was the
union of tribes under one priest and king who was
regarded as the father of the whole people.
Disputes about the right of succession, and the
disadvantage and danger of having a tyrant or a
weakling rule, just because he happened to be the
son of the previous ruler, led men to elect their rul
ers. There are to-day states like Russia where the
hereditary monarch is the ruler: states like the
United States where all rulers are elected by the
people ; and states like England where the nomi
nal ruler is an hereditary monarch, and the real rulers
are chosen by the people.
THE DUTY.
The function of the state is the organization
of the life of the people. — Men can live together in
157
158 THE STATE.
peace and happiness only on condition that they
assert for themselves and respect in others certain
rights to life, liberty, property, reputation, and opin
ion. My right it is my neighbor's duty to observe.
His right it is my duty to respect. These mutual
rights and duties are grounded in the nature of
things and the constitution of man. They are the
conditions which must be observed if man is to live
in unity with his fellow-men. It is the business of
the state to define, declare, and enforce these rights
and duties. And as citizens it is our duty to the
state to do all in our power to frame just laws ;
to see that they are impartially and effectively ad
ministered ; to obey these laws ourselves; to con
tribute our share of the funds necessary to maintain
the government ; and to render military service when
force is needed to protect the government from over
throw. To law and government we owe all that makes
life endurable or even possible : the security of prop
erty ; the sanctity of home ; the opportunity of ed
ucation ; the stability of institutions; the blessings
of peace; protection against violence and bloodshed.
Since the state and its laws are essential to the well-
being of all men, and consequently of ourselves;
we owe to it the devotion of our time, our knowl
edge, our influence, yes, our life itself if need be. If
it comes to a choice between living but a brief time,
and that nobly, in devotion to country, and living a
long time basely, in betrayal of our country's good,
no true, brave man will hesitate to choose the for
mer. In times of war and revolution that choice
THE DUTY. 159
has been presented to men in every age and coun
try : and men have always been found ready to
choose the better part ; death for country, rather
than life apart from her. So deep was the convic
tion in the mind of Socrates that the laws of the
state should be obeyed at all costs, that when he had
been sentenced to death unjustly, and had an op
portunity to escape the penalty by running away, he
refused to do it on the ground that it was his duty
to obey those laws which had made him what he
was and whose protection he had enjoyed so many
years. To the friend who tried to induce him to
escape he replied that he seemed to hear the laws
saying to him, "Our country is more to be valued
and higher and holier far than father or mother. And
when we are punished by her, whether with impris
onment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured
in silence ; and if she sends us to wounds or death
in battle, thither we follow as is right ; neither may
anyone yield or retreat or leave his rank, but wheth
er in battle or in a court of law, or in any other
place, he must do what his city and his country or
der him ; or he must change their view of what is
just ; and if he may do no violence to his father or
mother, much less may he do violence to his coun
try." To do and bear whatever is necessary to main
tain that organization of life which the state repre
sents is the imperative duty of every citizen. This
duty to serve the country is correlative to the right
to be a citizen. No man can be in truth and spirit a
citizen on any other terms. And not to be a citizen
160 THE STATE.
is not to be, in any true and worthy meaning of the
term, a man.
THE VIRTUE.
Love of country, or patriotism, like all love
places the object loved first and self second. —
In all public action the patriot asks not, " What is
best for me?" but, "What is best for my country?"
Patriotism assumes as many forms as there are cir
cumstances and ways in which the welfare of the
country may be promoted. In time of war the
patriot shoulders his gun and marches to fight the
enemy. In time of election he goes to the caucus
and the polls, and expresses his opinion and casts
his vote for what he believes to be just measures
and honest men. When taxes are to be levied, he
gives the assessor a full account of his property, and
pays his fair share of the expense of government.
When one party proposes measures and nominates
men whom he considers better than those of the
opposite party, he votes with that party, whether it
is for his private interest to do so or not. The
patriot will not stand apart from all parties, because
none is good enough for him. He will choose the
best, knowing that no political party is perfect. He
will act with that party as long as it continues to
seem to him the best ; for he must recognize that
one man standing alone can accomplish no practical
political result. The moment he is convinced that
the party with which he has been acting has become
more corrupt, and less faithful to the interests of
THE REWARD. l6l
the country than the opposite party, he will change
his vote. Self first, personal friends second, party
third, and country fourth, is the order of consider
ations in the mind of the office-seeker, the wire
puller, the corrupt politician. Country first, party
second, personal friends third, and self last is the
order in the mind of the true citizen, the courageous
statesman, the unselfish patriot.
THE REWARD.
In return for serving our country we receive a
country to serve. — The state makes possible for us
all those pursuits, interests, aims, and aspirations
which lift our lives above the level of the brutes.
Through the institutions which the state maintains,
schools, almshouses, courts, prisons, roads, bridges,
harbors, laws, armies, police, there is secured to the
individual the right and opportunity to acquire
property, engage in business, travel wherever he
pleases, share in the products of the whole earth,
read the books of all nations, reap the fruits of
scholarly investigation in all countries, take an in
terest in the welfare and progress of mankind.
This power of the individual to live a universal life,
this participation of each in a common and world
wide good, is the product of civilization. And
civilization is impossible without that subordination
of each to the just claims of all, which law requires
and which it is the business of the state to enforce.
162 THE STATE.
THE TEMPTATION.
Organization involves a multitude of offices
and public servants. Many of these offices are
less onerous and more lucrative than the aver
age man can find elsewhere. Many offices give
a man an opportunity to acquire dishonest gains.
— Hence arises the great political temptation which
is to seek office, not as a means of rendering useful
and honorable service to the country, but as a
means to getting an easy living out of the country,
and at the public expense. The " spoils system,"
which consists in rewarding service to party by op-
portunity to plunder the country : which pays public
servants first for their service to party, and secondly
for service to the country : which makes usefulness
to party rather than serviceableness to the country
the basis of appointment and promotion, is the
worst evil of our political life. " Public office is a
public trust." Men who so regard it are the only
men fit for it. Office so held is one of the most
honorable forms of service which a man can render to
his fellow-men. Office secured and held by the
methods of the spoils system is a disgrace to the
nation that is corrupt enough to permit it, and to
the man who is base enough to profit by it.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Betrayal of one's country and disregard of its
interests is treason. — In time of war and revolu
tion treason consists in giving information to the
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 163
enemy, surrendering forts, ships, arms, or ammuni
tion into his hands; or fighting in such a half-hearted
way as to invite defeat. Treason under such cir
cumstances is the unpardonable sin against country.
The traitor is the most despicable person in the
state ; for he takes advantage of the protection the
state gives to him and the confidence it places in
him to stab and murder his benefactor and pro
tector.
The essential quality of treason is manifested in
many forms in time of peace. Whoever sacrifices
the known interests of his country to the interests
of himself, or of his friends, or of his party, is there
in guilty of the essential crime of treason. Whoever
votes for an appropriation in order to secure for an
other man lucrative employment or a profitable con
tract ; whoever gives or takes money for a vote ; who
ever increases or diminishes a tax with a view to the
business interests, not of the country as a whole, but
of a few interested parties ; whoever accepts or
bestows a public office on any grounds other than
the efficiency of service which the office-holder is to
render to the country ; whoever evades his just
taxes ; whoever suffers bad men to be elected and
bad measures to become laws through his own negli
gence to vote himself and to influence others to
vote for better men and better measures, is guilty
of treason. For in these, which are the only ways
possible to him, he has sacrificed the good of his
country to the personal and private interests of him
self and of his friends.
