mWmmw^'t AA A ' ■■ Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L I 07 i5To C0|), I This book is DUE on the last date stamped below mG 1 ma Form L-9-15to-8,'26 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT By NICHOLAS PAINE OILMAN Health of mind consists in the perception of law Its dignity consists in being under law Emebson THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT BY NICHOLAS PAINE OILMAN 6- 7 7 '4 Health of ntitid consists in the perception cf laui Its dignity consists in being tender law Emerson ■mbM gLbfMrr£ii5r33rrg:rj Tirr.iiiTrrrfm-,^ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY <^\>t lli\Ji'rs"iiJi' ?9rrss, "JTamliiibOE 1S96 N Copyright, 1891, By NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN, All rights reserved. Tfie Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped aud Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 37 €a tt)t ^aUc ^rniii af Ccarl)crg This attempt to aid the cause of Moral Education in the Public Schools of America is dedicated with sincere esteem. O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule Aud sun thee in the light of happy faces, Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be tliy graces ; And iu thine own heart let them first keep school. For as old Atlas on his broad neck places Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it, so Do these upbear the little world below Of education — Patience, Love, and Hope. Methinks I see them grouped iu seemly show, The straightened arms upraised, the palms aslope, And robes that, touching as adown they flow, Distinctly blend like snow embossed in snow. Oh part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie, Love too will sink aud die, But Love is subtle and doth proof derive From her own life that Hope is yet alive ; And bending o'er witli soul-transfusing eyes, And the soft murmurs of the mother dove, Wooes back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies ; Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Lova. Yet haply there will come a weary day, When overtasked at length, Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way. Then with a statvie's smile, a statue's strength, Stands the mute sister Patience, nothing loth. And, both supporting, does the work of both. Coleridge. PREFACE. The American Secular Union, a national association having for its object the complete separation of Church and State, but in no way committed to any system of religious belief or disbelief, in the fall of 1889 offered a prize of one thousand dollars "for the best essay, treatise or manual adapted to aid and assist teachers in our free public schools, and in the Girard College for Orphans, and other public and charitable institutions, professing to be unsectarian, to thoroughly instruct children and youth in the purest principles of morality without inculcating religious doctrine." The members of the committee chosen to examine the numerous MSS. submitted were : Eichard B. West- brook, D. D., LL. B., President of the Union, Philadel- phia ; Felix Adler, Ph. D., of the Society for Ethical Culture, New York ; Prof. D. G. Brinton, M. D., of the University of Pennsylvania ; Prof. Frances E. White, M. D., of the Woman's Medical College, and Miss Ida C. Craddock, Secretary of the Union. As, in the opin- ion of a majority of the committee, no one of the MSS. fully met all the requirements, the prize was equally divided between the two adjudged to be the best offered, entitled respectively, "Character Build- ing," by Edward Payson Jackson, one of the masters of the Boston Latin School, and " The Laws of Daily Conduct." Although the two books were written with no refer- vi PREFACE. ence to each other, they seem to be, both m manner and matter, each the complement of the other. The defi- ciencies of each are, in great measure, supplied by the other. While "Character Building" is analytic and cast in dialogue form, the present work is more gen- eral and synthetic in its style and treatment. The two are therefore published in a single volume, as well as separately, at the earnest request of the Union, and the authors hope that the joint book will be preferred by purchasers. Much of the matter in the introduction to " The Laws of Daily Conduct " is equally pertinent to " Character Building." The authors of both books are friends to religion, and they have written from a deep conviction that there is a great need of instruction in morals in the public schools. Experience, however, has amply proved the inexpediency of the attempt to teach ethics there on a religious basis. Of the success of this endeavor to place the study on a scientific basis others must judge. But in a country marked by a great diversity of creeds, the way of practice is surely the one way to follow. To teachers and parents who would not neglect the main matter of human life while imparting general know- ledge, I offer this volume, in the hope that it may be somewhat of an aid in moral training in the home and in the school. N. P. G. CONTENTS. » Page Introduction: Morals in the Public Schools. Can they be Taught ? 1 Should they be Taught ? 6 The Best Way 10 Nature and Design of this Book .... 15 Chapteb I. Life under Law 21 II. Obedience to Moral Law 34 III. Self-Control 45 IV. Truthfulness 55 V. The Law of Justice 66 VI. The Law of Kindness 75 VII. The Great Words of Morality , . . . .80 VIII. Home 94 IX. Work 100 X. The Law of Honor 106 XL Personal Habits 114 XII. Our Country ........ 122 I. Patriotism ........ 122 II. Political Duty 125 XIII. Character 130 XIV. Moral Progress 137 XV. Life according to the Golden Rule .... 144 INTRODUCTION. MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. This small volume has been written to aid teachers in public and private schools, and parents in the home, in the very important work of the moral education and training of the young. As it is intended prima- rily for professional teachers, it has been put into a form supposed to be especially suitable for their use. But I trust that some fathers and mothers will be glad to take hints, at least, from these pages. A line drawn between education at home and education in the school- room is surely somewhat artificial when the subject is such a matter as the right direction of the whole life. The distinction between the home and tlie school in this connection is not that the home has, properly, a mo- nopoly of moral instruction, but that the field of the school is the more restricted. There are three important questions relating to the teaching of morals in public schools which may well be answered here, before we take up the main subject of this book. Can morality be taught in these public institutions, supported as they are from taxes laid upon the whole community, without doing injustice to any portion ? This question, in our present condition, resolves itself into two distinct inquiries. 1. Can ethics be taught in our common schools without sectarianism, but from a religious standpoint ? For one, I should answer this question without hesitation in the affirmative. It seems 2 INTRODUCTION. to me possible to teach the primary truths of practical morals (all that it is wise in any case to attempt in schools open to all), grounding them on the great propo- sitions of natural religion in such a way as to give no reason for offence to any person who accepts these. But this task, confessedly difficult when we simply mark the many diversities of religious belief in our country, it seems inexpedient to undertake when we remember that a considerable number of our fellow- citizens, who are likewise taxpayers, declare themselves to be destitute of any religious belief, or even vigor- ously opposed to all forms of religion. A much larger number of persons, again, are believers, but are none the less hostile to any inculcation, in the public schools, directly or indirectly, of any form of theology or reli- gion. They consider the State to be, properly, a purely secular institution, and they would not have it wound the conscience of any citizen by teaching morals from a religious point of view. Granting that this would be the unavoidable effect with some, be they few or many, of the attempt to give ethical instruction on the basis of natural religion, we are led on to the second question under this first head. 2. Can morality be taught in our public schools in complete separation from religion and theology, from what may be called " the scientific standpoint " ? Can instruction in practical ethics be so given that no injus- tice shall be done to any portion of the community, re- ligious, unreligious, or anti-religious ? In other words, is there a common ground, in the duties and rights con- fessed by all, on which the teacher may stand and give tuition in morals as securely as he does in geography or arithmetic ? This question would probably be answered in the negative by the great majority of persons in our country. They would, it is most likely, say that while the teaching of morality without sectarianism is difficult, to teach it omitting religion entirely, even so-called MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 3 "natural religion," is practically impossible. As the present book is an honest attempt to do precisely this thing, it is evident that I emphatically differ with the great majority on this point. It remains for the reader, or the user rather, of this volume to determine its value as an answer to the ques- tion whether morality can be taught from the scientific standpoint in our common schools. The work must speak for itself, but the fact that it is a manual of prac- tical morals, not a short treatise on ethical theories, will at once suggest to many that the most troublesome of the supposed obstacles in the way of moral education are left on one side. In fact, I have aimed as directly as possible at actual practice ; I have so far omitted ethical theory that it would not be strange if some should be uncertain whether to rank the author in this school of ethical theorists or in that : he may belong to none ! Such uncertainty would be a source of gratification to him, as an indication o£ his success in keeping to the ground where all schools agree. The great facts and the main laws of the moral life are obvious to all ma- ture men and women ; certainly, they are not depen- dent, for their clearness and their binding force, upon any notions as to the origin either of the universe, of mankind, or of the perception itself of these facts and laws. The fq^ts of astronomy which affect men's daily life — such as the so-called rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the inoon, and the phenomena of the ocean tides, for instance — are plain to every one ; the explanation of them given by the astronomer to the farmer and the sailor (whether correct or not) will not essentially change the arts of agriculture and navigation. So the common practical duties of human beings have long been familiar. Each new generation must learn them afresh, indeed, but it learns every-day morality as an art, not as a science. The difficulty lies in the prac- tice, not in the theory. Philosophers may dispute as 4 IN TR OB UCTION. to the exact reason, why a man loves, or should love, his mother ; but the duty of loving one's mother is not a question considered open to discussion in common life. The same may be said of the other obligations which make up the substance of their duty for the great mass of mankind, in all but exceptional times and situations. When, then, we have in mind as a subject for public- school instruction, not the science of ethics, not the speculations of moral philosophers, but the orderly pre- sentation of the common facts and laws of the moral life which no one in his senses disputes, we perceive how the religious or theological difficulty at once disappears, to a large degree. There is possible a theistic expla- nation of the moral law; there is possible an atheistic explanation ; but there is a third course open here to the common-school teacher, — to attempt no such iinal explanation at all ! It is not necessary for him to teach that morality rests upon religion as its ultimate foun- dation ; it is just as unnecessary for him to teach that religion, on the contrary, reposes iipon morality as its basis. Let the relation of religion and morality be as it may be : the teacher is not called upon to decide an issue of this magnitude. He can teach the duties of ordinary life, showing their reasonableness and their in- terdependence, in a consecutive, orderly manner, without appealing to religion ; he can use the plain and usvial con- sequences of actions, good or bad, as reasons for morality, without being open to a just accusation of irreligion. These consequences as he should teach them are ad- mitted by all. He has, then, a right in reason to stop with them, because of the practical limitations imposed upon him by the time at his disposal, the immaturity of the faculties Avhich he is training, and, most of all, be- cause of the wide difference of men's minds as to the final explanation. The intuitionist and the utilitarian agree in attaching much importance to the consequences of action as a test of its moral quality. So far as these MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 5 two keep coinjiany, the teacher, tlien, may safely and properly go along with them, not because he is, neces- sarily, in his own theory, an intuitionist or a utilitarian, but because he is on common and undisputed ground. The condicct of mankind is but little affected by theories of the origin of the moral sense ; this is in the highest degree true of the children in our schools. If the teacher will constantly bear in mind tliat religion is not morality, but an interpretation of the whole of human life and the universe, he will see that he is not unre- ligious or anti-religious in giving to moral instruction a practical limit, such as I have indicated, in a scientific presentation of practical duty — its facts, its methods, and its laws — fitted to the scope of the child's mind. Such a limitation bars out all matters of theological controversy. The sectarian difficulty and the religious difficulty in moral education disappear when we keep to conduct and its common laws, and stop short of theo- logical or philosophical explanations wht/ right is right or wrong is wrong. If sectarians or religious people of any faith should denounce this abstinence from disputed matter as in itself unwise, Avrong, or sinful, we must ask them to consider more carefully that the public schools are for all, and that the only ground on which they can stand and teach is common ground, — as much in moral- ity as in arithmetic or language.^ The first question as to the teaching of morals in schools — the question of its possibility, in justice to all kinds of religious belief and no-belief — has detained us 1 The ancient philosophers disputed long' and to little profit over a question which, as Dr. Jowett says, "no one would either ask or answer in modern times," — " Can virtue be tauglit ? " In the Pro- tagoras of Plato, Socrates maintains that it cannot be. But this " is a paradox of the same sort as the profession of Socrates that he knew nothing. Plato means to say that virtue is not brought to a man, but must be drawn out of him ; and that it cannot be taught by rhetor- ical discourse or citations from the poets." The discussion is, to us, pure logomachy. 6 INTRODUCTION. long enough. Allowing that such instruction on ground common to all, believers and unbelievers, and in a sci- entific manner, is possible, the second inquiry arises : Is it desirable to give general moral education in the schoolroom ? The objection from sectarianism and di- versity of religious beliefs has been anticipated. If it is, in fact, possible, and even far from difficult, to teach morality scientifically, giving no reasonable ground of offence to the various sects, — any or all of them, — then the further question of the desirability of imparting in the schoolroom a knowledge of moral law may be dis- cussed on other grounds. On general principles, the common criticism of oiir public-school system, that it looks too much to purely intellectual results, and that it has too little influence upon the life of pupils after they have left school, tends strongly toward giving moral instruction, now much neglected, a more conspicuous place in the school course. Many of the arguments forcibly used to recommend in- dustrial training bear upon moral training as well. Fair- minded critics who are among the warmest friends of the common-school system find its chief defect, where it has been carried, as in the large cities, to its highest pitch of apparent excellence, in its actual overrating of knowledge alone. Sheer luemorizing and cramming for examinations are generally to be condemned on purely intellectual grounds. The training of the mental pow- ers of children, which is surely a most important part;; of the teacher's duty, is very inadequate when the two processes just named occupy the place of real honor in the educational course. The lack of adaptation to the needs of real life in which such a partial education results has long been obvious. One good remedy for the old narrow and injurious insistence upon sheer book knowledge, gotten by heart and recited by rote, is the industrial training which takes the boy or girl away from textbook and recita- MORALS IN TUE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 7 ■tion for a part of tlie school day, ami educates the hand, the eye, and the practical judgment in other work. It is a new discipline of the mind, compared with the usual round of study, and it complements admirably the intellectual training given by even the best teacher of book knowledge. But it is, as well, a new moral disci- pline in the virtues, the very essential virtues, of work. If the pupils are required to do their manual exercises in the training shop with neatness, alertness, and steady attention, with economy of time and material, and with a thorough interest in their work, the total discipline of mental faculties and the moral nature is in the highest degree helpful toward true success in after life. This kind of education boys and girls out of school, and men and women earning their living, must get from actual life ; a gradual transition to it from the education chiefly by books is, therefore, most advisable. Indus- trial training, to be of any worth, involves no small amount of moral training, given, of course, by the same person. The latter discipline, equally as a matter of course, is not to be imparted in recitations from a book ; it is given, as in the actual industries of men, by the word and the example of the skilful and energetic. There can hardly be any dispute as to the desirability of moral training in connection with this department of education ; no separation of industrial and moral edu- cation is possible. The " virtues of work," as I call them further on, are indispensable to technical skill and to business success. Numerous educators, however, will dispute the advis- ability of giving formal instruction in morals in our schools as they are now conducted (without any provi- sion for industrial training) ; they take this ground even when convinced that the difficulties arising from sectarianism and religion in general have been over- rated, and can be surmounted by the exercise of care and judgment. They say that the schoolroom has a 8 INTRODUCTION. necessary moral discipline of its own, which is enforced by every capable teacher ; that it is not well to go be- yond this ; that the number of branches of study in our schools is already sufficiently great; and that moral education is the proper function of the home and the church. But I quite fail to see why the moral matters which are continually coming up in the schoolroom, whether practically in the actual discipline, or theoret- ically as suggested in the reading-books used, should be thus artificially divided from the ethics of the rest of life. The set teaching of arithmetic and geography, for instance, is, indeed, the peculiar task which parents confide to the schools ; but the instruction which bears on character is not to be dismissed by the teacher, on his side, as a thing to be attended to entirely by the child's guardians at home or in the Sunday school. This would be taking altogether too limited and partial a view of moral training. Wise instruction in the art of right living in human society can hardly be too fre- quent ; the practice must always be going on, so long as we live here on earth, and help in making that prac- tice better and more successful is not likely to be too insistent. The child spends its earliest years entirely at home, and its parents are responsible for the moral influences which shape its infant character. When he is five or six years old, he is sent to school for some thirty hours a week out of the one hundred or so which are not given to sleep. Henceforth the responsibility of moral in- struction must be divided between the parent and the teacher ; but much the larger share continues to fall upon the home authorities, of course. Such obvious duties of the schoolroom as obedience, industry in study, punctuality in attendance, and ordinary politeness, even if thoroughly enforced, are far from exhausting the moral range of the life at home, with its more frequent and varied opportunities for the display of good or bad MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 9 character, in word and act. But though the father and the mother cannot properly throw the whole burden of the moral training of their children upon any person or persons beyond the home circle, they naturally look for a vigorous reinforcement of their own efforts from an institution so expressly adapted to training as the public school, with its special buildings, its determined hours, its professional teachers, and its ample apparatus of instruction and discipline. The teacher who draws an artificial line in the child's life, dividing intellectual training from moral, to devote himself to the first and throw the entire burden of the second upon the home, commits not only a blunder, but also an offence. The child is growing as a moral being in school hours as well as out of them. In them there are some special advantages for effective ethical teach- ing which the home does not possess. The teacher and the parent are even more natural allies in this direction than in the field of purely intellectual effort. Every public-school teacher is bound, then, I hold, to make the school hours a time for instruction in character, so far as this is compatible with the chief object of im- parting the elements of knowledge. But this does not by any means necessarily imply that we shall add a new branch to the course of study, which is often too full already of varied subjects, or that textbooks of virtue or moral theory shall be put into the hands of children in order that they may learn to define elabo- rately and recite by rote the rules and distinctions of a formal morality. On the contrary, I can imagine few studies more dry, repulsive, and ineffectual in reaching their proposed aim than such a study of morals ! In the highest degree it is true of instruction in this art of life that it should come direct from the teacher's lips and pure from the teacher's heart and example. I am not a believer in textbooks of morals for the use of children in public schools. Buu it would be a great 10 INTRODUCTION. assumption to suppose that the whole great army of teachers, as a rule, are already entirely competent to give familiar talks occasionally on points of good con- duct, and that no assistance from a well-devised hand- book of practical ethics, especially intended for their use, could be of value. Manuals of the art of teaching, in general and in particular, are multiplying every year. It would be a curious exception if only in the compara- tively untried field of moral instruction the teacher Avere left to his own devices. Precisely the opposite method I hold to be adapted to the actual state of the case ; in no part of the common-school course should a good manual for teachers be more welcome or more profitable than just here. The present book is an earnest attempt to perform what seems to be the much-needed service of clearing the mind of the common-school teacher as to the nature and limits of the moral training which may advisably be given in the schoolroom. The younger and more inexperienced instructors may find here some useful hints as to the best way of putting things. But I shall leave it to the older and experienced teachers, who have realized the desirability of moral training, to answer the third question, "' How shall morality be taught in our schools ? " largely in their own way. The science of education has been amply and thoroughly illustrated of late years in books, many and excellent, for the guid- ance of teachers. The fit methods to pursue in moral education are essentially the same as those laid down in these numerous manuals and treatises on intellectual development in the schools. There is, of course, no fixed and plain line between the two disciplines. Wri- ters on psychology and the principles of education now- adays devote no small part of their space to topics which are common to both. Their frequent remarks on the training of the will, on the formation of habit, on the influence of association, and similar subjects are of vita] MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCUOOLS. 11 importance to the proper method of instruction in prac- tical ethics. From my own short experience as an edu- cator, but much more from observation and reflection on the matter, I offer to teachers the following suggestions for what they are worth, as to manner and method in moral education. The one principle to keep firmly in mind is to avoid didacticism (" preaching ") as much as possible, and to hold fast to actual life as children already know it, or may easily be led to comprehend it. Concrete in- stances of right-doing or wrong-doing, happening in the schoolroom itself, or just outside, within the immediate knowledge of the boys and girls, afford the best starting- point for talks about the moral points involved. It will be easy to bring the children's minds, through a consideration of actual examples, to recognize in some degree the general principles involved. The same cau- tion needs to be iirged here as in the case of other gen- eral notions, against haste and consequent disregard of the immaturity of the childish mind. But if the teacher will shun formality and generality, and keep mainly to the particular and the concrete, he will find that few sub- jects interest children more than these questions of right and wrong in common conduct. These men-and-women- to-be find j^eople the most attractive matter, just as they will find them later in life. Man is not only the " proper," but also the most engaging " study of man- kind," large or small. Conduct is to children, who have not yet entered upon the great activities of business, art, or science, much more than " three fourths of life," and the lines of it on which they are beginners will continue unbroken through all their years. Elaborate casuistry, hair-splitting about imaginary situations, any- thing and everything in the line of pure ethical theory, should be utterly tabooed in the schoolroom. But with these precautions observed, and under the guidance of a teacher of well-developed moral sense, boys and 12 INTRODUCTION. girls between eight and fourteen years of age (in tlie grammar schools, where moral education has its most fruitful field) will reason about points of ethical prac- tice with interest, and often with a freshness and an acuteness that are surprising. If this be not so, then these children in school differ very much from these same children out of school ! If the course of study is, anywhere, so full or crowded as not to allow time for the occasional talks (one or two a week) about conduct, which I should advise as the best method, then that course should be shortened by the omission of some branch of much less use- ful knowledge sure to be found in it. I would avoid set times for these conversations ; in them question and answer should play a large part ; the more easily (if not very frequently) the teacher " drops into " one of them for a few vivacious minutes, the better. Some incident of the schoolroom life that has just occurred, or some matter in the lesson in reading or history, may well interrupt the routine of the ordinary recitation, as the teacher asks the opinions of the class or of the school on the moral point in question, incites them to think more carefully about it, and indicates the conclusion to which long experience has brought the world of man. The school itself will, naturally, supply the starting- point at least for the majority of these ethical talks, for, like every other social institution, it has its moral law which must be observed by all its members in order to attain its end. The plainly visible chief function of the public school is to impart the elements of knowledge. To this end there must be full obedience to the natu- ral authority, the teacher ; the prescribed conditions of quiet, order, and studiousness must be observed by the pupils. Punctuality in attendance and readiness for all the exercises ; truthfulness in regard to absence from school, tardiness, or any other failure to comply with the regular order ; honorable conduct with respect to MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 13 methods of passing examinations ; polite treatment of the other scliolars ; attention and courtesy to the teacher, — such are some of the moral necessities of the school- room to be met by the scholars. The pupils have no duties which should not be met by an equal faithfulness to his duties on the part of the teacher, who should not be there teaching unless interested in his work, qualified for it, and industrious in improving his practice of it. He must be just and impartial in his treatment of the scholars ; he must, having the authority, exhibit the virtues of a ruler. Teaching politeness and honor, the instructor should be an honorable gentleman. He has some advantages over the parents at home in respect to the moral disci- pline demanded by the schoolroom. Indulgence or par- tiality for any individual child is out of place, of course, whereas at home it may sometimes be very natural ; the aim of the school is more limited and definite than that of the home ; the hours are set, the labors are plainly marked out, and to accomplish them success- fully something like military discipline is necessary. On the other hand, the teacher has no direct influence over the pupil except in the school hours, and his ear- nest efforts may be rendered almost useless by the in- difference, or the hostility even, of parents. But none the less must he strive to connect the morality of the schoolroom, which he can enforce, with the morality of life outside, as resting on the same general principles of reason. While the first rudiments of common sense will keep him from speaking of any vice, such as lying or stealing or drunkenness, in such a way as to proclaim his knowledge that it prevails in any scholar's home, he is still free to enlarge upon the manifold evil con- sequences of it. Thus his word may help somewhat to keep children pure in the midst of a bad home atmos- phere, which he is otherwise powerless to change. " Word," — this will usually be easy for the teacher 14 INTRODUCTION. to give in attempting moral education ; but nowhere else does word amount to so little compared with ex- ample. If the word is not reinforced by the examj)le, its influence will be small. The demand upon the pa- tience and good nature of the public-school teacher is great, and by the vast majority the call is well met ; but one good result of teaching practical morals may be in that reaction upon the teacher himself which is seen in other lines. What one teaches he learns more thoroughly than in any other way. So in respect to morals : the conscientious teacher, who cannot fail to apply to himself and his own conduct the precepts of justice and kindness which he instils into his pupils' minds, may be almost as much benefited by the study as the scholar. John Milton thought that " he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well here- after in laudable things ought himself to be a true jx)em ; that is, a composition and pattern of the honor- ablest things ; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy." As Milton would have the poet him- self a poem, so the excellent teacher of morals will be morality incarnate ; showing forth its gospel as well as its law in the daily exhibition of sweetness and light, he will be " not virtuous, but virtue " itself ! How diffi- cult, but how necessary, is such a preparation of the heart and will in the well-rounded instructor of chil- dren or of men one does not need to reiterate to the teacher who has found his true vocation. A single caution may be needed here by the most con- scientious. Children take example from the whole man or woman instructing them. A severe conception of his duty may make a teacher sometimes harsh, where a little measure of good nature would be more effective in correcting the offence. " You have not fulfilled every duty until you have fulfilled the duty of being pleas- MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS . 