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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
A PEIMER OF 
 EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 FOB YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS 
 AND FAMILIES 
 
 BY 
 
 J. N. LARNED 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
Copyright, 1902, 
 BY J. N. LARKED 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 Published November, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Meanings of the word " right " .... 1 
 
 The idea of straightness 3 
 
 The moral meaning 4 
 
 The word " wrong " 5 
 
 A straight line 7 
 
 Why the " right line " 8 
 
 The line of Tightness ...... 10 
 
 The line of truth 11 
 
 The line of the Golden Rule .... 14 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATURAL IMPULSE TO DO RIGHT AND OUR FREE- 
 DOM TO OBEY OR DISOBEY IT 
 
 The physical law of motion parallel to the moral 
 
 law of conduct ...... 20 
 
 Our freedom under the law 22 
 
 Our freedom gives our conduct its moral quality 23 
 
 Our freedom exalts us 24 
 
 176304 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE TRUST OF OUR MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 The destiny of man in his own hands ... 27 
 
 What might be 28 
 
 The easy gift we can make to the bettering of the 
 
 world . 30 
 
 Effects on ourselves 31 
 
 The high privilege of our freedom to do right . 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SELF-CONTROL AND THE FORMATION OF HABIT 
 
 Forces in conflict 38 
 
 We are not puppets 40 
 
 But we can be puppet-like .... 41 
 
 Self-mastery never impossible .... 42 
 
 Habits, and their power 44 
 
 Habit-making in childhood 45 
 
 Habit-cultivation 47 
 
 Franklin's plan of habit-cultivation ... 50 
 
 Other examples and opinions .... 55 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CONFUSED NOTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG AND THEIR 
 PRINCIPAL CAUSES 
 
 Thoughtlessness on the subject .... 64 
 
 Tribal notions 66 
 
 Views of slavery, for example .... 68 
 iv 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Mischievous notions of law .... 70 
 
 The object of human law 73 
 
 Legal honesty not moral honesty ... 74 
 Examples and opinions . . .75 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 Integrity is wholeness 83 
 
 Wholeness is health 84 
 
 The man of integrity 85 
 
 The " sense of honor " is self-respect . . . 86~ 
 
 The honest man 88 
 
 Honesty to oneself 90 
 
 Examples and opinions 91 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 All " business " supposed to be an arrangement 
 
 of reciprocity 97 
 
 Naturally on the line of the Golden Rule . 98 
 
 The Golden Rule in its commercial form . . 99 
 
 A beneficent system, not a barbaric scramble . 100 
 
 The treason of all fraud 102 
 
 The two Golden Rules in business . . . 103 
 
 Betting and gambling 103 
 
 Betting and gambling in so-called " business " . 106 
 
 Speculative trade is something very different . 107 
 
 Examples and opinions 109 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 The governed in America are the governors . 118 
 
 Responsibility to our fellow citizens . . 119 
 
 Political parties a means, not an end . . . 121 
 
 The mischief of party feeling as a habit . . 123 
 
 The needed education of patriotism . . . 124 
 
 The right inspiration of American patriotism . 125 
 
 Its right objects 127 
 
 The line of right for our political conduct . 129 
 
 Examples and opinions 131 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SYMPATHY BENEVOLENCE HELPFULNESS 
 
 Civilization and sympathy .... 143 
 
 The claims of suffering 144 
 
 Money-giving " charity " 145 
 
 Animal suffering 148 
 
 Cruelty as " sport " 149 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GENTLEMEN AND GENTLEWOMEN THE IDEAL OF 
 CHARACTER AND CULTURE 
 
 The golden chart of character .... 152 
 Good manners as a growth on the substance of 
 
 good character 156 
 
 Gentlemen and gentlewomen .... 158 
 
OF THE 
 
 1 UNIVERSITY 
 
 ITY 
 
 / 
 
 A PRIMER OF RIGHT 
 AND WRONG 
 
 I 
 
 EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 THE word BIGHT, as we all know, has 
 a number of meanings that seem to be 
 not much alike. As we use it in geo- 
 metry, speaking of a " right line," we 
 mean a line that is straight. We use 
 it in another sense when we Meanings of 
 
 the word 
 
 say of some action that it "rignt." 
 was "the right thing to do;" and in 
 this case we may mean that it was the 
 wisest action that could be taken, or we 
 may mean that it was morally the best 
 thing to do, the true thing, the thing 
 
 which ought to be done, because of a 
 1 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 goodness in itself which we are able to 
 see. In still another sense of the word 
 we may say that men have a right to 
 the free use of their minds in thought, 
 and of their tongues in speech, and of 
 their hands in work, so long as they 
 harm no others ; and then we mean that 
 if such freedom is taken away from 
 them they are abused and oppressed. 
 
 Now, these and other meanings of 
 the word BIGHT may seem to differ 
 widely, but there is reason to believe 
 that all of them grew out of the one 
 simple idea which is expressed in the 
 first example given above, namely, the 
 idea of a straight line. It appears to 
 be the fact that long ago, when our 
 language was being slowly made up, 
 the word which we have shaped finally 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 into the spelling and pronunciation of 
 this word RIGHT was used first to ex- 
 press the idea of straightness, The ldea Ol 
 and nothing else. That was 8tralglltness - 
 a very simple idea, which men's minds 
 took easily from their eyes. They 
 could see straightness in many things; 
 but it is possible that the idea of it 
 was especially impressed upon them 
 by the tightened strings of their bent 
 bows; for when they first used the 
 word straight, it meant stretched, 
 a stretched or tightened cord, or a line 
 of any kind from which all crooked- 
 ness had been taken out, making it 
 
 RIGHT. 
 
 The first use of the word RIGHT, 
 then, by the simple-minded people who 
 invented it, was probably to express 
 
 3 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 just so much of an idea of straightness 
 as their sight and feeling of a stretched 
 string could convey to their minds. 
 But afterward, when these or some 
 later people began to form moral ideas, 
 and needed a word to signify the good 
 quality which they found in some of 
 The moral their own actions, contrasted 
 with an opposite quality in 
 others, they seem to have felt that it 
 was like the straightness of a stretched 
 line, in contrast with the crookedness, 
 the wavering and turning, of other 
 lines ; and so they called it, as they 
 had called the straightened line, RIGHT. 
 The same feeling led them to say that 
 acts of good judgment or wisdom were 
 BIGHT ; and then to use that expressive 
 word in making up many other words, 
 
 4 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 all carrying ideas which seem to be 
 suggestive in some way of the stretch- 
 ing of things into straiglitness, like the 
 tightening of a cord. Then, of course, 
 they had need of a word to mean mor- 
 ally the opposite of BIGHT, and natu- 
 rally, as before, they took one already in 
 use, which bore an idea that Theword 
 would contrast with that of 
 the straightened cord. The word they 
 chose has come to our language in one 
 form as wrung, meaning twisted, and 
 in another form as WRONG, meaning 
 everything that is not BIGHT. 
 
 So we find that BIGHT and WBONG, 
 which are really the most important in 
 their final meaning of all the words that 
 we speak or write, got those meanings 
 at the beginning from the very simple 
 5 
 
A PRIMEK OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ideas of straightening and straightness, 
 for one, and of twisting and crooked- 
 ness for the other. The thought of a 
 straight line a " right line " is the 
 primary thought in both. Those who 
 made our language have given it to us 
 as the idea on which to form our no- 
 tions of BIGHT and WRONG, and when 
 we study the matter closely, we see 
 that they did so neither ignorantly nor 
 by accident, but with a wonderfully 
 fine sense of the true likeness of things. 
 "We find, indeed, that this simple, repre- 
 sentative idea of straightness has to be 
 kept in our minds, and carried distinctly 
 into many practical questions between 
 RIGHT and WRONG, if our moral under- 
 standing is to be clear and our moral 
 judgments are to be true. There is 
 6 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 really no study that ought to be more 
 carefully made. 
 
 A straight line may be described in 
 several ways. In the best known de- 
 scription it is said to be that line which 
 marks the shortest distance between two 
 points. Euclid, the old Greek geome- 
 ter, described it as a line that Astralgllt 
 lies evenly between its points. L 
 When we look at a straight line, in 
 
 comparison with other lines, our eyes 
 tell us that these descriptions are true. 
 "We need no other proof than the see- 
 ing. 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 But other facts as to the nature of 
 the straight line are apparent to us 
 when we see it. One is, that if we 
 draw a line between two points for the 
 sole purpose of connecting them, or re- 
 lating them to each other, it can be no 
 other than a straight line, because one 
 object or end can give it only one direc- 
 tion. It can depart from straightness 
 why the only by taking, somewhere in 
 
 "right 
 
 une." its course, some other direc- 
 
 tion for a time (as from A to C, for 
 example, instead of from A to B), in 
 which case it would not be drawn to 
 the sole end of connecting the point A 
 with the point B, or the point B with 
 the point A. This, therefore, is the 
 true line, the right line, of connection 
 between A and B; and manifestly it is 
 8 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 the one, and the only one, that truly 
 and exactly marks the relation of these 
 two points to one another. 
 
 Now let us imagine two persons in 
 the place of these two points, and then 
 
 imagine connections or relations be- 
 tween them which we represent in a fig- 
 urative way by drawing lines, as before. 
 The connection imagined may be any 
 
 one of the many that arise out of the 
 9 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 numberless relations existing among 
 men. The man A and the man B may 
 be talking together, or they may be buy- 
 ing and selling, or they may be em- 
 ployer and employed in some work, or 
 they may be teacher and pupil, or they 
 may be related to each other in no way 
 except as fellow beings, one of whom 
 needs help which the other has ability to 
 give. Out of every such relation there 
 arises some action or some feeling that 
 The ime oi connects the two persons, so 
 exactly in the manner of the 
 drawing of a line from the one to the 
 other that we could find no other com- 
 parison for it so perfect if we tried; 
 and when we set it before our minds 
 by that figure we cannot help feeling 
 that the straight line represents right- 
 10 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ness, in whatever passes between the 
 two men, and that no other line could 
 do so to the satisfaction of our imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Perhaps, if we look further, we can 
 find a reason for this feeling; and I will 
 pursue the search by imagining that I 
 am one of the two persons whose rela- 
 tions or dealings with each other we 
 are trying to represent. I put myself, 
 we will say, in the place of the man A. 
 I suppose myself to be talking with the 
 man B, of some matter on which each 
 wants information from the other. I 
 know nothing of what passes in his 
 mind, except as my own thinking and 
 feeling lead me to believe Thelineof 
 that his thoughts and feelings tratlL 
 must be moved in much the same way. 
 11 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 I am very clearly conscious of a claim 
 in myself to be told what is true. I feel 
 with absolute certainty that truth is due 
 to me, and that I should be treated very 
 badly if I did not receive it. My rea- 
 son, moreover, tells me that the infor- 
 mation I receive from B will be of no 
 worth to me unless I can trust it to be 
 true. Therefore my own consciousness 
 gives me a clear understanding of what 
 ought to be the sole purpose of B's 
 words to me, namely, to carry to me 
 the information that I need and that I 
 can trust when it comes to me. Here 
 we have an idea, of a single purpose 
 giving a single direction to something 
 done, which is exactly parallel to the 
 ' idea of straightness in the line from B 
 to A. But the line that is straight from 
 
 12 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 B to A must be equally straight from A 
 to B; and it is impossible for me to un- 
 derstand what ought to be in B's words 
 to me without knowing that the same 
 truthfulness ought to be in mine to hiifo, 
 since I cannot doubt that he is a beipg 
 of the same nature as myself, who 
 must therefore have the same needs and 
 claims. I am forced, that is to say, to 
 imagine myself in B's place and he in 
 mine, and to comprehend that his claims 
 on me are, in the nature of things, the 
 same that I make on him. 
 
 I reach the same result if I imagine 
 myself to be trading with B, or work- 
 ing for him, or employing his labor, or 
 engaged with him in transactions of 
 any other kind. In my own claims on 
 him in my sense of what is due to 
 
 13 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 me from him I always have that 
 which will draw the Line of Right back- 
 Tile invan- ward and forward between 
 
 able Line of 
 
 Right. us, in both directions the 
 same, if I use it as I should. I have 
 only to put myself in his place and 
 him in mine, and to think of what 
 would be satisfying honesty, or fair- 
 ness, or faithfulness, or kindness, or 
 courtesy, coming from him to me, and 
 I learn instantly what must go from me 
 to him, if my conduct is to be RIGHT. 
 
 But this, you will say, is nothing, af- 
 ter all, but the GOLDEN RULE, in a new 
 guise. So it is, the great, wise, won- 
 derful, beautiful, old GOLDEN RULE ; it is 
 just that and nothing more. For there 
 is nothing more than that. There is no- 
 thing to be said about RIGHT and WRONG, 
 
 14 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 so far as concerns our dealings with one 
 another, that was not summed up ages 
 ago in the simplest and grandest of all 
 commandments : " "Whatso- The Qolden 
 ever ye would that men * 
 should do to you, do ye even so to 
 them." It is a command which men 
 found in their consciousness and con- 
 science so early that we do not know 
 when it was first put into words. We 
 find it in the teachings of Confucius, 
 the Chinese apostle of morals, who 
 lived in the sixth century before Christ, 
 and who said to his disciples, " What 
 you do not want done to yourself, do 
 not do to others." We find it also in 
 one of the sacred poems of the ancient 
 Hindus, believed to have been composed 
 about five centuries before Christ, 
 
 15 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 where it is given in lines of verse which 
 a recent scholar has translated as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " This is the sum of all true righteousness : 
 Treat others as thou would'st thyself be treated. 
 Do nothing to thy neighbor which hereafter 
 Thou wouldst not have thy neighbor do to 
 thee." 
 
 And we have it, as we know it best, 
 in Christ's Sermon on the Mount. But 
 there must have been the sense of it 
 the instinct of it as we have seen, 
 in the minds of still earlier men, when 
 they formed the idea of RIGHT, as a 
 quality in itself, and named it with the 
 name they had given already to a 
 stretched, straight line. 
 
 16 
 
II 
 
 THE NATURAL IMPULSE TO DO EIGHT, 
 AND OUR FREEDOM TO OBEY OR 
 DISOBEY IT 
 
 So far as concerns that part of our 
 conduct which touches other people, 
 and which is much the larger part, we 
 find ourselves furnished with the means, 
 in our own minds, of fixing and mark- 
 ing the Line of Eight. In other mat- 
 ters of conduct, relating only to our- 
 selves, for example, to our minds, to 
 our bodies, to our capabilities and aims 
 in life, etc., we shall see, when we 
 come to consider them, that the reason 
 or principle of EIGHT is much the 
 same. 
 
 But if the learning and knowing of 
 
 17 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 RIGHT from WRONG has been made very 
 easy for us, by the natural working 
 of our thoughts, our imaginations, 
 and our feelings, is there anything in 
 our nature that helps us likewise to 
 do the RIGHT when we know it ? Un- 
 questionably there is. Unless we de- 
 stroy it, as we may do, by persisting 
 resistance, we are always conscious of 
 a pull from some feeling within us 
 toward the RIGHT action, and against 
 any departure from it, whenever we 
 give attention to see what the RIGHT 
 action is. We can be heedless of what 
 the RIGHT is, and so escape that pull 
 of feeling to it by mere recklessness of 
 action, or we can feel it and defy it, 
 and overcome it, to our hurt, and to 
 our ruin if we persist ; but it is always 
 
 18 
 
THE IMPULSE TO DO RIGHT 
 
 there, planted in the depths of our 
 nature, for our moral help, if we are 
 willing to be helped to do BIGHT and 
 not WRONG. 
 