1 64 THE STATE.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
True and false ambition.— The service of the
country in public office is one of the most interest-
ing and most honorable pursuits in which a man can
engage. Ambition to serve is always noble. Desire
for the honors and emoluments of public office,
however, may crowd out the desire to render pub
lic service. Such a substitution of selfish for
patriotic considerations, such an inversion of the
proper order of interests in a man's mind, is the vice
of political ambition. The ambitious politician
seeks office, not because he seeks to promote meas
ures which he believes to be for the public good ;
not because he believes he can promote those in
terests more effectively than any other available
candidate : but just because an office makes him
feel big ; or because he likes the excitement of
political life ; or because he can make money
directly or indirectly out of it. Such political
ambition is as hollow and empty an aim as can
possess the mind of man. And yet it deceives
and betrays great as well as little men. It is
our old foe of sentimentality, dressed in a new garb,
and displaying itself on a new stage. It is the
substitution of one's own personal feelings, for a
direct regard for the object which makes those feel
ings possible. It is a very subtle vice : and the
only safeguard against it is a deep and genuine
devotion to country for country's sake.
THE PENALTY. 165
THE PENALTY.
A state in which laws were broken, taxes
evaded, and corrupt men placed in authority
could not endure. — With the downfall of the state
would arise the brigand, the thief, the murderer, and
the reign of dishonesty, violence, and terror.
The individual, it is true, may sin against the state
and escape the full measure of this penalty himself.
In that case, however, the penalty is distributed over
the vast multitude of honest citizens, who bear the
common injury which the traitor inflicts upon the
state. The man who betrays his country, may con
tinue to have a country still ; but it is no thanks to
him. It is because he reaps the reward of the
loyalty and devotion of citizens nobler than him
self.
Yet even then the country is not in the deepest
sense really his. He cannot enjoy its de pest bless
ings. He cannot feel in his inmost heart, " This
country is mine. To it I have given myself. Of it
I am a true citizen and loyal member." He knows
he is unworthy of his country. He knows that if his
country could find him out, and separate him from
the great mass of his fellow-citizens, she would re
pudiate him as unworthy to be called her son. The
traitor may continue to receive the gifts of his coun
try; he may appropriate the blessings she bestows
with impartial hand on the good and on the evil.
But the sense that this glorious and righteous order
of which the state is the embodiment and of which
1 66 THE STATE.
our country is the preserver and protector belongs
to him ; that it is an expression of his thought, his
will and his affection ; — this spiritual participation
in the life and spirit of the state, this supreme devo
tion to a beloved country, remains for such an one
forever impossible. In his soul, in his real nature,
he is an outcast, an alien, and an enemy.
CHAPTER XX.
Society,
REGARD for others, merely as individuals, does
not satisfy the deepest yearnings of our social
nature. The family is so much more to us than the
closest of ties which we can form on lines of busi
ness, charity, or even friendship ; because in place of
an aggregate of individuals, each with his separate
interests, the family presents a life in which each
member shares in a good which is common to all.
The state makes possible a common good on a
much wider scale. Still, on a strict construction of
its functions, the state merely insures the outward
form of this wider, common life. The state declares
what man shall not do, rather than what man shall
do, in his relations to his fellow-men. To prevent
the violation of mutual rights rather than to secure
the performance of mutual duties, is the funda
mental function of the state. Of course these two
sides cannot be kept entirely apart. There is a
strong tendency at the present time to enlarge the
province of the state, and to intrust it with the
enforcement of positive duties which man owes to
his fellow-men, and which class owes to class.
Whether this tendency is good or bad, whether it is
desirable to enforce social duties, or to trust them
167
1 68 SOCIETY.
to the unfettered social conscience of mankind, is a
theoretical question which, for our practical pur
poses, we need not here discuss.
No man liveth unto himself. No man ought to
be satisfied with a good which is peculiar to himself,
from which mankind as a whole are excluded. No
man can be so satisfied. Ignorance, prejudice, self
ishness, pride, custom, blind men to this common
good, and prevent them from making the efforts
and sacrifices necessary to realize it. But the man
who could deliberately prefer to see the world in
which he lives going to destruction would be a
monster rather than a man.
This common life of humanity in which each
individual partakes is society. Society is the
larger self of each individual. Its interests and
ours are fundamentally one and the same.— If the
society in which we live is elevated and pure and
noble we share its nobleness and are elevated by it.
If society is low, corrupt, and degraded, we share its
corruption, and its baseness drags us down. So
vital and intimate is this bond between society and
ourselves that it is impossible when dealing with
moral matters to keep them apart. To be a better
man, without at the same time being a better
neighbor, citizen, workman, soldier, scholar, or busi
ness man, is a contradiction in terms. For life con
sists in these social relations to our fellows. And
the better we are, the better these social duties will
be fulfilled.
Society includes all the objects hitherto con-
THE DUTY. 169
sidered. Society is the organic life of man, in
which the particular objects and relations of our in
dividual lives are elements and members. Hence
in this chapter, and throughout the remainder of
the book, we shall not be concerned with new
materials, but with the materials with which we are
already familiar, viewed in their broader and more
comprehensive relationships.
THE DUTY.
In each act we should think not merely " How
will this act affect me ? " but " How will this act
affect all parties concerned, and society as a
whole ? " — The interests of all men are my own, by
virtue of that common society of which they and I
are equal members. What is good for others is
good for me, because, in that broader view of my
own nature which society embodies, my good can
not be complete unless, to the extent of my ability,
their good is included in my own. Hence we have
the maxims laid down by Kant : " Act as if the
maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a
universal law of nature." "So act as to treat hu
manity, whether in thine own person or in that of
another, in every case as an end, never as a means
only." Or as Professor Royce puts the same
thought; " Act as a being would act who included
thy will and thy neighbor's will in the unity of one
life, and who had therefore to suffer the consequences
for the aims of both that will follow from the act of
either." " In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou
1)6 SOCIETY.
wert at once thy neighbor and thyself. Treat these
two lives as one."
The] realization of the good of all in and
through the act of each is the social ideal.—
In everyday matters this can be brought about by
simply taking account of all the interests of others
which will be affected by our act. In the relations
between employer and employee, for instance, profit
sharing is the most practical form of realizing this
community of interest. Such action involves a co
operation of interests as the motives of the indi
vidual act.
The larger social ends, such as education, philan
thropy, reform, public improvements, require the
co-operation of many individuals in the same enter
prise. The readiness to contribute a fair share of
our time, money, and influence to these larger public
interests, which no individual can undertake alone,
is an important part of our social duty. Every
beneficent cause, every effort to rouse public senti
ment against a wrong, or to make it effective in the
enforcement of a right ; every endeavor to unite
men in social intercourse; every plan to extend the
opportunities for education ; every measure for the
relief of the deserving poor, and the protection of
homeless children ; every wise movement for the
prevention of vice, crime, and intemperance, is en
titled to receive from each one of us the same intel
ligent attention, the same keenness of interest, the
same energy of devotion, the same sacrifice of
inclination and convenience, the same resoluteness
THE VIRTUE. 17 1
and courage of action that we give to our private
affairs.