15 ant " is a good sayiug to remember in tlie sclioolroom. Strength of mind and fulness of knowledge have a moral bearing on the teacher's character ; good taste, refinement, a sense of beauty, — these too should be cul- tivated in himself by the instructor of youth. They will fit him to be a better and more persuasive moral guide ; they will not only favorably affect his own char- acter, but they will also diffuse a moral influence, not the less powerful because of his unconsciousness of its existence. Having answered the three questions as to the possi- bility, the desirability, and the general method of moral instruction in schools, I need add but a few paragraphs on the nature of this manual and the best way to use it. It is intended solely for the teacher : it is not a catechism for the scholar; it is not a book from which the teacher is to read selections to the school. It aims solely to be a help to instructors of children in prepar- ing short talks on practical morals.^ There is, to my knowledge, very little helpful literature in this special field ; and in what there is I have not happened to find any work which takes the line I have chosen as the best to follow. In this venture at making a properly scientific handbook of practical ethics to aid the teacher as he is aided by manuals on the teaching of geogra- phy, arithmetic, and other studies, I have not crossed the line between morality and religion. But every one who uses this manual should beware of supposing that because the author has omitted appeals to certain great beliefs and sentiments of mankind, he is therefore a disbeliever in them I am" strongly of the opinion that the line followed in this book is, substantially, the best to take ; that in our common schools it is well to begin and to end as I have done. Parents at home, preachers 1 The teacher will not, for this reason, think the style of these chapters too simple ; I have often written as if addressing hoys and girls. 16 INTRODUCTION. in the pulpit, or teachers in tlie Sunday school will supplement a distinctively scientific teaching of morals with a more religious or theological view. But no one can properly say that the method here taken is either anti-religious or anti-theological. Morality is here viewed as a practical art which has, of course, a working theory that it is well to know ; but it seems unadvisable to ex- tend this theory, in the case of children in our public schools, by bringing in considerations which are dis- tinctively religious or theological. Religion may, later in life, become one of the greatest inspirations to good conduct, and a rational theology may supplement a prac- tical science of morals most happily. Both, however, are here simply left out of view as subjects too great for the common school, and too much complicated with unset- tled controversies. So, likewise, ethical theory has been shunned, in order to make clearer and easier the suffi- ciently difficult task of the teacher. When the teacher who takes up this book has become well enough acquainted with it to sympathize with its spirit and appreciate its leading ideas, ha will be wise if he uses it for the purposes of the schoolroom in an independent fashion. I would not advise a consecutive series of talks to the scholars, following the order of the chapters. This order is based upon a logical con- ception, but the development of it is meant for the in- structor. The matter may well be left to the judgment of each individual teacher to decide, according as he is more or less inclined to system. But any striking oc- casion in school life fitted for driving home a moral precept ought to be improved at once, without regard to the place of a given duty in a handbook. A very free use of this volume will be the best use, so long as its method and spirit are accepted and folloAved. This method is to hold fast to the concrete and the actual ; this spirit is cleaving to righteousness as the great mat- ter in human life. MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 17 These fifteen short chapters begin with a simple ex- phanation of Life under Law, showing what it means to live, as mankind does, in a law-abiding Universe. The special significance of Moral Law and Obedience to it is the next subject. Obedience is possible mainly through the power of Self-Control, which must be fun- damental in the nature of any moral being. Exercising this, he can practice Truthfulness, Justice, and Kind- ness, not as instincts, acting more or less fitfully, but as perpetual forces, working steadily from within. Af- ter pausing to consider the Great Words of Morality, such as " duty " and " conscience," we pass to the groups of duties implied when we speak of Home, Work, Honor, and Personal Habits, — the last phrase covering " du- ties to one's self," as we often hear them called. The obligations to our country of Patriotism and Political Duty could not be omitted here. The meaning of Char- acter and of Moral Progress is next considered, and we conclude with a chapter on life according to the Golden Kule, the most important precept of practical morals. In the text which forms the body of this book, the teacher, as has been said, will not find discussions of the origin of the moral sense, the nature of conscience, the final test of right, and other similar matters which belong to the psychology or the metaphysic of ethics, not to practical morality. He will do well to consult, according to his interest, the books on ethics which are occupied largely with these matters ; he will probably gain more in the way of illustrations from actual conduct found in such works than in any lasting satisfaction of his own mind as to the perennial problems of ethics. The constant appeal in the schoolroom should be to experience which has fully shown the consequence of obedience and disobedience to the simpler moral laws of conduct here treated. Especially, whenever it is prac- ticable, should the law in question be traced in the experience of the children themselves, in what they 18 INTE OD UCTION. have seen, heard, felt, or done, at home, in school, or elsewhere. The object of the Notes is to fnrnish supplementary ■ matter to the text, in the way of hints for the develop- ment of the subject; illustrations from biography and history, which could only be referred to here ; quo- tations, or references to passages, from great writers, particularly the poets and moralists, bearing upon the point of conduct in question ; and occasional indications of places in the works on ethics generally accessible in which these points are well treated. It is evident that these Notes might be extended almost indefinitely ; comparatively few are given, and in this direction es- pecially the manual will need revision. The skilful in- structor, accustomed to teach without relying upon a book, will know how to take the material in the text and the notes, work it over in his own mind, and give it forth in a form suited to the needs of the schoolroom and the hour. One more suggestion remains : the songs sung in the school may be made influential in bringing home a sound moral lesson to the scholar's mind. Beyond its general refining influence, music may thus become an agreeable instrument for fixing plain truths of conduct deep in the memory and the heart. The songs should not be made exclusively didactic, but after a short talk on truthfulness, for instance, the moral could hardly be left on the mind more felicitously than with singing, "Be the matter what it may, Always tell the truth ! " In this attempt to set forth the laws of the good life — which is therefore the best, the happiest, the most truly successful life — in such a manner as to aid the great cause of the education of the young, I have used material from many quarters. A careful inquiry has not brought to notice any book, however, in English, French, or German constructed on the lines here fol- lowed. Books of ethical philosophy are many in these MORALS IN TUB PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 19 languages ; but handbooks of practical morals for schools are comparatively very few. But wherever I have found anything to my purpose I have appropriated it. A book of this kind, as a German author has well said, should be a collective work to which many minds have contrib- uted ; he would be pleased to have his own volume quoted as written " by the professors and schoolmasters of Germany." So, in offering this small book to the pub- lic-school teachers of my country, to make of it what use they may, I am careless of originality or plagiarism, but I earnestly invite such suggestions for its improve- ment as shall make it in the truest sense " a book by the teachers of America." NOTES. Moral education in the public schools is one of the " ques- tions of the day " most frequently debated in the press. The Christian Union and the Independent of New York, Public Opin- ion of Washington, and the Christian Register of Boston, have had of recent years many noteworthy expressions of opinion from prominent educators on the subject. ^ Cardinal Gibbons has ably stated the argument against secular schools. Particularly good is a little pamphlet by W. T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, entitled Morality in the Schools: it is a review of the discussion printed in the Christian Register, January 31, 1889. Mistaken methods of teaching morals with- out religion, are described, and a better way indicated, in a pa- per on Ethics in the Sunday School, by W. L. Sheldon of St. Louis. See also Problems in American Society, by J. H. Crooker. Among articles in the periodicals are Religion in State Educa- tion, by J. H. Seelye, Forum, i. 427; Training in Ethical Science, by H. H. Curtis, Popular Science Monthly, xxvii. 96; Moral and Industrial Training, by G. R. Stetson, Andover Review, vi. Sol; Religion, Morals, and Schools, by M. J. Savage, The Arena, i. 503. The Ethical Record of Philadelphia and its successor, The In- ternational Journal of Ethics, have frequently considered the 20 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. place of morals in education, and the best methods of instruc- tion. Some of Professor Felix Adier's valuable lectures on moral training have been printed in pamphlet form. In the multitude of works on pedagogy, which have more or less to say on the moral nature, and the wisest ways of develop- ing it, these books may be named as among the best: Plato's Republic, books iii. and iv. ; Richter's Levana; Herbert Spencer's Education ; A. Bain's Education as a Science; Rosenkranz's Phi- losophy of Education, part II. chapters xii.-xviii. ; G. Compayr^'s Lectures on Teaching, part I. chapters ix.-xii. ; and Psychology; other works on psychology by J. M. Baldwin, J. Dewey, D. J. Hill, and James Sully ; The Senses and the Will, by W. Preyer; T'he Education of Man, by Froebel. Hints on Home Teaching, by Edwin Abbot, D. D. ; School Life, a series of lessons, by Mrs. F. B. Ames; and Notes of Lessons on Moral Subjects, by F. Hack- wood (T. Nelson & Sons), are particularly helpful. A point not to be overlooked by the teacher is the use of pro- verbs ("the wisdom of many in the wit of one"), which will often be effective in fixing a moral truth in the child's mind. Such a book as Bartlett's Familiar Quotations will supply brief passages of higher literary merit, bearing on points of common conduct. The reading exercises, especially the supplementary reading, may well be chosen with an ethical aim. While the school-room itself supplies the natural basis for instruction in morals, by precept and by example, much moralizing on every little incident should be avoided. The chief aim of the school, after all is said, is to get knowledge. The biographies of Arnold of Rugby, and other great educa- tional reformers (see R. H. Quick's work with this title) will be useful. Every teacher has, in a sense, to be a re-former of char- acter, and Coleridge's lines (page iv.) indicate finely the chief virtues such a reformer must himself possess. THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. CHAPTER I. LIFE UNDER LAW. 1. All our human life is lived under Law. At the outset let us be clear iu our minds as to just what we mean by this comprehensive statement. We are well aware that in all free, civilized countries, such as our own, there is something called " the fundamental law," or " the Constitution " of the country. Thus the United States Constitution is for all the States. More- over, whether we live in Massachusetts, Ohio, Califor- nia, Louisiana, or any other State of the Union, we live under a State Constitution, too, which is in har- mony with the " fundamental law " of the whole coun- try. Congress and the State legislatures pass laws to adapt the provisions of the Constitutions to the circum- stances and needs of our own time. Many large vol- umes contain these laws, which do not promise to re- ward any one for doing well, but declare punishments for persons who do not act in conformity with what they prescribe. Policemen, constables, or sheriffs ar- rest men or women who are supposed to be " breaking the law " of the town or city or State or Nation, and they are confined in jails or prisons or kept on bail, until they are tried and found to be innocent or guilty by the courts. Judges are appointed to preside over these courts, at the public expense, and juries are 22 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. chosen to decide whether the accvised person has actu- ally broken the law or not. There is a special class of persons, lawyers, who devote themselves to studying and practising law ; they go into court and argue in behalf of one side or the other in a suit. Now, when we say that the jury has convicted a per- son (found him guilty) of breaking the law, what do we mean ? We do not intend to say that the law is something which can be broken as a pane of glass is broken by throwing a stone through it. We get a new pane of glass set in such a case, because the old one is no longer good for our purpose, to keep out the wind and the rain. But when a man breaks the law against taking human life by committing a murder, we do not have to pass a new law. The law which the murderer disobeys is the expression in words of the will and pur- pose of the people of this State that no person shall take the life of another at his own pleasure merely. If one man kills another, not in self-defence, he is a law- breaker in this sense, that he disobeys the expres- sion of the will of the people. By the methods they have established for such cases, they proceed to enforce the law against him, i.-e., to put it into effect by mak- ing him suffer certain consequences of his bad deed as a penalty. This punishment was laid down in the law before the murder was committed, and it was intended to be so severe as to prevent any person from killing a hu- man being. But if, for any reason, a man or woman has actually been killed by another, then we say, " The law must be enforced ; and the murderer must lose his life," because this is the punishment laid down in the law on purpose to keep people's lives safe generally. If the murderer is hanged (or imprisoned for life, in- stead, under certain circumstances) then the law against murder has been " enforced," and we might well say that the law has broken the murderer. He acted contrary LIFE UNDER LAW. 23 to the law ; but lu; was afterwards punished according to the law. lie; disobeyed ; but lu; had to take tht; con- sequences which tlie law threatened against disobedi- ence. So Avitli respect to offences of. less importance than the taking of a human life : if a man breaks into another man's house at night and carries away some of that man's property, or if he steals something out of a dry-goods store in broad daylight, he is sent to jail, if it is proved that he did the act, and he is kept in prison as long as the law has determined for such cases. This, then, is what we mean by " breaking " and " enforcing " the statute laAV of the Commonwealth in which we live. The great majority of the people living in the State believe that their lives and their property will not be safe unless laws prescribing punishments for certain bad actions are passed and enforced. So they choose legislators who make these laws, and pay judges and jailers to carry them out whenever any evil- minded person disobeys them. In all civilized coun- tries human beings live under law in this sense, and we say that " a government of laAvs, not of men " is right, meaning that the same rule should be applied to all alike who commit a crime, and that no man should have the power to suspend or set aside the law so that a guilty ]3erson may escape the punishment he has de- served. But this is only one meaning of " living under law." The laws of which we have been speaking were made by men, and they are changed from time to time, as men's ideas alter. But when we say "a law of na- ture," we are using the word law to mean something very different, something which men did not make and cannot alter. It is a law of nature, for instance, that the tides shall rise and fall twice in every twenty- four hours : it is a law of nature that the roots of an apple-tree shall spread out in the ground and that it shall leaf and blossom and bear fruit in the upper air 24 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. and sunshine. It is a law of nature that water shall run down hill, not up hill. We should only make ourselves ridiculous if we passed laws in our legislatures that the tide should go out and come in only once in the twenty- four hours ; that apples should grow in the ground like potatoes, and that rivers should run over hills instead of going around them. No law of nature can be set aside by laws that man makes. We may often be mis- taken as to what the actual laws of nature are : we have to discover them by experience, and reasoning on our experience, of the facts of nature. But when we have once found a real law like that of gravitation, the widest-reaching of all laws of nature, we should never think that we can make it of no effect by saying so, or voting so. A " law of nature " is our expression of the fact that natural forces act in certain ways. The uniformity of nature means that we find in all our experience that these ways do not change without a cause. Under the same conditions the natural forces — gravitation, heat, light, and electricity, for instance — always act in the same manner and produce the same effects. Just as we live together in towns and cities and states, feel- ing safe as to our persons and property so far as other persons are concerned, because of the human laws that have been made to protect us against attack by evil- doers, so we have a very much greater confidence in the laws of nature which man did not make and cannot alter. We feel perfectly sure that the force of gravita- tion will hold our houses down to the ground next year as well as this year ; so we build them to last for years, and we live in them in entire security. We are very con- fident that day will succeed night every evening that we lie down to sleep : we have no fear that harvest will not follow upon seed-time. Gravitation, and the revolution of the earth on its axis, and the growth of plants from seeds are all parts of the great uniformity of nature. LIFE UNDER LAW. 25 With respect to these laws of nature, we may say even more strongly t}ian we could say it of the wisest laws of man's making, " They cannot be broken : the?j break the persons who disobey them." If a little child puts its hand on a hot stove, its hand will be burned : if a boy who cannot swim goes alone into deep water, out of the reach of help, he will be drowned. It is the nature of fire and hot things to burn human flesh : it is the na- ture of water to cause the death of a person who gets under it so that he cannot keep on breathing. The judges and the juries sometimes let a person go free of punishment if he makes it seem probable that he did not intend to break the law printed in the statute-book ; or they impose a lighter punishment than they would in a case where they were sure that the person diso- beyed the law knowingly. But what we call the '^ laws of nature " were not made by human beings ; so we can- not ask our fellow-men to change them or alter the pen- alties because we did not know all about them or intend to violate them. The man who handles a wire charged with electricity will receive a shock just the same, whether he knew anything about the risk or did not. It is our business to learn the laws of nature and to act in accordance with them. These laws are very many in number, and we are constantly learning more and more about them : the more we learn, the more sure we become of the uni- formity of nature. This truth i3 the foundation of science and the reason for our daily confidence in the future. If we believe that hereafter the same causes will produce the same effects as now, under the same conditions, we can plan our lives with a firm trust that we are building on a sure foundation. This is the rea- son why we are continually inquiring into nature and its laws ; we study physics and chemistry and botany and physiology, and all the other " natural sciences," as we call them, in order first to know, and then to act in 26 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. accordance with our knowledge. We study the facts of natural things and forces in order to find the laws of their existence and their operation and in order to make our own actions conform to the nature of things. We wish to make use of the forces of nature, such as heat and electricity, that they may serve our conve- nience. After we have found how these forces act, Avhat the laws of them are, we have no choice about obeying or disobeying, and taking the consequences or not. We must take the consequences, if we act in one way or another, which " naturally " follow from that action. A statement of all the " laws " of any thing in nature would be a complete expression in words of the nature of that thing : so every thing or being is acting in accordance with law when it is acting according to its nature. We cannot reasonably expect that things will act contrary to their nature. We never find rocks, for example, putting out woody fibres and rooting them- selves in the soil. We do not expect ever to see oak trees walking up and down the street, or animals stand- ing on their heads to eat their food. Every law of nature has an interest and a value for mankind, if purely as a matter of knowledge. But among all the sciences, the most interesting to man and woman are those which declare the facts and laws of our own human nature. We are living beings, and so we must act according to the laws of life ; biology is the name we give to the science that tells us of the facts and laws of life in general, whether in plants or in ani- mals. We are animals, and we call by the name of physiology the science that informs us about the facts and laws of animal life, whether in dogs or horses, or any other of the " lower animals," or in mankind. As we study this animal life we find, as we get nearer and nearer in the scale to human beings, that there is more and more of that wonderful life which we call the life of mind. So we have a science of mental physiology LIFE UNDER LAW. 27 which is mainly made up of what men liave found out about the organs and functions (jf the human mind — the brain and nerves which we can see, and the feeling and thinking and willing which we are conscious of in ourselves, but which no one can see. We can only infer that others are feeling or thinking or willing by the signs which they make, in expression or speech or action. The fact that men are especially thinking animals with minds, is the reason why we have many other sci- ences than mental physiology, which has to do only with those organs of the mind which it is possible to see in a human being, the brain and the nervous system. Psychology is the name we give (" knowledge of the mind or soul ") to the science of the human mind in general. But this is a very great subject in itself : so we divide it into branches, and give each one of these a name. There is the science of logic, for example, which brings together the facts about the ways in which men reason ; the science of economics, which relates how they get wealth, and consume or distribute it ; the science of politics, which expounds the methods in which men have come together under various forms of government ; and the science of history, which shows us what mankind has done in all ages and countries where any record has been preserved of its doings. All these mental sciences show certain facts of our nature as human beings, and sift them so as to discover their laws. AVhen these laws are once actually found, we have no choice about obeying them and suffering a penalty or not. We must obey them if we would pros- X)er mentally. So doing, we live in accordance with our nature as intellectual beings : but if we disobey these laws, as to a limited extent we may and can, we must take the natural consequences. If, for instance, we rea- son contrary to the laws of logic, which are simply state- ments of the way in which we must reason to arrive at 28 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. correct conclusious, we come to a wrong result. We cannot reason or fail to reason, just as we please, and still have a right to demand that we arrive at the truth in both cases alike. We cannot act contrary to the ways in which the science of economics shows that men ac- quire property, and then rationally complain that we are not well-off as to property. There are laws of logic and laws of economics which are just as sure and just as binding as the laws of physics or chemistry. They are, indeed, often harder to discover, as human nature is very complex, and we are subject to so many laws that we are more apt to make mistakes about them than about rocks and plants and the lower animals. But whetlier we know the law or do not know it, it is still in force. The