 What is it? that urgent ought to 
 and ought not to which every human 
 being feels so often, or has felt ? We 
 call it "conscience ;" but this is only giv- 
 ing a name to something not explained. 
 What is the force in it that we feel ? 
 We cannot tell. But if it is a mystery, 
 it is no more so than the mystery of the 
 force which drives every moving body 
 of matter in a straight line of motion, 
 and which resists any other force that 
 would swerve it from the straight line. 
 The boy who turns a corner when he is 
 running swiftly feels the strain of that 
 force. Something in his body resists 
 
 19 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 the turn, and strives to keep him to the 
 straight run. If he has studied physics 
 in school, he knows that his body is 
 trying to obey what is called a " law of 
 motion/' and that is all that science can 
 tell him about it. He knows, too, that 
 when he throws a stone it would move 
 on in a never-bending straight line, if 
 the air did not resist its motion and if 
 The physical gravitation did not pull it 
 
 law of motion 
 
 parallel to the down to the earth, with forces 
 
 moral law o! 
 
 conduct. that overcome the force with 
 which it was thrown. If he knows 
 that, he knows all that anybody knows 
 about the mysterious impulse in all 
 motions of matter to keep them in the 
 right line. We only know it to be a 
 fact of the material universe, which we 
 cannot explain; and we simply mean 
 20 
 
THE IMPULSE TO DO RIGHT 
 
 that it is invariable when we call it a 
 " law." We know just the same, and 
 no more, about this other mysterious 
 impulse toward a Line of Eight in con- 
 duet, which we feel in ourselves and 
 call conscience, and which we have to 
 resist when we do Wrong. The two are 
 strangely alike, and one seems to be, as 
 much as the other, a " Law of Nature," 
 for the ordering of the universe in one 
 case, and for the ordering in the other 
 case of the life of man. 
 
 But if we are subject to a " law " of 
 right conduct, strangely parallel to the 
 " law " of right motion which all matter 
 obeys, we are subject to it in a very 
 different way. The stone which a boy 
 has thrown, and the flesh and bones of 
 
 his body when he runs, are so impelled 
 21 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 to a straight line of motion that they 
 cannot do otherwise than resist any 
 turn from it. They are obedient to the 
 law of their motion without will or 
 choice. It is a law to them which en- 
 forces itself. If they are swerved from 
 the right line it is by some force that 
 acts, not in them, but upon them, from 
 the outside. But the impulse to right 
 om freedom conduct, on the contrary, acts 
 
 under the 
 
 !** in a conscious mind which 
 
 feels that it has power within itself to 
 obey or disobey, to resist or to yield. 
 "We are free to let the impulse give 
 direction to our conduct or not, as we 
 will. It does not compel us to keep 
 ourselves true to the Line of Eight in 
 -what we do ; it only moves us to re- 
 member it, and urges us toward the 
 22 
 
THE IMPULSE TO DO RIGHT 
 
 line. It is given us, not to govern us, 
 but to actuate us helpfully in the gov- 
 ernment of ourselves. 
 
 This freedom to do RIGHT or to do 
 WRONG is what stamps on our con- 
 duct the character called moral, by 
 making it our own. If that freedom is 
 taken away from any act, the moral 
 quality of the act is gone. If a man, 
 for example, is compelled by a court of 
 law to pay an honest debt which he 
 would not pay otherwise, the thing 
 done is RIGHT, but there is 0urJreedom 
 no Tightness in the doing of 
 
 . . rm . 7 moral quality. 
 
 it. The man is a wrong-doer 
 so far as his own will is concerned; 
 the right-doing is not his own, though 
 the act may seem to be. And jso, if 
 the feeling which prompts us to do 
 
 23 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 BIGHT had power to compel us to do it, 
 there would be no more morality in our 
 conduct than there is morality in the 
 straight flight of a bullet to its mark. 
 There would be no more character in 
 ourselves, and no more dignity and 
 nobility of being, than there is in a 
 machine. It is our moral freedom 
 our freedom of choice between Good 
 and Evil, BIGHT and WBONG that dig- 
 nifies and exalts us among the crea- 
 tures and creations of God, and no- 
 
 Oni freedom thin g els6 COuld Kft US tO the 
 
 exaltsus ' same height. Gifts of intel- 
 lect are nothing to compare with it. 
 "We might, every one of us, have the 
 genius of Shakespeare and Michael 
 Angelo and Julius Caesar combined in 
 
 24 
 
THE IMPULSE TO DO RIGHT 
 
 our brains, and, if we had not the 
 power to rule our own actions by our 
 own will, we should be infinitely poorer 
 in the worth of our being than we are 
 now. 
 
 25 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TRUST OF OUR MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 THE power of self-government with 
 which we are endowed is not to be 
 called a gift; it is an almost incredible 
 Trust. It not only trusts our own des- 
 tiny to ourselves, but it actually trusts, 
 or seems to trust, the whole final out- 
 come of God's creative work to our 
 treatment of it. This earth, at least, is 
 put into our hands, to make what we 
 will of it and of ourselves, its inhab- 
 itants. It is stored with all possible 
 helps to us, in natural forces and mate- 
 rials ; we are given intelligence to find 
 them out and to use them for the en- 
 richment and beautifying of our lives; 
 we are given the understanding of a 
 
 26 
 
THE TRUST OF MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 Rule of Right in our conduct toward 
 each other that will keep us in perfect 
 harmony and happiness of The destiny 
 
 of man in his 
 
 work together, for the com- own hands, 
 mon good; we are drawn toward action 
 in accord with that Rule by a feeling 
 created in us, which will not let us for- 
 get it or violate it without willful in- 
 tent; but (and here is the grandeur of 
 the part we perform in creation) we 
 are trusted with the freedom to do with 
 all this what we will. The outcome, 
 good or evil, is what we and our fel- 
 lows of the human race, past and fu- 
 ture, are helping, or have helped, or 
 will help, to make it. The glory or 
 the shame of triumph or failure in the 
 creation of mankind is to belong to the 
 race itself. 
 
 27 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ]STow think for a moment what the out- 
 come would be if a time were reached 
 when no human being, young or old, did 
 anything to another which he would not 
 wish to have done to himself ! There 
 would be, then, of course, no war, and 
 no need of armies or horrible battle- 
 ships ; there would be no crime, and no 
 need of police, except for helpful ser- 
 vice, in dealing with the mishaps of life ; 
 What there would be little for law- 
 
 makers and courts of law to 
 do; there would be no cruelty, no op- 
 pression, no hardness of dealing with 
 the unfortunate, no dishonesty, no inso- 
 lence, no meanness, no discourtesy, lit- 
 tle or no quarreling or anger, little or 
 no preventable suffering in the world. 
 This is not a fancy-painted picture of 
 
 28 
 
THE TRUST OF MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 what might be; it is what plain reason- 
 ing tells us would come to pass if every- 
 body followed the simple Rule which 
 everybody knows to be the Rule of 
 Right Conduct among men, and which 
 nobody disputes. It would be, in effect, 
 hardly less than the making of this earth 
 into the likeness of heaven, as we im- 
 agine heaven to be; and how simply 
 and easily it may be done ! 
 
 That is to say, how easily each one of 
 us may do his part towards heaven- 
 making on earth; and the adding of 
 part to part might some time produce 
 the celestial whole. The question to 
 each one of us is whether his life shall 
 contribute to that outcome, or be of the 
 number that keep it unattained. Many 
 persons are ambitious to contribute to 
 
 29 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 the improvement of the world in ma- 
 terial ways, by building canals, or 
 railways, or stately edifices, or by the 
 adornment of cities, all of which are ex- 
 The easy gift cellent things to do; but one 
 
 we can make 
 
 to the better- who helps to rid the world ot 
 
 Ing oi the 
 
 world. cruelty and rapacity and dis- 
 honesty and meanness and rude man- 
 ners, by simply living a life that has 
 no such thing in it, is making a con- 
 tribution which surpasses the worth of 
 railways that span continents and of 
 canals that join seas. And this is a 
 gift to the bettering of the world which 
 any of us, young or old, rich or poor, 
 learned or unlearned, can make, by sim- 
 ply doing always what we know that 
 we ought to do. 
 
 But doing what we know that we 
 
 30 
 
THE TRUST OF MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 ought to do is not only for the good of 
 the world, but likewise, and far more, 
 for the good of ourselves. We take in- 
 finitely more benefit from our own per- 
 formance of an act of uprightness, and 
 infinitely more harm from an act of 
 wrong, than the good we bestow or the 
 harm we inflict. The good or ill we do 
 to another in such ways only touches 
 some circumstance of his life ; but the 
 influence which comes back Eflectson 
 from it to ourselves goes 
 deeply into our nature, refines or 
 coarsens it, lifts or lowers it, and is 
 either inspiring or deadening to all 
 that is best in soul and mind. If, for 
 example, a man is defrauded, he suf- 
 fers from an injury done, not really to 
 himself, but to the circumstances of 
 
 31 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 his life. It takes something from the 
 comforts of his living, or from his en- 
 joyments, or from his expectations and 
 hopes ; it burdens him, perhaps, with 
 new anxieties and new toils. But, no 
 matter how cruelly his life is troubled 
 by it, the wrong done has only touched 
 and pricked him from the outside. On 
 the other hand, think of the case of 
 him who does the wrong, who pro- 
 duces it, from evil thoughts and avari- 
 cious desires, which he has allowed to 
 grow into a wicked will and a ruthless 
 deed ! If this is his first act of knav- 
 ery, Nature makes it hateful and hard 
 to him; compels him to feel the degra- 
 dation of it and the shame. In the 
 moment it is done, he knows that he 
 has made himself a meaner being than 
 
 32 
 
THE TRUST OF MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 he was before, and he falls forever to a 
 lower level in his own esteem. Then 
 all dishonesties lose half their repug- 
 nance to him, and all the defenses of 
 his integrity are half broken down. A 
 second temptation to fraud will find less 
 to overcome in him, and a third still 
 less ; and at last the fallen man will be 
 wholly contented with his place among 
 the predatory creatures of the world, 
 and will slink through life, hunting for 
 prey. Surely he is the greater victim 
 of the wrong ! 
 
 Such effects on ourselves of what 
 we do are consequent upon our moral 
 freedom, which causes every act of 
 right or wrong doing to be an exercise 
 of some trait of character, good or bad, 
 and so invigorates it, as the muscles of 
 
A PRIMEE OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 the body are invigorated by the work 
 they do. Thus we become the makers of 
 our own characters, and our freedom to 
 act rightly or wrongly is seen, in that 
 
 The privilege vieW > tO be the hi ghest of all 
 
 toSfto' the privileges we enjoy. It is 
 common to call right-doing a 
 Duty, and so it is if we give a proper 
 meaning to the word. But our idea 
 of Duty is apt to be the idea of an 
 unwelcome obligation ; something to 
 be done which we find more merit in 
 doing because it is disagreeable and 
 hard; and this is an idea which fits no 
 true conception of the doing of Right. 
 The more carefully we consider what 
 that is, in its nature, and what results 
 from it, to ourselves and to the world 
 
THE TRUST OF MORAL FREEDOM 
 
 of mankind at large, the more clearly 
 we can see that when we prefer Eight 
 to "Wrong we are exercising the most 
 precious of all the Privileges of man. 
 
 35 
 
IV 
 
 SELF-CONTROL, AND THE FORMATION 
 OF HABIT 
 
 OUR freedom to choose between Eight 
 and Wrong is part of a general power 
 of self-control, or self-government, with 
 which we are nobly endowed. We are 
 animated in our being, we may say, by 
 various forces, not always in agree- 
 ment, and there is something in us 
 the something which makes up the " I " 
 and " Me" of each one of us that has 
 a power of government over them all, 
 to constrain them to work together, to 
 one common end. We may call them 
 forces, because we have no better name ; 
 we are only conscious of their action 
 
SELF-CONTROL 
 
 in us, and know nothing as to what 
 they are. One of them forms ideas in 
 our minds, and compares and combines 
 them, in acts of judgment and reason- 
 ing; another sways us with emotions, 
 of love, hatred, anger, and the like ; an- 
 other colors our self-consciousness with 
 feelings of pleasure and pain; a fourth 
 excites us to desires and appetites, 
 stirred in our bodies or in our minds ; 
 still another appears in what we call 
 Will, which manifests itself in every 
 act, but which nobody can even de- 
 scribe in a satisfactory way; and, lastly, 
 we find the moral impulse which urges 
 us toward Right Conduct, when we 
 have seen intelligently what is Right. 
 It may be that these are only differing 
 forms of one intellectual force, just as 
 
 37 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 heat, light, and electricity are differing 
 forms of one physical force ; but they 
 Forces m seem to animate us sepa- 
 rately, and some of them act 
 often in strong conflict with others. 
 Our passions and desires, especially, are 
 often in conflict with our judgment, 
 pressing us to do things, or to say 
 things, or to give way to feelings, 
 which the latter advises us against, and 
 which it prompts the moral impulse to 
 resist. 
 
 Now, somewhere, in or over these 
 more or less conflicting forces which 
 animate our being, there is something 
 that can rule them to order and agree- 
 ment and make them obey. I prefer to 
 believe that the something in question 
 is not in them, but over them, and that, 
 
SELF-CONTROL 
 
 for me, it is what I feel to be my self. 
 This is sometimes disputed by people 
 who do not believe that the judgments, 
 passions, desires, and will of a man are 
 overruled at all, by any supreme au- 
 thority in his being that can bring them 
 under control. They maintain that our 
 state of being is a state without govern- 
 ment a state of anarchy in which 
 the animating forces, as we have called 
 them, are left struggling together un- 
 til the weaker submit to the stronger, 
 and that the outcome of conduct and 
 character, in all persons, is just what 
 happens to result. But this is a view 
 which brings man into contempt, as a 
 worthless, poor creature, endowed with 
 nothing that differs very much from 
 
 the springs and clock-wheels in such 
 39 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 puppets as are made for the amusement 
 
 we are not ^ a c hild. If we give atten- 
 tion to the working of our 
 own minds, we know that it is not true. 
 We know it by proofs in our conscious- 
 ness which outweigh any argument that 
 can be brought. Whenever we choose 
 to do so we can feel a power in our- 
 selves to master any passion, any appe- 
 tite or desire, any dread of pain, any 
 careless habit or indolence of thinking, 
 any indifference of will. We can feel 
 a power to strengthen or to weaken any 
 one of the forces in ourselves that act 
 in producing thought, passion, desire, 
 or will. We can feel that they are our 
 servants if we will make them so; but 
 feel, too, at the same time, that our mas- 
 tery over them can easily be given up. 
 
 40 
 
SELF-CONTROL 
 
 It is lost, in fact, more easily than it is 
 kept. The government of ourselves is 
 like the government of human socie- 
 ties, in which the strength and firmness 
 of authority must never fail. But they 
 do fail if unceasing energy and watch- 
 fulness are not exercised in maintain- 
 ing them, and the state of anarchy 
 appears, then, at once. 
 
 If, therefore, we are not by nature 
 the kind of puppet creatures that we 
 should be if we had no power of self- 
 control, we can easily sink ourselves to 
 the likeness of creatures of that worth- 
 less sort. It is as easy as any indo- 
 lence, or any carelessness, or But we can 
 
 u- j j -<* * e P u PP et - 
 
 any yielding and drifting in m>. 
 life; and the temptations to it, from 
 what seem to be pleasure and com- 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 fort, are often hard to resist. But 
 what pleasure can make us willing 
 to be shamed by so discrowning and 
 dethroning ourselves from the sover- 
 eignty of our own being, and submit- 
 ting to be slaves of the sensibilities that 
 we were appointed to rule? "What can 
 make it worth being a Man, and not an 
 insect or a worm, if one has no mas- 
 tery over the endowments of the Man? 
 The self-mastering of passions and 
 dispositions of body and mind is far 
 harder for some than for others, being 
 made so by surrounding influences or 
 by inherited weaknesses and traits ; but 
 seii-mastery we have no reason to believe 
 
 never impos- 
 
 siwe - that it was ever made impos- 
 
 sible to any man. On the contrary, 
 we have numberless examples to show 
 
 42 
 
SELF-CONTROL 
 
 us that all imaginable weaknesses and 
 all imaginable pressures of circum- 
 stance or disposition can be and have 
 been overcome; and they leave no 
 ground for any person to plead that 
 self-control is beyond his power. If he 
 acts as a puppet in life it is not because 
 he was made so, but because he has 
 been more willing to play the easy part 
 of a puppet than to strive stoutly and 
 valiantly for a freedom which proved 
 hard to win. 
 