Co-operation, then, is of two kinds, inward
and outward: co-operation between the interests
of others and of ourselves in the motive to our
individual action; and co-operation of our action
with the action of others to accomplish objects
too vast for private undertaking.— Both forms
of co-operation are in principle the same ; they
strengthen and support each other. The man who
is in the habit of considering the interests of others
in his individual acts will be more ready to unite with
others in the promotion of public beneficence. And
on the other hand the man who is accustomed to
act with others in large public movements will be
more inclined to act for others in his personal affairs.
The reformer and philanthropist is simply the man
of private generosity and good-will acting out his
nature on a larger stage.
THE VIRTUE.
Public spirit is the life of the community in the
heart of the individual. — This recognition that we
belong to society, and that society belongs to us,
that its interests are our interests, that its wrongs
are ours to redress, its rights are ours to maintain,
its losses are ours to bear, its blessings are ours to
enjoy, is public spirit.
A generous regard for the public welfare, a
willingness to lend a hand in any movement for the
improvement of social conditions, a readiness with
I72 SOCIETY.
work and influence and time and money to relieve
suffering, improve sanitary conditions, promote
education and morality, remove temptation from
the weak, open reading-rooms and places of harmless
resort for the unoccupied in their evening hours, to
bind together persons of similar tastes and pur
suits — these are the marks of public spirit; these
are the manifestations of social virtue.
Politeness is love in little things. — Toward indi
viduals whom we meet in social ways this recog
nition of our common nature and mutual rights
takes the form of politeness and courtesy. Po
liteness is proper respect for human personality.
Rudeness results from thinking exclusively about
ourselves, and caring nothing for the feelings of any
body else. The sincere and generous desire to bring
the greatest pleasure and the least pain to every-
one we meet will go a long way toward making our
manners polite and courteous.
Still, society has agreed upon certain more or less
arbitrary ways for facilitating social intercourse ; it
has established rules for conduct on social occasions,
and to a certain extent prescribed the forms of
words that shall be used, the modes of salutation
that shall be employed, the style of dress that shall
be worn, and the like. A due respect for society,
and for the persons whom we meet socially, demands
that we shall acquaint ourselves with these rules of
etiquette, and observe them in our social inter
course. Like all forms, social formalities are easily
carried to excess, and frequently kill the spirit they
THE REWARD. 173
are intended to express. As a basis, however, for
the formation of acquaintances, and for large social
gatherings, a good deal of formality is necessary.
THE REWARD.
The complete expression and outgo of our
nature is freedom. — Since man is by nature social,
since sympathy, friendship, co-operation and affec
tion are essential attributes of man, it follows that
the exercise of these social virtues is itself the satis
faction of what is essentially ourselves.
The man who fulfills his social duties is free,
for he finds an open field and an unfettered
career for the most essential faculties of his nature.
The social man always has friends whom he loves;
work which he feels to be worth doing ; interests
which occupy his highest powers ; causes which ap
peal to his deepest sympathies. Such a life of
rounded activity, of arduous endeavor, of full, free
self-expression is in itself the highest possible re
ward. It is the only form of satisfaction worthy of
man. It is in the deepest sense of the word success.
For as Lowell says :
All true whole men succeed, for what is worth
Success's name, unless it be the thought,
The inward surety to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end.
THE TEMPTATION.
Instead of regarding society as a whole, and
self as a member of that whole, it is possible to
regard self as distinct and separate from society,
174 SOCIETY.
and to make the interests of this separated and
detached self the end and aim of action.— This
temptation is self-interest. It consists in placing
the individual self, with its petty, private, personal
interests, above the social self, with the large, pub
lic, generous interests of the social order.
From one point of view it is easy to cheat society,
and deprive it of its due. We can shirk our social
obligations ; we can dodge subscriptions ; we can
stay at home when we ought to be at the committee
meeting, or the public gathering ; we can decline in
vitations and refuse elections to arduous offices, and
at the same time escape many of the worst penalties
which would naturally follow from our neglect. For
others, more generous and noble than we, will step
in and take upon themselves our share of the public
burdens in addition to their own. We may flatter
ourselves that we have done a very shrewd thing in
contriving to reap the benefits without bearing the
burdens of society. There is, as we shall see, a
penalty for negligence of social duty, and that too
most sure and terrible. Self-interest is the seed, of
which meanness is the full-grown plant, and of
which social constraint and slavishness are the final
fruits.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Lack of public spirit is meanness. — The mean
man is he who acknowledges no interest and recog
nizes no obligation outside the narrow range of his
strictly private concerns. As long as he is comfort-
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 175
able he will take no steps to relieve the distress of
others. If his own premises are healthy, he will
contribute nothing to improve the sanitary condi
tion of his village or city. As long as his own prop
erty is secure he cares not how many criminals are
growing up in the street, how many are sent to
prison, or how they are treated after they come
there. He favors the cheapest schools, the poorest
roads, the plainest public buildings, because he
would rather keep his money in his own pocket than
contribute his share to maintain a thoroughly effi
cient and creditable public service. He will give
nothing he can help giving, do nothing he can help
doing, to make the town he lives in a healthier,
happier, purer, wiser, nobler place. Meanness is the
sacrifice of the great social whole to the individual.
It is selfishness, stinginess, and ingratitude com
bined. It is the disposition to receive all that so
ciety contributes to the individual, and to give noth
ing in return. It is a willingness to appropriate the
fruits of labors in which one refuses to bear a part.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The officious person is ready for any and every
kind of public service, providing he can be at the
head of it. There is no end to the work he will
do if he can only have his own way. — He wants to
be prime mover in every enterprise : to be chairman
of the committee ; to settle every question that
comes up ; to " run " things according to his own
ideas. Such people are often very useful. It is
1 7<5 SOCIETY.
generally wisest not to meddle much with them.
The work may not be done in the best way by
these officious people ; but without them a great
deal of public work would never be done at all.
The vice, however, seriously impairs one's use
fulness. The officious person is hard to work
with. Men refuse to have anything to do with
him. And so he is left to do his work for the
most part alone. Officiousness is, in reality,
social ambition ; and that again as we saw
resolves itself into sentimentality ; — the regard
for what we and others think of ourselves, rather
than straightforward devotion to the ends which
we pretend to be endeavoring to promote.
Officiousness is self-seeking dressed up in the uni
form of service. The officious person, instead of
losing his private self in the larger life of society,
tries to use the larger interests of society in such
a way as to make them gratify his own personal
vanity and sense of self-importance.
THE PENALTY.
All meanness and self-seeking are punished by
lack of freedom or constraint ; though frequently
the constraint is inward and spiritual rather than
outward and physical. — We have seen that to the
man of generous public spirit society presents a
career for the unfolding and expansion of his social
powers. To such a man society, with its claims and
obligations, is an enlargement of his range of sym
pathy, a widening of his spiritual horizon, and on
THE PENALTY. l^^
that account a means of larger liberty and fuller
freedom.
To the mean and selfish man, on the contrary,
society presents itself as an alien force, a hard task
master, making severe requirements upon his time,
imposing cramping limitations on his self-indulgence,
levying heavy taxes upon his substance ; prescribing
onerous rules and regulations for his conduct.
By excluding society from the sphere of interests
with which he indentifies himself, the mean man,
by his own meanness, makes society antagonistic
to him, and himself its reluctant and unwilling
slave. Serve it to some extent he must; but
the selfishness and meanness of his own attitude
toward it, makes social service, not the willing and
joyous offering of a free and devoted heart, but
the slavish submission of a reluctant will, forced to
do the little that it cannot help doing by legal or
social compulsion.