one wise course for us to follow is to dis- cover the law, if possible, and then conform our action to it. This is not a world iu which we can " do as we please," and prosper. On the contrary, as a very wise man has said, " Only law can give us freedom ; " we must obey the laws of our own human nature and of all nature, if we would have true liberty and happiness. Most of all is what we have been saying true of the science of ethics or morals (the two words mean the same thing, one being derived from the Greek, the other from the Latin language). Ethics is the sci- ence of human conduct in personal relations. It tells us of the facts of human life which concern human beings, not in respect to reasoning (logic) for example, not in respect to the way to make and spend money (economics), not in respect to setting up a government that will last (politics), but in respect to the common conduct of men toward each other in the relations of character. Ethics, or morals, is a more difficult science to define than the others which we have been naming, so easy is it for almost any human action to take on a moral bearing, i e., to affect the welfare of other per- sons than the doer of the act, or to influence his own LIFE UNDER LAW. 29 ethical life. But, on the other hand, the vast majority of acts and words and feelings which may be called moral ov immoral are of the commonest, and are con- stantly happening every day. We live in society : not one of us can live entirely apart, as an isolated individual. Human society is just as much a fact as any single person is a fact. Men, we say, are social beings. Their nature marks them out as intended to live together, members of a family, of a neighborhood, of a town, of a nation, and of the great world of human beings. Ethics is not, of course, the only science of human action in society, for men in order to carry on trade or establish a government, for instance, must be living in communities, and so economics and politics are social sciences too ; but eth- ics is preeminently the most fundamental and impor- tant science of human life together. The art of morals is by far the most interesting and constant of all arts to universal mankind. We are all the time liv- ing in social relations ; society of some kind is abso- lutely necessary to human welfare. The science and the art which are concerned with the personal relations of the members of society to each other must thus be of supreme interest. No questions are more common than questions of moral goodness or badness ; no words are more often employed than " right " and " wrong ; " nothing is more thought of than the personal relations into which moral qualities may at any time enter ; nothing is of more consequence to the very existence of human society than virtue, or the moral life. It would be a very strange exception to» all the rest of our life if these personal relations were not subject to law like other relations. Moral law, in the family, in the neighborhood, in the political organizations of men, is, in fact, the earliest of all laws to force itself upon the attention of men. Unless the social law is in large degree obeyed, the family would not endure, the 30 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. State would perisli, men would fly apart from one another and live in solitude, and civilization would thus become impossible. So important to the very existence of social life is the moral life, that we find the earliest codes of law were largely collections of moral precepts. At once, on reflection, we see how reasonable this is. The moral law is the law which expresses the nature of society ; just as the single human being must obey the laws of his own nature to some degree, even to live, so a society, a larger or smaller collection of human beings must obey the moral law, however imperfectly, in order even to exist. It may have been a very long time before books were written on moral science, but troni the ear- liest days of human life on this earth there must have been some practical recognition of the moral law, for otherwise human society would have been impossible. To put this truth in another form, we might say that human nature has alw^ays been true to itself and that man has always acted out his own nature. Since we can reason about an art and imagine it car- ried to a perfection which only few persons, if any, have ever attained, we may conceive a perfect morality, according to certain principles, which few individuals have practised thoroughly at any time. There is an ideal excellence which may be imagined in every direction of human effort. aS"o where else, as a matter of fact, has the ideal been earlier conceived or more constantly held up to mankind than in this very sphere of conduct, however rarely it has been realized. But as the moral law is the very law of life of human so- ciety, it has always been recognized and obeyed in some degree. Mankind makes progress in morality, as in other arts of life, by taking heed to its ways. So strong is the force, however, in most human beings that makes them think too much of individual happiness and too little of the social welfare, that moral progress toward the higher LIFE UNDER LAW. 31 levels of conduct is necessarily slow. But we are able to-day to see at least that the moral law is inscribed in the nature of man, that its facts are a part of the facts of human nature, aiid that obedience to it is in the line of the true development of human nature. We live under moral law as we live under physical law, under chemical law, under physiological law. We cannot escape from it, except by leaving human society, for it is of the very nature of that society. We find our wel- fare in obedience to it ; we suffer if we disobey it, knowingly or unknowingly. Owing to the complexity of many social relations we cannot be so exact in pre- dicting the consequences of immorality as of disobe- dience to the laws of health, but we may be just as con- fident, despite all apparent exceptions, that there is a moral law and that it is binding on all human beings, as we are that there are laws for the body, which must be observed if one Avould have good health. The first thing for a rational human being here to do is to acknowledge that he lives in every time, place, and condition, under law, and, most of all, under the moral law of universal human nature, to which he owes obedience. What this obedience implies we will consider in the next chapter. NOTES. The teacher will do well to dwell upon the great conceptions of modern thought, the universe governed by one law, tlie uni- formity of nature, and the inclusion of human life under law. He will be aided himself by such books as J. S. Mill's Logic, The Principles of Science, by W. S. Jevons, John Fiske's Cosmic Phi- losophy, and The Reign of Law, by the Duke of Argyll. The popular writings of Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and M. J. Savage, are full of illustrations of scientific conceptions. The following quotation from Professor Huxley's Science Primer: Introductory, 32 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. explains the meaning of the phrase " a law of nature." (The sight of the Statutes of the State would impress the child's mind forcibly.) " When we have made out, by careful and repeated observa- tion, that something is always the cause of a certain effect, or that certain events always take place in the same order, we speak of the truth thus discovered as a law of nature. ... In fact, everything that we know about the powers and properties of natural objects, and about the order of nature, may properly be termed a law of nature. ... A law of man tells what we may expect society will do under certain circumstances, and a law of nature tells us what we may expect natural objects will do under certain circumstances. . • . Natural laws are not commands, but assertions respecting the invariable order of nature; and they remain laws only so long as they can be shown to express that order. To speak of the violation or the suspension of a law of nature is an absurdity. All that the phrase can really mean is, that under certain circumstances the assertion contained in the law is not true; and the just conclusion is, not that the order of nature is interrupted, but that we have made a mistake in stat- ing that order. A true natural law is a imiversal rule, and as such admits of no exception." So Montesquieu wrote: "Laws, in their most general signifi- cation, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws." Here are three famous sayings by lawyers on man-made law: — "Reason is the life of law; nay, the common law itself is no- thing else but reason. . . . The law, which is perfection of rea- son." (Sir E. Coke.) " The absolute justice of the State, enlightened by the perfect reason of the State. That is law." (Rufus Choate.) " There is a higher law than the Constitution." (W. H. Sew- ard.) Three other great minds have thus spoken of the relations of law and liberty: — " That liberty which alone is the fruit of piety, of temperance, and unadulterated virtue." (Milton.) " Liberty must be limited in order to, be possessed." (Burke.) " Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." (Dan- iel Webster.) LIFE UNDER LAW. 33 As a popular exposition of the law of the land under which we live, E. P. Dole's Talks About Law is an excellent manual. The idea of justice is intimately connected with the political life of mankind, and the teacher will naturally be led into the study of politics as a science. Bryce's American Commonwealth, Wood- row Wilson's 2'he State and Federal Governments of the United States, and John Fiske's American Political Ideas, are three good books to start with ; see the notes to Chapter XII. of this vol- ume. " Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is, in my opinion, safe." — Edmund Burke. CHAPTER II. OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. How do we obey what we call a physical or natu- ral law, and what does such obedience mean ? To answer these two questions, let us take some very plain and specific instances. JVIankind has discovered, as the most universal of all laws of physical nature, the law of gravitation. This law finds expression in the facts of weight and of falling bodies. Like every other law of general nature, this is fixed and determined. We cannot abolish it either by our private will, or by a majority vote of all the people on earth. It is the force of gravitation, indeed, which keeps our bodies on the earth ! When we are to build a large house we act in accordance with our knowledge of gravitation by dig- ging deep into the ground first, and then laying the strongest part of the building below the surface, as a foundation for the rest. We do not think because we have but a short time for building, or because we have but little money to build with, or simply because "we happen to feel like it," that it will be well enough to go on fast with the work, and run up a high building with- out digging deep to lay a strong and heavy foundation wall. The power of gravitation would bring the house to the ground of its own weight if we did so ; and men would call us, as we should deserve to be called, " fools." We cannot know just how much weight to place on a certain foundation unless we have studied the matter in books, or have had much practical experience ; but, if we are wise, we consult those who do know, and build OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 35 accordingly. We should be very foolish, indeed, if we had such an idea of our own importance as to think that the natural force would be modified, or fail to act as it usually does, because it is we who have built the house, however unwisely. " Shall gravitation cease if you go by ? " writes the poet. No ! it will not cease ; and your bad building will fall, and perhaps crush you in its falling. We obey this natural law of gravitation by building as experienced men tell us we must build if we would be sure that our house stand firm. We have no choice in the matter. Stone and wood and irOn, and the earth on which they rest, will act according to the laws of their own natures, and they will pay no atten- tion to our fond wishes, our caprices, or our ignorance. They are all under universal law ; they are parts of one whole, — the universe of things, — and they act accord- ingly, each in its sphere. We, too, must so act wisely, with a knowledge of law and according to law, if we would have our houses stand. People cannot build " just as they please " and have good houses that will last. Success is the result of conformity to natural law here ; it is shown by the fact that the house endures and is strong. Failure and disaster are the result of neglect of natural law or conscious disobedience, — the house falls fiat. In our next example let us come home to ourselves, as human beings in animal bodies. Human physiology is the name we give to the science which brings together the facts which men have discovered by long and care- ful study of the human body. They have found out " the laws of physiology." These are the expression, in a few words comparatively, of the facts as to the ways in whicli the bodily forces work constantly in us. In accordance with their knowledge of the working of muscles and nerves and stomach and brain and all the other bodily parts and organs, the doctors tell us that we must do so and so if we would preserve the bodily 36 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. health, which is so indispensable a condition of human happiness and prosperity. They give the name Hygiene to the set of practical rules and directions about eat- ing and drinking, breathing, sleeping, work and play, and other functions, which are founded on their studv of physiology. If one follows these rules he will prob- ably enjoy good health ; if he does not follow them he is altogether likely to be sick or infirm. Of course, this matter of good health is very much more complicated than the matter of building a house so that it will stand firm. There are very many more things to be taken into consideration, and there are, aj)2yarentl)/, a great many exceptions to what we call " the laws of health," because the conditions under which people live are so various. But we need not doubt, first, that there are laws of health ; and second, that we know a good deal about them, amply enough to show us what our bodily habits, as a rule, should be. One law, for example, is that our lungs should have pure air to breathe, and that they be- come weakened or diseased if we breathe the same air over and over. Now a farmer who works outdoors all the summer day may sleep in a small and poorly- ventilated room, and may not appear to suffer very much from bad air. He does not suffer so much, at any rate, as a man would who has to work all day in a close factory or machine shop. This difference does not affect the fact that ^-'^''^'fi (lir is aUvays best for the lungs of every one, or the truth that because of this fact we should pay attention to ventilation in our houses and workshops. The Black Hole of Calcutta is the well-known instance of the absolute necessity of a certain amount of pure air merely to sustain the animal life. But the laws of hygiene in regard to pure air are confirmed in our common experience when the results of inattention are less tragical. Bad air produces head- ache and languor and a low tone of bodily spirits. Such effects as these we cannot get rid of simply by wishing OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 37 them away. We must change our habits with regard to the ventilation of our houses and work-places, the amount of exercise we take in the open air, and like matters. We have no choice. Our personal inclina- tions are not important in the case. We must have habits that are in conformity with our knowledge of the need of good, pure air ; otherwise, we shall suffer for our nonconformity or disobedience. So we might go on to speak of the rules of hygiene about eating and drinking, about sleep, and the work of hand or head. But the principle is one and the same throughout. Obedience to the laws of hygiene means conforming our actions to our knowledge of these laws, so as to be healthy and, so far, happy. The wise man values health very greatly. He knows that he did not make the rules of health and that he cannot unmake them. They are " bottom facts " of human nature, which all mankind cannot destroy. We must, then, if we wish to be well and strong and have a good animal life, submit ourselves to the guidance of those who know the laws of hygiene and learn of them how to fix our habits. We have always to bear in mind that we shall thus attain, by acting in accordance with the laws of things, all the happiness and prosperity which things can give us. Obedience is the highway to welfare. We do not give up our own whims and follies and submit to the rule of facts and law merely in order to discipline our- selves, without regard to the result. Precisely the con- trary is true. The happy, prosperous life would be impossible without conformity to the laws of human nature ; therefore, the sooner we learn what these laws are, and obey thcni in our practice, the larger will be the measure of our Avelfare. The service of natural law is perfect freedom ; it is the highest liberty we can con- ceive. Universal nature is under the reign of law, as Ulysses says in " Troilus and Cressida" : — 38 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. " The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order." Now what do we mean especially by moral law ? When we speak these two words we imply that the actions, the whole life, of human beings in their rela- tions to one another are under latv ; that there are rules for social welfare and individual happiness which, as men have discovered by long experience, are entitled to be called laws of human conduct, and that these are not dependent on any person's caprice or whim or fancy, but are the consequence of the great facts of the nature of man living in society. We are not free, under the reign of moral law, to " do as we please," any more than we are free to observe the law of gravitation in house-building or the laws of health, or not, just as we feel inclined. We must obey, or we shall suffer the penalty for disobedience. Til ere are moral laws which have to be observed in the family, in the school, in every kind of association of men with other human beings, whether it be common social intercourse, business relationship, or the life of the citizens of the town, state, or nation. Men come together to live in families and other larger groups through a fundamental instinct ; it is one of the strongest laws of their nature that they should so do. Every one of these groups has its conditions of life, which must be observed if it is even to*exist, and other conditions also which must be observed if it is to 2»'os-' per. Hence there is moral law for the family, moral law for the neighborhood, moral law for the school, for the state, for all kinds of associations. It is of the very nature of all these bodies of men that their mem- bers must act in certain ways if the associations are to continue. In the family, for example, the Aveak and helpless children must for years be cared for, and sup- OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 89 ported by their parents. As children do not of them- selves know how to act wisely and live happily for all concerned, they have to obey their parents, who Avill teach them to act in such ways as to make life in the family what it should be, — peaceful, active, and happy. Fathers and mothers in their place should act according to the laws of the moral life of the family, by support- ing and training and loving their children. Children have their part to do in returning their parents' love and rendering a cheerful obedience to their wishes. As boys and girls grow up they will understand better and better the reasons why they are obliged to do thus and so. But, whether they understand it or not, they must obey the moral law as it comes to them from the lips of their parents. The bond that holds the family together is this very power of the father and mother to make their children " mind," by force, if need be. We say the word '' ought " very frequently : it means " owe," and Avhenever we use it we imply that the per- son of whom we speak has a debt to pay. Children are under great obligations to their parents ; for these give them food and shelter and clothing and education and all the love and help of home. They owe a great deal to father and mother, who gave them life, and will do their best to make their lives fruitful and happy. So boys and girls ought (owe it) to do all they can in return to make life at home pleasant and cheerful for their parents. So, likewise, men and women owe a great deal to the human society in which they are liv- ing, and which is the source of very much of their hap- piness and welfare. They owe it to one another (ought) to be polite, to be ready to assist in case of need, to take an interest in each other's well-being, and in all their relations to give as well as take. " Duty " is another great word of the law which is over all men living together in society, Our duty is what is 40 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. due from us to others : so it means the same thing as " ought." " Ought " and " duty " — two of the greatest words in our language — always indicate that we live in society, that there are laws and conditions of social welfare, as of individual happiness, and that whatever these laws require men and women to do, in order that society may be strong and pure and helpful to each per- son who is a member of it, this all men and women owe to society ; this they ought to do ; this is their duty. ''Each for all, all for each," is the proper motto of human society. It is a whole in which each of us is a part ; and each must act, not as if he or she were the centre of all things, but as if recognizing that we are to do each his part and to take each h^s portion. It is the natural function of the child, the scholar, the ser- vant, the workman and the soldier, to act according to oi'ders, — to obey parents, teachers, masters, foremen, or officers. These command in the interest of the family, the school, the factory, or the army-regiment as a whole; they are themselves subject to the moral law of these associations, and if they command by right, they also have the duty, they ouglit to provide for those who obey their orders. The end of all obedience to the moral law is the high- est and greatest welfare of every human being as an individual and as a member of the great body which we call human society. This is a body, an organism, in which each of us is a member.^ If every child took its own way, with out regard to the advice or the command of its parents, the true family life would be impossible ; if every scholar did as he pleased about studying or recit- ing, the very reason for having schools at all would be defeated ; if servants obeyed orders from their masters or mistresses only when they " felt like it," little work would be done ; if men in a factory acted according to ^ Compare St. Paul (First Epistle to the Corinthians, xii. 14-26), and Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare's Coriolamis, I. i. OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 41 their own fancy, and idled or worked as the humor seized them, the factory would soou have to be closed and the men would receive no more wages ; if every private in a company acted as if he were just " as big a man " as the captain, there would be no use in trying to fight a battle. Thus the welfare of the whole house- hold, of the whole school, of the whole factory, and of the whole company of soldiers depends upon obedience to those in authority. Every person in authority, in his turn, is bound in duty (ought) to work for the welfare of each and all of those who make up the whole body of which he has the control. We do not obey for the sake of obedience ; we do not command for the sake of commanding, but whether we obey or command, we do it that each person may reach his highest happiness and welfare, both- as an individual and as a part of society. Disobedience means disorder in all the associations of men with one another ; it means lawlessness, self-will, the setting-up of ourselves as the whole, or as the most important part of the whole ; it means that we ask other people to take our will for law, instead of the moral law. But this will not do in the relations of human beings with one another, any more than it would do in our relations with natural forces. Society, therefore, in order to preserve itself and so give its members (you and me and all of us) the best things that human life can afford, enforces moral law. Some parts of this law, such as those which forbid killing and robbing, are written down in that " law of the land " or " statute law," which we began by speaking of. Other com- mands of the moral law men have found it best not to try to enforce by written laws, but to leave to what we call public opinion to deal with. Thus, if a man is unkind and harsh in his treatment of his children, the law will not do anything to him so long as he is not actually cruel. Most men are influenced very much by 42 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. what other people think and say concerning them, and we find by experience that many wrongs are righted more effectually by leaving them to public opinion to settle than by passing laws against them. Still other parts of the moral law we leave to each person to discover and obey for himself, according to his circumstances, his education and his moral sense. But whatever is actual moral law, tending to the wel- fare of each and all, is to be obeyed ; whether we know the law or not, we suffer bad consequences from not living in compliance with its demands, or we prosper because we are acting in accordance with it. For man the end of all obedience to law is his welfare ; he lives under law, and he finds freedom and happiness, not in fighting against the conditions, physical or moral, of human life, but in full and cheerful acceptance of them. Freedom is not in " having our own way," but in follow- ing the best ways that mankind, in its thousands of years of life on this earth, has discovered. Freedom is realized in life according to the laws of human nature in society. Life through obedience to reason and all that reason tells us of law — this is moral life, the life that renders human society possible, and makes it better and better as we learn more of the moral law and obey it more faithfully. The natural rulers of human so- ciety are those who know more of life than ourselves ; so we should respect the laws which have been ascer- tained by the wisdom and experience of many minds ; we should respect the voice of public opinion in regard to matters of right and wrong. When we have been educated by experience of life ourselves, we shall still find that the moral law is supreme over every other law for man, as it is simply the highest law of our own nature. Desire to know this law and willingness to obey it — this is the fundamental matter in human life. The spirit that is essential to our highest welfare is the spirit of obedience. Our first lesson is to obey father OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 43 and mother at home, but we uever outgrow the necessity of obedience to moral hiw. " Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward must ? He and his works like sand from earth are blown." NOTES. The desire to command, or the love of power, is oue of the fundamental desires in human nature; with many persons it is predominant. Obedience is not in itself pleasant to children, or to men and women. But there are few leaders and many fol- lowers in human life. Napoleon, the most masterful of men, declared that he learned to command through the obedience re- quired at the school of Brienne, and Emei-son says that " obe- dience alone gives the right to command." The more perfectly parents seek to carry out the law of the home, and teachers the law of the school, which prescribe duties to themselves, the more capable will they be of commanding wisely. Children are quick to observe the evil consequences of disobedience at home or in school when their own conduct is not in question. Press home to them the reasons for the very existence of such associations, which are defeated by insubordination. The military drill fur- nishes a good analogy; the lives of great generals and the his- tories of wars are full of incidents illustrating the prime need of obedience. All associations for profit or pleasure must have leaders, and the submission we pay them is but a type of the obedience mankind owes to the whole moral law. The great Stoic moralists, like _Mareus Aurelius and Epic- tetus, have dwelt forcibly on the virtue of obedience. The in- scription on the monument at Thermopylfe ran: "Go, stranger, and tell at Lacedfemon that we died here in obedience to her lav/s." The citizen of the ancient city was a devotee to its wel- fare. So A. H. Clough has said: "The liigliest political watch- word is not liberty, equality, fraternity, nor yet solidarity, but service." The Wisdom of Solomon declares that, " The very true beginning of wisdom is the desire of disci])line. If a man love righteousness, wisdom's labors are virtues; for she teacheth tem- perance and prudence, justice and fortitude ; which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in their life." 44 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. Men become masters of the forces of nature by first obeying their laws; so in morality, "laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them who obeys them." (H. W. Beecher.) See Miss E. Simcox's Natural Law; James Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. chapter 4, and Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics, for discussions of the ground of authority in the moral law, and Lecky's European Murals, for a good view of Stoi- cism. " I slept and dreamed that life was beauty ; I woke and found that life was duty." Duty is changed to delight when love is seen to be " the ful- filling of the law." CHAPTER III. SELF-CONTROL. It is very easy for us to say that we all ought to obey the moral law. But very often, and especially when we are young and have not had nuich experience of life, we find it hard to obey this law ourselves. Children like to have their own way when it seems to them pleasanter than to obey their parents or teachers who bid them take another way. John, for instance, is playing mar- bles, and his mother tells him to come and get ready for school, as he has only time enough to get there in season. But John prefers play to school, just then ; perhaps he prefers it all the time ! So he keeps on with his game, and his mother has to leave her work to speak to him again, and possibly she is obliged to come out and make him get ready at once. Then he is late at school, and probably he has got to feeling so ill-tempered, because he has been compelled to leave his game, that he will not study, and so he fails in his lesson, and the teacher keeps him after school to make it iip. John feels worse than ever, and when he gets through he is dis- gusted with school and home, and he thinks it will be very fine to be a man and do as he pleases. All this is the result of his disobedience to his mother. But men and women laugh at him, and tell him that he is very foolish not to see how easy a time he is having now ; his father and mother care for him, and he does not have to work to get his food and lodging and clothing and edu- cation. They are doing their utmost to make his life, present and future, good and happy ; being much older, having been children themselves, and having gained 46 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. much more wisdom from experience than he can have, they know far more thoroughly what is best for him than he can know. When he is grown up, and is a man in fact, not merely in imagination, he will have a man's work to do, and he should have plenty of knowledge and skill to do that work well ; he will not be able to " do as he pleases " and at the same time be a good and capable man. A considerable number of persons who think they ccai do as they please find themselves, naturally, after a time, in jails or prisons, because people in general will not allow them to do as they like, when it comes to stealing or cheating, or doing bodily injury to others. No ! the obedience due to father and mother and teacher is comparatively a simple and easy matter for John, if he did but know it. He is acting foolishly and un- reasonably in setting himself up so, as the only person whose pleasure is to be considered. As a matter of fact, he is not so important a person as he thinks, and the sooner he learns this, the better it will be for all con- cerned. Here is another boy, Thomas, who likes to play just as well as John does ; but he loves his mother and de- sires to make her happy by obeying her cheerfully and readily. He wishes to please the teacher by being punctual, and attentive to his studies in school time. So he quits his game at once, when his mother reminds him that she has an errand for him to do on the way to school, and that it is time to go. He Avalks along whis- tling and thinking how fortunate he is that li^ can some- times do little things, at least, to show his gratitude for all that his mother does for him in her love for her boy. When he gets to school he remembers that he is there to study ; he puts all his mind on his book ; the lesson comes easy, he recites well, the teacher is glad to see him so willing and ready, and he returns home with a light heart. All has gone well with him during the day. SELF-CONTROL. 