 ~No man was ever born with an evil 
 appetite or passion too strong for him 
 to master. It may grow to that strength 
 if he indulges it; he may be vanquished 
 and enslaved by it in the end, because 
 he carelessly gave way to it in the 
 beginning; but it overcomes him then 
 
 43 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 as a HABIT, of his own growing, a 
 tyrant of his own making; and blame 
 for the loss of his moral freedom lies 
 on none but himself. There is no other 
 fact concerning Man which needs so 
 much as this to be impressed on our 
 Habits, and thoughts while we are young, 
 and while most of the habits 
 of our lives are being formed and 
 fixed. If we could only be made to 
 know in youth what we have to learn 
 in later years, of the mighty power, be- 
 yond all estimate or description, which 
 Habits grow to in our characters, and 
 of the completeness with which the 
 making and aiming of them is in our 
 own hands at the beginning, we could 
 never let them heedlessly spring up. 
 Most of our infancy and childhood is 
 
 44 
 
FORMATION OF HABIT 
 
 spent in the making of Habits, good 
 and bad, without consciousness in our- 
 selves of the fact. Our education is a 
 process of habit-making, and not much 
 more. The action of nerves and the 
 movement of muscles by which we bal- 
 ance our bodies and swing them for- 
 ward, first on one leg, then on the other, 
 in walking, only ceased to be difficult 
 when we had practiced them enough to 
 make them habits of direction in the 
 brain joined to habits of motion in the 
 
 limbs. So, too, with the com- Habit- 
 making In 
 
 plicated working together of childhood, 
 brain, tongue, lips, lungs, and larynx, 
 in speech, or of brain, arms, and fin- 
 gers, in writing, in piano-playing, and 
 in all dexterous kinds of work: it is only 
 by a laborious cultivation of Habit that 
 
 45 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 those difficult things are made easy to 
 do. Habits of that class are so abso- 
 lutely necessary in life that parents are 
 compelled to give some attention to the 
 cultivation of them in the young, and 
 the young cannot very well fail to un- 
 derstand the importance of the mat- 
 ter to themselves ; but even these are 
 so much slighted in the cultivation 
 that what we call " careless habits of 
 speech/' for example, are commoner 
 than the pure articulation and pronun- 
 ciation and the careful choice of words 
 that could just as easily be fixed in the 
 Habit of our talk. 
 
 " The great thing in all education," 
 says Professor James in his " Psycho- 
 logy," "is to make our nervous system 
 our ally instead of our enemy. It is to 
 
 46 
 
FORMATION OF HABIT 
 
 fund and capitalize our acquisitions, 
 and live at ease upon the interest of 
 the fund. For this we must make auto- 
 matic and habitual, as early as possible, 
 as many useful actions as we can, and 
 guard against the growing into ways 
 that are likely to be disadvantageous 
 to us, as we should guard against the 
 plague." 
 
 Habits of carefulness instead of care- 
 lessness in seeing things, to see them 
 wholly and not partly, and to be cor- 
 rect in our knowledge of them ; habits 
 of carefulness in our thinking, to be 
 sure of distinctness in the ideas out of 
 which we form opinions and beliefs; 
 habits of careful attention to what we 
 wish to remember, and to the good 
 order in memory that will keep it 
 
 47 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 ready for use : these may be acquired 
 Hawt- 3 ust as eas ^y as the Habits 
 
 cultivation. Qf ^ heedlesg eye? the looge 
 
 thought, and the haphazard memory, 
 which are so much commoner in the 
 world. That is, we may acquire them 
 just as easily in the 'early years of 
 life, when the ways of the working 
 of our minds are being worn into the 
 grooves we call Habit; but when the 
 grooves have once been worn, then all 
 changes from carelessness to careful- 
 ness are very hard. So it is, likewise, 
 with the movements of feeling that are 
 excitable in our minds, with anger, 
 impatience, fear, sympathy, desire, van- 
 ity, indolence, for example: they are 
 all equally subject to the Habits of ra- 
 tional restraint and rational cultivation, 
 
 48 
 
FORMATION OF HABIT 
 
 on one hand, or to the Habits of reck- 
 less indulgence and neglect, on the 
 other, which we form in the great 
 Habit-making time of our youth. 
 Then, and then only, can Anger be 
 trained to a Habit of waiting for Rea- 
 son to approve it, and Fear to a Habit 
 of leaning on Pride, and Vanity to a 
 Habit of remembering its own empti- 
 ness. Then, and then only! That is 
 the terrible fact. Few men TheterrlMe 
 reach old age without saying fl 
 sadly, " Oh, that I could live my life 
 over!" because time has shown them 
 their misuse of the opportunities of 
 their youth for a different develop- 
 ment of themselves and a different 
 shaping of their lives. If, by some 
 startling revelation, the young could 
 
 49 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 be made to realize the stupendous im- 
 portance of those golden opportunities 
 before wasting them, instead of waking 
 to the realization when it is too late, 
 the effect on mankind would be like 
 the creation of a new race. 
 
 EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 FRANKLIN'S PLAN OF HABIT-CULTIVATION. 
 Benjamin Franklin saw early in life that he 
 might make himself what he wished to be, 
 by a careful cultivation of desirable habits, 
 and by a persistent breaking of those that did 
 him harm. He gave his best thought to the 
 subject, and framed a remarkable plan of self- 
 cultivation and self-control, which he carried 
 out with great success. It is described very 
 fully in his autobiography, and must have 
 prompted many young people since to attempt 
 the same training of habit in themselves. He 
 50 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 began, he tells us, by endeavoring " to live 
 without committing any fault," but soon found 
 that he had undertaken more than he could 
 do. " While my care was employed in guard- 
 ing against one fault," he writes, " I was often 
 surprised by another; habit took the advan- 
 tage of inattention ; inclination was sometimes 
 too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, 
 . . . that the contrary habits must be broken, 
 and good ones acquired and established, be- 
 fore we can have any dependence on a steady, 
 uniform rectitude of conduct." For this pur- 
 pose he contrived his notable method, first 
 making a careful list of the moral virtues, 
 thirteen in number, which seemed to call for 
 especial cultivation. "My intention," said 
 Franklin, " being to acquire the habitude of 
 all these virtues, I judged it would be well not 
 to distract my attention by attempting the 
 whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at 
 a time ; and, when I should be master of that, 
 51 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 then to proceed to another, and so on, till I 
 should have gone through the thirteen ; and, 
 as the previous acquisition of some might 
 facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I 
 arranged them with that view. . . . Temper- 
 ance first, as it tends to procure that coolness 
 and clearness of head which is so necessary 
 where constant vigilance was to be kept up, 
 and guard maintained against the unremitting 
 attraction of ancient habits, and the force of 
 perpetual temptations. This being acquired 
 and established, Silence would be more easy ; 
 and my desire being to gain knowledge at the 
 same time that I improved in virtue, and con- 
 sidering that in conversation it was obtained 
 rather by the use of the ears than of the 
 tongue, and therefore wishing to break a 
 habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, 
 and joking, which only made me acceptable to 
 trifling company, I gave Silence the second 
 place. This and the next, Order, I expected 
 52 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 would allow me more time for attending to 
 my project and my studies. Resolution, once 
 become habitual, would keep me firm in my 
 endeavors to obtain all the subsequent vir- 
 tues ; Frugality and Industry, freeing me from 
 my remaining debt, and producing affluence 
 and independence, would make more easy the 
 practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. 
 Conceiving then that, agreeably to the advice 
 of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily 
 examination would be necessary, I contrived 
 the following method for conducting that ex- 
 amination. I made a little book, in which I 
 allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled 
 each page with red ink, so as to have seven 
 columns, one for each day of the week, mark- 
 ing each column with a letter for the day. I 
 crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, 
 marking the beginning of each line with the 
 first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, 
 and in its proper column, I might mark, by a 
 53 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 little black spot, every fault I found upon ex- 
 amination to have been committed respecting 
 that virtue upon that day. ... I determined 
 to give a week's strict attention to each of the 
 virtues successively. . . . Proceeding thus to 
 the last, I could go through a course complete 
 in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. 
 And like him who, having a garden to weed, 
 does not attempt to eradicate all the bad 
 herbs at once, which would exceed his reach 
 and his strength, but works on one of the beds 
 at a time, ... so I should have, I hoped, the 
 encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages 
 the progress I made in virtue, by clearing suc- 
 cessively my lines of their spots. ... I en- 
 tered upon the execution of this plan for self- 
 examination, and continued it with occasional 
 intermissions for some time. I was surprised 
 to find myself so much fuller of faults than I 
 had imagined ; but I had the satisfaction of 
 seeing them diminish. . . . After a while I 
 54 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 went through one course only in a year, and 
 afterward only one in several years, till at 
 length I omitted them entirely, being em- 
 ployed in voyages and business abroad, with a 
 multiplicity of affairs that interfered ; but I 
 always carried my little book with me. . . . It 
 may be well my posterity should be informed 
 that to this little artifice, with the blessing of 
 God, their ancestor owed the constant felicity 
 of his life, down 'to his seventy -ninth year, in 
 which this is written." 
 
 THE SELF-MASTERY OF SOCRATES. Xeno- 
 phon, who wrote the Memoirs of Socrates, 
 the wisest and noblest of the Greeks, says 
 of him : " He was so frugal that I doubt 
 whether there is any man whose labor would 
 not earn for him as much as satisfied Soc- 
 rates. He took only such food as he could 
 consume with a relish, and sat down to table 
 prepared to make his appetite for his meal the 
 sauce to season it withal. All kinds of drink 
 55 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 were agreeable to him, because he never drank 
 unless he was thirsty." In another place 
 Xenophon says : " He drew no distinction be- 
 tween wisdom and temperance, for he consid- 
 ered a man who knew what was honorable 
 and good, and how to practice it, and who, 
 recognizing what was base, had the power to 
 withstand it, to be both wise and temperate. 
 Being asked whether he esteemed those who, 
 knowing what was their duty, acted in opposi- 
 tion to that knowledge, as wise, he said : * I 
 regard such people as foolish and intemperate 
 characters; for I suppose that every one, in 
 every case in which it is possible for him to 
 do so, chooses that which he thinks will be 
 best for him.' . . . He asserted that the oppo- 
 site of wisdom was insanity, but he did not 
 reckon ignorance as insanity." Socrates is 
 quoted further by Xenophon as saying : " In 
 what respect does an intemperate man differ 
 from the most ignorant brute? For if any 
 56 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 one, instead of regarding his highest interests, 
 seeks invariably to avail himself of any plea- 
 sure that comes within his reach, what distinc- 
 tion is there between his conduct and that of 
 the most unreasoning beasts ? " 
 
 ONE OF THE SAYINGS OP MARCUS AUEE- 
 LIUS. In the little book of " Thoughts " or 
 "Meditations," written by the Roman Emperor, 
 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, one of the purest 
 and noblest men who ever lived, we find this : 
 " If thou findest in human life anything better 
 than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, 
 in a word, anything better than thy own 
 mind's self-satisfaction in the things which it 
 enables thee to do according to right reason, 
 and in the condition that is assigned to thee 
 without thy own choice ; if, I say, thou seest 
 anything better than this, turn to it with all 
 thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found 
 to be best. But if nothing appears to be bet- 
 ter than the Deity which is planted in thee, 
 57 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 which has subjected to itself all thy appetites, 
 and, as Socrates said, has detached itself from 
 the persuasions of sense, and has submitted 
 itself to the gods, and cares for mankind ; if 
 thou findest everything else smaller and of less 
 value than this, give place to nothing else." 
 
 How FARADAY ACQUIRED SWEETNESS AND 
 GENTLENESS. Professor Tyndall, in his little 
 book on " Faraday as a Discoverer," wrote : 
 " We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness 
 and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, 
 but it is very incomplete. . . . Underneath his 
 sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a vol- 
 cano. He was a man of excitable and fiery na- 
 ture ; but through high self -discipline he had 
 converted the fire into a central glow and mo- 
 tive power of life, instead of permitting it to 
 waste itself in useless passion. 'He that is 
 slow to anger,' saith the sage, * is greater than 
 the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than 
 he that taketh a city.' Faraday was not slow 
 58 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 to anger, but he completely ruled his own 
 spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he 
 captivated all hearts." 
 
 THE POWER OF SELF-CONTROL A DEVEL- 
 OPMENT. In a child of six months " no desire 
 or tendency is stopped by a mental act. At a 
 year old, the rudiments of the great faculty of 
 self-control are clearly apparent in most chil- 
 dren. They will resist the desire to seize the 
 gas-flame, they will not upset the milk-jug, they 
 will obey orders to sit still when they want to 
 run about, all through a higher mental inhibi- 
 tion. But the power of control is just as grad- 
 ual a development as the motions of the hands." 
 T. S. CLOTJSTON, Lectures on Mental Dis- 
 eases (quoted by Professor William James in 
 his Principles of Psychology). 
 
 SPINNING OUR OWN FATES. "Keep the 
 faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratu- 
 itous exercise every day. That is, be system- 
 atically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary 
 59 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 points ; do every day or two something for no 
 other reason than that you would rather not do 
 it, so that when the hour of dire need draws 
 nigh, it may find you not unnerved and un- 
 trained to stand the test. Asceticism of this 
 sort is like the insurance which a man pays on 
 his house and goods. The tax does him no 
 good at the time, and possibly may never bring 
 him a return. But if the fire does come, his 
 having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. 
 So with the man who has daily inured him- 
 self to habits of concentrated attention, en- 
 ergetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary 
 things. He will stand like a tower when 
 everything rocks around him, and when his 
 softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff 
 in the blast. . . . Could the young but real- 
 ize how soon they will become mere walking 
 bundles of habits, they would give more heed 
 to their conduct while in the plastic state. 
 We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, 
 60 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke 
 of virtue or vice leaves its never so little scar. 
 The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's 
 play, excuses himself for every fresh derelic- 
 tion by saying, * I won't count this time.' 
 Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven 
 may not count it ; but it is being counted none 
 the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres 
 the molecules are counting it, registering and 
 storing it up to be used against him when the 
 next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do 
 is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. 
 Of course this has its good side as well as its 
 bad one. As we become permanent drunkards 
 by so many separate drinks, so we become 
 saints in the moral, and experts in the practi- 
 cal and scientific spheres, by so many separate 
 acts and hours of work." WILLIAM JAMES, 
 Psychology (Abridgment of Principles of 
 Psychology), p. 149. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILL. " * To will ' 
 61 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 (in the highest sense of the word) is ... 
 the result of a development ; it is something 
 which no one can do at the beginning of 
 mental life, but which all men learn to do 
 in the course of its unfolding. To exercise 
 * free will ' in any conceivable meaning of 
 this term is not a birthright; it is rather 
 an achievement which different individuals 
 make in greatly differing degrees." Gr. T. 
 LADD, Psychology, Descriptive and Explan- 
 atory, ch. xxvi. 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS OF RIGHT AND 
 WRONG, AND THEIR PRINCIPAL CAUSES 
 
 is easier in most circum- 
 stances than to see what will be Right 
 and what Wrong, in any choice we 
 have to make between two courses of 
 action; and yet most of the wrong- 
 doing of the world is probably done 
 with no clear understanding that it is 
 "Wrong. Not many people really mean 
 to do Wrong. Not many, that is, know 
 clearly that they are turning away from 
 the Line of Right and going wrongly 
 when they take that course. On the 
 other hand, not many, perhaps, really 
 try to know what is Right, in order 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 that they may do it with certainty and 
 make no mistake. The greater num- 
 ber seem to give little thought to the 
 matter, and their notions of Right are 
 so vague as to be easily confused and 
 misled. They prefer Right to Wrong, 
 Thoughtless- and a general intention to be 
 
 ness on the 
 
 subject. guided by it is in their minds ; 
 but the intention is not earnest enough 
 to make them careful and exact. They 
 run no lines of moral survey for them- 
 selves, to lay out their courses in life, 
 but carelessly follow beaten paths. 
 They are satisfied, in other words, to 
 be " as nearly Right as other people/' 
 the " other people " being mostly as 
 careless on the subject as themselves. 
 Thus imperfect notions or standards 
 of Right and Wrong get thoughtlessly 
 
 64 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 accepted, and become established in 
 common practice so widely that more 
 wrong-doing appears to result from 
 them than from all the willful wick- 
 edness of the world. 
 