To him society is not a sphere of freedom, in
which his own nature is enlarged, intensified,
liberated ; and so made richer, happier, nobler,
and freer. To him society is an external power,
compelling him to make sacrifices he does not
want to make ; to do things he does not want to
do ; to contribute money which he grudges, and
to conform to requirements which he hates. By try-
ing to save the life of self-interest and meanness,
he loses the life of generous aims, noble ideals,
and heroic self devotion.
By refusing the career of noble freedom which
1 78 SOCIETY.
social service offers to each member of the social
body, he is constrained to obey a social law which
he has not helped to create, and to serve the inter
ests of a society of which he has refused to be
in spirit and truth a part.
This living in a world which we do not heartily
acknowledge as our own ; this subjection to an au
thority which vve do not in principle recognize and
welcome as the voice of our own better, larger,
wiser, social self, — this is constraint and slavery in
its basest and most degrading form.
CHAPTER XXI.
Self.
HITHERTO we have considered things, relations,
persons, and institutions outside ourselves as the
objects which together constitute our environment.
The self is not a new object, but rather the bond
which binds together into unity all the experiences
of life. It is their relation to this conscious self
which gives to all objects their moral worth. Every
act upon an object reacts upon ourselves. The vir
tues and vices, the rewards and penalties that we
have been studying are the various reactions of con
duct upon ourselves. This chapter then will be a
comprehensive review and summary of all that has
gone before. Instead of taking one by one the par
ticular reactions which follow particular acts with
reference to particular objects, we shall now look at
conduct as a whole ; regard our environment in its
totality ; and consider duty, virtue, and self in their
unity.
THE DUTY.
The duty we owe to ourselves is the realization
of our capacities and powers in harmony with
each other, and in proportion to their worth as
elements in a complete individual and social
life. — We have within us the capacity for an ever
179
I So SELF.
increasing fullness and richness and intensity of
life. The materials out of which this life is to be
developed are ready to our hands in those objects
which we have been considering. One way of con
duct toward these objects, which we have called
duty ; one attitude of mind and will toward them
which we have called virtue, leads to those com
pletions and fulfillments of ourselves which we
have called rewards. Duty then to self; duty in
its most comprehensive aspect, is the obligation
which the existence of capacity within and material
without imposes on us to bring the two together in
harmonious relations, so as to realize the capacities
and powers of ourselves and of others, and promote
society's well being. In simpler terms our funda
mental duty is to make the most of ourselves ; and
to become as large and genuine a part of the social
world in which we live as it is possible for us to be.
THE VIRTUE.
The habit of seeking to realize the highest ca
pacities and widest relationships of our nature
in every act is conscientiousness. Conscience
is our consciousness of the ideal in conduct
and character. Conscience is the knowledge
of our duty, coupled as that knowledge always
is with the feeling that we ought to do it. —
Knowledge of any kind calls up some feeling ap
propriate to the fact known. Knowledge that a
given act would realize my ideal calls up the feel
ing of dissatisfaction with myself until that act is
THE VIRTUE. 181
performed ; because that is the feeling appropriate
to the recognition of an unrealized yet attainable
ideal. Conscience is not a mysterious faculty of
our nature. It is simply thought and feeling,
recognizing and responding to the fact of duty, and
reaching out toward virtue and excellence.
The objective worth of the deliverances and dic
tates of the conscience of the individual, depends on
the degree of moral enlightenment and sensitiveness
he has attained. The conscience of an educated
Christian has a worth and authority which the con
science of the benighted savage has not. Since
conscience is the recognition of the ideal of conduct
and character, every new appreciation of duty and
virtue gives to conscience added strength and clear
ness.
The absolute authority of conscience. — Rela-
tively to the individual himself, at the time of
acting, his own individual conscience is the final and
absolute authority. The man who does what his
conscience tells him, does the best that he can do.
For he realizes the highest ideal that is present to
his mind. A wiser man than he might do better
than this man, acting according to his conscience, is
able to do. But this man, with the limited knowl
edge and imperfect ideal which he actually has, can
do no more than obey his conscience which bids him
realize the highest ideal that he knows. The act of
the conscientious man may be right or wrong,
judged by objective, social standards. Judged by
subjective standards, seen from within, every con-
182 SELF.
scientious act is, relatively to the individual himself,
a right act. We should spare no pains to enlighten
our conscience, and make it the reflection of the most
exalted ideals which society has reached. Hav
ing done this, conscience becomes to us the au
thoritative judge for us of what we shall, and what
we shall not do. The light of conscience will be
clear and pure, or dim and clouded, according to the
completeness of our moral environment, training,
and insight. But clearer dim, high or low, sensitive
or dull, the light of conscience is the only light we
have to guide us in the path of virtue. In hours of
leisure and study it is our privilege to inform and
clarify this consciousness of the ideal. That has
been the purpose of the preceding pages. When
the time for action comes, then, without a murmur,
without an instant's hesitation, the voice of con
science should be implicitly obeyed. Conscientious
ness is the form which all the virtues take, when
viewed as determinations of the self. It is the asser
tion of the ideal of the self in its every act.
THE REWARD.
Character the form in which the result of vir
tuous conduct is preserved. — It is neither possi
ble nor desirable to solve each question of conduct-
as it arises by conscious and explicit reference to
rules and principles. Were we to attempt to do so
it would make us prigs and prudes.
What then is the use of studying at such length
the temptations and duties, the virtues and vices,
THE REWARD. 183
with their rewards and penalties, if all these things
are to be forgotten and ignored when the occasions
for practical action arrive ?
The study of ethics has the same use as the
study of writing, grammar, or piano-playing. In
learning to write we have to think precisely how
each letter is formed, how one letter is connected
with another, where to use capitals, where to
punctuate and the like. But after we have
become proficient in writing, we do all this
without once thinking explicitly of any of these
things. In learning to play the piano we have to
count out loud in order to keep time correctly, and
we are obliged to stop and think just where to put
the finger in order to strike each separate note.
But the expert player does all these things with
out the slightest conscious effort.
Still, though the particular rules and principles
are not consciously present in each act of the finished
writer or musician, they, are not entirely absent.
When the master of these arts makes a mistake, he
recognizes it instantly, and corrects it, or endeavors
to avoid its repetition. This shows that the rule is
not lost. It has ceased to be before the mind as a
distinct object of consciousness. It is no longer
needed in that form for ordinary purposes. In
stead, it has come to be a part of the mind itself — a
way in which the mind works instinctively. As
long as the mind works in conformity with the prin
ciple, it is not distinctly recognized, because there
is no need for such recognition. The principle
1 84 SELF.
comes to consciousness only as a power to check
or restrain acts that are at variance with it.
It is in this way that the practical man carries
with him his ethical principles. He does not stop
to reason out the relation of duty and virtue to re
ward, or of temptation and vice to penalty, before
he decides to help the unfortunate, or to be faithful
to a friend, or to vote on election day. This trained,
habitual will, causing acts to be performed in conform
ity to duty and virtue, yet without conscious refer
ence to the explicit principles that underlie them,
is character.
It is chiefly in the formation of character that the
explicit recognition of ethical principles has its
value. Character is a storage battery in which the
power acquired by our past acts is accumulated and
preserved for future use.