47 Why ? Because he has cheerfully done his part. It is not a great part, but it is something which no one else covild do for him, and it is necessary that he should do it readily if, at home and school, all is to go on pleas- antly and profitably. ' Whefn Thomas is at home, he feels that he is but one among several persons who make up the family ; that his father and mother are wiser than he and anxious to have him do, and to do for him, only what is best ; and that all goes well only when each one in the family group thinks of the welfare of all the others as well as of his own happiness; so he tries to do his share", to help as much as he can in making life happy for all at home. When Thomas is at school, he bears in mind that school is meant as a place to learn in, and that in order to learn well he must leave off: playing, and " buckle down " to his book, and be quiet and obey the orders of the teacher. He sees tliat these orders are for the good of the whole school, of which he is a part and only a part, and that nothing could be more unreasonable than for him to neglect study and be noisy and mis- chievous, thus keeping the teacher's attention on him- self and disturbing the rest of the scholars in their duty. Thomas is a healthy, lively boy, who likes to play and have a good time. But he wishes others to have a good time too ; such " good times " in school mean good order, and good lessons, and teachers and scholars all pleased and busy with the good work to be done by them, in learning and teaching. That is a good time anywhere, when f/ie thing to do in that time and place is done finely and thoroughly. Now Thomas plays with all his soul in play-hours, and in the place and time for study he studies with all his might. He has a strong impulse to play too long, or in school, but he resists it — as we can resist any impulse in ourselves if we will — and conquers it, and the better impulse wins the day. 48 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. We have had much to say about obedience to law as the foundation of all good human life. But we all have inclinations at times to prefer our own wishes or desires, however unreasonable they may be, to the obe- dience which though reasonable seems hard and dis- agreeable. We are so made that there is often this con- flict between what we knotv to be the proper thing for lis to do and the thing we wish at the time to do. We must, therefore, learn to control ourselves ; we must practise the very necessary art of making ourselves do what is disagreeable, if it seems to us the right and reasonable thing, until it shall come to be not only right and reasonable but also agreeable to us, for this very cause. This is precisely what we often have to do in other matters than our dealings with human beings. We need training in the art of conduct as in every other art. Mary has musical talent and she is anxious to learn to play the piano-forte. So her father buys one and engages a teacher for her ; and the first lessons are very pleasant. But after a time, Mary gets tired of scales and exercises, and begins to think that it is not " worth while." She is discouraged and talks of giving up. But others tell her, she can see herself, that ex- cellence in piano-playing comes to most persons only through diligence and patience in mastering the ele- ments. She is soon encouraged to find that she can play simple exercises without keeping her eyes on the keys ; after a time she can play easy tunes without notes, and, if she continues to persevere, she comes in time to do almost automatically what was once very difficult for her. She is amused now at the recollection that she ever found a certain exercise hard to play. Mary has fully complied with the conditions of excel- lence in music. She controls her desire to give up and try something easier. She perseveres and conquers the difficulties, one by one. By " sticking to it " and prac- tising and practising, she establishes what are called SELF- CON TEOL. 49 " lines of least resistance ; " her fingers move swiftly over the keys, she acquires skill in her art, and she finds future progress much easier in proportion, as her self- control increases. With all our different characters and dispositions few of us find it easy to do always the thing that we know to be right. We must, then, if we are to acquire the fine art of good conduct, learn self-control, and this im- plies patience and perseverance. By practice we shall establish " lines of least resistance "' in our relations with others, over which we shall in time move with an ease and freedom that will surprise ourselves. Self-control is necessary to obedience to the laws of conduct. But it is not necessary that we should have a sense of effort and difficulUj in doing what we call "right," in order that it should be truly right or "vir- tuous " in us. On the contrary, the ideal we should al- ways hold before ourselves is to make the doing of right deeds, the living of a virtuous life, the easiest and most agreeable thing to do. In the beginning, we have pains and trouble in making our habits better, until they are right and good in certain respects ; then habit slowly becomes a second nature, taking the place of the former untrained and undisciplined nature,^ until, at last, it is " as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 'T is the natural way of living." We need to practise self-control until the self is altered for the better — we can alter it — and then, when it is changed for the better, it may well have free play in that direction, A hasty-tempered man might find it hard at first to wait and count a hundred, according to the old rule, before he speaks, when he feels himself getting angry. But in time he should be strong enough, from long resistance to his native im- pulse, to trust himself to speak at once. ^ "Habit a second nature," said the great Duke of AVellinglon " it is ten times nature ! ' ' 50 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. In every art the acquirement of skill and excellence implies discipline, and discipline means patience and self-control. Most of all in the art of arts, at which we are continually practising, the art of a noble life, is the desire of discipline "the very true beginning of wis- dom." On the other hand, it is the height of unwisdom to ask continually : " Why should I control myself ? Why should I not have my own way ? " This would not be so foolish if you were the only person in the world, and there were no one else to be affected by your actions. In that case, you might properly do many things which it is not right or reasonable for you to do in a world where you are surrounded by many other human beings. These other persons you expect to be considerate of the fact that you yourself exist, and that they owe you something, as another human being, in all their rela- tions with you. When you are ready to say that others owe you nothing, then you can ask why you owe it to them to control yourself, to abate your extravagant claims, and to be content with your reasonable portion of good things. Each of these other persons has a " self " also, which he is bound to preserve and care for, according to the instinct of nature and the teach- ings of reason. Very many things which are necessary to our life, to our progress, and to our comfort, we can do for ourselves better than any one else, or perhaps any number of other persons can do them for us. It is natural and right that we should " assert ourselves," and claim what is needful for living our human life. Nature makes this instinct of self-regard exceedingly strong in each one of us, and it is one of two or three fundamental forces in directing all our actions. Man is chiefly dis- tinguished from the lower animals, however, in that he can reason to himself about this instinct of self-preser- vation and self-regard and the great instinct of regard for others (sympathy) which is just as much a part of SELF-CONTROL. 61 our nature, and can determine what is the proper place for each motive in his actions. Constant experience teaches us very plainly how much stronger the natural instinct of self-assertion is than the other instincts which lead us to forget self in thinking of others. So we learn that the essential spirit of morality is self-control by reason. jMorality holds us back from making a self-assertion that is " exorbi- tant " (i. e., which takes us out of our proper " orbit ") ; it gives us a more moderate notion of what others should do for us (i. e., of what we call our rights), and it stimulates us to do what we ought, what we really owe to others (i. e., our duties). There is no rule for determining rights and duties but the rule of reason, as in all other human affairs. Men, however, have been living in social relations so many generations that they have found out a great many facts and laws of conduct. They have acquired a large amount of practical wisdom and of moral " faculty " which has been handed down from one generation to another, each increasing it. A new person coming into the world does not need, therefore, to try all kinds of actions to find out which are hurtful and which are helpful to himself and others. But he should be docile, i. e., teachable, and willing to learn what things have already been found good to do, and what things have been found to be bad. To be docile is to have such self-control that we shall not set ourselves up as wiser than everybody else. We need to live long before we can do wisely in contradicting or correcting any of the simple practical rules for common conduct which men ages ago found out, and which mil- lions of human beings have learned are reasonable by trying to live according to them. These moral precepts are working laws of human conduct, which are gradu- ally extended and made definite in the long course of human experience. It has thus become natural for civ- ilized men to live obedient to moral law as to physical 52 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. law. But not all men are civilized. Xo one is really civilized until he has learned to know himself, in some degree at least, as a part of the social order, and to fit himself by self-control for his place in this order. We are not called upon by reason to sacrifice our- selves in the common relations of social life, but rather to preserve ourselves wisely, and to make the best and the most of oiirselves, keeping in view the good of each and the good of all. Human society is made up of as many " selves " as there are persons in it. Each of these selves appears, usually, to itself to be much more important and deserving of consideration than it does to others. This is a common fact of human nature, which is seen to be justifiable in reason when we con- sider the further fact that each one of these " selves " has the chief responsibility of caring for itself. There is, therefore, a very proper " selfhood " ^ for each and every human being ; his self-existing, with no need of excuse, is a most important fact to him. We need to cultivate and develop ourselves ; self- culture is both an end in itself and an essential means to helping others most effectually. As a part of this development and cultivation, the control of self by our knowledge, by our reason, by our social instinct, by sympathy, by the Golden Rule, is of the first impor- tance. We do not think of standing on our heads as a regular exercise or as a common position. Our feet are the parts of our body meant to walk with, and to stand on. So our minds are given us to use in discovering the laws of human life ; and the laws of right conduct, when once discovered, are no less natural than the prac- tice of walking on our feet. The general moral law of self-control means that any and every force in us — of ^ Just as we say "childhood" and "manhood," not blaming or praising the child, because it is a child, or the man because he is a man Dr. Dewey was wise in advising the restoration of the word to present usage. SELF-CONTROL. 53 feeling or passion or temper — must be kept obedient to our enlightened reason and our disciplined will. Reason teaclies us, for example, to prefer a larger to a smaller good, and to subordinate the brief present to the long future. Education, therefore, is better for a child than unlimited play, because it will outgrow the desire for play, and its childhood will give place to manhood, and this should be instructed and capable, as only years of previous education can make it. NOTES. Self-control should be taken to mean restraint of the lower self, — the aniuaal, sensual, anti-social instincts and tendencies. The higher, nobler self, that finds its true life in the life of all, is thus free to emerge and assert itself with power. The higher self is to take the lower self in hand, and show its own ability to shape thought, feeling, and action toward an ideal excellence. (See the treatment of the Will by the various writers on ethics, such as Noah Porter in his Elements of Moral Science.) In this process the lower self is not sacrificed, but simply confined to its own sphere. An admirable discussion of this point is the lecture on Selfhood and Sacrifce, by liev. Dr. Orville Dewey, in the vol- ume entitled Christianity and Modern Thought. The formation of good habits is the obvious step toward diminishing the difficulty of self-control. As Walter Bagehot says, the first step in the moral culture of the child is " to secrete a crust of custom." J. F. Clarke in his Self-Culture is especially good on the education of the will. " Self-reliance, self-restraint, self-control, self-direction, these constitute an edu- cated will. . . . Freedom is self-direction. The two diseases of the will are indecision, or weakness of will, and wilfulness, or unregulated strength of will. The cure for both is self-direction, according to conscience and truth." Read The Conqueror^s Grave, by Bryant ; " Prune thou thy words," by J. H. Newman ; " How happy is he born or taught," by Sir Henry Wotton ; Emerson's lines, closing, " When Duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' The youth replies, ' I can ; ' " 54 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. and Matthew Arnold's Morality, " Tasks in hours of iusigbt willed Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city; so the lives of famous inventors teach us, as they bend all things to serve their aim. See Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Ste- phensons, Men of Invention and Industry, and Life and Labor, for instances of this truth. CHAPTER IV. TRUTHFULNESS. We have thus far been attending to the great facts that all human life is under law ; that one of the most important laws for man, if not the most important, is the moral law which springs from his very nature as a member of society ; and that we are obliged, as we are also able, to govern or control ourselves so as to live according to this law. We have been speaking of the actual world of nature and human society in which we all live. Now, a very large part of our life depends for its character and its results upon what we report to each other about what is or has been. We have by na- ture the faculty of speech by which we communicate with each other, and we have found out the arts of writing and printing. But we have not only eyes to see and ears to hear, and the organs of three other senses, which present to our minds the realities of the outward world ; we have also a faculty of imagination by which we can form to ourselves another view of things than that which our senses actually give, or have given us. We can thinli of things otherwise than as they are. We can use words to express our thoughts so that we shall in our speech re-present to others the realities we know, or we can alter them in our speech so that our words will not correspond to the facts as we think them to be. We call it speaking the truth when any one de- scribes things as they, in fact, appear to him to be, or relates events as his senses showed them to him. He may be mistaken, as his senses or his judgment may have misled him ; but so long as he intends to re-pre- 66 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. sent fact, he is tndhfal. On the contrary, when, for any cause, he means to sj)eak, and does speak, of things or events as they were 7iot, or are not, then he is false. He intends to deceive us, whether he succeeds in doing so or not. The first and natural use of words, or hu- man speech, is to represent reality. AVe are in a very high degree dependent on eacli other's words as to what the facts of life are. A large part, probably the largest part, of our own words and actions are based upon our confidence that other human beings have spoken to us the truth. In courts of law the witness who is called upon to state what he knows about the case, swears, or affirms, that he will tell "the truth, the Avhole truth, and no- thing but the truth." In ordinary life we go upon the assumption, generally, that the words we hear corre- spond to fact, that people are re-presenting to us the facts as they are, or have been ; and we act in accord- ance with this confidence. We must live in an actual world : we cannot live in an imaginary world, as it has no reality. All our own words that are based upon a falsehood told us by another, instead of a truth, have no foundation in fact, and must, therefore, count for little or nothing in the end. All that we do, thinking and believing that a certain other thing has been done, because we have been told so, when, in fact, it has not been done, lacks proper foundation, and is likely to come to naught, or to work harm instead of good. A true report of facts is, then, the first condition of satis- factory intercourse of human beings with one another. They must have a substantial confidence in one an- other's general truthfulness. Otherwise, they can have little dealing with one another. All human undertak- ings must finally rest upon reality, and correspond to fact ; every departure from fact means for all men loss and harm. Hence arises the prime necessity of truthfulness in TRUTHFULNESS. 57 human society. In the great majority of cases, men naturally tell the truth ; i. e., whether it is to their own advantage or not, they re-present things in speech as these have appeared to them in reality. If this were not the case, social life, in which men inevitably depend upon one another for information and guidance, would be impossible. But, on the other hand, it is very much easier to say a false "word, thus misrepresenting fact in some degree, than it is to do any one of a hundred wrong acts. More than this : when we have con- sciously done a bad deed, we usually wish to avoid the consequences of it, and we naturally try to escape them by lying about it. So offences against truth are the common attendants of wrong actions of a thousand kinds. " Vice has many tools," it is said ; " but a lie is the handle that fits them all." We wish our clocks and watches to give us the true time — the hour and minute that actually are, as distin- guished from those that have been and those to come. So we ask that other human beings shall give us " true time " in what they say to us. If the clock is an hour slow or half an hour fast, Ave cannot blame the clock, for it is only a machine, and cannot think, or be said to have any intention to deceive us so that Ave shall miss a train or be late at school : we properly find fault with the maker of the clock or with the jeweller who should have regulated it so that it would keep good time. But boys and girls and men and women thitik ; they have an intention in what they say, and if they tell us what is not true, it is usually because they mean to mislead us. The result of their attempts to deceive us is that we lose that confidence which is the very first condition of human dealings. A boy Avho is found to have told a lie is often suspected afterward of deceiving even when he has no desire or intention of reporting anything but the exact fact. When a witness has taken an oath in a court of law to tell " the truth, the whole truth, and 58 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. nothing but the truth," and then tells a falsehood, known or afterwards found out to be such, he is pun- ished for 'perjurij ; and if he should ever come into court again as a witness, everybody would be slow to believe him in an important matter. When a man has the reputation of being " the biggest liar in the town," what he says may very often be entirely true ; but people do not believe that a thing is so because he says it. He has forfeited the confidence of those avIio know him, and they will not accept his sole word as probably true. He is put out of the pale "of society, so to speak, in proportion to the greatness of his offences against truth, and non-intercourse with him is practically declared. The person who tells a lie which is believed by people who have not yet " found him out," usually begins to think that a falsehood is a very easy substitute for the fact. A boy, for example, has disobeyed his father, who had commanded him not to go in swimming in the river because it is dangerous ; when he is asked if he has been in the river, he boldly answers, " ISTo." Thus he adds to his first fault a second. As his father believes him, John is quite likely to try the same plan again, until, at last, he is found out. Then his father punishes him for the disobedience and the lie ; but the woi'st part of the whole punishment to John, if he is a self- respecting boy, is that his father and mother will proba- bly not take his word as suilicient, in any matter of consequence, for some time to come, until he has shown that he is again to be trusted fully. But for John, or any one else, to deceive thus, and then ask people to treat him afterward as if he had always spoken the truth, is most unreasonable. If John were a man in a position of responsibility and were detected in lying, he would probably be turned out of his place at once, be- cause the truth is one of the first tilings he owes his employer. When " thought is speech and speech is truth " we can trust each other and join together with Tli U TUFULNESS. 