 For this reason, it seems to be more 
 necessary to persuade people to give 
 careful consideration to questions of 
 Right and Wrong, and to frame dis- 
 tinct rules in their own minds for the 
 guidance of their conduct, than it is to 
 persuade them to prefer the Right. We 
 have seen already how simple a subject 
 it is, and how small a degree of intelli- 
 gence is required for grasping every 
 idea with which it has to do. The false 
 notions that confuse it are just as plain, 
 too, in their falsity, when examined, as 
 the true notions are plainly true. Many 
 
 65 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 that were most misleading in former 
 times have been practically cleared from 
 men's minds by the mere changing of 
 their habits of view, as their dealings 
 with each other have widened out. In 
 the early days of human society a man 
 learned first to see that others in his 
 own tribe were beings like himself, who 
 could claim from him the same treat- 
 ment which he claimed from them. 
 These were his fellow men; all others 
 seemed different to him. Men not of 
 his own tribe were strangers ? and to be 
 TriDai a stranger was quite certainly 
 to be an enemy. Hence, 
 most, if not all, of his first notions of 
 Right and Wrong in dealing with other 
 people extended only to the people of 
 his own tribe. He could see it to be 
 
 66 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 Wrong to take their lives or their pro- 
 perty, or to harm them otherwise, long 
 before he could think it Wrong to kill 
 or rob the strange people of other tribes. 
 In time, this tribal notion of Right and 
 Wrong got slowly enlarged in various 
 directions and in various ways, by the 
 union of kindred tribes into nations, or 
 by the spreading of common religions, 
 which multiplied the number of peo- 
 ple whom each man could feel human 
 fellowship with, and so recognize as 
 having moral claims on himself. 
 
 That process has been going on 
 through centuries, until now it can be 
 said that nearly all the hedges which 
 used to grow high between people of 
 different nations, different races, differ- 
 ent religions, to keep them from f eel- 
 
 67 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ing that they were fellow men, of like 
 nature and having like claims on each 
 other, are going to decay. The one 
 which seems hardest to destroy is the 
 hedge of color, between white men and 
 black, or yellow, or brown. There was 
 views of a time when slavery was one 
 
 slavery, for 
 
 example. o f the commonest iniquities 
 of the world. Any mode of capture, 
 anywhere, which supplied the slave 
 markets with desirable men, women, 
 and children, was winked at by the 
 moral feeling of that age. Then there 
 came a feeling, among the peoples 
 most advanced in civilization, that only 
 savages or captives taken in war could 
 rightly be made slaves. In the next 
 growth of moral enlightenment on the 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 subject, no enslaving of a white man 
 was approved by the white races, but 
 the black man might still be caught 
 and sold to a whit% master with no 
 sense of Wrong being done. Finally, 
 at the present time, all slavery of hu- 
 man beings, black or white, is con- 
 demned by the general opinion of 
 mankind. The most important of the 
 workings of what we call civilization, 
 
 of Christian civilization especially, 
 
 is seen in this. It has been slowly 
 bringing the different peoples of the 
 earth to a knowledge of each other 
 which compels them to see that every 
 man is the fellow of every other, alike 
 in nature, alike in moral claims, and 
 that when the Golden Rule of Eight 
 
 69 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 i4\k^ 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 between any two has been found, it 
 must be the Rule of Eight for every 
 two and for all. 
 
 The most serious cause of mistake 
 and confusion in the moral perceptions 
 of mankind is being thus slowly re- 
 moved; but another, hardly less mis- 
 chievous, remains in full force. This 
 latter is found in the view which many 
 people take of the Laws by which they 
 are humanly governed; the Laws, that 
 is, of their nation or state. They seem 
 to think that these are sufficient rules 
 of conduct for the right guidance of 
 the subjects of the state in their deal- 
 ing with one another. They accept 
 Mischievous them as standards of sound 
 
 notions o! 
 
 law. morality, and feel, no doubt, 
 
 that they are entirely righteous if they 
 
 70 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 live up to the requirements of the 
 Law which their legislatures and courts 
 have set forth. No idea could be more 
 destructive of a true understanding 
 of Right and Wrong. These Laws 
 which our courts enforce, not only are 
 not meant to be moral rules, but they 
 could not, by any possibility, have that 
 character or quality given to them. 
 Nobody can frame directions that will 
 tell us, in every case of our dealing 
 with another, what conduct is called 
 for by the Golden Rule. As a little 
 thought will show us, each case raises 
 a question which the person concerned 
 must settle for himself. The man A, 
 in our diagram on page 9, must learn 
 from his own consciousness the Line 
 of Right Conduct which he claims 
 71 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 from B, in order to give a true moral 
 aim in his own conduct towards B. 
 In no other way can his action be 
 rightly fitted to its circumstances; in 
 no other way can it be a moral act of 
 his own. If his line of conduct is sim- 
 ply that which the Law lays down, and 
 which its courts can compel him to fol- 
 low, it is not his own, and therefore, as 
 we have seen, there can be little or no 
 morality in his obedience to it, no mat- 
 ter how Right it may be. 
 
 Since it is plainly true that not many 
 of these Laws of human making would 
 be needed if every man did to others 
 as he would have them do to him, it 
 follows that most of them are made 
 solely for the coercion of people who 
 will not learn for themselves what is 
 
 72 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 Eight, and do it of their own accord. 
 It is not the object of the Law to in- 
 struct or guide those who wish to act 
 rightly, that being impossible, as was 
 said before. The best that The object 
 
 of human 
 
 legislatures and courts can do law - 
 is to roughly mark lines that shall be 
 somewhat nearly Lines of Right, for 
 various classes of dealings between 
 people one or both of whom need to 
 be forced to do what is Eight. There- 
 fore one who takes guidance from the 
 Law is not morally guided at all; he is 
 only kept from going Wrong beyond 
 a certain line. 
 
 For example, there are hundreds of 
 circumstances in which a man may 
 owe a debt of some description that is 
 not exactly set forth in any Law, and 
 
 73 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 which he cannot be compelled to pay. 
 There are just as many circumstances, 
 too, in which he may get possession of 
 property that does not justly belong to 
 him, but which there is a failure of 
 Law to compel him to restore. If he 
 looks into his own mind for the Rule 
 of Right to direct his conduct in such 
 a case, and imagines himself changed 
 in place with the other party con- 
 cerned, he is sure to feel and know 
 what his own claim of Right would 
 be, and to understand that the due of 
 Right from him is settled by that. 
 But if, with moral carelessness, he hag 
 Legal honesty fallen into the practice oi 
 
 not moral 
 
 honesty. leaving questions of Righl 
 and "Wrong to be settled for him by 
 lawyers and courts, instead of form- 
 
 74 
 
CONFUSED NOTIONS 
 
 ing and cultivating the habit of appeal 
 to the Golden Rule, applied by his 
 own moral sense, he commits a great 
 "Wrong, half understanding, perhaps, 
 that it is so, but believing, or trying 
 to believe, that the Law is responsible 
 for it, and not himself. A large part 
 of the wrong-doing of the world comes 
 from this deplorable source. 
 
 EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 SIB WALTER SCOTT'S EXAMPLE IN THE 
 PAYMENT OF A DEBT FAR BEYOND THE 
 REQUIREMENTS OF LAW. The publishing 
 house of Ballantyne & Co., of Edinburgh, 
 was forced to stop business in 1826, owing 
 an immensely large debt. Sir Walter Scott, 
 who had invested money in the business and 
 become a partner, was legally liable for this 
 debt to the extent of all the property which 
 75 
 
A PRIMER OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 he then possessed, and no more. "But," 
 says his son-in-law and biographer, Mr. Lock- 
 hart, " he regarded the embarrassment of his 
 commercial firm, on the whole, with the feel- 
 ings not of a merchant but of a gentleman. 
 He thought that by devoting the rest of his 
 life to the service of his creditors he could, in 
 the upshot, pay the last farthing he owed 
 them. . . . Nor had Sir Walter calculated 
 wrongly. He paid the penalty of health and 
 life, but he saved his honor and his self- 
 respect." Between January, 1826, and Jan- 
 uary, 1828, by prodigious labors in writing 
 and by selling the copyright in his books, 
 he paid off nearly 40,000 (1200,000) of 
 the great debt, and wrote in his diary : " I 
 might have employed the money I have made 
 since the insolvency ... in compounding my 
 debts. But I could not have slept sound, as I 
 now can, under the comfortable impression of 
 receiving the thanks of my creditors, and the 
 76 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a 
 man of honor and honesty. I see before me a 
 long, tedious, and dark path, but it leads to 
 stainless reputation. If I die in the harrows, 
 as is very likely, I shall die with honor ; if I 
 achieve my task, I shall have the thanks of 
 all concerned, and the approbation of my own 
 conscience." At his death, in 1832 (broken 
 down by incessant labor), no less than 54,000 
 ($270,000) of the debt remained still to be 
 paid; but moneys received on the insurance 
 of his life, and advances made by publishers 
 on future sales of his writings, enabled his 
 executors to clear it entirely away. 
 
 THE SIMILAR EXAMPLE SET BY GEORGE 
 W. CURTIS. George William Curtis, one of 
 the most delightful of American writers and 
 one of the noblest of men, became in middle 
 life a partner with others in the publication of 
 " Putnam's Monthly Magazine," which failed. 
 Mr. Curtis felt called upon, by his own -sense of 
 77 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 right, to make good the loss to creditors, and 
 accordingly he assumed a large indebtedness, 
 " for which," says his biographer, Mr. Edward 
 Gary, " he was not legally bound ; " and for 
 nearly twenty years he labored incessantly to 
 pay it, devoting to that purpose the money 
 which he earned by lecturing, from city to 
 city, throughout the United States. The cost 
 to him of this long and patient undertaking 
 was not only heavy labor, " but much hard- 
 ship and exposure, much sacrifice of the joys 
 of a home peculiarly dear, and the almost 
 complete abandonment of scholarly pursuits 
 to which he had looked with longing." This 
 " was done in the quiet and unquestioning 
 obedience to the law of simple, manly fidelity 
 that was a law of his nature, and as integral 
 a part of it as his kindness of heart and gen- 
 tleness of manners." 
 
 A MERCHANT'S EXPERIENCE. It is re- 
 lated of Mr. Samuel Appleton, formerly an 
 78 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 eminent merchant of Boston, that he was 
 asked on one occasion his opinion of the 
 general honesty of mankind. "Very favor- 
 able," he replied; "very generally, I think 
 they mean to be honest. I have never in my 
 life met with more than three or four cases 
 in which I thought a man intended to be dis- 
 honest with me." 
 
 WHAT RUSKIN THOUGHT OF EVERYBODY'S 
 ABILITY TO KNOW ALWAYS WHAT is RIGHT. 
 The following is from a dialogue between a 
 teacher and his pupils on the subject of our 
 ability to know what is Right and what is 
 Wrong. It is taken from Mr. John Ruskin's 
 little book entitled " The Ethics of the Dust," 
 in which many moral lessons suggested by the 
 structure and formation of crystals are finely 
 and beautifully discussed. 
 
 Mary. Must not one repent when one does 
 wrong, and hesitate when one can't see one's 
 way? 
 
 79 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 L. You have no business at all to do 
 wrong ; nor to get into any way that you can- 
 not see. Your intelligence should always be 
 far in advance of your act. Whenever you 
 do not know what you are about you are sure 
 to be doing wrong. 
 
 Kathleen. Oh, dear, but I never know 
 what I am about ! 
 
 L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal 
 to know, if you know that. And you find that 
 you have done wrong afterwards ; and perhaps 
 some day you may begin to know, or at least 
 think, what you are about. 
 
 Isabel. But surely people can't do very 
 wrong if they don't know, can they ? I mean, 
 they can't be very naughty. They can be 
 wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make 
 mistakes ; but not wrong in the dreadful way. 
 I can't express what I mean; but there are 
 two sorts of wrong, are there not ? 
 
 L. Yes, Isabel ; but you will find that the 
 80 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 great difference is between kind and unkind 
 wrongs, not between meant and unmeant 
 wrong. Very few people really mean to do 
 wrong, in a deep sense, none. They only 
 don't know what they are about. . . . 
 
 May. But if people do as well as they can 
 see how, surely that is the Eight for them, 
 is n't it? 
 
 L. No, May, not a bit of it; Eight is 
 Eight, and Wrong is Wrong. It is only the 
 fool who does Wrong, and says he " did it for 
 the best." And if there 's one sort of person 
 in the world that the Bible speaks harder of 
 than another, it is fools. . . . 
 
 May. But surely nobody can always know 
 what is Eight ? 
 
 L. Yes, you always can, for to-day ; and 
 if you do what you see of it to-day, you will 
 see more of it, and more clearly, to-morrow. 
 
 81 
 
VI 
 
 INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 IN many of the words that we use to 
 express moral ideas we find something 
 to think about if we trace them back 
 to the older uses they had, and see 
 what their moral meaning was when it 
 shaped itself first in men's minds. The 
 word INTEGRITY, for example, stands for 
 a great deal in our language at the 
 present day. It brings up in us a 
 large, general, rather vague idea of 
 moral character, which is apt to flit 
 through our thoughts without ever be- 
 coming quite distinct. But in the be- 
 ginning it carried as simple, as clear, 
 and as well defined a notion as ever 
 
 82 
 
INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 took form in the thinking of mankind. 
 It was borrowed for our English speech 
 from the Latin, where it came from the 
 word integer, meaning un- ^^tii* 
 touched, unbroken, whole. In wlloleness - 
 that sense it was taken to represent 
 anything that can be thought of as 
 unimpaired and complete in the per- 
 fection of itself. We can use it pro- 
 perly in no other sense. 
 
 But the idea of wholeness is identical 
 with the idea of health. The two 
 words whole and health show two 
 sides of the same meaning, having 
 ''grown into use from the same root, 
 far back in the early word-making of 
 our speech. The first thought in them 
 was the thought of a condition in 
 something (no matter what) which can 
 
 83 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 be changed to another less perfect 
 state. But that is a change which 
 one cannot help feeling is in an un- 
 natural direction, being made by in- 
 jury, or by taking some part of the 
 
 Wholeness is thin S aWa J' The state f 
 
 wholeness or health in any- 
 thing seemed, therefore, to be its nat- 
 ural state, the condition in which it 
 ought to be. If our English language 
 had all grown up from the old Ger- 
 manic stock that gave us these words 
 whole and health, we should now be 
 using one or the other of them, no 
 doubt, to express what we mean when 
 we speak of a " man of Integrity." As 
 it is, they help to show us what mean- 
 ing the word was intended to bear in 
 our minds, by those forefathers of ours 
 
 84 
 
INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 who took the Latin word for whole- 
 ness, instead of their own, for use in 
 a moral sense. The man of Integrity 
 is a man who morally is in the state 
 of health, in the natural state of 
 his being, in the condition Themanol 
 which ought to be. The de- lntegrlty< 
 sire which actuates his conduct is the 
 desire to know and to do what is 
 Eight, to his fellows and himself. He 
 exercises and cultivates his perception 
 of Eight, and his will to choose it, in 
 all the aims and actions of his life. 
 He is the man of Integrity because he 
 tries to perfect his moral being, mak- 
 ing the most and best of the nature 
 with which he is endowed. 
 