It is through this power of character, this tendency
of acts of a given nature to repeat and perpetuate
themselves, that we give unity and consistency to
our lives. This also is the secret of our power of
growth. As soon as one virtue has become habitual
and enters into our character, we can leave it, trust
ing it in the hands of this unconscious power of self-
perpetuation ; and then we can turn the energy
thus freed toward the acquisition of new virtues.
Day by day we are turning over more and more
of our lives to this domain of character. Hence it
is of the utmost importance to allow nothing to
enter this almost irrevocable state of unconscious,
habitual character that has not first received the ap-
THE REWARD. i«5
proval of conscience, the sanction of duty, and the
stamp of virtue. Character, once formed in a wrong
direction, may be corrected. But it can be done
only with the greatest difficulty, and by a process
as hard to resolve upon as the amputation of a
limb or the plucking out of an eye.
The greater part of the principles of ethics we
knew before we undertook this formal study. We
learned them from our parents ; we picked them
up in contact with one another in the daily inter
course of life. The value of our study will not con
sist so much in new truths learned, as in the clearer
and sharper outlines which it will have given to
some of the features of the moral ideal. The defi
nite results of such a study we cannot mark or
measure. Just as sunshine and rain come to the
plants and trees, and then seem to vanish, leaving
no visible or tangible trace behind ; yet the plants
and trees are different from what they were before,
and have the heat and moisture stored up within
their structure to burst forth into fresher and larger
life ; in like manner, though we should forget every
formal statement that we have read, yet we could
not fail to be affected by the incorporation within
ourselves in the form of character of some of these
principles of duty and virtue which we have been
considering. It has been said : " Sow an act, and you
reap a habit ; sow a habit and you reap a character;
sow a character and you reap a destiny."
16 SELF.
THE TEMPTATION.
Pleasure not a reliable guide to conduct. — The
realization of capacity brings with it pleasure. The
harmonious realization of all our powers would bring
harmonious and permanent pleasure or happiness.
Pleasure is always to be welcomed as a sign of health
and activity. Other things being equal, the more
pleasure we have the better. It is possible how
ever to abstract the pleasure from the activity which
gives rise to it, and make pleasure the end for which
we act. This pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's
sake is delusive and destructive. It is delusive, be
cause the direct aim at pleasure turns us aside from
the direct aim at objects. And when we cease to aim
directly at objects, we begin to lose the pleasure
and zest which only a direct pursuit of objects can
produce. For instance, we all know that if we go
to a picnic or a party thinking all the while about
having a good time, and asking ourselves every now
and then whether we are having a good time or not,
we find the picnic or party a dreadful bore, and our
selves perfectly miserable. We know that the whole
secret of having a good time on such occasions is
to get interested in something else ; a game, a boat-
ride, anything that makes us forget ourselves and
our pleasures, and helps us to lose ourselves in the
eager, arduous, absorbing pursuit of something out
side ourselves. Then we have a glorious time.
The direct pursuit of pleasure is destructive of
character, because it judges things by the way they
THE TEMPTATION. 187
affect our personal feelings ; which is a very shallow
and selfish standard of judgment; and because it
centers interest in the merely emotional side of our
nature, which is peculiar to ourselves ; instead of in
the rational part of our nature which is common to
all men, and unites us to our fellows.
Duty demands not the hap-hazard realization of
this or that side of our nature. Yet this is what the
pursuit of pleasure would lead to. Duty demands
the realization of all our faculties, in harmony with
each other, and in proportion to their worth. And
to this proportioned and harmonious realization,
pleasure, pure and simple, is no guide at all. Hence,
as Aristotle remarks, " In all cases we must be spe
cially on our guard against pleasant things and
against pleasure ; for we can scarce judge her im
partially." " Again, as the exercises of our faculties
differ in goodness and badness, and some are to be
desired and some to be shunned, so do the several
pleasures differ; foreach exercise has its properpleas-
ure. The pleasure which is proper to a good activ
ity, then, is good, and that which is proper to one
that is not good is bad." " As the exercises of the
faculties vary, so do their respective pleasures."
To the same effect John Stuart Mill says that the
pleasures which result from the exercise of the
higher faculties are to be preferred. " It is better
to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied ;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satis
fied." Whether it is possible to stretch, and qualify,
and attenuate the conception of pleasure sc as to
1 88 SELF.
make it cover the ideal of human life, without hav
ing it, like a soap-bubble, burst in the process, is a
question foreign to the practical purpose of this
book. That pleasure, as ordinarily understood by
plain people, is a treacherous, dangerous, and ruin
ous guide to conduct, moralists of every school
declare. Pleasure is the most subtle and universal
form of temptation. Pleasure is the accompaniment
of all exercise of power. When it comes rightly it
is to be accepted with thankfulness. We must re
member however that the quality of the act deter
mines the worth of the pleasure ; and that the
amount of pleasure does not determine the quality of
the act. A pleasant act may be right, and it may be
wrong. Whether we ought to do it or not must in
every case be decided on higher grounds.
To the boy who says, " I should like to be some
thing that would make me a great man, and very
happy besides — something that would not hinder
me from having a great deal of pleasure " — George
Eliot represents "Romola" as replying, " That is not
easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness
that could ever come by caring very much about our
own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest
happiness, such as goes along with being a great
man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling
for the rest of the world as well as for ourselves ;
and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain
with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being
what we would choose before everything else,
because our souls see it is good. And so, my Lillo,
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 189
if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best
things God has put within reach of men, you must
learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what
will happen to you because of it. And remem
ber, if you were to choose something lower, and
make it the rule of your life to seek your own
pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, cala
mity might come just the same; and it would be
calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one
form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may
well make a man say — It would have been bet
ter forme if I had never been born."
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The unscrupulous man acts as he happens to
feel like acting. — Whatever course of conduct pre
sents itself as pleasant, or profitable, or easy, he
adopts. Anything is good enough for him. He
seeks to embody no ideal, aims consistently at no
worthy end, acknowledges no duty, but simply
yields himself a passive instrument for lust, or
avarice, or cowardice, or falsehood to play upon.
Refusing to be the servant of virtue he becomes the
slave of vice. Disowning the authority of duty and
the ideal, he becomes the tool of appetite, the foot
ball of circumstance. Unscrupulousness is the form
of all the vices of defect, when viewed in relation to
that absence of regard for realization of self, which
is their common characteristic.
19° SELF.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The exclusive regard for self, in abstraction
from those objects and social relationships
through which alone the self can be truly real
ized, leads to formalism. — Formalism keeps the
law simply for the sake of keeping it. Conscientious
ness, if it is wise and well-balanced, reverences the
duties and requirements of the moral life, because
these duties are the essential conditions of individ
ual and social well-being. The law is a means to
well-being, which is the end. Formalism makes
the law an end in itself ; and will even sacrifice
well-being to law, when the two squarely conflict.
Extreme cases in which moral laws may be
suspended. — The particular duties, virtues, and
laws which society has established and recognized
are the expressions of reason and experience
declaring the conditions of human well-being. As
such they deserve our profoundest respect ; our un
swerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules
to cover every case. There are legitimate, though
very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties.
For instance it is a duty to respect the property
of others. Yet to save the life of a person who is
starving, we are justified in taking the property of
another without asking his consent. To save a per
son from drowning, we may seize a boat belonging
to another. To spread the news of a fire, we may
take the first horse we find, without inquiring who
is the owner. To save a sick person from a fatal
THE VICE OF EXCESS. 1QI
shock, we may withold facts in violation of the
strict duty of truthfulness. To promote an impor
tant public measure, we may deliberately break
down our health, spend our private fortune, and re
duce ourselves to helpless beggary. Such acts
violate particular duties. They break moral laws.