59 confidence in all kinds of undertakings, great or small. But when the act is one thing and the word is another different or contrary thing, we stand apart from such a man in suspicion and distrust, and we refuse to work with him, since truthfulness is of the very essence of voluntary association in all kinds of works. Our house of life must be built upon fact, or it will fall. AVhen we repeat " Great is truth and mighty above all things," we mean to say that the facts of this universe are far stronger than any mistaken or false re- port of them which any one may make. They Avill come to the light at last, since the mind of man is evi- dently intended to know the truth, i. e., the reality of things. Any one, therefore, who tells us the truth, in small matters or in large, enables us so far to bring our life into harmony with the laws of all life in general and of human life in society in particular. He clears the way so that we can walk in it, if we will. But if another human being deceives us, we are led off from the right road, as when some one misdirects a traveller, and he goes the opposite way to that which he desires to take, or in any other direction which is wrong for him, and it costs him much time and trouble to find the right way. To tell the truth is, then, the first of services we can render one another in the great association which we call human society. Knowledge must come before action. But as we can know from our own observation but a very small part of all that we need to know, we mainly depend upon others' report of facts and events in order to act wisely and properly. Lord Bacon said : " Xo pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." This is, indeed, the case. When we tell the truth we are in harmon^^ and union with the whole universe so far ; but when we tell a lie we leave the world of reality, the only tvorld that is, and enter a world of unreality which we have, for a brief GO THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. time, created, so to speak, out of nothing, and whicli has only the substance of nothingness in it. We may add lie to lie in order to make a consistent story and gain belief for the time. But the facts are against us : we know it ourselves. It is not as if we had simply made a mis- take. We have deliberately directed our fellow-beings wrong on the way of life ; we have given them incorrect time, and we have tried to raise around them a false world. They cannot fail to discover the deception sometime. Indignation, with a long loss of confidence ; constant suspicion, even when Ave are telling the truth, and great difhculty in all their dealings with us, are the natural and inevitable results of such lying. The person who lies gives way to a temptation too strong for him at the time. A boy who has broken a pane of glass in a window, while playing ball, is afraid that he will be punished for it, and so he declares, when he is questioned about the matter, that he did not break it. If he knew and realized how important truthfulness is as a constant habit in all our relations with one an- other, he would have preferred to be punished rather than tell a lie, which would deserve a severer punish- ment than the original faidt. According to the law of habit, with each time that one tells a lie it becomes easier for him to lie again. "With each time that he conquers the temptation it is so much the easier to tell the truth again. It is just as important for us that we should respect ourselves as that others should respect us. The only way in which we can maintain our self-respect in this matter is by telling the truth ; as Chaucer's Franklin says, " Truth is the highest thing that man may keep," and when he keeps it, he has a justifiable pride in the fact and in himself. Knowing how hard it is sometimes for children to tell the exact facts, when they have done wrong, teachers and parents should always try to make them feel that an offence against truthfulness is a great Tli U THFULNESS. G 1 weakener of proper self-respect and that it is often a worse fault than the original wrong-doing. We should speak the whole truth. Often, by keep- ing back, purposely, some essential fact or circumstance, we can produce an impression on another person's mind directly the opposite of that which we are sure he would probably receive if we told this fact or circumstance. Invariably, we should tell those who have a right to know the facts of a matter from us, everything impor- tant that we know about it ; then, if they get a mistaken impression, it is not our fault. We owe one another the whole truth simply as members of the human society in which all are dependent on exact knowledge as a pre- cedent to wise and right action. We should not tell more than the truth by exagger- ating the facts or by inventing circumstances to make our talk interesting. AVhen the exaggeration is plainly understood, it does not deceive. But we should not alloAv ourselves to fall into a habit of magnifying things as though we were always looking through a microscope. If a boy has seen two dogs fighting, he should not de- clare, " Oh, mother ! there were a thousand dogs fight- ing in front of our house this morning." We should be satisfied to report things as they have been or now are, neither more nor less. This is the simplest course for every one to take and to keep. Duplicity, which is another name for falsehood in action, means " doubleness." A person who desires to deceive others has " to keep up appearances," as to cer- txin matters about which he lies. In all other respects, he may be willing and even anxious to let the facts of his life be manifest. Now, to keep up appearances, to seem to be what one is not, is a far harder thing to do than to live according to fact, and let the appearances be simply those of the facts. Dui)licity is keeping up two courses of conduct, side by side, that do not agree with each other. We do not deceive ourselves by the 62 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. lies we tell, so we must act in large degree as if these are lies. But we wish to deceive others by these false reports, and in order to deceive them thoroughly we have to act as if we had spoken the truth. The farther we go in such a course of conduct, the harder it is likely to become ; so a frank confession of all our untruthfulness is, at last, often a great relief to us. We come back with pleasure to simple fact and a life that is open and straightforward as the natural and right way of living. We have found " What a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive." We must throughout life take home to ourselves this lesson, that Truth is meant for man and man is meant for Truth. Language is our natural means for telling facts to one another, so that we may know the real world in which we actually live, and do wisely, kindly, and rightly in it. We must obey the laws of nature ; we must control our actions so as to make them accord with these laws ; but the most fundamental duty of men in all their dealings with one another is to represent things as they are, in nature, in society, in life. Truth is the first necessity of wise living, and out of truth comes the only beauty that is permanent. The good rests upon the true. All this means that we should recognize the facts and laws of our human existence and represent them to others as they are, as the only sure and lasting foundation for a good and happy life. NOTES. The teacher will find some help, in treating the duty of ve- racity, in the sections or chapters of most of the standard books on ethics which pay attention to practice in any degree. Among the older works, Paley's Aloral arid Political Philosophy has rarely been surpassed for its concrete and sagacious treatment of prac- TRUTHFULNESS. 63 tical morals : the chapter on Lies (Book III. chap, xv.) is inter- estinsr. Other works which jiive matter of value in this direction are Professor Noah Porter's Elements of Moral Science (Part II. chap. X. p. 41G) ; John Bascom's Science of Duty, pp. 158-1 GO ; Mark Hopkins's Law of Love (on the " right to trutli "), pp. li)9- 201 ; A. Bierbower's The Virtues and their Reasons ; and Paul Janet's Elements of Morals, translated by Mrs. C. R. Corson. As a specimen of illustrative reading, take this from S. Smiles's Character (p. 214 ; the chapter on Duty-Truthfulness) concern- ing the great educator, Thomas Arnold of Rugby. " There was no virtue that Dr. Arnold labored more sedulously to instil into young men than the virtue of truthfulness, as being the manliest of virtues, as indeed the very basis of all true manliness. He designated truthfulness as ' moral transparency,' and he valued it more highly than any other quality. When lying was de- tected, he treated it as a great moral offenc.e ; but when a pupil made an assertion, he accepted it with confidence. ' If you say so, that is quite enough ; of course, I believe your word.' By thus trusting and believing them, he educated the young in truth- fulness ; the boys at length coming to say to one another : ' It 's a shame to tell Arnold a lie, — he always believes one.' " {Life of Arnold, i. 94.) There is an apposite story of Arthur Bonnicastle in Dr. J. G. Holland's novel of that name (p. 88). The story of Washing- ton and the cherry tree belongs to myth, not to history, as one may see in Lodge's Life of Washington (American Statesmen Series) ; avoid it, as much as the myth of William Tell in teach- ing patriotism. Books of the style of Miss C. M. Yonge's Golden Deeds, Mr. S. Smiles's Character and Self-Help, and William Matthew's Getting on in the World, will afford pertinent anecdotes and stories of truth-telling and its opposite. As to the causes of lying by children, the following points are useful, from an instructive paper by President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University. Aided by a number of teachers, he col- lected very many data as to the character of children's lies and the occasion of their development. He finds, that with children, as with primitive people, the enormity of tlie lie depends largely upon whom it is told to. A great many children have persisted in lies until asked, "Would you tell that to your mother?" Then they have confessed the falsehood. A lie to a teacher who is liked stands upon an entirely different moral basis from a lie 64 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. to a teacher who is not liked. Lies to help people are generally applauded by children. One teacher reported to President Hall that she had been considerably saddened because her class of thirteen-year-old children would not apply the term " lie " to the action of the French girl who, when on her way to execution, in the days of the Commune, met her betrothed, and, to save him from supposed complicity, responded to his agonized appeals, " Sir, I never knew you." To the minds of the children the falsehood was glorified by the love. President Hall sensibly recognizes that a great many chil- dren's lies spring from one of the most valuable and healthful of mental instincts. Children live in their imagination. The finest geniuses have shown this " play instinct " most strongly. The children who have this type of imagination most strongly devel- oped are often the dullest at schools. Exaggeration is a mild species of ofPence against truth, but children may be taught to respect things as they are ; they should certainly be taught that it requires more care and thought to relate an event just as it happened, and that such an«,ccount is more creditable to them, than to indulge in exaggeration of any kind. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says : " I often tell Mrs. Professor that one of her ' I think it is so's ' is worth a dozen of anotlier person's *! know it is so's.' " We should not exaggerate the degree of certainty in our own minds concerning what we say or believe ; there is such a very good thing as "the rhetoric of understatement." Truth is stranger than fiction, and if held to consistently, it will yield more variety and charm. If a child is evidently imaginative the teacher should be especially careful to keep it to the real world (outside of its games and story-telling, understood to be such), which it should be taught to respect and distinguish as the world we have to live in, where we need veracity more than imagination. Fear is another great cause of lying with children, when they have committed some offence. The parent or the teacher should not offer to remit the proper punishment for this offence in case the child will tell the truth ; but he should, as a rule, make the punishment more severe for the lie than for the original trans- gression, and the two penalties should be kept distinct. The teacher may well say : " If you did such and such a wrong thing, I shall have to punish you for it, even if you tell me frankly that you did it ; but if you lie about it I will give you a harder NOTES. 65 punishment, m addition, because of the lie." But the tempta- tion to lying- should be made as slight as possible by the teacher. Appeal to the sense of honor, as in Dr. Arnold's case, and to the feeling of self-respect ; show that duplicity (doubleness) is a hard part to play, that the liar " should have a good memoi-y," as one lie breeds others which must be told, to be consistent, and all of these must be remembered ; that the facts are all the time troubling, and will finally triumph over, the liar, who gets hito worse and worse difficulties continually, while he who is plainly telling the truth all the time has no such difficulties. The loss of confidence which a lie, suspected or detected, brinjrs about should be brought home to the child who has told an untruth, by declining to believe him the next time he makes an assertion at all doubtful, and telling him the reason why you must, inevitably, so do ; ask him how he likes the feeling of havinsT his word doubted, how he felt when he has been deceived himself (" put yourself in his place ") and how he felt when he saw he had deceived a person to whom he owed the truth in proper gratitude and honor. Be sure to give all due weight to the intention of the child in telling a falsehood, if you can get at it ; anything else than a plain intention to deceive should make him a subject of enlightenment rather than of punishment. But casuistry should be avoided in the general talks to children. There is little profit in discussing with them the question if one may properly tell a lie to a drunkard or an insane person, or in order to save life. Such debate should be left to older persons who will not be so apt to become confused in their minds. Nature will teach a person what to do in such a ease better than any amount of discussion. Remember how many a child that shamelessly reproduced the immorality of a savage or barbarian in its frequent lies has be- come thoroughly truthful when grown up ; the lively, mendacious Greek is thus often outgrown in time, and the truth-loving Teuton emerges and remains. CHAPTER V. THE LAW OF JUSTICE. As we all live under tlie moral law, each of us lias a right to the protection of that law. The moral law is written down in part in the laws of the land, and we see in every civilized country what are called " courts of justice." If any man thinks that he has been wronged by another who has taken away his property, he " goes to law," as we say, about it. The case is tried before a judge and a jury. The judge tells the jury what the law of the land bearing on the suit is, and the jury decides upon the facts of the case, whether it comes under the law or not. This is one way of getting jus- tice done. There are many laws about property and other rights ; there are many judges and lawyers and legislators, making or discussing or determining the written law. The object of all these arrangements and institutions is that every man may have his ov/n, that which properly belongs to him. As we all very well know, a large part of the moral law is not written down in the statute-book and is not executed by the courts, but is left to public opinion or to private persons to enforce, because it can be enforced in this way better than by the judges. However it is applied, justice always means giving every person his due ; L e., what others owe him because he is a human being in society. Speaking generally, he himself owes the same things to other people as they owe to him, since all human beings are very much alike. What he calls his " rights " are the " duties " of others to him, and their " rights " measure his " duties " to them. THE LA W OF JUSTICE. 67 We must rule out, at once, from all our thoughts of moral law, the notion that we ourselves have more rights than other persons have, or that we have fewer duties. One and the same great law of human life is over us all ; it makes our duties equal to our rights. In the great whole of human society, each person is a part. The whole has duties to each part : each part has duties to all the other parts and to the whole. This is the universal law for entire mankind. Practice of the obedience and the self-control of which we have had so much to say results in justice to all men. " The just " is the fair and due part of each and every person. Meum et tuum : we know what this Latin phrase means, " mine and thine ; " the law of mine and thine is that you shall have what belongs to you, no more and no less, and that I shall have what belongs to me, no more and no less. Honesty is a very important part of justice, and honesty is respect for the property of others. To take wdiat is another's property, know- ingly, is to work injustice. We may do this by vio- lence, while he protests or tries to prevent us. In this case we are setting the law of the land openly at defi- ance, and the policeman or the constable or the sheriff will come and arrest us. We shall be taken before the court, and if we are proved to be guilty, we shall be severely punished, because it is for the interest of all men that the rights of property should be respected, and because private violence is contrary to all law except the rude law of the strongest, under which savages live. Reason and right cannot prevail unless violence be punished. But if we take away another person's property with- out his knowledge, — this we call " stealing," — we are also breaking the great law of ineirm et tiami, and it is none the less wrong if we are not found out and pun- ished. People often dispute about property, different persons thinking that they have a clear right to the 68 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. ownership of tlie same thing, — a house, let us say, or a piece of land. In such a case they should let the courts, or some other competent authority, decide for them, and both parties should respect the decision after- wards. But Avhen we know that a thing does 7iot be- long to us, we owe it not only to the person who owns the property, but also to the whole community in which we live, to regard his right, and we should not try to cheat or defraud him of it, any more than we should take it away from him by force. There is enough in the world for all, if each will take only his part. So mankind thinks, and tries, therefore, to set up " even- handed justice," as Shakespeare calls it. Enjoy what is your own, and let others enjoy their own. Such a rule would keep us from robbery or theft of any kind. If we are just to others, again, we shall not take or keep back any part of what belongs to them since they have paid for it. The grocer must weigh out sixteen ounces to the pound, as he is paid for the pound ; the dry -goods clerk should give thirty-six inches to the yard, for otherwise he is keeping back what is another's. Jvistice is opposed to par-t la lit!/ or favoritism, as well; this means giving to one person more than his share, as when a teacher is kind to one scholar and severe to another, both being equally deserving. All the pupils in the school have a right to the teacher's care and help, just as the teacher has a right to obedience and atten- tion from all the scholars alike. The upright judge in the court room makes no distinction in his rulings be- cause one man is rich and another man is poor, or because one is white and the other is black. He is no " respecter of persons " : it is his duty to apply princi- ples to cases and not to let his personal likings or dis- likings influence his action. The old Romans represented the goddess of justice by the statue of a woman blindfolded, holding a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. The THE LAW OF JUSTICE. G9 bandage indicated, that the just man should be blind to e^ery consideration which would lead him to favor one person at the expense of another. The scales showed that the just man weighs out his part to each, that he may be fair to all. In our homes we should all weigh in ouv minds the parts we owe to father and mother, to brothers and sisters, and to other relatives there, and give them freely and heartily, full measure and ample weight. So at school, so on the street, so in business and so in all our relations with other human beings, we should be just, first of all. In order to do justly we have to recognize the truths we have thus far been learning : that we are all under one law ; that we all owe it obedience ; that we all ought to control our selfish dispositions, which tend to become the very opposite of reason and justice ; and that we all owe one another the whole truth. As Ave go along further in our study of morality, we shall see that very much more of right conduct might be included under the name of justice : even kindness might be called a part of it. But let us think of it now as the giving his fair and equal part to every person, whether he is near enough to us for us also to be kind, or not. As each human being is a member of society, each has a just claim to his fair part of the good things of the world. What we call " self " has its rights as well as its duties, and it is not " selfishness " for any one to desire to have that which in reason belongs to him. '' Selfishness " means asking or taking too much, more than one's proper share. We need a word to sig- nify without any shade of blame the existence and action of the self, that is, of each individual person, in its right and reasonable degree. Such a word, as has been said in a previous cha]iter, is the old English term " selfhood." Like boyhood, manhood, womanhood, and other similar words, it means simply the natural condi- tion of each human being, existing as a person of the 70 TEE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. first and nearest importance in his own eyes. Nature has given him consciousness of himself, and he call never take the same attitude toward himself as he holds toward every other human being. He views his self from within, but all other persons he sees, and must see, from without. The preservation of this self from danger or disease or death, and the maintenance of it in health and comfort are, by a law of nature, peculiarly the business of each one of us, more especially when we have reached our full size and strength. Each person can, on the whole, provide for himself better than others can provide for him. Self-help is thoroughly natural, and it is usually the best kind of help. The devel- opment of all one's powers of body and mind is pecul- iarly one's own duty and privilege. There is nothing selfish or wrong in any one's asking for what is, reason- ably, his share. We become selfish, i. e., we carry our natural liking for ourselves too far, when we take away from others, directly or indirectly, what is theirs, to make it, wrong- fully, our own property. As we all know, selfishness, the claiming or taking too much, is the most common form of all wrong-doing. It might be said that it is even the foundation or source of almost all wrong- doing. When we think very highly of our own merits and very little of the rights of others, we really act as if human society revolved around us as its centre ; we are virtually claiming that we cannot have too much, or others too little, the main matter being that we shall be satisfied. This is making the same kind of mistake that men used to make when they imagined that the sun and the planets and all the stars of heaven revolved around this little earth of ours as their centre. It was not so ; it is not so, and it cannot he made to he so by any amount of talking or doing on our part. So when any man or woman, or boy or girl, acts as if the whole fam- ily, or the whole school, or the whole neighborhood, or THE LAW OF JUSTICE. 71 town or city or state or nation revolves, or should re- volve, around his or her own convenience or comfort or happiness, the same great mistake is made. All these associations of human beings are intended for the good of each and all together ; every individual in any one of them must consult the welfare of all the others, as well as of himself, if the association is to continue in its natural and proper form, and if each is to receive from it the greatest degree of aid and comfort. The rule of justice, then, is, To each man his part. The way to bring this about is to act, in the first place, reasonably, to have a moderate and sensible notion of our own merits, to remember that each of us is only one of many, that each, indeed, is very important to himself, bvit that all these different selves are to live together in a common society under one and the same moral law. So apt are we all to exaggerate our own personal merits, so very apt to take more than what in reason belongs to us, that it becomes a necessity for us to make a con- stant allowance for this disposition. Very few persons, indeed, are likely to decide impartially in a case where their own interests are involved. Hence, it is a matter of the highest importance for us to realize our compara- tive inability to judge ourselves correctly. Our one re- source, if we must decide ourselves, is to try to obey the maxim. Put yourself in his place. When we have a dispute Avith another, or when it is a matter con- cerning meum et Umm., our safest, surest way is to obey the Golden Kule of conduct, " Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you." Practically, this is the most important of all rules for governing our actions, because we are strongly inclined by natu.re to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, in reason. But if we once put ourselves, in imagination, in the other person's place, and ask our- selves how we should then like to have him do to iis as we were purposing to do to him, we get a new light on 72 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. the matter. It becomes plain to us, very often, that we should not at all like to be treated, so by any one, and should consider such treatment unreasonable and un- fair. If, then, it would be so for us, why should it not be so for him ? The action remains the same, the dif- ference being only that the one who does the wrong and the one who suffers the wrong have changed places. Many persons declare, by their practice, that they hold the view of the African chief who was asked the differ- ence between right and wrong : " Eight," he answered, " is when I take away my neighbor's cattle ; wrong is when he takes away mine ! " But this, of course, is the very height of unreason : it amounts to denying that there is one and the same law binding upon all men alike, which makes stealing or robbery wrong because it is an offence against the social life. Justice and selfishness, therefore, are the two ex- tremes of action. The just man obeys the social, moral law ; the selfish man sets up his own will or pleasure as the only law that he wishes to obey. Liberty, the self- ish person thinks, is liberty to do as he pleases and take all he likes ; but he is very much mistaken. The real freedom for all men is liberty to act according to the Golden Rule. " Look out for number one " is the prin- ciple of the selfish man ; by " number one " he means himself. But, as a matter of fact, is he " number one " in respect to other matters than his relations to his fellow-men ? Was the sun made for him ? Will the rain come at his convenience ? Can he be idle and yet have all the rewards of industry ? Can he disre- gard any other law than the moral law with safety and profit to himself ? He surely cannot so do. He is no more " number one " before the moral law than he is before physical law. Moral law is law for the exist- ence and preservation and progress of human society, including all its individual members. Society is number one, and the moral law leaves no individual THE LAW OF JUSTICE. 73 exempt from its equal operation and application. Hon- esty is " the best policy," therefore, because it is in harmony with the law of justice that includes all men without an exception. We are obliged to balance self and others in very many of our moral judgments and actions. We may be very sure that the two parties are meant by nature to work together in harmony for the welfare of all. We have instincts of justice as well as instincts of selfish- ness. Through our faculty of reason and our power of self-control, we can bring ourselves and others to a true selfhood which is just to all. Living in it we should be true to our own selves and false to no man. But to reach this end we need to think upon justice first. Self will probably assert itself fully enough, with most of us, without encouragement. When we think earnestly about our duties, to do them, other men will usually be quite ready to give us our rights with pleasure. But if we ai-e very clamorous about " our rights," they will probably ask us first if we have discharged our own part. Not England alone, but all mankind " expects that every man will do his duty." A man who attends to all his duties will not talk pro- fusely about his rights. NOTES. "Justice satisfies everybody, and justice alone," says Emer- son. No word is more common to-day than "rights." See, for example, Herbert Spencer's Justice, with its chapters on the rights of women and children. But " duties " are, on the whole, much more profitable things to consider. Under justice comes honesty in all our dealings, as opposed to cheating, defrauding, stealing, adulteration of goods, and scamping work; the keeping of promises (" who sweareth to his liurt and changeth not "); re- gard for the reputation of otliers; fair methods of making money fread J. Wolcott's poem, The Razor-Seller^, and a hundred other 74 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. topics. " Fair play " is an important aspect of justice easily- brought into the view of boys and girls in school. Justice rests finally on the idea of equality, that all men have certain great rights as men, owed them by all other men as duties. " A man 's a man for a' that." Justice is the law of the business world, where kindness is not often mentioned. See Dole's American Citizen, part third, on " economic duties, or the rights and duties of business and money." " The most enviable of all titles," said Washington, — " the character of ' an honest man.' " " Jus- tice," said Aristotle, "more beautiful than the morning or the evening star." CHAPTEK VI. THE LAW OF KINDNESS. In considering the full meaning of justice we have said that it might be so defined at last as to make it in- clude kindness, and we came to the Golden Rule as its best expression. But still it Avill probably seem to many that, so far, we have been making morality stern and forbidding, since we have had so much to say about law and obedience, — joyless words, most often ! We have taken this course deliberately, however, in order to think and reason clearly about this most important matter, — our conduct. But we should be omitting the view of conduct which changes its whole aspect, if we left out kindness. Justice we commonly regard as based upon deliberate thought, and we often say that one must not let his " feelings bias his judgment " on a question of right and wrong. Yet a very great portion of our life is the life of feeling. While we should not try to distinguish feeling and thought too closely, each has its large place. In all our conduct feeling has a great part to play. AVe only need to be sure that the feeling is rightly di- rected and not immoderate in its degree. This being so, the more strongly we/ee/ in matters of conduct tJie better, for feeling is the powerful force that makes action easy. If we " think clear and feel deep " we shall be most likely to '' bear fruit well," and this is what every '' friend of man desires." Now kindness is the word that stands preeminently for good feeling. In many of its uses it means as much or nearly as much 7G THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. as Love, and Love is the word that marks the strong- est possible feeling of personal attachment. We shall use the word Kindness in preference to Love in speak- ing of acts and feelings which concern many persons, because Love is, strictly, an intensely attractive feeling in persons very near each other, such as members of one family, intimate friends, or men and women who are " in love " with each other, as we say. The deep sympathy we call " love " continues strong while it is confined to a few as its object ; but if we try to extend it to many persons it necessarily loses its intensity. As we are now considering feelings which are to be entertained toward the many, not toward the few, it is well to say "kindness," and reserve "love" for the highest degree of affection. We will speak then of " the law of kindness," rather than of " the law of love," for the present. We all know that persons may, not rarely, deserve to be called just, and not deserve to be called kind. We often say that we respect a certain man because he does right habitually, but that we are not " attracted " to him. His conduct seems to us reasonable and just; but it lacks that element of grace and charm which we imply when we say that another person is thoroughly kind — " kind-hearted " we generally phrase it, making an implied distinction between the " heart " and the " head." We must be very careful not to press this distinction too far, and make too much of it, for head and heart, not only literally but in this figurative use as well, are necessary parts of the same person ; they are not always or often to be set in sharp opposition. But there is a difference, plain to see, between good conduct that is simply just and good conduct that has " heart in it," /. e., is also " kind." Keal kindness is not opposed to justice, but is above it as a superior degree in right con- duct. There is in kindness a notion of "wholeness, immediateness and inspiration, which are more pleas- THE LA W OF KINDNESS. 