 We describe such a man in another 
 way when we say that he has " a high 
 
 85 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 sense of honor/' or that he is " honor- 
 able/' or that he is an " honest man." 
 We do so, that is, if we use the words 
 HONOR and HONEST with a due sense of 
 what they mean. The true idea ex- 
 pressed in the word Honor is that of 
 an exalted tribute of respect and rever- 
 ence, paid to some object of surpass- 
 ing nobility and worth. Therefore, a 
 truly " high sense of Honor " in a 
 man's mind is a high feeling of self- 
 respect. It is the feeling of one who so 
 esteems himself that his whole nature 
 The "sense shrinks from wrong-doing as 
 
 of honor "is 
 
 seii-respect. a cleanly hand shrinks from 
 the touch of filth. He honors himself 
 too much to be lowered willingly in 
 his own consciousness by any act that 
 seems base mean Wrong. The 
 
 86 
 
INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 same high sense of what is due to his 
 own dignity of being will justly forbid 
 him to submit willingly to wrong-do- 
 ing from others; but that can never 
 be so urgent in a truly honorable mind 
 as the repulsion which keeps it from 
 any base prompting in itself. There 
 is nothing that even resembles a real 
 " sense of Honor " in the shallow self- 
 conceit which hurries men to retaliate 
 and " avenge " some insult or slight. 
 This is coming to be seen much more 
 generally than it used to be, and the 
 barbaric state of mind that formerly, 
 in all countries, made dueling a so- 
 called " affair of honor," prevails in 
 few regions now. More and more, as 
 people are brought to think carefully 
 of such matters, it will be seen that a 
 87 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 man's Honor is harmed very slightly 
 by any offense he can receive from 
 another, compared with the incurable 
 wounding and staining that it suffers 
 from the least baseness in his own 
 acts. 
 
 Honest and Honesty are very com- 
 mon words in our every-day talk; but 
 we do not always use them with the 
 full meaning they ought to have. 
 When we say that a man is Honest 
 we should expect it to be understood 
 that we believe him to be a man who 
 is careful of his Honor, in all that 
 he does, says, and thinks. But we 
 often do call men Honest who are 
 The honest on ty careful to do nothing 
 contrary to Law, or to the 
 common practice or opinion of the 
 
 88 
 
INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 community in which they live. That 
 gives a most unworthy meaning to 
 the word, and disfigures the great idea 
 of self -reverence and respect which it 
 ought to carry to our minds, and which 
 we cannot afford to lose. The truly 
 Honest man not only does what is 
 Right for his own sake, and strives 
 always to be sure in his knowledge 
 of it, but he strives to think Right 
 thoughts and to feel Right feelings. 
 He is as Honest to himself as to 
 others. He sees that it is as much 
 against his Honor to deceive himself, 
 or to allow himself to be led astray 
 in his opinions or beliefs by careless 
 thinking, or by unnecessary ignorance, 
 as it is against his Honor to mislead 
 other men. In this case he is con- 
 89 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 sidering the Line of Right between 
 his whole self, as an intelligent, free 
 being, made up of reason, will, and 
 Honesty to feeling, on one side, and that 
 part of himself, on the other, 
 which thinks; and he finds a claim 
 on his own thought that is like the 
 claim to truth which he makes on 
 other men. He brings, then, all the 
 forces of his being into action to fulfill 
 the claim, and to be, therefore, true to 
 himself. He stimulates and enlightens 
 his thinking, to the utmost of his abil- 
 ity; disciplines his passions and feel- 
 ings; strengthens his will; trains his 
 habits ; and so makes Rightness, in be- 
 lief, inclination, and action, the chief 
 end of his life. That, and no less than 
 
 90 
 
INTEGRITY HONOR HONESTY 
 
 that, makes the character of a really 
 Honest Man. 
 
 EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 THE HONESTY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 Abraham Lincoln, when he practiced law in 
 Illinois, got the familiar name among the peo- 
 ple of " Honest Old Abe," and was looked 
 upon as the typical Honest Man. What won 
 him this name and reputation was described 
 by Judge Drummond, one of the judges of 
 the courts in which Mr. Lincoln practiced, as 
 follows : " He never intentionally misrepre- 
 sented the evidence of a witness nor the argu- 
 ment of an opponent. He met both squarely, 
 and if he could not explain the one or answer 
 the other, substantially admitted it. He never 
 misstated the law, according to his own intel- 
 ligent view of it." This is quoted by Messrs. 
 Nicolay and Hay, in their great life of Lin- 
 
 91 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 coin, and they add that he always avoided a 
 cause which he thought to be wrong " when 
 he could consistently with the rules of his 
 profession. He would often persuade a fair- 
 minded litigant of the injustice of his case 
 and induce him to give it up. His partner, 
 Mr. Herndon, relates a speech in point which 
 Lincoln once made to a man who offered him 
 an objectionable case : ' Yes, there is no rea- 
 sonable doubt that I can gain your case for 
 you. I can set a whole neighborhood at log- 
 gerheads ; I can distress a widowed mother 
 and her six fatherless children, and thereby 
 get for you six hundred dollars, which right- 
 fully belongs, it appears to me, as much to 
 them as it does to you. I shall not take your 
 case, but I will give a little advice for nothing. 
 You seem a sprightly, energetic man. I would 
 advise you to try your hand at making six 
 hundred dollars in some other way.' " 
 
 DEGREES OF HONESTY. " Many are they 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 who are capable of being honest because dis- 
 honesty is an injury to a fellow ; a less num- 
 ber are honest because honesty is a duty. . . . 
 Fewer still are they who are honest because 
 they would scorn to smirch themselves with 
 baseness, and who dread the remorse of seem- 
 ing mean in their own eyes. But very few 
 indeed are they who are honest with no 
 thought of any consequence, near or remote, 
 external or entirely within themselves ; who 
 love to dwell with honesty as they love to 
 inhabit a region of exquisite beauty, or to 
 linger amid the fairest creations of genius, 
 solely because these are in themselves delight- 
 ful." A. SUTHERLAND, The Origin and 
 Growth of the Moral Instinct, ch. xvii. (v. 2.) 
 EMERSON ON THE EFFECT OF PUTTING 
 TEN DISHONEST MERCHANTS IN THE PLACE 
 OF TEN HONEST ONES. In his essay on 
 " Wealth " Emerson says : " If you take out 
 of State Street [Boston] the ten honestest 
 93 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 merchants and put in ten roguish persons 
 controlling the same amount of capital, the 
 rates of insurance will indicate it ; the sound- 
 ness of banks will show it ; the highways will 
 be less secure; the schools will feel it, the 
 children will bring home their little dose of 
 the poison ; the judge will sit less firmly on 
 the bench, and his decisions will be less up- 
 right ; he has lost so much support and con- 
 straint, which all need ; and the pulpit will 
 betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple- 
 tree, if you take out every day for a number 
 of days a load of loam and put in a load of 
 sand about its roots, will find it out. An 
 apple-tree is a stupid kind of creature, but if 
 this treatment be pursued for a short time I 
 think it would begin to mistrust something. 
 And if you should take out of the powerful 
 class engaged in trade a hundred good men 
 and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just 
 the same thing, introduce a demoralizing in- 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 stitution, would not the dollar, which is not 
 much stupider than an apple-tree, presently 
 find it out ? The value of a dollar is social, 
 as it is created by society. Every man who 
 removes into this city with any purchasable 
 talent or skill in him, gives to every man's 
 labor in the city a new worth. If a talent is 
 anywhere born into the world, the community 
 of nations is enriched ; and much more with a 
 new degree of probity." 
 
 95 
 
VII 
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 ALL the dealings among people which 
 bear the general name of " Business " 
 are supposed to form part of a great 
 system of arrangements for exchang- 
 ing labor, to the end that each person 
 may have the help of many, in the 
 different kinds of work which our 
 comfort and happiness demand, in- 
 stead of being left to do everything 
 for himself. The sole reason for buy- 
 ing anything from another, instead of 
 making or trying to make it for one- 
 self, and the sole reason for producing 
 things to sell to others, instead of pro- 
 ducing only for one's own wants, is 
 
 96 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 found, of course, in the convenience 
 and benefit resulting to everybody 
 from such a division and exchange of 
 the work of the world. For the same 
 reason, and no other, buyers and sell- 
 ers are willing to pay profits, interest 
 on capital, commissions, etc., to mer- 
 chants, shippers, bankers, and other 
 " middlemen " in commerce, who man- 
 age and conduct the exchange. In 
 other words, the whole arrangement 
 of what we call " business" is one of 
 reciprocity, expected to be profitable 
 and beneficial to all concerned. 
 
 But the principle of reciprocity 
 (which means, literally, a movement 
 backwards and forwards) is the princi- 
 ple of the Golden Eule ; and when the 
 Chinese philosopher, Confucius, gave 
 
 97 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 that Kule to his disciples he is said 
 to have described it by a word which 
 signifies reciprocity in the language 
 that he used. Hence, the natural, ex- 
 pected, rightful working of all trade, 
 all industrial dealing, all " business," is 
 on the backward and forward straight 
 The spirit line of the Golden Eule, and 
 
 natural to 
 
 trade. the spirit natural to it is one 
 
 that would strive to make it beneficial 
 to all, so that its purpose may be al- 
 ways fulfilled. Any other disposition 
 in trade, or in occupations connected 
 with trade, makes it a sham and a fal- 
 sity, pretending to be what it is not, 
 and needing to be rooted out of the 
 world. 
 
 If all trade could go on between near 
 neighbors and friends, and no others, 
 
 98 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 this fact would be kept more in mind 
 than it is. In so small a circle of deal- 
 ings the claim of each to equal bene- 
 fits from the arrangement of exchange 
 would then make itself constantly heard, 
 and none could lose very easily the 
 sense of being bound, both in honor 
 (self-respect) and by self-interest, to 
 give to others the good value he would 
 have them give to him, which is the 
 Golden Rule in its commercial form. 
 But our dealings are with all the ends 
 of the earth, what goes from us being 
 scattered through every continent, and 
 what returns to us coming from a thou- 
 sand unknown hands, of every color 
 and race ; and this seems to cause people 
 to lose sight very often of what would 
 be plain to them if buyer and seller were 
 
 99 
 
A PEIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 not so far apart. In many minds the 
 operations of industrial commerce are, 
 apparently, never thought of as belong- 
 ing to a great beneficent system of 
 A Descent exchanges among the people 
 earth, by the working 
 
 of which they seek together 
 to make the most of their labor, and 
 to obtain from it the largest good. 
 To such minds, on the contrary, the 
 world's " business " seems to be looked 
 on as having the nature of a barbaric 
 scramble, for the most that can be 
 snatched out of other hands, giving up 
 as little as possible in return. If this 
 view and practice came to be general, 
 trade would cease, and with it civiliza- 
 tion would come to an end. 
 
 To say that the expected result the 
 
 100 
 
BIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 proper and right result from every 
 transaction that belongs truly to the in- 
 dustrial and commercial " business " of 
 the world is beneficial to all the parties 
 engaged in it, is not to say that failures 
 of that result are caused by wrong- 
 doing alone. Mistakes, miscalculations, 
 accidents, and thousands of the circum- 
 stances in life that cannot be foreseen, 
 are constantly interfering with the com- 
 plicated exchanges of mankind, to make 
 some people losers, through no fault on 
 the part of those who gain. How far in 
 such cases the gainers can rightly take 
 the full advantage thrown into their 
 hands is a question to be settled by the 
 Golden Rule, applied by each man for 
 himself. But nothing that happens in 
 
 this way is treacherous to the under- 
 101 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 standing and expectation of fair trade, 
 
 The treachery while that treachery is prac- 
 ticed in every smallest fraud. 
 To make and market things which are 
 not what they seem to be, by adulter- 
 ation, by scamped work, or by false 
 labeling, is not only to steal and to lie, 
 but it is to be guilty of an infamous 
 treason against the system of indus- 
 trial exchange which upholds the civ- 
 ilization of the world. That is the 
 actual nature of a detestable kind of 
 crime which seems to increase in the 
 manufacturing and trading of the world, 
 and which is treated too leniently by 
 public opinion as well as by law. 
 
 For conduct in " business " dealings 
 there seem to be two Golden Rules, 
 
 one positive (as stated already), To 
 102 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 give to others the good value you would 
 have them give to you ; the The two 
 
 Golden Rules 
 
 other negative, To take no of business. 
 gain that is got by MAKING another 
 suffer loss. The former is not likely 
 to be questioned ; but the latter may 
 be, for it condemns dealings of an im- 
 mensely large class, which great num- 
 bers of people are assuming to be 
 either entirely Right, or no more than 
 slightly Wrong. Betting, for example, 
 is a transaction of the nature referred 
 to, in its simplest form. That one 
 should gain from a bet, it is neces- 
 sary that the other should lose. His 
 gain is made ~by the other's loss. The 
 loss is an intended consequence of the 
 gain. In this respect the transfer of 
 property or money from one person 
 
 103 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 to another occurs precisely as it does 
 by theft. But the loser of a bet has 
 consented in advance to his loss, while 
 the loser by a theft has not ; and this 
 important difference of circumstance is 
 supposed by many people to cleanse the 
 betting transaction of all wrong. But 
 does it ? What is a bet but an agree- 
 ment between two persons that one 
 shall be allowed to despoil the other of 
 
 Betting ana a g iven sum of money, and 
 that some uncertain or chance 
 happening in a horse-race or a game 
 of cards, perhaps shall decide which 
 is to be the despoiler and which the 
 despoiled? The loser has consented in 
 advance to submit to the spoliation 
 but why ? Simply because he hoped and 
 felt sure that the spoil would come to 
 
 104 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 himself. The motive of the bet on both 
 sides was that hope, which is plainly as 
 immoral, as contrary to Eight, as any 
 motive in human conduct can be. The 
 loser makes no gift of the money he 
 has lost ; he yields it under the compul- 
 sion of ill-luck. If he had yielded it to 
 the compulsion of a pistol the real na- 
 ture of his loss would have been the 
 same ; but he himself, in that case, 
 would have had no partnership in the 
 wrong-doing of the affair. As it is, 
 he has made himself accessory to the 
 Wrong, which does not better it in the 
 moral view. 
 
 If this is rightly reasoned (and where 
 is there a flaw in the reasoning?), it 
 condemns all gaming for money ; but 
 it goes much farther than that. A 
 
 105 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 deplorably large part of what goes by 
 the name of " business " in the world 
 has acquired the nature of betting, 
 Betting and simply that and nothing else. 
 
 gambling In 
 
 business. Instead of actually buying 
 and selling such commodities as corn 
 and pork, or such pieces of property 
 as the shares of a railroad, men stake 
 money on the chances of a future rise 
 or fall in the prices of such things. It 
 is called " speculation ; " but it is the 
 speculation of gambling, not specula- 
 tion in trade. It has nothing to do with 
 trade. It connects itself in no way with 
 the producing or the exchanging of 
 things. Those who engage in it are en- 
 tirely outside of all the movements of 
 useful industry and real trade, standing 
 as onlookers to watch them and to bet 
 
 106 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 with each other on the future course 
 those movements will take, doing what 
 they can, meantime, to disturb the nat- 
 ural market by falsifying reports and 
 exciting cries. Such so-called " busi- 
 ness " bears no resemblance to the use- 
 ful busying which the word properly 
 implies ; and yet the two are much 
 confused in the common notions of 
 " business " that now prevail. A clear 
 distinction between them needs to be 
 drawn ; and a still clearer distinction 
 between equitable gains derived from 
 the beneficial commerce of mankind, 
 and the predatory gains which one may 
 get by making another lose. 
 