And yet they all are justified in these extreme
cases by the higher law of love ; by the greater duty
of devotion to the highest good of our fellow-men.
The doctrine that " the end justifies the means " is
a mischievous and dangerous doctrine. Stated in
that unqualified form, it is easily made the excuse
for all sorts of immorality. The true solution of
the seeming conflict of duties lies in the recognition
that .Mie larger social good justifies the sacrifice of
the lesser social good when the two conflict. One
must remember, however, that the universal recog
nition of established duties and laws is itself the
greatest social good ; and only the most extreme
cases can justify a departure from the path of
generally recognized and established moral law.
These extreme cases when they occur, however,
must be dealt with bravely. The form of law and
rule, must be sacrificed to the substance of righte
ousness and love when the two conflict. As Prof
essor Marshall remarks in the chapter of his " His
tory of Greek Philosophy" which deals with Socrates,
" The highest activity does not always take the
form of conformity to rule. There are critical mo
ments when rules fail, when, in fact, obedience to
rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of
192 SELF.
which rules and' formulae are at best only an adum
bration."
There is nothing more contemptible than that
timid, self-seeking virtue which will sacrifice the
obvious well-being of others to save itself the pain
of breaking a rule. There is nothing more pitiful
than that self-righteous virtue which does right,
not because it loves the right, still less because it
loves the person who is affected by its action, but
simply because it wants to keep its own sweet sense
of self-righteousness unimpaired. Mrs. Browning
gives us a clear example of this " harmless life, she
called a virtuous life," in the case of the frigid
aunt of "Aurora Leigh" :
From that day, she did
Her duty to me (I appreciate it
In her own word as spoken to herself),
Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,
But measured always. She was generous, bland,
More courteous than was tender, gave me still
The first place, — as if fearful that God's saints
Would look down suddenly and say, ' Herein
You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.'
THE PENALTY.
Just as continuity in virtue strengthens and
unifies character and makes life a consistent and
harmonious whole ; so self-indulgence in vicious
pleasures disorganizes a man's life and eats the
heart out of him. — Corrupt means literally broken.
The corrupt man has no soundness, no solidity, no
unity in his life. He cannot respect himself.
THE PENALTY. 193
Others cannot put confidence in him. There is no
principle binding each part of his life to every other,
and holding the whole together. The other words
by which we describe such a life all spring from the
same conception. We call such a person dissolute;
and dissolute means literally separated, loosed,
broken apart. We call him dissipated ; and dissi
pated means literally scattered, torn apart, thrown
away.
These forms of statement all point to the same
fact, that the unscrupulous pleasure-seeker, the sel
fish, vicious man has no consistent, continuous, co
herent life whatever. " The unity of his being," as
Janet says, " is lost in the multiplicity of his sensa
tions." His life is a mere series of disconnected
fragments. There is no growth, no development.
There is nothing on which he can look with ap
proval ; no consistent career of devotion to worthy
objective ends, the fruits of which can be witnessed
in the improvement of the world in which he has
lived, and stored up in the character which he has
formed.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN the last chapter we saw that the particular ob
jects and duties which make up our environment
and moral life are not so many separate affairs; but
all have a common relation to the self, and its reali
zation. We saw that this common relation to the
self gives unity to the world of objects, the life of
duty, the nature of virtue, and the character which
crowns right living.
There is, however, a deeper, more comprehensive
unity in the moral world than that which each man
constructs for his individual self. The world of ob
jects is included in a universal order. The several
duties are parts of a comprehensive righteousness,-
which includes the acts of all men within its right
ful sway. The several virtues are so many aspects
of one all-embracing moral ideal. The rewards
and penalties which follow virtue and vice are the
expression of a constitution of things which makes
for righteousness. The Being whose thought in
cludes all objects in one comprehensive universe of
reason; whose will is uttered in the voice of duty;
whose holiness is revealed in the highest ideal of
virtue we can form ; and whose authority is declared
in those eternal and indissoluble bonds which bind
104
THE DUTY. 19$
virtue and reward, vice and penalty, together, is
God.
THE DUTY.
Communion with God is the safeguard of virtue,
the secret of resistance to temptation, the source
of moral and spiritual power. — Our minds are too
small to carry consciously and in detail ; our wills
are too frail to hold in readiness at every moment
the principles and motives of moral conduct. God
alone is great enough for this.
We can make him the keeper of our moral precepts
and the guardian of our lives. And then when we
are in need of guidance, help, and strength, we can
go to him, and by devoutly seeking to know and do
his will, we can recover the principles and reinforce
the motives of right conduct that we have in
trusted to his keeping ; and ofttimes we get, in ad
dition, larger views of duty and nobler impulses to
virtue than we have ever consciously possessed be
fore. Just as the love of father or mother clarifies a
child's perception of what is right, and intensifies his
will to do it, so the love of God has power to make
us strong to resist temptation, resolute to do our
duty, and strenuous in the endeavor to advance the
kingdom of righteousness and love.
Into the particular doctrines and institutions of
religion it is not the purpose of this book to enter.
These are matters which each individual learns
best from his own father and mother, and from
the church in which he has been brought up. Our
GOD.
account of ethics, however, would be seriously in
complete, were we to omit to point out'the immense
and indispensable strength and help we may gain
for the moral life, by approaching it in the religious
spirit.
Ethics and religion each needs the other. —
They are in reality, one the detailed and particular,
the other the comprehensive and universal aspect of
the same world of duty and virtue. Morality with
out religion is a cold, dry, dreary, mass of discon
nected rules and requirements. Religion without
morality, is an empty, formal, unsubstantial shadow.
Only when the two are united, only when we bring
to the particular duties of ethics the infinite aspira
tion and inspiration of religion, and give to the
universal forms of religion the concrete contents of
human and temporal relationships, do we gain a
spiritual life which is at the same time clear and
strong, elevated and practical, ideal and real.
THE VIRTUE.
Just as God includes all objects in his thought,
all duties in his will, all virtues in his ideal ; so
the man who communes with him, and surren
ders his will to him in obedience and trust and
love, partakes of this same wholeness and holi
ness. — Loving God, he is led to love all that God
loves, to love all good. And holiness is the love of
all that is good and the hatred of all that is evil.
Complete holiness is not wrought out in its con
crete relations all at once, nor ever in this earthly
THE VIRTUE. 19?
life, by the religious, any more than by the moral
man. Temptations are frequent all along the way,
and the falls many and grevious to the last. But
from all deliberately cherished identification of his
inmost heart and will with evil, the truly religious
man is forevermore set free. From the moment
one's will is entirely surrendered to God, and the
divine ideal of life and conduct is accepted, a new
and holy life begins.
Old temptations may surprise him into unright
eous deeds ; old habits may still assert themselves,
old lusts may drift back on the returning tides of
past associations ; old vices may continue to crop
out.
In reality, however, they are already dead. They
are like the leaves that continue to look green upon
the branches of a tree that has been cut down ; or
the momentum of a train after the steam is shut off
and the brakes are on.
God, who is all-wise, sees that in such a man sin is
in principle dead ; and he judges him accordingly.