77 ing and winning tlian the most careful, well calculated and deliberate justice can be by itself. Kindness, in fact, is the ideal of conduct toward the great body of our fellow-creatures, ^^'e have said in the last chapter that mankind has a natural instinct to be just, as well as an innate disposition to be selfish. It is also true, and a very important thing it is to bear in mind, that human nature lias another instinct, to be kind. Sympathy (I. e., feeling with another, especially in his troubles) is precisely as natural to man as self- ishness ; sympathy is but another name for kindness. Selfhood and sympathy — feeling for one's self and feel- ing with and for others — are the two poles on which the world of personal conduct revolves. Each feeling is good and right in itself. The practical matter al- ways is to keep each in its proper place and confine it to its right degree. It may help us a little, at this critical point, to be just to self and to others if we consider closely the several meanings of the words " kind " and " kindness." ^ " Kind " as a noun means (this is the original use of the word) the species, or class, to which a. being be- longs, as in the phrase " cattle after their kind." There are kinds of plants and kinds of animals. Among ani- mal beings, we belong to mankind. Each species or class has its peculiar nature, by reason of which we are led to call it a separate kind. This nature is, to all belong- ing to this kind, a necessary law of their action ; they simply must act according to their kind. " They fol- low the law of their kind," we say of all living animals. In connection with this nature we also use the words native propensity, disposition, character ; these are all " natural," if they are involved in the " kind." It is the disposition of the tigress, for instance, to be cruel ^ The teacher will observe that elsewhere I have preferred to dis- cuss in the notes the matter of etymologies — so interesting and im- portant in ethical reasoning — or to leave it untouched. 78 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. to all animals but lier own young : to them slie is affec- tionate. Equally it is the character ux the dog to be fond of his master, and faithful to him.^ So men 'and women have a certain general disposition or character because they all belong to mankind. For instance, you are " led by kind to admire your fellow-creature," says Dry den. The first use of " kind " as an adjective follows di- rectly from these meanings which we have been mention- ing. Whatever is " characteristic," i. e., is a mark, of a species, whatever belongs to its nature, is natural or native to it, is therefore '* kind " to it, in this primitive sense. (" Kind " and " kin," we have to remember, are etymologically the same word ; " kin " or " akin," and " kind," in this present sense, mean just the same.) " The kind taste " of an apple is the taste natural to an apple. The hay " kindest for sheep " is the hay that suits best their taste. "Kindly" is another form of "kind." "The kindly fruits of the earth" are the fruits which the earth naturally produces, i e., after its kind. ISText " kind " comes to mean especially, in the case of human beings, havbirj the feelings that are com- mon and natural to the kind, the feelings which indi- cate, as well as stature or complexion, a community of descent. "A kindless villain," such as Hamlet calls the King, is one who acts contrary to the usual disposition of men, as the King did in murdering his own brother, Hamlet's father. " A little more than kin and less than kind," says Hamlet again, of the king, playing on the related words. The chorus in " Henry V.," ad- dressing England, exclaims : — " What mightst thou do Were all thy children kind and natural ; " tliat is, were they all true to their nature as English- men, Avith no traitors among them. 1 " The bee," says Eichard Rolle de Hampole, the old English writer, " has three kyudes ; ane es that sche is neuer ydell.' ' THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 79 " Kind " as an adjective easily passes on to imply not only the feelings which show a common nature in hu- man beings, but in particular the feelings which show it most, the tender emotions. These prove the exist- ence, in a i)erson, of a high degree of sympathy or com- passion (these two words are etymologically the same). "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," l. e., it makes men feel alike, and with each other. When we ■ are thoughtful about the fortunes of others, and dwell upon their lot so as to feel with them, " we become kindly with our kind," as Tennyson writes. In this way " kind," the adjective, reaches its present and usual meaning of tender and thoughtful for the welfare of others, in little things as well as in great. The history of "kindness," the noun, has followed the same course. In " Much Ado About Nothing " the un- cle of Claudio is reported by the messenger to have burst into tears when he heard how his nephew had distinguished himself in battle. " A kind overflow of kindness," says Leonato there, meaning, as he played upon the words, a natural overflow of tender feeling in one related, " akin," to Claudio. " Thy nature," says Lady Macbeth to her more humane spouse, " is too full o' the milk of human kindness," i. e., to kill the king. ' Kindness," then, points to the great fact on which the moral law rests, that we are living with our kind. In this life together we are to think very carefully about the things which tend to make it profitable and pleasant to all. We must obey the laws of human nature which not only bring men together but are also continually operating to make the life together richer, fairer, and sweeter. This is the action of the law of kindness, the highest law of human society, of life with our kind. We are wont to say Iniman society and human kind. Notice how this word ''human" and the word " Im- mane " are related. A human being, an individual of 80 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. the species Homo, would be partially described by the naturalist as an animal Avalking upright and having two hands, and a large brain with inany convolutions. We are each of us a portion of such a " humanity," meaning physiological human kind, or the species Homo, through the possession of these physical characteristics. But " humanity " means, specifically, the thoughts and feel- ings proper, i. e. peculiar, to mankind, those which dis- tinguish us from the lower animals more plainly than do any bodily marks. ^ Most of all it stands for tender- • ness toward our own kind, so that " humanity " and " kindness " are, to a certain degree, synonymous, the latter word having historically the somewhat wider meaning. "Humane" is the adjective corresponding to this last-mentioned sense of the noun " humanity." An old translator of Plutarch into English using the word in the earliest, literal sense, " of man," speaks of bearing " humane cases humanely," i. e., bearing the lot of man like a man ! The change of signification which has come upon " kind " and " human " is one sign of the great fact of the progress of man. Universal history, indeed, is the record of man becoming more human, steadily working out the beastly and savage elements in his mingled nature, and giving ever freer exercise to those elements which are distinctively human. The humanization of man in society is the aim of all that we properly call civilizntion. Every step in this process, which takes mankind away from the beast and the savage, in thought, feeling, and action, is an improvement, since thus his special nature is working itself free. To humanize a race is to give it knowledge and art, a higher morality and gentler manners. Observe how this word " gentle," again, comes to mean what it does. A " gentle " person ^ " Men that live according' to the rig'ht rule and law of reason live but in their own kind, as beasts do in theirs," Sir Thomas Browne says. THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 81 was originally one belonging to " a good family," one "well-born." Now people of family, the well-born, among their other advantages have more leisure than most persons to consider the smaller things of human intercourse — manners, that is, and the " minor morals " — and give them pleasing shape. Manners with these persons are improved ; they become more gracious and refined, largely because the conditions of life are easier here than those of the majority of mankind ; the Avell- to-do can thus spend more time and thought upon minor matters in social intercourse. The manners of good, or polite society are, properly, the kindest manners, be- cause they have been the object of much consideration with a view to making the relations of men and women in refined society pleasant and agreeable in every way. " Courtesy," our word for the finest kind of manners, comes from the " court " of royal personages where the greatest attention is usually paid to cultivating fine manners. But politeness and courtesy have now, of course, no necessary connection with kings or nobles. The law of kindness requires consideration of others, in preference to a selfish absorption in one's own pleasure or profit, and such kindness is not chiefly dependent upon our outward rank. As far as external conditions go, it is more easily cultivated in a state of comfort and leisure than in a state of hardship and poverty, but its essence is in the kind heart. True kindness does not require that we try to suspend for any one the fit operation of the laAvs of human life, or that we excuse him from obedience, most of all, to the moral law. Kindness does not allow us to be untrue in our words or unjust in our deeds, but it implies a constant control over the tongue and hand, so that the spirit- in ■which we act and speak shall be gentle and considerate of the feelings of all other human beings. To speak the truth in love, — to do justly while we love the mercy that is above all sceptred sway, — this is the ideal of human conduct. 82 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. Naturally, we learn most easily how to live in this best way through our experience in our own homes. There our kin are our teachers in kindness. Nothing can surj)ass a mother's kindness for her children, or a father's concern for the happiness of his sons and daughters, unless it be the love of the husband and wife themselves, unitcji in a true marriage. The love of our brothers and sisters, the kind thoughtfulness and affec- tionate helpfulness which are the very atmosphere of a happy home, instruct us that the same quality of mind and heart will make our intercourse with other human beings better and more humane. Opportunities for for- getting ourselves, for thinking how to do good, and for the doing of it, are innumerable in every life, and the character of every person becomes stronger, richer, and more beautiful, as he improves these occasions. We are not doing our Avhole duty when we simply tell the truth without regard to the mode of telling it ; when we give other people their rights, without considering the manner in which we regard these rights ; or when we have brought ourselves to obey every precept of the moral law in an external way only. This law is a law of life ; obedience should become a second nature, so that all its hardness and diflficulty may pass away. " Serene will be our days, and bright And happy will our nature be When love is an unerring light And joy its own security." The element of beauty is needed in our conduct, as elsewhere in human life. Kindness supplies this grace and cliarm, in that it carries regard for others to the point of making it a fine art. Nothing is more beauti- ful in human intercourse than purely unselfish love, — of man and woman, of mother and child, of brother and sister, of whole-hearted friends. Beautiful, too, is the good man's regard for all other members of the great human family, when nothing that is human is alien to THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 83 his heart; when the sight of the weak, the ignorant, and the poor, reminds him that we are all of one primal nature, and that the law of kindness is the supreme law for man. The short and easy way to stamp this character of beauty on our conduct is to begin "with the heart, out of which are " the issues of life." When we think clearly, we perceive how far beyond and above all the dif- ferences and distinctions between human beings are the great and fundamental likenesses of man to man, which should arouse and sustain in us all a feeling of the com- mon brotherhood of humanity. The single person enters into a larger life by sympathy with another. Man and woman come together in marriage, the closest union of this kind, and find strength and beauty in a home where love reigns, and family ties multiply the sweetness and the power of life. The same feeling can extend itself, in various degrees, but in the one form of human kind- ness, to all the relations of life, to soften and rehne and beautify human society. The law of kindness tends to put down all " sur- vivals " of the beast, the primitive savage, and the bar- barian, in the individual and in the world at large. Un- kindness is injustice to one of the same race with ourselves ; it is untruthfulness to the great fact of our common humanity. But as a positive force of interest in others and sympathy with them, kindness becomes the finest justice and the most delicate truthful- ness. Harshness is unjust, and cruelty is brutal ; both these opposites of kindness are unhuman. But let us do a kindness to a person whom we have disliked, and what an effect it has in clearing away injustice in our own mind ! We often see how false has been our view of what we called the facts of his nature. Human kindness preserves the family and the home, and makes them fair and satisfying. A man and his wife used often to quarrel, she said, but now that they kept " two bears " 84 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. in the house all went happily : the names of these two peacemakers were Bear and Forbear ! Kindness in the form of politeness and common cour- tesy makes the relations of men and women outside their own homes a source of pleasure and happiness, helping on every other good thing. Human kindness between nations would abolish war and all its horrors. Peace in the home and in the world, and, because of peace, larger opportunity for growth in knowledge and beauty and right and fulness of life in every direction, — this is the result of love fulfilling every moral la'w. When men act and speak and think and feel out of a generous, merciful, peaceful, kindly spirit, then their highest level here upon earth is attained, human nature comes to its finest flower, and the fullest fruit- age of life is sure. NOTES. " The quality of mercy is not strained." A CLASSIC book ou courtesy is The Gentleman, by George H. Calvert, full of references to history and literature, from Sir Philip Sidney to Charles Lamb. Dr. Holmes defines good breed- ing as " surface Christianity," and Cardinal Newman says the gentleman is " one who never willingly gave pain." " Moral life is based on sympathy ; it is feeling for others, working for others, aiding others, quite irrespective of any per- sonal good beyond the satisfaction of the social impulse. En- lightened by the intuition of our community of weakness, we share ideally the universal sorrow. Suffering humanizes. Feel- ing the need of mutual help, we are prompted by it to labor for others." (G. H. Lewes.) Kindness to animals is distinctively a modern virtue in Chris- tian countries. It is an extension to the lower animals, espe- cially to those we domesticate, of the considerate treatment we have first learned to give to our own species. " I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 85 Yet la3king sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a -wonn." Read Rab and his Friends; such poems as The Halo, by W. C. Gannett, and selections from the biographies of men, like Sir Walter Scott, fond of dogs and horses. See Miss Cobbe on the Education of the Emotions in the Fortnightly Review, xliii. p. 223. Lessons on Manners, by Edith Wiggin, is a good handbook for the teacher. As for kindness in charitable works : — " That is no true alms ■which the hand can hold ; He g^ves only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty ; But he who gives but a slender mite And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite, — The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms." CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. In our previous chapters we have studied the mean- ing of " law " in general, and of the " moral law " in par- ticular. " Duty," " ought," " justice," and " kindness " we have also explained. Bu.t there are numerous other words used very commonly in speaking of human ac- tions, such as " right " and '' wrong," " conscience," " virtue," and '' vice," which we have not yet consid- ered. In every art and in every science a clear under- standing of the exact meanings of the words we use is important. But nowhere is it of more consequence than when we are speaking or writing about the moral character of actions. Indeed, in discussing matters of conduct the decision as to their rightness or wrongness often turns upon the definition we give of " right " and " wrong " in general. In this book we are trying to keep clear of controversies as to the ultimate nature of vice and virtue, of the morally good and the morally bad, and to remain upon the ground of practical ethics where there is a general agreement among men. In such a spirit, avoiding refinements and subtleties, let us look at some of the words which mankind commonly use in regard to morals. In the first place, however, what do we mean pre- cisely by " moral " or " ethical " ? The two words have the same signification, the first coming from the Latin language, and the second from the Greek ; both mean " pertaining to the habits, manners, or customs of men." Of course, not all possible actions of human beings are called " moral." We eat and sleep and do many other THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. 87 things wliich all other animals do as a part of their ani- mal existence. These are not immoral but xm.moral acts : there is no propriety in applying the words " right " and " wrong " to them. We read and study, again ; we employ our minds in many ways, and we do not think of vice or virtue as fit words to use about what we are doing. There is thus a great deal of hu- man life which lies outside of the world of moral distinctions : our instinctive animal existence, the natural play of the mind, and numerous powers of con- scious thought and action have standards other than those of morals. We may not judge a book, a picture, or a building by morals alone. Only a. 2xirt of all the manners and customs of men do we properly call moral or immoral. This part, evi- dently, takes in those actions which most directly affect the welfare of other persons. Man in society is the subject of moral or ethical science, and our actions show themselves to be moral or immoral according as they tend, immediately or ultimately, to the welfare or to the injury of other human beings. Eating my break- fast is not a moral act in itself ; but if I give another person poisoned food for his breakfast, it is a highly immoral deed that I do. If any act of mine is plainly confined in its consequences to myself, then its moral quality is not immediately obvious. If every human being were out of all relations to every other, there could be no such science or art as morals or ethics, for " duties to self," as they are sometimes called, would not, alone, constitute such a science. But there is a law, as we have seen, governing all the many actual relations of men to one another, and because we are social beings and live our lives mainly together, this law, the law of morality, is of the very first importance to us. Duty, " the ought," as we have explained, is the obedience we " owe " to this law. But there is a very common phrase, " rights and duties." This combination 88 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. indicates the social nature of morals. Our duties are what we owe to others ; oxw rights are what others owe to us. Their rights are our duties ; their duties are oiir rights. " Right " (which comes from the same root as rectus, straight) means, first of all, " in accordance with rule or law." Kighteousness, or rightness, is equivalent to rectitude, which means going straight by the rule or vieas'ure. This rule has come to be for all mankind the rule in particular derived from the moral law : right means, therefore, doing the things which the moral law, of truthfulness or kindness for instance, prescribes to be done. If we can find this law and merely under- stand it as we should any other law of nature, we are intellectually right, i. e., correct in our thought ; if we act as it commands, we are morally right, so far as our action is concerned ; if we obey it in a spirit of glad- ness, as the inspiring law of our human life, then we are right, all through, — mind and hand and heart and will : then we are completely moral beings. " Right " has in it the notion of straightness, straight- forwardness, directness. A " right line " is the straight line between any two points. Eight conduct is conduct tending directly to social welfare, the good of all em- bracing the good of each. But when one's action is bent or swayed out of this straight line, when it tends to some other mark than the good of all, it is " wrong," i. e., it is wrung out of conformity with the rule or law. Now the great occasion or cause of wrong-doing in the world is, as we have seen, that we are apt to think only of ourselves when we act. Our own welfare very often so takes the first place in our thoughts and feel- ings that we care little, or not at all, what the conse- quences of our deeds may be to other persons. There are, in truth, many matters in which we must think about our own comfort and convenience as the impor- THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. 89 tant matter, since self-help is the best kind of help ; and if the thing we desire is good for us, it may be entirely right that we should endeavor to obtain it. But when a benefit of any kind is one that may be shared, or that must be shared, in order that no one shall suffer because another gets more than his portion, then pure selfhood becomes selfishness, and is wrong. For example, a farmer works hard to make money from his land : he labors on his own place, and has his own interest, not his neighbor's, in view, as he buys and sells according to the usual laws of trade. This is right : there is no selfishness about caring for one's self in this way. But the farmer is bound to provide for his wife and chil- dren, to see that they have enough to eat, that they are well clothed, that the children go to school, that the hired men receive fair wages and are punctually paid, and that all the benefits of his prosperity, such as it is, are divided among those who have a just and natural claim upon him. But while the farmer is making money, he may compel his family to fare poorly and dress meanly ; he may keep his children at work when they should have the opportunity to go to school ; he may " beat down " the pay of his workmen and delay the payment. In all these ways, not to speak of other matters, he may disregard the fact that we are partners with one another. Instead of going straight to the mark of the plain and simple duty before him, he may force and complicate things into a state of wrongness by his selfishness. The crooked line is the proper em- blem of the conduct that obeys no law; the straight line, of the conduct that is true to the direction which the law commands. Vice, a common word in speaking of bad conduct, means, first of all, a defect: it refers to a deficiency in the exercise of that power of self-control of which we have before spoken as the root of morality in the pri- vate person. One man does not exert himself as he 90 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. miglit about his proper work : he has the vice of idle- ness. Another does not control his liking for intoxi- cating liquors, and he falls into the vice of intemper- ance. A third man may have a violent or an irritable disposition which he does not control, and he falls into the vice of bad temper. So the vicious man practically sets up his own pleasure or wilfulness as the law by which he acts. He is not strong, but weak, in that he does not have the mastery over himself which full obe- dience to the moral law requires. Virtue, on the contrary, originally meant manliness, and especially the distinctive excellence of a man, courage. The word always implies strength, and when it came to be applied to conduct, it marked power of will to control one's self, according to the law of right. The " cardinal," or chief, virtues were formerly said to be justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. Underlying all these is the notion of strength. Jus- tice demands the ability to put down one's exorbitant wishes and to limit one's self, as well as other persons, each to his share. Prudence (from pro-vidence, looking forward) signifies a will-power which is sufficient to curb our own indolence or extravagance or carelessness in view of our probable needs or interests in the future. Temperance implies just such a restraint, such a stop- ping short of excess, with a view to the more immedi- ate consequences. Fortitude is courage, active or pas- sive, in doing or bearing. These four " virtues " (from the Latin vir, a man) are signs of manliness : they belong to the manly mind and the manly will. Injus- tice, imprudence, intemperance, and cowardice are equally marks of moral weakness in a person. A train- ing in virtue, then, is like physical training : its object is to give strength and power of self-control. In one case we strengthen the muscles by use that they may be ready servants of the will in time of need. In the other case we strengthen our powers of judgment and THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. 91 self-control in small matters, so that we may show our- selves equal to emergencies which require the lull strength of a man in resisting evil. " Conscience " is the word we use to denote each per- son's knowledge of the moral law, or his power of know- ing it and passing judgment as to matters of morality. Its meaning, etymologically, is doubtful. "Knowing with," its two members (con-sciu) signify, but " knowing with" ivhat ? Some call it a faculty which gives an im- mediate knowledge of right and wrong, and does not need instruction, but only opportunity to speak. Others would call it a faculty capable of enlightenment like any other faculty of the human mind. Into such dis- cussions as to the ultimate nature of conscience we have no need to enter here. The final ground of right, whether in utility or in experience or in intuition, is another point which belongs to the theory of ethics, not to the practical morality which now concerns us. On the main matters of conduct there is virtual agreement among civilized men as to what is right and what is wrong. Why this, finally, is right or why that is finally wrong, is another matter, on which philosophers differ and dispute. The great majority of mankind are inter- ested only in determining what to do, not what to think, in the sphere of conduct. It is agreed by all that children need instruction and advice as to right and wrong, and a great part of the conversation and the writing of grown people consists of the giving of ad- vice or suggestion about moral matters. Thus whatever our consciences may be, in the last resort, we all need instruction as to the facts in any case where we have to act, and we need to reason clearly and logically from these facts in the light of moral principles generally ad- mitted. Not only is this so ; we need to have our inter- est in right-doing, by others and by ourselves, kept \\v> and quickened by thinking earn(\stly about conduct and clearing our minds, and by purifying and strengthening 92 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. our wills, so that we shall understand and do and love the right. If we are thus drawn toward the moral life with the full force of our nature, it is of little conse- quence how we define conscience, or what our theory is about its origin in the history of our race. Like the sense of beauty, the moral sense justifies itself by its results, not by its definitions : each aims at a practical result, not at the vindication of a theory. The virtuous life, all will say, is life in accordance with the highest laws of human nature. " Good " is, to us human be- ings, whatever is fit or suitable for man ; moral good is what is fit or suitable for man to do or be in the society of his kind. The good man, morally speaking, is al- ways good for something. NOTES. The teacher will do well to trace the natural history of every word that conveys a sense of moral obligation. " Should," he will find, for instance, is derived from tlie Teutonic root skal, to owe: thus its meaning is radically the same as that of " ought." "Must," — a frequent word in this book, — is often equivalent to "ought." One ought to do so and so to attain an end ^ one 7nust do it. Right is noted as the straight and obvious course in these lines: — " Beauty may be the path to highest good, And some successfully have it pursued. Thou, who wouldst follow, be well warned to see That way prove not a curved road to thee. The straightest way, perhaps, which may be sought Lies through the great highway men call I ought." Right is simple, i. e., without folds; wrong is often duplicity, full of complexities. "Man is saved by love and duty," said Amiel; "society rests upon conscience, not upon science." " A society can be founded only on respect for liberty and justice," M. Taine declares. " A right " can be made out only when it can be proved to be some person's positive duty; " the right " is what all ought to do, THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. 