 Speculation in actual trade is some- 
 thing very different from this. It is an 
 exercise of foresight, calculation, know- 
 
 107 
 
A PEIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ledge, which enters more or less into 
 all commercial dealing, and its right- 
 specuiative ness depends on the care that 
 is taken to harm no others. 
 It is manifestly Eight that one who 
 carefully cultivates and uses his intel- 
 ligence to some serviceable end should 
 have the benefit of an advantage over 
 those who do not ; and this can come 
 to him in trade with no loss to others, 
 whose benefit is merely less, and justly 
 less, than his own. He is bound by 
 the great Rule of Right to use any 
 advantage he may happen to possess, 
 whether of strength in his body, or of 
 energy in his spirit, or of capability in 
 his mind, with careful consideration for 
 his fellow men. That marks a limit 
 which each must find for himself. 
 
 103 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 "Within that limit, if he is performing a 
 useful part in society, as a middleman 
 between producer and consumer, it is 
 clearly his right to buy to-day instead 
 of to-morrow, and sell to-morrow in- 
 stead of to-day, with some risk of loss 
 for a chance of increased gain ; and this 
 is speculative trade or " business " in 
 the proper sense of the words. What 
 one gains in it is not obtained by mak- 
 ing another lose. A may win a profit 
 which B, with equal sagacity or alert- 
 ness, might have had ; but A's gain 
 makes B no poorer than he was before. 
 
 EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 FRAUD WORSE THAN THEFT IN THE MOR- 
 ALS OF THE LILLIPUTIANS. In the satirical 
 romance of " Gulliver's Travels," Dean Swift 
 represents Gulliver as saying of the Lillipu- 
 109 
 
A PKIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 tians : " They look upon fraud as a greater 
 crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to 
 punish it with death ; for they allege that care 
 and vigilance, with a very common under- 
 standing, may preserve a man's goods from 
 thieves, but honesty has no fence against su- 
 perior cunning ; and since it is necessary that 
 there should be a perpetual intercourse of buy- 
 ing and selling, and dealing upon credit, where 
 fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no 
 law to punish it, the honest dealer is always 
 undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I 
 remember, when I was once interceding with 
 the king for a criminal who had wronged his 
 master of a great sum of money, which he had 
 received by order and ran away with, and hap- 
 pening to tell his majesty, by way of extenua- 
 tion, that it was only a breach of trust, the 
 emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer 
 as a defence the greatest aggravation of the 
 crime ; and truly I had little to say in return, 
 110 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 farther than the common answer, that differ- 
 ent nations had different customs ; for, I con- 
 fess, I was heartily ashamed." 
 
 CICERO ON THE MORALS OF TRADE. The 
 following passages are from chapters v., vi., 
 xii., and xiii. of the Third Book of Cicero's 
 " Offices," the treatise on Moral Duties which 
 he wrote for the instruction of his son Mar- 
 cus : 
 
 " To take away wrongfully from another, 
 and for one man to advance his own interest 
 by the disadvantage of another man, is more 
 contrary to nature than death, than poverty, 
 than pain, than any other evils which can be- 
 fall either our bodies or external circum- 
 stances. For, in the first place, it destroys 
 human intercourse and society ; for if each for 
 his own gain shall despoil or offer violence to 
 another, the inevitable consequence is that the 
 society of the human race, which is most con- 
 sistent with nature, will be broken asunder. 
 Ill 
 
A PKIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 ... It is indeed allowed, nature not opposing, 
 that each should rather acquire for himself 
 than for another, whatever pertains to the en- 
 joyment of life ; but nature does not allow 
 this, that by the spoliation of others we should 
 increase our own means, resources and opu- 
 lence." " One thing, therefore, ought to be 
 aimed at by all men: that the interest of 
 each individually and of all collectively should 
 be the same ; for if each should grasp at his 
 individual interest, all human society will be 
 dissolved." 
 
 In another part of this fine treatise, Cicero il- 
 lustrates his idea of honor or Tightness in trade 
 by the following example : " Cases often occur 
 when profit seems to be opposed to rectitude, 
 so that it is necessary to consider whether it is 
 plainly opposed, or can be reconciled with rec- 
 titude. Of that sort are these questions r If, 
 for example, an honest man has brought from 
 Alexandria to Rhodes a great quantity of 
 112 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 grain during the scarcity and famine of the 
 Rhodians, and the very high prices of provi- 
 sions; if this same man should know that 
 many merchants had sailed from Alexandria, 
 and should have seen their vessels on the 
 way, laden with corn, and bound for Rhodes, 
 should he tell that to the Rhodians, or, keep- 
 ing silence, should he sell his corn at as 
 high a price as possible ? We are supposing 
 a wise and honest man; we are inquiring 
 about the deliberation and consultation of one 
 who would not conceal the matter from the 
 Rhodians if he thought it dishonorable, but is 
 in doubt whether it be dishonorable." Cicero 
 discusses the question and decides that it 
 would be dishonorable for the corn-merchant to 
 conceal from the Rhodians the coming of the 
 other ships with larger supplies of food. For, 
 he asks, " as to this sort of concealment, who 
 does not see what kind of thing it is, and what 
 kind of man will practice it ? Certainly not 
 113 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 an open, not a single-minded, not an ingenu- 
 ous, not a just, not a good man." Some mod- 
 ern commentators on this passage in Cicero's 
 writings have tried to find ingenious reasons 
 for disputing his judgment ; but the great old 
 Roman's sense of Honor and Right was finer 
 and truer than theirs. 
 
 HORACE MANN'S VIEW. " The man who 
 sells one thing for another, or less for more, or 
 an inferior- for a superior quality, though he 
 may enter a large item on the ' Profit ' side 
 of his earthly ledger, yet, in the Book of Life, 
 he will find it entered on the side of ' Loss.' 
 . . . What are palaces and equipages, what 
 though a man could cover a continent with his 
 title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce, 
 compared with conscious rectitude ; with a 
 face that never turns pale at the accuser's 
 voice ; with a bosom that never throbs at the 
 fear of exposure ; with a heart that might be 
 turned inside out and discover no stain of dis- 
 114 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN "BUSINESS" 
 
 honor ? To have done no man a wrong ; to 
 have put your signature to no paper to which 
 the purest angel in heaven might not have 
 been an attesting witness; to walk and live, 
 unseduced, within arm's length of what is 
 not your own; with nothing between your 
 desire and its gratification but the invisible 
 law of rectitude, this is to be a man." 
 HORACE MANN, Thoughts for a Young Man 
 (in Lectures on Various Subjects), p. 67. 
 
 WHAT is CALLED "A GOOD BARGAIN." 
 " The theory of the modern bargain appears 
 to be that of the mediaeval judicial combat ; 
 let each do his worst, and God will protect 
 the right. . . . What is ordinarily termed ' a 
 good bargain ' is, morally, a bad bargain ; it 
 is unequal, and good for one party only. 
 Whenever such a transaction takes place some 
 one is plundered. It is the sufferer, in such 
 cases, who usually regrets the occurrence ; in 
 an ideal society it would be the gainer who 
 115 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 would mourn. . . . Sackcloth and ashes are 
 the proper covering of the man who has made 
 'a good bargain.'" New Englander, 38: 
 157. 
 
 116 
 
VIII 
 
 EIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 IN many parts of our conduct we act 
 in two characters, sometimes in more. 
 We act always as single persons, re- 
 lated alike to all other persons, and 
 always, too, as members of some soci- 
 ety or body of persons united for some 
 special purposes of action as a whole. 
 The most important of such societies 
 are those great ones that form nations 
 or states, wherein we are joined to- 
 gether for common purposes of gov- 
 ernment and law; and when these are 
 democratic, as in America, we act again 
 in two characters, as the governors 
 and as the governed. "We act, that 
 
 117 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 is, by combination in shaping the gov- 
 me governed ernment and the law which 
 
 are the gov- 
 ernors. we act individually in sub- 
 mitting to. This government of each 
 by all, all taking authority from each, 
 is not described with strict correctness 
 when we call it " self-government," 
 as we commonly do; since each self 
 shares both the ruling and the being 
 ruled with millions of selves besides 
 his own. 
 
 "When we carefully consider these 
 several relations in which we live and 
 act as citizens of the democratic re- 
 public of the United States, we find 
 that our political conduct as citizens 
 needs serious thinking to make it 
 Right. We have to think of what we 
 justly owe to ourselves, to our own 
 
 118 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 judgment of Tightness and wisdom in 
 measures of government, and to our 
 own highest interests, as affected by 
 the general state of things which gov- 
 ernment produces in the land. Equally, 
 we have to think of the welfare, the 
 claims, the interests, of nearly eighty 
 millions of people besides ourselves, 
 
 for whom we hold our polit- Responsibil- 
 ity to our f el- 
 
 ical powers in trust, and for low citizens, 
 whom we act in every vote we cast 
 and every political opinion we declare, 
 as much as for ourselves. In assum- 
 ing to be partners in the government 
 of a nation we assume a responsibility 
 to all the subjects of the government. 
 Though each citizen is but one of 
 fourteen millions and more who take 
 part in the direction of the government 
 
 119 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 by their votes, he is just as responsible 
 for so much as his action affects, or 
 might affect, as he would be if he 
 governed autocratically from a throne. 
 Then we have to think, not merely of 
 what we do or can do by our votes, 
 but also of the influence, from know- 
 ledge, or opinion, or example, that we 
 may exert or do exert over other votes. 
 In mere voting, a citizen may exercise 
 only one fourteen-millionth part of the 
 power of government in the United 
 States, while in influence his actual 
 share of that power may be ten, or a 
 hundred, or a thousand times as much. 
 He is responsible for what he does by 
 influence, and he is no less responsible 
 for what he might do and does not, 
 
 to help in preserving Tightness in the 
 120 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 measures of government and in pre- 
 venting wrong. 
 
 Again, we have to give careful 
 attention to the working of the com- 
 binations of " party " that we form 
 with other citizens, whose aims and 
 opinions are more or less in agreement 
 with our own. Such political parties 
 are necessary means to be employed 
 for bringing those together who think 
 somewhat nearly alike, as to what 
 should be the course of government 
 in matters of chief importance, and 
 for concentrating their action on such 
 matters to give it effect. But people 
 who enter a party are always in danger 
 
 of forgetting that it is only a political par- 
 ties a means, 
 
 means to use for accomplish- not an end. 
 
 ing well-considered ends; that it is 
 121 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 properly an instrument to work with, 
 a servant to be employed; and 
 when they forget this they allow it to 
 take possession of them, and are com- 
 manded by it, instead of being served. 
 It is not possible for one who studies 
 public matters with thoughtful care to 
 be in complete agreement with any 
 political party on every question that 
 arises, and throughout his whole life. 
 The party for such a citizen is the one 
 which, at any given time, is aiming to 
 do the things that he deems then to 
 be most important, in the way that 
 he judges to be wise and Eight. His 
 right place of political action is in that 
 party so long, and only so long, as it 
 will help him to do what he believes 
 
 is most needing to be done. But men 
 122 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 are prone to form habits of attach- 
 ment to a party that hold them 
 
 of party 1 eel- 
 
 fast after every such reason ingasanawt. 
 has ceased to exist. In that case they 
 exercise no longer any thought for 
 themselves in political matters, act 
 on no judgment of their own; they 
 have surrendered the sovereignty of 
 their citizenship, and are willing, as 
 mere partisans, to do the bidding of 
 other men. The weak tendency in 
 human nature to this partisan habit 
 does measureless mischief to demo- 
 cratic governments, by making it easy 
 for self-seeking politicians to master 
 and use great parties for the accom- 
 plishment of their own ends. 
 
 Lastly, but not least, in our conduct 
 as citizens we are called upon to think 
 
 123 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 of our country, not merely as an asso- 
 ciation of people whose common wel- 
 fare is to be sought, but as an object 
 in itself of warm and deep affections, 
 which move us as few other affections 
 do. "Why men love their own country 
 so much more than the rest of the world 
 seems sometimes, in some countries, 
 very strange ; but the affection is an 
 instinct in human nature, and it works 
 good or harm, according to the enlight- 
 ened cultivation it has received. It has 
 been the frequent cause of wicked and 
 terrible wars, arising out of perverted 
 untrained notions of national greatness 
 LSDL and glory and honor, all ani- 
 mated by an untrained and misguided 
 passion of patriotic love and pride. 
 The passion, in itself, is one of great 
 
 124 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 nobility, often lifting men to heights of 
 unselfish devotion which hardly any 
 other would give them strength to at- 
 tain ; but no other passion can be more 
 unreasonably or more wickedly used. 
 
 The highest duty we can find in our 
 citizenship is that of educating our pa- 
 triotism to be moved by true stimula- 
 tions to right objects and ends. We 
 cannot love our country too ardently ; 
 we cannot think of it with too much 
 pride ; but why, and for what ? Be- 
 cause it is so big ? Because it contains 
 so many people ? Because it is so rich? 
 Because its bigness and its riches make 
 it so strong? Or because it is a coun- 
 try whose people have the greatest pos- 
 sible opportunities for doing their best, 
 for making the most of themselves 
 
 125 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 and of their lives ? That, in very truth, 
 * s *^ e one high distinction 
 ?- of this republic of ours over 
 
 all other countries in the 
 world, and the one ground for a love 
 and pride that may reasonably exceed 
 the patriotic pride and love of other 
 peoples. All things considered, this 
 country does offer more helpfulness to 
 its inhabitants, in every kind of free- 
 dom and free opportunity for every 
 kind of ambitious and aspiring effort, 
 than older countries can. It does so 
 not only by its democratic form of gov- 
 ernment, but by its democratic form of 
 society ; by the spirit of all its institu- 
 tions, as well as by the character of its 
 laws ; by its customs and its habits of 
 feeling and thought ; by its very new- 
 
 126 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 ness as a cultivated land ; by the im- 
 mensity of its natural resources, which 
 stimulate every practical energy and 
 faculty of man. 
 
 This, then, is what gives to an Amer- 
 ican the right inspiration of patriotism 
 and the right objects toward which it 
 should press. It excites him to no de- 
 sire for war, no craving for conquests, 
 no disposition to have his country act 
 the part of a national bully in the world. 
 It makes him glad of its strength, be- 
 cause a strong 1 nation will not _ 
 
 The right 
 
 be wronged, and escapes all 
 
 need of war. It gives him p 
 no fierce wish to crowd other less for- 
 tunate peoples to the wall, in manufac- 
 tures or in trade, by a hard use of the 
 advantages we hold in our hands. It 
 
 127 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 turns his ambitions for the country to 
 quite different ends. It bids him strive 
 to have it made a great power in the 
 world, by example and influence, lead- 
 ing the advance of mankind in every 
 refinement of character and every im- 
 provement of the conditions of life, 
 showing what humanity can do to up- 
 lift itself when it is wholly free. It 
 stings him with pain when he sees any 
 part of the great opportunities of the 
 American people being wasted or ig- 
 nobly used. It makes him laborious and 
 untiring in efforts to keep the course 
 of government on lines of Wisdom 
 and Eight ; on lines, that is to say, of 
 Truth, Honor, Honesty, Helpfulness 
 and Good Will to humanity at large. 
 For the Lines of Right between one 
 
 128 
 
EIGHT AND WRONG IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 nation and another, or between a nation 
 and its citizens, can be no other than 
 the Lines of Right between man and 
 man. The same Golden Rule of Re- 
 ciprocity draws them all. 
 