If penitence for past sins and present falls be genu
ine ; if the desire to do his will be earnest; He
takes the will for the deed, penitence for perfor
mance, aspiration for attainment. Such judgment
is not merely merciful. It is just. Or rather, it is
the blending of mercy and justice in love. It is
judgment according to the deeper, internal aspect of
a man, instead of judgment according to the super
ficial, outward aspect. For the will is the center
and core of personality. What a man desires and
198 GOD.
strives for with all his heart, that he is. What he
repents of and repudiates with the whole strength
of his frail and imperfect nature, that he has ceased
to be.
Thus religion, or whole-souled devotion to God,
gives a sense of completeness, and attainment, and
security, and peace, which mere ethics, or adjust
ment to the separate fragmentary objects which
constitute our environment, can never give. The
moral life is from its very nature partial, fragmen
tary, and finite. The religious life by penitence
and faith and hope and love, rises above the finite
with its limitations, and the temporal with its sins
and failings, and lays hold on the infinite ideal and
the eternal goodness, with its boundless horizon and
its perfect peace. The religious life, like the moral,
is progressive. But, as Principal Caird remarks,
" It is progress, not towards, but within, the infinite."
Union with God in sincere devotion to his holy will,
is the "promise and potency" of harmonious rela
tions with that whole ethical and spiritual universe
which his thought and will includes.
THE REWARD.
The reward of communion with God and com
prehensive righteousness of conduct is spiritual
life. — The righteous man, the man who walks with
God, is in principle and purpose indentified with
every just cause, with every step of human progress,
with every sphere of man's well-being. To him
property is a sacred trust, time a golden oppor-
THE REWARD. 1 99
tunity, truth a divine revelation, Nature the
visible garment of God, humanity a holy brother
hood, the family, society, and the state are God-
ordained institutions, with God-given laws.
Through the one fundamental devotion of his heart
and will to God, the religious man ismade a par
taker in all these spheres of life in which the creative
will of God is progressively revealed. All that is
God's belong to the religious man. For he is
God's child. And all these things are his inheri
tance.
To the religious man, therefore, there is open a
boundless career for service, sacrifice, devotion and
appropriation. Every power, every affection, every
aspiration within him has its counterpart in the
outward universe. The universe is his Father's
house ; and therefore his own home. All that it
contains are so many opportunities for the develop
ment and realization of his God-given nature.
To dwell in active, friendly, loving relation to
all that is without ; to be
wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion,
to be heirs with God of the spiritual riches it
contains: this is life indeed. "The gift of God
is eternal life. "
Religion is the crown and consummation
of ethics. — Religion gathers up into their unity
the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which
it has been the aim of our ethical studies to dis-
200
cern apart. Religion presents as the will of the all-
wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues
which ethics presents as the conditions of our own
self-realization. Religion is the perfect circle of
which the moral virtues are the constituent arcs.
Fullness of life is the reward of righteousness, the
gift of God, the one comprehensive good, of which
the several rewards which follow the practice of
particular duties and virtues are the constituent
elements.
THE TEMPTATION.
The universal will of God, working in con
formity with impartial law, and seeking" the
equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp con
flict with the interests of the individual self. — If
his working is irresistible we are tempted to repine
and rebel. If his will is simply declared, and left
for us to carry out by the free obedience of our wills,
then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good
to which the divine will points, and to assert instead
some selfish interest of our own. Self-will is, from
the religious point of view, the form of all tempta
tion. The ends at which God aims when he bids us
sacrifice our immediate private interests are so re
mote that they seem to us unreal ; and often they
are so vast that we fail to comprehend them at
all. In such crises faith alone can save us — faith
to believe that God is wiser than we are, faith to be
lieve that his universal laws are better than any pri
vate exceptions we can make in our own interest,
THE VICE OF DEFECT. 201
faith to believe that the universal good is of more
consequence than our individual gain. Such faith
is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain ; and con
sequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly
seductive, and is never far from any one of us.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Sin is short-coming, missing the mark of our
true being, which is to be found only in union
with God. — Sin is the attempt to live apart from
God, or as if there were no God. It is transgression
of his laws. It is the attempt to make a world of
our own, from which in whole or in part we try
to exclude God, and escape the jurisdiction of his
laws. All wrong-doing, all vice, all neglect of duty,
"is in reality a violation of the divine will. But not
until the individual comes to recognize the divine
will, and in spite of this recognition that all duty
is divine, deliberately turns aside from God and
duty together, does vice become sin.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Devotion to God as distinct from or in oppo
sition to devotion to those concrete duties and
human relationship wherein the divine will is
expressed, is hypocrisy. — " If a man say I love God
and hateth his brother he is a liar: for he that
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot
love God whom he hath not seen."
Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works.
It draws from God the inspiration to serve in right-
202 COD.
eousness and love our fellow-men. If faith stop short
of God, and rest in church, or creed, or priest ; if
work stop short of actual service of our fellow-men,
and rest in splendor of ritual or glow of pious feel
ing, or orthodoxy of belief; then our religion be
comes a vain and hollow thing, and we become
Pharisees and hypocrites.
THE PENALTY.
The wages of sin is death.— The penalty of each
particular vice we have seen to be the dwarfing, stunt
ing, decay, and deadening of that particular side of
our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance
brings disease ; wastefulness brings want ; cruelty
brings brutality; ugliness brings coarseness; exclu-
siveness brings isolation ; treason brings anarchy.
Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral
order which is the expression of God's will ; just in
so fa'r as there is sin, there is privation, deadening,
and decay. As long as we live in this world it is
impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut our
selves off completely from God and his order and
his laws. To do that would be instant death. The
man who should embody all the vices and none of
the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unen
durable even to himself. The penalty of an all-
round life of vice and sin would be greater than
man could endure and live. This fearful end is sel
dom reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues
save even the worst of men from this full and final
penalty of sin. The man, however, who deliberately
THE PENALTY. 203
rejects God as his friend and guide to righteous
living; the man who deliberately makes self-will and
sin the ruling principle of his life, is started on a
road, which, if followed to the end, leads inevitably
to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere
of good, that career of service and devotion, where
in alone true life is to be found. He is banishing
himself to that outer darkness which is our figurative
expression for the absence of all those rewards of
virtue and the presence of all those penalties of vice
which our previous studies have brought to our
attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth
forth death. " " The wages of sin is death. "
THE END.
INDEX.
ABSTINENCE, total, 14-16
Adulteration, 47
Affectation, 86, 87
Alcibiades, on personal appear
ance, 22
Ambition, true and false, 164
Amusement, 28 ; seeking, 30
Animals, 98
Anxiety, 63
Aristotle, on friendship, 137 ; on
pleasure, 187
Arnold, M., on insincerity, 105 ;
on " quiet work," 39
Art, 89
Asceticism, 12
BASHFULNESS, 106
Beauty, 90, 92 ; how to cultivate
the love of, 91 ; ideal of, 89
Benevolence, 118
Betrayal, 141
Betting, a form of gambling, 78
Brothers, duties of, 145
Browning, Mrs. E. B., on self-
centered virtue, 192
Browning, Robert, on strength,
72 ; on love, 115
Building and loan associations, 42
CAIRD, JOHN, on morality and re
ligion, 198
Carelessness, 68, 69
Carlyle, Thomas, on human fel
lowship, 156 ; on work, 32
Character, 182, 184
Charity, 118
Cheating, 48
Childhood, 40
Children, duty of, to their parents,
145
Civilization restsvon law, 161
Coleridge, S. T., on kindness to
animals, 101
Confidence, 56
Conflict of duties, 191
Conscience, absolute authority of,
181
Conscientiousness, 180, 182
Constraint, 176
Co-operation, 170 ; two kinds of,
171
Co-ordination, 60
Courage, 73, 75 ; moral, 74
Cowardice, moral, 76 ; the shame
of, 79
Craik, Mrs. D. M., on marriage,
M7
Cruelty, 102, 103
Cynicism regarding appearance, 21
DEATH, the wages of sin, 202
Debility, the penalty of neglected
exercise, 31
Debt, 43
Devotion of husband and wife, 153
Discord, 64
Disease, 17, 1 8
Dishonesty, 49
Dissipation, 193
Dissoluteness, 193
Divorce, 148
Dress, 19, 20, 21
Drink, 9
Drunkenness, 13
206
INDEX.