93 i. e., what they owe to one another, or to society at large. The variations of conscience in different times and countries (see Wake, The Evolution of Morality) correspond to the degrees of enlightenment reached by the human race ; they prove that mo- rality is a progressive art, not that right and wrong are delu- sions. Conscience needs enlightenment and training, like all other human powers. A high stage of pi-ogress is marked in Carlyle's saying: "There is in man a higher than love of happi- ness. He can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." Rights and Duties is a suggestive little manual by Mrs. K. G. Wells, and Mr. Smiles's Duty has an abundance of illustrative matter. CHAPTEE VIII. HOME. Home is the name we give to the place where our family life is lived. The family, made up of father, mother, children, and other blood-relatives, is the most important and most helpful of human associations. AVe are born into the family, and in our years of weakness we are supported and our life made stronger and better by the love and help of father and mother, and brothers and sisters. "When we grow up, we marry and form other families, and become ourselves fathers and mo- thers, bringing up children, as we were brought up. Home, " sweet home," ought to be, as it is to most per- sons, the dearest spot on earth, where we find loving words and sympathy and kind deeds, and where we may return these, and do each his full part in this small and close society, — very powerful for good because it is a small body and the " life together '' is here intimate and continuous. We have certain hours for work away from our homes ; we associate with others in school, or business, or travel, and in divers other ways ; but at home we not only eat at the same board and sleep under the same roof, but we know one another and can help and love one another day after day, and year after year, until in the family we die, as into the family we were born. " Home " is the sweetest and strongest word in our language, because it stands for so much of love and fellow-service, for the tenderest and fairest side of our life. The family, which makes the home, is a natural insti- tution, the outgrowth of our deepest human nature. HOME. 95 The love of man and woman which brings them together as husband and wife comes next to the instinct of self- preservation in its universality and power. It is the foundation of the family, and if we follow it along its course of development and refinement in the civilized countries of to-day, we find the virtues, that is, the strengths and the excellences, which go to make the true and perfect home. The husband and father is the natural head of the family ; on him it depends for its support. He used to have in ancient times even the power of life and death over his children. But the power which he now has is based on right and reason. The wife and mother is his friend and dear companion and constant helper. On her more than on him, in the natural course of things, the daily care of the children rests. To father and mother, then, the boys and girls of the house should look up with respect and love as older and more experienced than themselves, and thus able to teach and guide them in many things of which they are ignorant and incapa- ble. The first thing necessary to make a 'happy home is cheerful obedience paid by children to their parents, who are providing them with food and clothing and shelter and education, and who have no greater desire than to see their children growing up to be good and intelligent men and women. Children in their younger years can return but little for the immeasurable love and help which their fathers and mothers delight to bestow upon them. But they may make life pleasanter for their parents by showing a cheerful and contented spirit, by returning the love, and doing the little they can to aid in the daily work of the family life. In running errands, in learning to help itself about dress- ing, in tending the baby, for instance, the young child may exhibit a loving and helpful spirit, which will make it still dearer to the heart of father and mother. At home, more than anywhere else, obedience to those 96 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. who liave a natural right to commaud should be ready and cheerful. Our parents are older and wiser than we ; they give us directions only for our own good, and have our happiness always in view. Until we can see and understand the reasons why they order us to do this or that, we should do it because they have ordered it. Father and mother are the law-makers and law-executors for the children, who should obey as the sailor on a ves- sel at once obeys the captain or the pilot, as the soldier gives instant attention to the command of his officer, and as the hired man at work follows the directions of his employer. Father and mother are acting for the good of the whole family. The children must be content to obey, and take their own share, and should not make life hard for their parents by disobedience, stubborn- ness, idleness, or other forms of selfishness. The Golden Eule would teach children to remember constantly how much father and mother are doing for them, not only in the matters which any one can see, such as care for their health and comfort, but also in training them to become honest and upright men and women. This is the greatest thing that our parents can do for us, to bring us up in habits of self-control and truthfulness and honor and kindness, so that as we grow older, we can be trusted to walk by ourselves and to do the right because -we know it and prize it, not simply because we are ordered to do it. But this doing of the right is, quite naturally, what children often like very little or dislike very much. They want to have their own way, whether it is the right and reasonable way, or not. They do not always " feel like " going to school, or helping their parents or brothers and sisters in some small way. But home rests upon law and love. The father, who sees so much more clearly than the unwilling boy what is right and just and fair and reasonable, will make him "mind," by force, if necessary. The great law of the home is HOME. 97 helj^fulness and kindness from each to all and from, all to each ; it is always well with us if the law is enforced whenever we do not cheerfully obey it. Boys and girls are growing up to become fathers and mothers them- selves, in their turn, and they cannot learn too soon that each must be ready and willing to do his own part in the work of life, and be satisfied with his share of good and pleasant things, helping and helped, happy and making others happy. There should be no other place like home to us. There is no other place where we can shoAV so plainly what we are, — kind and true and helpful, or selfish and false and careless of our duty. Moral training be- gins here, and throughout life it centres here. When a man is a good son or father or husband, he is likely to be a true man in business and in the larger life in gen- eral, beyond his home. We need, then, to think very carefully about our duties at home that we may be sources of sweetness and light there. In the right and true home we love and help one another without asking a return, and from no selfish motive whatever ; begin- ning with the simplest forms of duty we rise to the fair- est heights of love through self-forgetfulness in kindly service. The virtues of home are the qualities which tend to make it strong in a mutual helpfulness of all the family circle, and sweet and pleasant in a beautiful spirit of love. To serve, not to be served; to give, not to re- ceive ; to help and bless continually by word and example, — this makes firm the family bond, and keeps home as it should be, the dearest place on earth. The virtues, the strength and the excellence of home lie deep in justice and right and truth ; but nowhere else can we so love and be loved, nowhere else does duty so easily pass into affection. Home should, then, be a sacred place to us. We do well to remember the Lares and Penates, as the old Romans called the household 98 TIIi: LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. gods. Their images were in every house ; a perpetual fire was kept on the hearth in their honor ; on the table the salt-cellar stood for them, and the firstlings of the fruit were laid, and every meal was considered as, in a sense, a sacrifice to them. When one of the family came home after absence, he saluted the Penates as well as the family, and thanked them for his safe re- turn. So we should consider our home holy ground, — too holy for wrong or vice to tread, — a place sacred to love and duty. Through these virtues home is deeply helpful to our best life beyond the family border. NOTES. There is a considerable literature on the origin and develop- ment of the family iu liiiman history. Such a book as E. B. Ty- lov's Anthropology (in the closing chapter on Society) will be suf- ficient for most uses. It is of vastly more consequence to study family life in its highest excellence to-day than to trace its ani- mal beginnings. Ethics is concerned more with what ought to be than with what is or what has been; at the same time, a knowledge of the past and the present is necessary to any wise attempt to shape the future. Herbert Spencer, in his Justice, marks this fundamental difference between family ethics and state ethics: " Within the family group most must be given where least is deserved, if desert is measured by worth. Contrariwise, after maturity is reached benefit must vary directly as worth; worth being measured by fitness to the conditions of existence." The monogamous family is the form under which modern civ- ilized man obeys the imperious instinct which bids the race pre- serve itself. Self-preservation, in its broadest sense, is the com- panion-instinct. The dictates of both are obeyed in the close cooperation of the family, where the most exigent duties are ren- dered easy by the strong affections naturally engendered. The monogamous family, Goethe said, is man's greatest conquest over the brute; it rests not upon mere animal inclination, but upon the most constant obedience to duty, — an obedience ren- dered easy and happy by use and love. HOME. 99 Some classic poems of home are the " Cotter's Saturday Night ; " Cowper's " Winter Evening ; " Wordsworth's lines to the lark, " Ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky ; " and Whittier's " Snow Bound." Three good books are Home Life, by J. F. W. Ware ; Home Teaching, by E. A. Abbott; and The Duties of Women, by F. P. Cobbe. The pamphlet lessons on Home Life, by Mrs. Susaa P. Lesley, are suggestive. CHAPTER IX. WORK. Man is born to work and employ his powers of body and mind for good ends. That we have strength is a sign that we were intended to use it in order to preserve our life and make it comfortable through our exertions. That one may eat and drink, have clothing and shelter, get an education, own a house, be able to travel, or enjoy life in any one of a thousand ways, he must work, or some one must work for him. No human being is free from the necessity or the duty of working and making use of his natural powers. Now all work has its conditions of success, and these demand certain qualities which we will call the virtues of work. They are such excellences of character as Industry, Punctuality, Orderliness, Intelligence, and Economy. Taking a general view of all kinds of labor, we see that to do any woi'k well and succeed in gaining a good result, we must comply with these natural moral conditions ; if we will not, then we fail, whatever our other virtues may be. As each one of us grows up and takes to some special kind of business to support him- self and those dependent on him, he is obliged to learn the proper ways of doing things, whether it be farming, or carpentering, or teaching, or practising law, for in- stance. Each pursuit has to be learned by itself, hav- ing its special works and needs. One person must live on a farm and work under a farmer to learn agriculture ; another must go into a printing-office and learn his " case " if he would be a compositor ; a thii*d must go to college and a professional school to learn medicine or WORK. 101 law. But in all these directions we find work has its general laws, the same evert/ivhei-e, and we cannot begin too soon to recognize them and obey them, whatever we are doing. I. We must be industrious. This means that we must be willing and ready each of us to do at least the share of work that comes to him, at home, in the school- room, or in business. We must learn to like work, if we do not naturally enjoy it, by working, and to rejoice in the fact that we are accomplishing something in this world. We have to form a habit, by practice, of steady, patient, and persevering labor. We must have intervals for rest and play or recreation, but while we work we should work with our might, and while we play, let us play ; work and play are successful and reach their aim only when so taken. If we idle when we should be working, some one else must do the work that we should have done, and thus the fundamental rule, "each his part," is violated. Pure idleness is shirking one's duty as a soldier deserts his regiment. Idling over one's work, " scamping " it, is unjust to those who employ us, and naturally leads to our discharge. Into what we are doing we should put our whole strength ; if disagree- able work is before us we must learn not to be concerned about the disagreeableness and in time the task will be- come easier and less irksome. The first law of each place of work is work ! School is the place to study in ; the blacksmith's shop, the cotton-mill, the shipyard, are places in which to tise one's hand and eye in steady labor ; let us, then, do the head-work or the hand-work faithfully. II. Most of the work that men do must be done at fixed times, if it is to be done well. There must be an hour for opening the shop or the factory or the school, and at this time the workers must attend, for " time is money " to all who work. Punctuality, being true to the point of time, is one of the first of business vir- 102 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. tues. The hour is set for beginning the clay's work, and we are to be paid for the day's time. If we are late in arriving at work, we are not performing our part of the agreement, and are thus doing wrong. Business of every kind must have its time set for beginning and ending, and time has more and more value as men become more civilized. So we should imitate in our human affairs the punctuality shown by the tides and the changes of the moon and even the comets, whose ap- j)earance is foretold by astronomers, ages beforehand, to the minute. When " on time," the school opens with all the pupils in their seats at the fixed hour, and the lessons and study begin at once. The school work is not hindered and delayed by Fred or Mary lagging behind, and no one loses the whole or part of an exercise. We make engagements with one another to meet at certain places, to do certain things, to deliver goods, it may be, to join in all sorts of enterprises. Everywhere "punc- tuality is the soul of business," and the unpunctual man will not be tolerated long in any direction. The railroad train will not delay for him, and men who have business with him will not wish to continue it if he wastes their time by keeping them waiting. In all our dealings with each other, in which there is any question of time, respect and courtesy demand that we be on time, " pat betwixt too early and too late." III. Orderliness is necessary to success in business. There must not only be a time for everything to begin and to end, but there must also be a place for every- thing. In a well-managed carpenter's shop, for exam- ple, each saw and hammer and file has its hook or nail or slot where it belongs. When needed it is taken from that place, and when it has been used it is re- turned there. No time is then wasted in looking for it here and there, as in a shop where the workmen are slack and careless. The orderly workman begins at the beginning of his WORK. 103 work : lie keeps to one job at a time, so far as he can, until it is finished : then he takes up another. He ar- ranges his work beforehand in such order that it will require the least outlay of time and strength to do it well. He has his mind on his business ; all his energy and intelligence and skill he directs wisely, so as to procure the largest and best result. IV. ISTot only should every worker be as methodical and systematic as possible, for his own good and the good of all, skill is a duty for him. Here is a certain thing to do, to raise a crop, or build a house, or manage a railroad. Since man is an intelligent being and can know, if he will, many of the causes and ways of things, the farmer, the builder, and the locomotive engineer are bound to understand their business : each should study persistently the nature of the forces and the materials with which he has to deal, and acquaint him- self practically with the methods that other men have used to attain the end he is seeking himself. The best way of doing a thing does not come by chance to one who is ignorant and careless ; it comes to those who use their eyes and ears and their whole minds, carefully and patiently. The successful worker is the one who concentrates his full power on the task in hand. He wishes to do the most good work with the largest and best result inside of a given time and in the most eco- nomical manner. How to do this is an affair requiring thought. So to our virtues of industry and punctuality and order and economy, we need to add all the know- ledge of our occupation that keen observation and study of books or life can give us. Intelligence is a duty, as well as perseverance, for everybody. Not until we reach the limit of possible knowledge or training can we say that we have done our full duty, as intellectual beings, to the work that lies before us. " The very true beginning of wisdom is the desire of discipline." The power and ability that 104 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. we have by nature are very well, but to be of much use or profit in the world, they must be trained : they must come and submit themselves to learn the virtues of work. Our human society stands firm because of the immense amount of patient work that is done day after day by millions of workers of all kinds ; and it advances in knowledge and beauty and comfort as this work be- comes more moral and more intelligent. The idle, the careless, the disorderly, the unwilling-to-learn are a burden on the industrious, the careful, the orderly, and the intelligent ; and each one should resolve not to be such a burden, but, by complying with the laws of good work, do his own manly part, and so have a right to enjoy his own share. NOTES. There is no lack of inspiring examples to do our best work in the lives of the great men of our own generation, of whom the newspaper, the monthly magazine, and contemporary books tell us. Perhaps the most forcible instruction from biography in the virtues of work is based upon the achievements of living men. Their word has often telling power, as when Mr. Edison, asked for advice how to succeed, answered : " Don't look at the clock," i. e., forget yourself in your work, be possessed by it. Work is always to be disassociated from worry; see A. K. H. B. on A Great Evil of Modern Times. " One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, Of toil unsevered from tranquillity." On the other hand : — " Rest is not quitting The busy career ; Rest is the fitting Of self to its sphere." Read from Whittier's " Songs of Labor; " Captains of Industry, by James Parton, two series; J. F. Clarke and J. S. Blackie on Self-Culture; and Blessed be Drudgery, by W. C. Gannett (it is WORK. 105 ♦* the secret of all culture," he says). " Idleness," says old Burton, " the bane of body and mind, the nui-se of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief." "Labor is man's great function; the hardest work in the world is to do nothing " (Dr. Dewey.) " There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that .actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so mam- monish, mean, is in communication witli Nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth. All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand- labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven." (Carlyle.) Work is of the mind as well as of the hand; the tendency of civilization is set forth by Sir Thomas More: — " The Utopians, when nede requireth, are liable to abide and suffer much bodelie laboure ; els they be not greatly desirous and fond of it; but in the exercise and studie of the mind they be never wery. . . . For whil, in the institution of that weale pub- lique, this end is onelye and chiefely pretended and mynded, that what time may jjossibly be spared from the necessary occu- pacions and affayres of the commen welth, all that the citizeins should withdraw from the bodely service to the free libertye of the mind and garnishinge of the same. For herein they sup- pose the felicitye of this liffe to consiste." CHAPTER X. THE LAW OF HONOR. The moral law, we have seen, is the law which de- clares the proper relations of human beings to each other in personal conduct. Like every other natural law, it is disclosed to us by study and observation of the beings whom it governs. It governs them because it is a part of their nature, which they cannot escape. Man is a social being, and if he would live in society as he desires, he must obey the laws of the social life : of these laws the moral law is a most important part. A portion of it is written down in the statute law of the land, and is carried into effect against wrong-doers by courts and police and prisons. Another part is recognized in this or that country as binding on all ; but men do not judge it expedient to pass laws concerning it. A power that we call " public opinion " enforces certain duties, such as the education of a man's children according to his means, without legal penalties. The law of the land obliges every par- ent to send his children to school so many weeks in the year ; in the State of Massachusetts this must be done up to the age of fourteen. This is all that the legisla- ture, or the State, thinks it wise to attempt in the way of obliging all parents to educate their children. But when a man is amply able to send his children to the high school or to college, and they wish to go, public opinion says that he ought to send them ; and so much do men, in general, care for the good opinion of their fellow-men, that children not rarely receive this further education when the parents themselves do not admit THE LAW OF HONOR. 107 the intellectual need of it. Public opinion, is, however, a very variable thing, and it often represents a sort of compromise between all kinds and degrees of private opinions, when it concerns a moral question. There must be some persons whose opinion is worth more than that of others on a point of right and wrong, just as there are on a matter of art or science. These per- sons every one will recognize as the honorable people, those who live according to the moral law of honor. I. There are two very opposite senses in which a per- son may be " a law to himself." A man may be willing and ready to defy and disobey the moral law whenever and wherever he thinks he can do so safely. If the offence he has in mind is one against the written law, he will commit it in case he thinks himself sure not to be found out, or in case he cares less for the shame of the punishment tlian for the advantage to be gained from the crime. This man's law is his own self-interest, or the gratification of his passions, whether for his in- terest or not. He will care little for public opinion in respect to matters of Avhich the law says nothing. So he will lie and cheat and steal and break his promises whenever he considers it to be for his own advantage. He will rob and do personal violence, perhaps even commit murder, if he considers himself very likely to escape punishment. He thus puts himself outside the moral law which declares these deeds wrong in them- selves, and makes his own will his law. But such con- duct is directed against the very life of human society, which would go to pieces if it were practised to any great extent. Therefore these dangerous classes, the open enemies of order and civilization and morality, must be kept down. Laws are passed against them : the constable and the policeman, the criminal courts, the jails and the prisons, and the gallows in the last resort, are employed against these savages and barba- rians who are survivals from the times before mo- rality. 108 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. Other enemies of morality are those men who are more crafty and prey on their fellow-men by taking advantage of the imperfections of the statute law to de- fraud and do any other wrong which they think for their own interest. They do not kill, or rob on the highway ; but they make war on their kind by craft. Morality is to them simply an outside restraint : they cannot be trusted to do right when to do wrong would be for their own profit. Both these classes, the violent and the crafty, are " a law to themselves " in the bad sense that they reject all law but their own will. II. At the other extreme in human society stand those men and women who are a law to themselves in the good sense of the phrase. They see that all the laws which mankind has ever made are but clumsy and imperfect attempts to carry out the full moral law as the highest minds and the best hearts perceive and feel it. They do what they know to be just, not because the authorities will otherwise punish them, but because they realize that justice is the one fit thing for men to do to one another. They keep the peace because they love peace and the things which peace brings. They tell the truth because they wish to live themselves and to have others live, at all times, in a real world ; their word does not need to be supported by an oath, — it is always to be relied upon. Their verbal promises are as good as written contracts made before witnesses and under penalty. They pay regard to every known right of others because they feel that we are members one of another in society, and that " no man ever hurt himself save through another's side." To live in this way is to live under the law of honor. Every honorable man feels bound to live up to his fullest knowledge of right, without regard to the statute law or to public opinion, which are satisfied with a lower standard. He is very sure that both are, and must be, imperfect, and that his duty is to remedy their THE LAW OF HONOR. 