 So, considering the several relations 
 in which we stand as citizens of the 
 Republic of the United States, we can 
 see very plainly that every Line of 
 Right that is to be drawn for our polit- 
 ical conduct has two parts to it, one 
 going straight from the other, TheLlneof 
 both pointed to the same end. ^^0" 
 In its first part it is the line 
 of careful thoughtf ulness and study, 
 to learn facts, to find sound principles, 
 to form clear and independent judg- 
 ments, as to what course of govern- 
 ment will be most helpful to the best 
 
 129 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 use of the surpassing opportunities 
 for self-improvement and elevation 
 which the people of this fortunate 
 country hold in their hands ; what 
 course is honorable and just, in the 
 dealings of our nation with its own peo- 
 ple or with others ; what course in any 
 juncture is worthy to be made an ex- 
 ample to other nations ; what course 
 will tend to qualify this Republic for 
 leadership in the higher civilization of 
 the world. In its second part, it is the 
 line of faithful and strenuous endeavor, 
 by influence and vote, in cooperation 
 with other citizens of like thoughtful 
 mind, as joint sovereigns of a demo- 
 cratic republic, to make the course of 
 government accord with the judgments 
 thus carefully formed. 
 
 130 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 LOWELL'S POEM OF AMERICAN PATRIOTISM. 
 The noblest poem yet written in America is 
 the Ode which James Russell Lowell recited 
 at Harvard University, on the 21st of July, 
 1865, in commemoration of the patriotic ser- 
 vices of those students and graduates of the 
 University who had fought in the war for the 
 Union, and many of whom had died for their 
 country. Every line of it should be stamped 
 upon the memory of all the youth of America, 
 and especially these, which close the Ode : 
 
 " 'T is no man we celebrate, 
 
 By his country's victories great, 
 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
 But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
 Drawing force from all her men, 
 Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 
 For her time of need, and then 
 Pulsing it again through them, 
 Till the basest can no longer cower, 
 131 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, 
 Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. 
 
 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! 
 
 Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! 
 
 Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves ! 
 And from every mountain-peak 
 Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 
 Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whitef ace he, 
 
 And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
 Till the glad news be sent 
 Across a kindling continent, 
 
 Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver : 
 
 ' Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped to 
 
 save her ! 
 
 She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, 
 She of the open soul and open door, 
 With room about her hearth for all mankind ! 
 The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more ; 
 From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, 
 Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, 
 And bids her navies, that so lately hurled 
 132 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, 
 Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmf ul 
 
 shore. 
 
 No challenge sends she to the elder world, 
 That looked askance and hated ; a light scorn 
 Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty 
 
 knees 
 
 She calls her children back, and waits the morn 
 Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.' 
 
 " Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found re- 
 
 Thy God, in these distempered days, 
 Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, 
 And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace ! 
 
 Bow down in prayer and praise ! 
 No poorest in thy borders but may now 
 Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow, 
 Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
 O'er such sweet brows as never others wore, 
 And letting thy set lips, 
 133 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
 What words divine of lover or of poet 
 Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
 Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 
 
 What were our lives without thee ? 
 
 What all our lives to save thee ? 
 
 We reck not what we gave thee ; 
 
 We will not dare to doubt thee, 
 But ask whatever else, and we will dare." 
 
 WASHINGTON'S WARNING AGAINST THE 
 SPIRIT OF PARTY. Washington's Farewell 
 Address to the people of the United States 
 when he retired from the presidency contains 
 a solemn warning against the dangers of an 
 indulgence in the party spirit. "This spirit," 
 he wrote, " unfortunately, is inseparable from 
 our nature, having its root in the strongest pas- 
 sions of the human mind. It exists under dif- 
 ferent shapes in all governments, more or less 
 stifled, controlled, or repressed ; but, in those 
 134 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest 
 rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The 
 alternate domination of one faction over an- 
 other, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, nat- 
 ural to party dissension, which in different 
 ages and countries has perpetrated the most 
 horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despot- 
 ism. But this leads at length to a more formal 
 and permanent despotism. The disorders and 
 miseries, which result, gradually incline the 
 minds of men to seek security and repose in 
 the absolute power of an individual ; and sooner 
 or later the chief of some prevailing faction, 
 more able or more fortunate than his competi- 
 tors, turns this disposition to the purposes of 
 his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Lib- 
 erty. Without looking forward to an extrem- 
 ity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not 
 to be entirely out of sight), the common and 
 continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are 
 sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a 
 135 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 wise people to discourage and restrain it. It 
 serves always to distract the Public Councils, 
 and enfeeble the Public Administration. It 
 agitates the community with ill-founded jeal- 
 ousies and false alarms ; kindles the animosity 
 of one part against another, foments occasion- 
 ally riot and insurrection. It opens the door 
 to foreign influence and corruption, which find 
 a facilitated access to the government itself 
 through the channels of party passions. Thus 
 the policy and the will of one country are sub- 
 jected to the policy and will of another. There 
 is an opinion, that parties in free countries 
 are useful checks upon the administration of 
 the Government, and serve to keep alive the 
 spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits 
 is probably true ; and in Governments of a 
 Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with 
 indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit 
 of party. But in those of the popular char- 
 acter, in Governments purely elective, it is a 
 136 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 spirit not to be encouraged. From their natu- 
 ral tendency, it is certain there will always be 
 enough of that spirit for every salutary pur- 
 pose. And, there being constant danger of 
 excess, the effort ought to be, by force of pub- 
 lic opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire 
 not to be quenched, it demands a uniform 
 vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, 
 lest, instead of warming, it should consume." 
 
 DR. FRANCIS LIEBER ON POLITICAL PAR- 
 TIES. " Parties are unavoidable in free coun- 
 tries, and may be useful if they acknowledge 
 the country far above themselves. . . . But 
 party has no meaning in far the greater num- 
 ber of the highest and the common relations 
 of human life. When we are ailing, we do 
 not take medicine by party prescription. We 
 do not build ships by party measurement ; we 
 do not pray for our daily bread by party dis- 
 tinctions ; we do not take our chosen ones to 
 our bosoms by party demarcations, nor do we 
 137 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 eat or drink, sleep or wake, as partisans. We 
 do not enjoy the flowers of spring, nor do we 
 harvest the grain, by party lines. We do not 
 incur punishments for infractions of the com- 
 mandments according to party creeds. We do 
 not pursue truth, or cultivate science, by party 
 dogmas ; and we do not, we must not, love and 
 defend our country and our liberty, dear to us 
 as part and portion of our very selves, accord- 
 ing to party rules. Woe to him who does ! " 
 FRANCIS LIEBER, Address to Loyal Na- 
 tional League, New York, April 11, 1863. 
 
 GEORGE W. CURTIS ON THE INTELLIGENT 
 LOVE OF COUNTRY. " Patriotism, or the pe- 
 culiar relation of an individual to his country, 
 is like the family instinct. In the child it is 
 a blind devotion ; in the man an intelligent 
 love. The patriot perceives the claim made 
 upon his country by the circumstances and time 
 of her growth and power, and how God is to 
 be served by using those opportunities of help- 
 138 
 
EXAMPLES AND OPINIONS 
 
 ing mankind. Therefore his country's honor 
 is dear to him as his own, and he would as 
 soon lie and steal himself as assist or excuse 
 his country in a crime. Eight and Wrong, 
 Justice and Crime, exist independently of our 
 country. A public wrong is not a private right 
 for any citizen. The citizen is a man bound to 
 know and to do the right, and the nation is but 
 an aggregation of citizens. If a man shout, 
 ' My country, by whatever means extended 
 and bounded ; my country, right or wrong,' 
 he merely utters words such as those might be 
 of the thief who steals in the street, or of the 
 trader who swears falsely at the Custom-house, 
 both of them chuckling, ' My fortune, however 
 acquired.' Thus we see that a man's country 
 is not a certain area of land, of mountains, 
 rivers and woods, but it is a principle : and 
 patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In 
 poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this 
 feeling becomes closely associated with the soil 
 139 
 
A PKIMER OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 and the symbols of the country. But the secret 
 sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the 
 idea which they represent, and this idea the 
 patriot worships through the name and the 
 symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove 
 of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair 
 upon his heart." GEORGE W. CURTIS, Ora- 
 tion at Union College, July 20, 1857. 
 
 SPARTAN PATRIOTISM. In Plutarch's life 
 of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of ancient Sparta, it 
 is said that " he taught the citizens to think 
 nothing more disagreeable than to live for 
 themselves. Like bees, they acted with one 
 impulse for the public good. . . . They were 
 possessed with a thirst for honor, and had not 
 a wish but for their country." 
 
 140 
 
IX 
 
 SYMPATHY BENEVOLENCE HELP- 
 FULNESS 
 
 THAT Truth and Honesty between man 
 and man are Right is a dictate of 
 reason more than of feeling ; but that 
 Helpfulness and Benevolence have the 
 same quality is a suggestion of feeling, 
 which reason is only called oil to con- 
 firm. It is a suggestion arising from 
 what we call Sympathy, and is mostly, 
 if not wholly, an effect of imagination, 
 which excites some effort in us to feel 
 as another person seems to be feeling, 
 either painfully or pleasurably, as the 
 case may be. It is Nature's prompting 
 and help to human fellowship, enabling 
 
 141 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 one, as we say, to " put himself in the 
 place " of another, and to imitate, more 
 or less perfectly, the other's state of 
 feeling in his own. We have this 
 prompting and capacity for Sympathy 
 from Mature, just as we have the 
 prompting to do Right, and the capa- 
 city to know what is Right ; but we 
 make ourselves sensitive or callous to 
 this prompting, as we do to the other, 
 by cultivation or neglect. 
 
 The cultivation of sympathetic feel- 
 ing has been nearly, if not quite, the 
 most important kind of culture that 
 has been going on in what we describe 
 as the civilization of mankind. It has 
 produced already immense results, di- 
 minishing or removing many causes of 
 hideous suffering in the world, check- 
 
 142 
 
SYMPATHY 
 
 ing many barbarities, weakening many 
 hostilities, spinning many threads of 
 fellowship and weaving them into the 
 social web. The tendency of civiliza- 
 tion seems to be toward a state of feel- 
 ing that will not allow any civilization 
 
 and sympa- 
 
 suffering to exist which can ttv - 
 possibly be prevented or relieved. We 
 are very far now from that state ; but 
 it is not unreasonable to hope that time 
 may bring it about. We are far from 
 it yet ; but our race has traveled far 
 towards it since the process of civiliza- 
 tion was begun. If most of us, in the 
 present generation, are not moved as 
 we ought to be by the suffering around 
 us, if we enjoy our own escapes from 
 it too selfishly, if we yield ourselves 
 too carelessly to practices and condi- 
 
 143 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 tions that make it wider and worse 
 than it need to be, we are not able to 
 do so as heedlessly and callously in 
 these days as we might have done in 
 former times. We are pricked and 
 troubled continually by a guilty sense 
 of our own selfish inaction where we 
 feel that we ought to act. If we do 
 try sometimes as I fear we do 
 not to cultivate a sympathy which is 
 troublesome to our ease, it is never 
 without knowing distinctly that we do 
 "Wrong. 
 
 When we ourselves suffer, we feel 
 that we have an imperative claim on 
 others for relief, if relief is in their 
 power, or for kindness at their hands, 
 if it is not ; and, when we imagine the 
 suffering of another, we cannot help 
 
 144 
 
BENEVOLENCE 
 
 feeling the same claim come back to 
 us, unaltered in force. Probably there 
 are none who have no such feeling ; 
 probably there are few who try delib- 
 erately to suppress or resist it ; but 
 probably there are many who try to 
 satisfy it in some easy, inadequate way. 
 The easiest way is that of money-giv- 
 ing " charity ; " and if money could 
 extinguish all needs, and if what we 
 call " charity " could discharge all 
 claims of man upon man for help 
 and kindness, it is quite possible that 
 the giving might be raised Money-giving 
 to an abounding sum. But " oharlty -" 
 money-giving " charity," even when it 
 is well directed, can go a very little 
 way towards dealing with misfortunes, 
 distresses and sufferings, as we would 
 
 145 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 wish to have them dealt with if they 
 came upon ourselves ; and a great part 
 of such easily rendered " charity " is 
 so ill directed as to do more of harm 
 than of good. The help that is wanted 
 most often from man to man is not out 
 of the pocket, but straight from the 
 hand, from the heart, from the voice ; 
 it is the help of knowledge, of judg- 
 ment, of experience ; it is help from 
 the stronger and the better instructed 
 to the ignorant and the weak. It is 
 helpfulness towards self-help ; it is en- 
 couragement and cheer ; it is teach- 
 ing and counsel ; it is sympathy made 
 manifest ; it is fellowship and hearty 
 good will. It calls for the giving of 
 time, thought, care, effort ; it may in- 
 terrupt our occupations, it may break 
 
 146 
 
HELPFULNESS 
 
 in on our pleasures ; its claims may 
 often be disturbing to our comfortable 
 ease ; and yet, if we feel towards our 
 fellows as we would have them feel 
 toward us, we cannot wish to be free 
 from such claims. 
 
 It is natural, and not improper, that 
 suffering in one who is near and dear 
 to us should move our sympathies more 
 deeply and urgently than suffering in 
 a stranger ; and it is hardly less natu- 
 ral that distress occurring in our own 
 presence, witnessed by our own eyes, 
 should affect us and appeal to us more 
 than the same distress made known 
 to us from a distance by report. The 
 claim for help, too, on the nearest 
 and readiest hands, is much stronger in 
 most circumstances than on those more 
 
 147 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 remote. But, in so far as the need 
 for help reaches us at all, neither 
 the strangeness nor the distance of the 
 sufferer can rightly excuse us from re- 
 sponding, as we are able, to his cry. 
 Suffering has its right to help, wher- 
 ever it befalls, from any hand holding 
 power to help, wherever the hand may 
 be. That is a feeling which has grown 
 and spread slowly in the world until 
 even brute animals have been brought 
 Anlmal within the range of the sym- 
 pathy it represents. The low- 
 est animal in creation has its right to 
 our protection from needless suffer- 
 ing; the suffering animal has its right 
 to our sympathy and help ; for Nature 
 marks no distinction between the suf- 
 fering of a brute and the suffering of 
 
 148 
 
HELPFULNESS 
 
 a man, but compels us to be pained in 
 imagination by both. 
 
 There have been times, it is sicken- 
 ing to remember, when even human 
 suffering was a source of entertain- 
 ment to whole communities of people ; 
 as at Kome, for example, when the 
 deadly combats of gladiators, and the 
 rending of Christian martyrs by furi- 
 ous wild beasts, were the spec- Onielty aa 
 tacles most enjoyed. Such " sport " 
 heartlessness is possible no longer ; 
 but something akin to it still lingers 
 in practices against animals, which 
 make them suffer sometimes for hours 
 the terror of being hunted to their 
 death, or which kill them for no pur- 
 pose but the killing, and which men 
 are not ashamed to call " sport." It is 
 
 149 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 not the brute creature that is wronged 
 so much by this as the human being, 
 who cultivates the instincts of savagery 
 in himself, and scorns to have his en- 
 joyments refined. 
 
 150 
 
GENTLEMEN AND GENTLEWOMEN 
 THE IDEAL OF CHARACTER AND 
 CULTURE 
 
 LET us now gather up the main con- 
 clusions we have reached in our little 
 study of Tightness or rectitude, and 
 mould them together, to see what ideal 
 of a nobly cultivated character they 
 will shape in our minds. 
 