Dude, the, 23
Duties, conflict of, 191
Duty, 2, 187
ECONOMY, 42
Effusiveness, 142
Eliot, George, on sympathy, HO ;
on happiness, 188
Emerson, R. W., on friendship,
140, 143
Energy, the value of superfluous,
26
Ennui, 30
Enjoyment, the only true, 86
Epicurus, on the duty of friends,
139
Equivalence in trade, 46
Ethics, i
Ethics and religion, 196
Example, responsibility for, 15
Exchange, 46
Excitement, 27
Exclusiveness, 142
Exercise, necessity of, 25
FAITH, 200
Falsehood, the forms of, 57
Family, the, 144
Fastidiousness, 23
Fellowship, 104
Food, 9
Foolhardiness, 77
Forgiveness, 130
Formalism, 190
Fortune, 70
Freedom is complete self-expres
sion, 173
Friendship, 137
GAMBLING, 78
Games, value of, 26
God. 194
Golden Rule, the, 107
Gossip, the mischievousness of, 57
Gluttony, 13
HABIT, 3
Harmony, 90
Hegel, on duty in personal rela
tions, 2
Heredity, 51
Hill, Octavia, on benevolence, 1 20
Holiness, 196
Home, 149, 150
Honesty, 47
Hospitality, 105
Husband and wife, 149
Hypocrisy, 105-201
IDEAL OF BEAUTY, 89
Idleness, 33
Independence, 150, 151, 152
Indorsing notes, 50
Indiscriminate charity, 125
Individualism, 150, 153, 154
Industry, 35
Isolation, 143
JANET, PAUL, on dissipation, 193
Justice, 128
KANT, on humanity an end, 106 ;
on importance of social relations,
109 ; on a lie, 59 ; on universal
ity as test of conduct, 169
Keats on beauty, 93
Kindness, 100
Knowledge, 53
Law, uniformity of, 70
Laziness, the slavery of, 37 ; leads
to poverty, 39
Lenity, 134, 135 ; its effect on the
offender, 135
Life insurance, 42
Loneliness, 156
Love, 106, 107, 108, ill
Lowell, J. R., on success, 173
Loyalty, 148
Luxury, the perversion of beauty,
93
Lying, 58, 59
MARRIAGE, viii, ix, 146, 153
Marshall, J., on conformity to rule,
191
Martineau, on censoriousness, 58
INDEX.
207
Maudsley, on hereditary effects of
dishonesty, 51
Meanness, 51, 174, 175, 177
Mill, John Stuart, on pleasure, 187;
unity with fellow-men, 108
Miserliness, 44, 45
Moral courage, 74
Moroseness, 29
Morris, William, on simplicity of
life, 92
NATURE, 81
Neatness, 20
Niggardliness, 124
Notes, indorsement of, 50
OBSCENITY, viii
Obtuseness, 86, 87
Officiousness, 176
Old age, provision for, 40
Opium habit, 16
Orderliness, 66
Organization, the function of the
state, 157
Overwork, the folly of, 38
PARENTS, duties of, to children,
vi, 145
Party, political, 1 60
Patriotism, 160
Peace, 198
Perfection, 90
Place for everything, 65
Plato, on virtue and vice, 6 ; refu
tation of the Cynic, 22 ; on obe
dience to laws, 159
Pleasure, 71, 186
Politeness, 172
Politician, and statesman, 161
Potter, Bishop, on giving, 119
Poverty, the causes of, 117
Pride, 142
Prigs, 182
Procrastination, 62
Profit-sharing, 170
Property, 40
Prudence, 6l
Public spirit, 171
Punishment, the function of, 128 •
good for the wrong-doer, 129
Purity, viii
QUACKERY, 49
RAFFLING, a form of gambling, 78
Red-tape, 68
Reformation, 131
Reformer, 170; Religion, 195, 198
Religion and ethics, 196, 199
Reward of virtue, 4
Rich, the idle, 33
Rights, our own, 50 ; of others,
158
Royce, J., on regarding others as
persons, 107, 169
Rules, 183, 191
Ruskin, John, on the home, 150 ;
on truth, 54
SAVING, systematic, 41, 43
Savings-banks, 42
Scandal, the mischievousness of, 57
Scott, Sir Walter, on deceit, 56
Selfishness, 112; the penalty of,
"5
Self-indulgence, 192
Self-interest, 174
Self-obliteration for the sake of
family, 154, 155
Self-realization, 179
Self-righteousness, 192
Self-will, 200
Sensuality, ix
Sentimentality, 113, 114
Severity, 133, 135 ; effect of, on
the offender, 135
Sexual passions, vii
Shakespeare, on music, 95
Simplicity of life, 92
Sin, 201
Sisters, duties of, 145
Slavery, 178
Slovenliness, 22, 23
Social ideal, 170
Society, 167
Social responsibility, 15
208
INDEX.
Socrates, on obedience to law, 159
Soft places, to be avoided, 36
Space, 65
Speculation, a form of gambling, 79
Spencer, Herbert, on abundant
energy, 27 ; on deficient energy,
29
Spendthrift, the, 45
Spinoza, on the difficulty of excel
lence, 97
Spiritual life, the reward of right
eousness, 198
" Spoils system," 162
Sports, value of, 26
Stagnation, 87
State, developed out of the family,
157
Statesman and politician, 161
Stealing, 48
Stoicism, 71, no
Strength, the secret of, 72
Strife, the penalty of selfishness,
"5
Success, 173
Superiority to fortune, the secret
of, 71
Sympathy, 123
System, 66, 67
TEMPERANCE, 10-15
Temptation, 5
Terence, oneness of individual with
humanity, 106
Time, 60
Tobacco, 1 6, 17
Trade, importance of learning a,
34
, equivalence in, 46
Tranquillity, 39
Treason, 163
Truth, 53, 54
UGLINESS, 94
Unscrupulousness, 189
VENGEANCE, 131, 132
Veracity, 55
Vice, 5
Virtue, 3
Vulgarity, akin to laziness, 96
WASTEFULNESS, 44, 45
Wealth, 36
Well-being, the conditions of, 118
Whitman, Walt, on the feelings of
animals, 99
Whittier, J. G., on acting contrary
to convictions, 79
Wife, and husband, 149
Woman's sphere, 34
Wordsworth, on books, 53 ; on
courage, 75 ; on the influence of
Nature, 82, 83, 84 ; on neglect
ing Nature, 85 ; on cruelty to
animals, 102
Work, 32, 35
TWO BOOKS 8Y THE LATE
FRANCIS A. WALKER
President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ISCUSSIONS IN ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
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Practical ethics. -•
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