 If the reasoning we have followed is 
 correct, we can sum the matter nearly 
 by saying that the ideal character must 
 be that of one who never forgets his 
 natural fellowship with all mankind ; 
 who sees himself reflected and feels 
 himself repeated in every human being, 
 
 151 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 to such a degree that he is instructed 
 by all that is good and warned by all 
 that is evil in his kind, and that, in 
 every communication or dealing with 
 another, he thinks of himself as being 
 changed in place with that other, in 
 order to do as he may feel that he 
 ought to be done by. On this outline 
 of a Golden Chart of Character, traced 
 by the Golden Eule of Conduct, we 
 will note a little of what we have 
 learned to be needed for filling it out. 
 
 First, and before all, Self-mastery, 
 the established dominion of rea- 
 son and the consciousness of right, 
 over impulses of passion and desire. 
 Plainly, there is nothing that can merit 
 the name of character in man which 
 does not rest on this. So far as it lacks 
 
 152 
 
CHAEACTER AND CULTURE 
 
 in him, he remains but an animal, and 
 the measure of his manhood is the 
 measure of his rational and moral self- 
 control. Such control is very easy to 
 hold when won and very hard to re- 
 cover when lost. Nature, as inexora- 
 ble as she is generous, makes it so by 
 the strain of Habit which she puts 
 upon our lives. She offers our Habits 
 to us as the penalties of self-indulgence 
 and self -neglect, or as the rewards of 
 self-command ; we may take them as 
 we choose. The cultivated character is 
 that for which the wise choice is made, 
 so that it is served through life by 
 Habits formed and trained with con- 
 scientious care. 
 
 Self-mastery permits no carelessness, 
 and he who attains it will be studious 
 
 X 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 to know what is Right, as well as will- 
 ing and anxious to do it. He will fol- 
 low no beaten paths of conduct which 
 careless custom has worn smooth, but 
 will find the Lines of Eight for him- 
 self, by his own thoughtful survey. 
 
 Of necessity he will be Truthful, for 
 nearly all Rectitude is comprehended 
 actually in that. To be True (in one's 
 self and towards all others) is to be in 
 all ways Honest, in all ways Honorable, 
 in all ways Faithful, in all ways Sincere, 
 in all ways Just. 
 
 If any part of Rectitude is not in- 
 cluded here, it is that which belongs 
 to the benevolent, the kindly, the gra- 
 cious side of character, which we must 
 take care that we do not neglect. As 
 the suggestions of conduct on this side 
 
 154 
 
CHARACTER AND CULTURE 
 
 come from feeling much more than 
 from reason, they seem to be often de- 
 fective in characters that are otherwise 
 finely formed. In this region of char- 
 acter we need to consider not only the 
 rectitude of what we do to our fellows, 
 but the Manner of it ; for all the plea- 
 sure and most of the moral profit of 
 human intercourse depend on the Man- 
 ner in which it is carried on. It would 
 be quite possible for every logical obli- 
 gation of Right between man and man 
 to be fulfilled in a manner so harsh, so 
 offensive, so repulsive, as to keep them 
 hateful and hostile to each other, and 
 to make an irredeemably miserable 
 world. To Truthfulness, therefore, or 
 Honesty, and even to Benevolence or 
 Generosity, in human relations, there is 
 
 155 
 
A PKIMER OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 needed the addition of Geniality, of 
 Suavity, of Graciousness, to make it 
 pleasant or profitable for men and wo- 
 men to dwell together. 
 
 The subject of Manner, or Manners, 
 is one to be considered as of great im- 
 portance, but not too great. For Man- 
 ner may be an expression of character, 
 or it may be a disguise. It may be the 
 well-cultivated manifestation of kindly 
 and genial feelings, outflowing in the 
 speech, the gesture, the bearing and 
 demeanor that will represent them most 
 pleasingly, in the most finely expressive 
 way. These are the Good Manners that 
 we can cultivate as a growth upon the 
 substance of a Good Character, to be 
 from it and of it, perfecting it, and giv- 
 ing us the ideal we seek. But there 
 
 156 
 
CHARACTER AND CULTURE 
 
 are Manners of another make, fash- 
 ioned by art like a costume, that can be 
 worn outwardly upon a character which 
 inwardly they do not fit. They are 
 made up of phrases and attitudes and 
 looks, the product of conventions and 
 rules. Within limits, the art of polite 
 demeanor which such Manners repre- 
 sent has a value that we must not de- 
 spise ; but the tendency in most circles 
 to esteem them beyond their worth is 
 very strong. They seem to be all that 
 is needed to realize the ideal of culture 
 in many minds. 
 
 For our nobler ideal we demand all 
 the graces of Manner that art can per- 
 fect, and all the fine observances that 
 reason and good taste can approve, but 
 only for the beautiful finish of a char- 
 
 157 
 
A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 acter that would be noble and impres- 
 sive, even if it had them not. 
 
 Those who realize our ideal in some 
 sufficient degree we will class as Gen- 
 tlemen and Gentlewomen, and so give 
 them the highest rank, with the high- 
 est title, that exists in any society, or 
 that can exist. 
 
 158 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 AMERICAN citizenship, its responsibilities, 117-130. 
 American patriotism, its right inspiration and objects, 125- 
 
 129; Lowell's poem of, 131-134. 
 Anger, as habit, 48-49. 
 Animals, cruelty to, 148-150. 
 
 Appetites : become tyrants of our own making, 43-44. 
 Appleton, Samuel: his experience of honest intentions 
 
 among men, 78-79. 
 
 Bargain, what is called a " good," 115. 
 
 Benevolence, 144-147. 
 
 Betting, nature of the transaction in, 103-105 ; the practice 
 of it in so-called " business," 105-107. 
 
 " Business," right and wrong in, 96-109 ; it is an arrange- 
 ment of reciprocity, 96-98 ; on the principle of the Golden 
 Rule, 98-99 ; a beneficent system which upholds civiliza- 
 tion, not a barbaric scramble, 100 ; all fraud a treason 
 against it, 101-102 ; the two Golden Rules, 102-103 ; bet- 
 ting and gambling speculation should not be called " busi- 
 ness," 103-109 ; Cicero on the morals of trade, 111-114. 
 
 Carefulness and carelessness, the habit-cultivation of, 46-48. 
 Character, dignified by moral freedom, 24-25; the self- 
 making of, 31-35 ; the ideal of, 151-158. 
 Charity, money-giving, 144-147. 
 Cicero, on the morals of trade, 111-114. 
 Citizenship, right and wrong hi, 117-130. 
 Civilization and sympathy, 142-144. 
 Clouston, T. 3. : on self-control a development, 59. 
 Commerce. See " Business." 
 
 161 
 
INDEX 
 
 Conduct, the law of right, 19-21. See, also, Right and 
 Wrong. 
 
 Confucius : his teaching of the Golden Rule, 15 ; as a prin- 
 ciple of reciprocity, 97-98. 
 
 Confused notions of Right and Wrong : their chief causes, 
 63-75; in " business," 96-109. 
 
 Conscience, the mystery of, 19-21. 
 
 Courtesy, 155-158. 
 
 Cruelty as "sport," 149-150. 
 
 Culture, the ideal of, 151-158. 
 
 Curtis, George W. : his payment of a great debt without 
 compulsion of law, 77-78. 
 
 Dishonesty. See Honesty. 
 
 Dueling, 87. 
 
 Duty, the idea of, 34. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo : on the public effect of dishonest 
 
 merchants, 93-95. 
 " Ethics of the "Dust," quotation from, 79-81. 
 
 Faraday, Michael : his self-mastery, 58. 
 
 Fear, as habit, 48-49. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin : his plan of habit-cultivation, 50-55. 
 
 Fraud : effects on one who commits it, 31-33 ; a crime of 
 treason against civilization, 102; worse than theft, 109- 
 111. 
 
 Free will. See Freedom, Moral. 
 
 Freedom, moral : our possession of it, 19-24 ; we are digni- 
 fied and exalted by it, 24-25 ; it is an almost incredible 
 trust, 26-27 ; it gives us the making of our own char- 
 acters, 31-34 ; it exercises the most precious of all privi- 
 leges, 34-35 ; part of a general power of self-control, 36- 
 41. 
 
 162 
 
INDEX 
 
 Gain got by making another lose, 103-109. 
 
 Gambling : its immorality analyzed, 103-105 ; its practice 
 in so-called " business," 105-107. 
 
 Geniality, 156. 
 
 Golden chart of character, 151-152. 
 
 Golden Rule, the : logically deduced, 1-14 ; its antiquity, 
 15-16 ; what might be if all followed it, 28-30 ; its prin- 
 ciple of reciprocity, 97-98; the rule in its commercial 
 form, 99 ; the two Golden Rules in " business," 102-103 ; 
 tracing the golden chart of character, 151-152. 
 
 Graciousness, 156. 
 
 Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, 151-158. 
 
 Habits : their power, 43-44 ; their cultivation, 43-49 ; the 
 terrible fact of, 49 ; nature offers them as rewards or 
 penalties, 153. 
 
 Health, meaning " whole," 83. 
 
 Heaven-making on earth, easy contributions to, 28-30. 
 
 Helpfulness, 144-148. 
 
 Hindu teaching of the Golden Rule, 16. 
 
 Honest man, the truly, 88-91. 
 
 Honesty : rules for it not furnished by laws and courts, 73- 
 75 ; examples from Sir Walter Scott and George W. Cur- 
 tis, 75-78 ; prevalence of honest intentions, 79 ; primary 
 meaning of the word, 86; what we should understand 
 from it, 88-91 ; illustrated in Abraham Lincoln, 91--92 ; 
 degrees of, 92-93; estimated by Emerson, 93-95; in 
 " business," 96-109. 
 
 Honor, the sense of, 86-91. 
 
 Hunting animals for sport, 149-150. 
 
 Ideal of character and culture, 151-158. 
 Impatience, as habit, 48-49. 
 Indolence, as habit, 48-49. 
 
 163 
 
INDEX 
 
 Integrity : source and primary meaning of the word, 82-85. 
 See, also, Honesty. 
 
 James, Professor William : on the training of habits, 46- 
 47, 59-61. 
 
 Knavery. See Fraud, and Honesty. 
 
 Ladd, Professor G. T. : on the development of the will, 61- 
 
 62. 
 
 Law, mischievous notions of, 70-75. 
 Law of motion and law of right conduct, strange likeness 
 
 between the, 19-21. 
 Legal honesty not moral honesty, 73-75 ; exemplified by Sir 
 
 Walter Scott and George W. Curtis, 75-78. 
 Lieber, Dr. Francis, on political parties, 137-138. 
 Lilliputians, morals of the, 109-111. 
 Lincoln, Abraham : his honesty, 91-92. 
 Line of right, the: figuratively represented, 7-14; the 
 
 means in our minds for marking it, 17 ; parallel to the 
 
 line marked by the law of motion, 19-21. 
 Lowell, James Russell : his Commemoration Ode the 
 
 poem of American patriotism, 131-134. 
 
 Mann, Horace, on profit and loss, 114-115. 
 Manners, 155-158. 
 Marcus Aurelius, saying of, 57. 
 Memory, habits of, 47-48. 
 Moral freedom. See Freedom, Moral. 
 Moral quality in conduct given only by the freedom of it, 
 23-25. 
 
 " Ought to " and " ought not to " in our consciousness, the, 
 19-21. 
 
 164 
 
INDEX 
 
 Parties, political, to be used as instruments) 121-123 ; Dr. 
 Lieber on, 137-138. 
 
 Partisanship as a habit, the mischief of, 121-123; Wash- 
 ington's warning against, 134-137. 
 
 Passions, become tyrants of our own making, 43-44. 
 
 Patriotism, untrained, 124-125 ; its right inspiration and 
 objects, 126-129 ; Lowell's poem of, 131-134 ; George W. 
 Curtis's description of, 138-140 ; the Spartan idea of, 140. 
 
 Politeness, 155-158. 
 
 Political action and influence, 117-130 ; the line of right in, 
 129-130. 
 
 Profit and loss, Horace Mann on, 114-115. 
 
 Puppets, we are not, 39-40 ; but can make ourselves pup- 
 pet-like, 41-42. 
 
 Keciprocity : the principle of the Golden Rule, 97-98. 
 
 Responsibility in citizenship, 119-120. 
 
 Right : different meanings of the word, 1-2 ; their growth 
 from one idea, 2-3 ; figurativeness of the moral meaning, 
 4-5 ; leading logically to the conception of the Golden 
 Rule, 6-14 ; the natural impulse to do right, 17-21 ; our 
 freedom to obey or disobey the impulse, 21-23. 
 
 Right and wrong : illustrated by the geometrical straight 
 line, 7-14 ; summed up hi the Golden Rule, 15-16 ; the 
 helps and resistances in our nature, 18-21 ; our freedom 
 of choice between them, 22-25 ; self -benefit and self -in- 
 jury from, 31-34 ; confused notions of, 63-75 ; not defined 
 in human laws, 70-75 ; Ruskin on the ability to know, 
 79-81; in "business," 96-109; in citizenship, 117-130; 
 in " charity," 144-147 ; in " sport," 148-150. 
 
 Right, the Line of. See Line of Right. 
 
 Rule of right, the, 14-16, 28-29. 
 
 Ruskin, John : on everybody's ability to know right from 
 wrong, 79-81. 
 
 165 
 
INDEX 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter: his payment of a great debt without 
 compulsion of law, 75-77. 
 
 Seeing, habits of carefulness and carelessness in, 47-48. 
 
 Self-control. See Self-mastery. 
 
 Self-government. See Self-mastery. 
 
 Self -in jury of wrong-doing, 31-34. 
 
 Self-mastery, our help in it, 21-23 ; the trust of it, 26-27 ; 
 the something in us which empowers it, 36-41 ; never im- 
 possible, 42-43 ; overcome by habits, 43-44 ; example of 
 Socrates, 55-57 ; of Faraday, 58 ; saying of Marcus Aure- 
 lius, 57; self-control a development, 59-61; character 
 rests upon it, 152-154. 
 
 Slavery : the cause of changed moral notions about, 66-70. 
 
 Socrates, self-mastery of, 55-57. 
 
 Spartan patriotism, 140. 
 
 Speculation in trade and speculative gambling, 103-109. 
 
 Speech, habits of, 45-46. 
 
 Sport, cruelty as, 149-150. 
 
 Straight line, a : the idea of it, 2-3 ; the moral suggestion 
 from it, 4-6 ; descriptions of it, 7-9 ; moral analogies, 9- 
 14; the "line of right," 14. 
 
 Suavity, 156. 
 
 Suffering, the claims of, 144-149. 
 
 Sutherland, A. : on degrees of honesty, 92-93. 
 
 Swift, Dean, on fraud, 109-111. 
 
 Sympathy, as habit, 48-49 ; developed by civilization, 141- 
 144. 
 
 Thinking : habits of carefulness and carelessness in, 47-48. 
 Trade. See " Business." 
 Tribal notions of Right and Wrong, 66-70. 
 Trust of our moral freedom, the, 26-27. 
 Truthfulness: .known as an obligation because felt as a 
 claim, 11-14 ; nearly all rectitude comprehended in, 154. 
 166 
 
INDEX 
 
 Vanity, as habit, 48-49. 
 
 Virtues, moral : Franklin's list, 51-55. 
 
 Voting, obligations to be considered in, 117-130. 
 
 Washington, George : his warning against the spirit of 
 
 party, 134-137. 
 Whole, the word, 83-84. 
 Will, the development of, 61-62. 
 Will, Free. See Freedom, Moral, and Self-mastery. 
 Wrong : figurative meaning of the word in its moral use, 
 
 5-6 ; source of the idea in it, 6-14. See, also, Right and 
 
 Wrong. 
 
 Youth : the habit-making time, 44-50. 
 
 167 
 
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