109 imperfections and to show in his own practice a nearer approach to what is demanded by the full moral law. His own enlightened conscience is his guide : it tells him to square his conduct not by the letter of morality, but by its spirit. " Conscientiousness " means having a delicate, conscience and paying instant heed to it, in small things as in great things. To be conscientious, to be high-minded, to be magnanimous, to be honorable^ — these are one and the same thing : the words mark the person to whom morality has become real and vital. The conscientious are truthful in the extreme degree ; the magnanimous do nothing mean by taking advantage of the weakness or the mistakes of others ; the honor- able are themselves the highest moral law incarnate. The essence of honor is in fixing one's eye upon the re- sult to character of any action and then acting as self- respect and kindness dictate. To follow the law of honor is the ideal of morality ; and no one desiring to live the right life should be satisfied until he values the moral life for itself as the highest and best expression of refined human nature : then he is one of the truly honorable of the earth. Any practice that is dishonorable, however common, bears its condemnation in itself : it must disappear be- fore a more active moral sense, a better instructed pub- lic opinion, or more thorough-going legislation. Every honorable man has the duty laid upon him of raising the standard of morality in his business or profession. There are tricks in every trade which do not cease to be evil because they are common ; there are offences against truth in every profession, which are none the less wrong because they are nearly universal. IVlorality and business, honor and trade, must be kept together. No man is justified in saying to his conscience, prescrib- ing the law of honor, what Frederick the Great used to say to his people demanding a reform : " You may sa>/ what you like : I will do what I like." 110 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. A reputation for honorable dealing lias a high busi- ness value : honor pays in the commercial sense, if a man will trust in it, in the long run, if not immediately. When the farmer " tops off " his barrels of apples or potatoes, or his boxes of berries ; when the grocer sells oleomargarine for butter ; when the tailor palms off an ill-made suit of clothes upon a near-sighted person ; when the manufacturer sells shoddy for woollens, they are short-sighted. Steady custom cannot be kept by such tricks. A reputation for honorable dealing is of more value than all that can be made by occasional im- position. But honor pays in a much higher sense. One of the surest foundations of morality is a just self-respect. A man who has lost his self-respect cannot be trusted : he cannot trust himself. Dishonorable practice saps this foundation : it introduces a kind of dry rot into the moral life. When some unusual strain of tempta- tion to do gross wrong comes upon a man who has been guilty of dishonorable conduct, perhaps known only to himself, he will probably go down, as the great Tay bridge went down in the night, because of some flaw, carrying with it hundreds of lives. The justly anxious passenger on an ocean steamer, in a severe storm, asked the captain if the vessel could live through the tempest. " If any ship can, this one can," replied the captain ; " I know her builder, and I know that she was built on honor." That is a good word for all : Build Life on Honor ! When we are children at home we cannot begin too soon to make our word the exact counterpart of fact so far as we know it, and our promise to do anything the assurance of honest performance. If we break any precious piece of glass or furniture about the house, let us not break the truth too : let us fear that damage more than any punishment that can come upon iis. In the school we can build life on honor, by refusing TUE LAW OF HONOR. Ill to prompt, or to be prompted by, another scholar ; we can scorn to use " ponies," we can take our examinations fairly, without the trick of scribbling the answers before- hand on our cuffs or elsewhere ; when we have done wrong, we can take our punishment manfully, with- out trying to sneak out of it and letting some inno- cent person be suspected or even disciplined for it. When we leave school and take up the active business of life, we can build on honorable work, done carefully and faithfully. Let no one need to watch us or inspect our performance to see if we have been shortening the quantity or " scamping " the quality of our work. We agree to work certain hours, on understood conditions ; honor bids us fill these hours with patient work, having a single eye to the interest of our employer ; it bids us live up to every condition of our self-chosen task. If we ourselves become employers, building life on honor -means doing justice to our men, paying wages promptly and fully, and recognizing and rewarding merit. It means dealing justly in every trade, giving fair measure and just weight and due quality. If our chosen business has a certain dishonorable practice in it, it is our duty to try and " reform it altogether " if we can ; no one knows how much he can do to improve the morality of his trade or business or profession until he has, very earnestly, tried. Honor forbids cheating an individual. It forbids cheating a corporation as well ; if the " corporation has no soul," this is not a suf- ficient reason why you should not have a conscience ! Pay your fare, then, if you take your ride in the horse- car, or the steam-car ; the corporation has fulfilled its part of the contract in transporting you ; fulfil your part by paying for the ride. It is dishonorable to take advantage of the mistake or oversight of those with whom you have dealings ; in making change, or ex- change, the honorable man takes and keeps only what belongs to him. 112 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. The honorable lawyer seeks, first of all, to have jus- tice done, not to pervert it in the interest of a guilty- client, that the innocent may suffer. The honorable physician ijrepares himself for his difficult profession by long study, and despises the bogus diploma. The honorable clergyman respects the dignities of his profes- sion, and in all his dealings follows the strictest code of personal morals. The honorable statesman makes only pledges that he intends to keep, and builds " platforms " on which he means to stand. Building life on honor is building it like a good mas- ter-builder, on honest day-labor, not on a contract out of which we seek to profit as much as possible. In the end it is always better to be, than to pretend to be. We are to respect the law ; we are to respect public opinion ; but, most of all, we are to respect our careful consciences. " Where you feel your honor grip, let that aye be your border," beyond which you will not go. NOTES. Magnanimity is the end to be sought in all discourse of honor. The mind great in virtue, if not in talent, is strong, healthy, and serene ; but parvanimity implies weakness, disease, and distress. " This is a manly world we live in. Our rever- ence is good for nothing, if it does not begin with self-respect." (O. W. Holmes.) " The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few ; Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great" (Lowell.) Some have complained that in the human world disease is catching while health is not. This is a mistake; health is at least as contagious as disease. But in the moral sphere the truth THE LAW OF HONOR. 113 is obvious that honor calls out honor, the best way to advance in morality being to take the forward step yourself, relying on the innate disposition of men to do as they are done by. See De Quincey's story of A Noble Revenge. " Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thy own." The honorable persons in a community are the saving rem- nant, and they are never satisfied until public opinion inclines in favor of the just way which they advocate and practice. Moral progress usually begins with the exceptionally conscientious in- dividual. He first persuades a few ; in time the few become many, and the public opinion, which governs all modern states, soon expresses itself in law, if it is deemed expedient. The " law of honor," criticised by Porter (Elements of Moral Science), is the technical code prevailing in a certain class or profession ; to this his objections are well founded. But the law of honor here set forth is limited by no artificial or class distinc- tions. Wordsworth's lines describe it: — " Say, what is honor ? 'T is the finest sense Of justice which the human mind can frame, Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, And guard the way of life from all offence, Suffered or done." CHAPTER XI. PERSONAL HABITS. The greater part of morality has reference directly to our relations with other persons. But a large portion of our dvity concerns things that we are to do for our- selves, as no one else can do them so well for us, and that affect others only indirectly. I. Each of us has to care for his own person. Clean- liness of body and neatness in dress are matters of in- dividual ethics, which we have to learn to attend to as early as we can in life. Such habits as frequent bath- ing and cleaning the teeth are parts of that physical virtue in wliich every human being should be diligent. Bodily health is so important in every way, in its bear- ings on our own happiness and the welfare of others, that we should make it no small part of the right life to conform all our physical habits to the rules of health. Some say that it is " a sin to be sick ; " certainly, very much of the illness and disease in the world is avoid- able. If this were prevented, as it might be, then a great addition would result to the comfort and pros- perity of mankind. Among the foremost of the laws of health is Tem- perance, or moderation in eating and drinking. Eating to excess, not for the sake of satisfying the natural desire but for the mere pleasure of gratifying an appe- tite artificially stimulated, is a great evil. Gluttony, beside causing immediate distress, brings on many dis- eases ; it unfits one for mental occupation, and it makes one careless of the welfare of others ; it puts the animal above the intellectual part of us, where it should not PERSONAL HABITS. 115 be. Enough is not only *' as good as a feast," but better, for it leaves us able to enjoy the pleasures of the mind, which the heavily-loaded stomach will not allow. Intemperance is so much more plainly and widely injurious in the matter of what we drink that the word is commonly taken to mean this one kind of bodily ex- cess. We are not in much danger of drinking water to excess, or those common beverages of the table, tea and coffee, although here we sometimes need to be on our guard. It is in the direction of those intoxicating drinks which are used, more or less, all over the world, to produce agreeable sensations, that men are most of all intemperate. So immense and wide-reaching are the bad effects of indulgence in these intoxicating liquors that it is altogether safest to abstain totally from using them as a beverage, taking them only in cases of sick- ness or absolute need. They are artificial stinuilants, and the body is usually sounder and better off without them. The drunkard puts an enemy in his mouth that steals away his brains ; he becomes insane for the time, and moral law has no power over him until he becomes sober. Through continued indulgence he loses his self- respect ; he comes to care only for the gratification of his debased appetite. The result is waste and ruin to him- self and to all who are dependent upon him. Loss, un- happiness, and misfortune of a hundred kinds attend upon drunkenness. It has been well said that Debt and drink are the two great devils of modern life. Total abstinence, then, from the use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, is the part of wisdom and virtue. Less injurious, but still to be shunned as an unclean and wasteful habit, is the use of tobacco, especially in the worst way, — chewing. The frequent use of tobacco is apt to lead to drinking, and it is in itself a habit bad for the body and bad for the mind ; increasing refine- ment should put an end to it. One may be intemperate in work, in not regarding 116 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. the limit which his strength and his health fix for him. However good the motive, overwork is to be blamed as unwise ; injurious to one's self, it spoils the temper, and causes more unhappiness than it can cure. Too much study is worse even than too much play for the growing boy and girl. The course of wisdom for old and young is to find how much work of hand or head one can do without exhaustion, and stop there. Of physical virtue men in ancient Greece used to think much, and the men of the civilized world are to- day concerning themselves much about it. The sound body is always the first thing, in order of time, to attend to ; the sound mind shows itself such in asking for a sound body as its ready and capable servant and helper. To balance work and play ; to keep every nat- ural appetite true to its proper ofiice ; to be clean and pure and active and sound bodily, — this is a great matter in human life, for without physical virtue all other \nrtues lack a strong friend. To physical sound- ness some kind of regular bodily work or exercise is indispensable. II. Next comes intellectual virtue, the duty of cul- tivating our minds so that Ave can " see straight and think clear." The chief glory of man is his intellect : the very word, " man," is said to mean " the thinker." In every civilized state the education of the people is a vital matter ; it is especially such here in our own coun- try. Nature will look after our bodily growth, if we will let her have her own way and not hinder her by bad habits. But our minds need more attention, so that we may start right in life ; the public schools are built, and we go to them as boys and girls that we may learn the elements of knowledge, and begin to use our minds capably. We are steadily growing intellectually, if we spend our time faithfully in school. When we leave school, whether it be the grammar school, the high school, the college, or the professional school, we PEUSONAL HABITS. 117 are more free to fix our own hours and plans of study. But we are not intellectually virtuous, we do not show ourselves possessed of strong and active intellect, unless we continue to cultivate our minds to the extent of our ability as long as we live. One way to do this is by mastering our work or business, whatever it is, by studying it in practice, and by reading what others have found out concerning it. Every art has its science, and we should never be satisfied to be mere hand-workers or to travel round and round the same dull routine. Art and science are inexhaustible, and the pleasures of the active mind are very pure and high and satisfying. Whatever one's intellectual ability may be, he should give it lifelong cultivation, as a matter of duty to himself and to others. We can do the most for others when we make the most of our own ability ; whether we have positive "talent" or not, it is a duty laid upon all to think soundly, that we may act wisely and rightly. The mis- fortunes of mankind are largely due to insufficiency in the knowledge which might be ours, did we strive for it, and to vices of the mind such as wilful blindness and obstinacy in the face of facts, and loose thinking. These troubles might be avoided largely if we remem- ber that intellectual virtue is a great part of right-doing. In order to do the right we must first know the right, and we shall not know it if we are content to be foolish or ignorant. Always to be willing to learn, to be fair and candid, to defer to facts and the laws of facts, to try to think all around a subject and deep into it, to discuss disputed matters with good temper and a single desire to get at the truth, — these are some of the intellectual virtues which have a most important part to play in our life. In the common schools we cannot go far beyond teachableness; but this is the beginning of true intellectual virtue. \ III. Much of our most valuable education we get 118 ' THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. through the work we have to do in order to live and enjoy life. The training of our will by the discipline of school, of business, of regular employment of any kind, is necessary if our natural powers are to do their best work. We have spoken of " the virtues of work " under another head. Here we may mention them again with reference chieiiy to the person who practises them. " Prudence " is a word which marks the application of mind to work and life. A shortened form of providence (foresight), it implies the training of the eye of the mind to look forward that we may prepare in the pres- ent for the future. It is a great intellectual and practi- cal aptitude to be able to do this. The wisely prudent man is self-denying to-day that he may not be in danger of starving or some only less severe misfortune next month or next year ; he is economical because he knows that every little counts in the end : he takes a long look ahead, and, like a good chess-player, adjusts his moves to this view. Every man who wishes to think clearly and act wisely must be aware that one of the greatest obstacles to both of these excellences is indulgence in bad tem- per. When we are peevish and captious, or when we are in a positive passion, we cannot see straight, we cannot think clearly, we cannot do justly. We need to discipline our natural temper, then, to take account of ourselves, to realize, from our own knowledge or from what others tell us, the chief faults to which we are most exposed, the principal weaknesses of our minds and the deficiencies in our previous training, that we may by earnest self-culture do away with all these (oftentimes we think them points of strength), and be- come strong by self-control. Suppose that we think twice before acting once ; that we stop long enough to count twenty before saying the sharp or bitter word that is on our tongue. Tlie word will be kinder and wiser ! the deed will be better ! The patience we show PERSONAL HABITS. 119 in training a dog or a horse ; the pains we bestow upon our own bodily habits when " in training " for a race or a match-game, — these are a type of the attention and the care that we sliould give to the training of our tongues and our tempers in tlie ways of sweetness and light. We have different temperaments by nature : some persons are constitutionally more lively, cheerful, and fond of society than others. In our judgments upon others and on ourselves we cannot properly ask that all shall act and talk alike ; each one must be allowed to be himself. But as man is a social being, a degree of cheerfulness and sociability is incumbent upon all in ordinary life. Cheerfulness may not be in itself a vir- tue, but it is a natural grace ; a happy and pleasant dis- position may not be a duty for every one, but all ac- knowledge its charjn. In the common social relations, then, at home and at school, for instance, we do wisely to cultivate beauty in action. jModesty, cheerfulness, and kindliness in little things of manner belong to the beautiful. The " gentleman " and the " lady " show the excellence of relinement in conduct. Courtesy, which once meant the manners of court where the no- bility lived in wealth and leisure, is the flower of right- doing, a flower which any one may cultivate. Strength is one of the two things which all men desire. Tlie righteous action is usually that which requires the most real strength : moral courage, for instance, is the high- est kind of courage. But Beauty, the other thing uiu- versally desired, comes into human actions with kind- ness. When it takes the form of politeness to all with Avhom one is brought into contact, of a gracious cour- tesy to the nearer circle of one's acquaintances and friends, and of personal affection for the nearest of all, "the Ought, Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy." 120 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. NOTES. "Our work," says Montaigne, "is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man ; and iii man soul and body can never be divided." The right care of the body includes some daily work or exercise ; abstinence from sen- suality and intemperance ; regularity in eating and sleeping ; cleanliness ; training of the eye and hand ; the acquirement of physical skill in our particular trade or craft, if we follow one, and the harmonious development of all the bodily powers. Books of instruction in physical virtue are nowadays very plentiful, and it is not necessary to single out any here for special mention. " The first duty of every man is to be a good animal." " Intellectual virtue " brings up the vast subject of education in general, — that which schools give us and that which we give ourselves. The care of the mind is more apt to be neglected by good people than it should be. Much bad temper is due to ill-advised bodily habits ; so also much wrong proceeds from carelessness in finding out the truth, the mental indolence which is satisfied with good mtentions, when sound thoughts are needed almost as much to bring about welfare. Self-culture, in the sense of continual progress in knowledge and in the power of reasoning well, is within the reach of all in this age of books. " Pegging away " at one's own mental deficiencies will produce astonishing results. If only an hour or a half-hour a day is spent on some really great book, instead of being nearly wasted on the newspaper, the result of a few months' perseverance is most encouraging. It is in the direction of self-education (the best kind of all) that biographies help us greatly. To get the utmost profit from them, one should make a personal application to himself of the example of virtue set by the man or woman whose actual career is portrayed, and ask if there is not some- thing especially adapted to himself in the methods of self-dis- cipline described. Advice that we give ourselves, incited by the record of a true man's life, comes with tenfold pov/er ; it is the best of all counsel. The allusion in the last paragraph of this chapter is to the following words of Rev. F. H. Hedge, D. D. : — " There are frwo things which all men reverence who are capable of reverence, — strictly speaking, only two : the one is PERSONAL HABITS. 121 beauty, the other power, — power and beauty ; man is so consti- tuted that he must reverence these so far and so fast as he can apprehend them. And so far and so fast as human culture ad- vances, men will see that holiness is beauty, and goodness, power." CHAPTEE XII. OUR COUNTRY. I. Patriotism. We have spoken of the duties that we owe to the family, the school, and society in general. The family is a small society into which we are born and in which we grow up : its obligations are the strong- est, even as the ties it makes between human beings are the closest. In other associations of men, each having a special object, — as when we make part of a school, of a business tirm, or of a society for the advancement of some reform, — we have special duties according to the end and aim of the association. But there is a larger kind of association of men than the family or the school, or business partnership or the reform society, — to name no others. It is the natural grouping of great bodies of human beings, according to their race or their coun- try, into Nations or States. These may include mil- lions of people, living under one common law, enjoying the benefits of the same government, and bound to- gether by the same great duties to it. Here in the United States of America, as the name shows, we use the word " State " in a special sense fco mean Massachusetts or Pennsylvania or California, for instance, all the different States being united in what is called a federal government to make the Nation. The distinction is very important politically in our country between the State government and the National govern- ment. But it is a distinction made for practical conve- nience, and it does not affect the fundamental notion of the State as the association of men under one govern- ment. When we speak of the State here then, we may OUR COUNTRY. 123 intend sometimes a particular State of tlie Union in which we live and sometimes the Nation, — the United States ; but we always mean a great association of hu- man beings for political ends. Whatever name it may bear, the State, large or small, is the supreme earthly power over each and every person in it. Usually, it is an association of multitudes of people of the same race in one particular land, — their native country, — as with the French in France or the Italians in Italy. In our own land we are a people made up of many races ; but we are still one people, living in one country and subject to one government. We Americans cannot be patriots after the manner of men who live in a small country with a king over them to whom they owe loyalty, and whose will is largely law to them. Oui- country is very great in size, and each one of us is part of the power that rules it all. As the Italian is loyal to the king, or the German to the emperor, we have to be loyal to the people. For the great American idea is that " The people rule." Gov- ernment is here of the people, by the people, for the people, as Theodore Parker and Abraham Lincoln have said. This is the democratic principle which is carried out in a republican form of government. The Ameri- can patriot is one who is loyal to this great princi])le of equal rights and equal duties, and will give his life, if need be, to aid the government which stands to defend it. Our country has a right to anything we can give : nothing tliat we can give her is equal to all that she secures to us, — our life, our liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So when our country is in danger, from a foreign foe or from civil war, it is the simplest, plain- est and foremost of all duties for each and every citi- zen to be ready to take iip aims in her defence. For her defence means the defence of all that we hold dear, — family, home, friends, our great institutions, our high principles, our inspiring ideas of human brotherhood. 124 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. We will not Scay " Our Country, right or wrong ! " in dealing with foreign nations, but Our Country for- ever ; we will keep it safe and hold it right ! In time of war our native land must iirst be defended against every assault : in time of peace it must be made the home of justice. When we see the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic marching through the city streets, some of them bearing the tattered flags which once they carried through the smoke and fiery hail of battle, we loudly cheer these standards, and our blood thrills, for the flag is the sign of Our Country, and we feel that, like those war-stained men, we, too, would follow the flag to save the State. In great love for man, for the cause of our fatherland, we, too, would dare everything. " Though Love repine and Reason chafe, There comes a voice without reply : 'T is man's perdition to be safe, When for the Truth he ought to die." Happily, in our peaceful land, the call for such su- preme devotion rarely comes. Whenever it has come, it has always been heeded by the great mass of men, who show how natural and right, how sweet and beautiful it is to die for their country. Rare, indeed, is the man, " With soul so dead, Who never to himself has said ' This is my own, my native land.' " And when we say it, we feel that our country has a su- preme claim upon us. It is the largest part of the whole human race the thought of which moves any but great and exceptional natures to self-sacrifice. We may be sure, too, that he will love all mankind best who loves his country best, and by his devotion makes it the strongest helper of all the sons of earth. Men are more wont to feel deeply patriotic in time of war than in time of peace. The thought of our whole country as above party and creed, above Korth or South OLA' COUNTRY. 125 or East or West, tinds us and moves us most profoundly when the welfare of the whole country is visibly threat- ened. In time of peace, by far the longer time of the two, we are thinking mainly about our family, our busi- ness, our local interests, and of the things in general which are apt to divide one section or one State from another. The main duty of the citizen in peace is to save the State, not from destruction from without, but from error and wrong-doing within. Patriotism then takes another form, as important to the welfare of all as volunteering for the battle-field. II. Political Duty is this other form of patriotism, the duty, that is, of doing one's part in the government of our country, in State and Nation. Every man over twenty-one years of age has the right to vote for other men who shall represent him, i. e., stand for him, in the work of making and administering the laws. Each man is, therefore, a ruler in this country. His power and right as a voter brings along with it a very plain diifi/ to exercise the right and use the power for the good of all. This signifies to the American voter four things : He should keep himself well-informed on public questions. He should do his part by his words toward constituting a right public opinion, made up of a great sum of single opinions become powerful by union. He should vote according to his own convictions of truth and justice. He should not, as a rule, seek office, but he should be ready to hold it for the public good when called to it by the voice of his fellow-citizens. There are, usually, in a free country some great ques- tions of public policy on which political parties are formed. One party advocates a certain line of action ; another would do differently if entrusted with the power of government. In our country there are now opposite views about the tariff, for instance, about the coinage of silver, and about the proper relations of the National government to the State governments. As 126 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. eacli man by liis single vote can affect the policy wliich is at last adopted by Congress, he should cast this vote intelligently. He should enlighten himself as to tariff's and free trade, for example, and vote so that his con- viction as to what the welfare of the country demands may be carried into effect. He should not be satisfied to take his opinions from the newspapers of the party with which he usually votes, and let them do his think- ing for him, talking and voting as they say. He sliould read books written by able men who are not partisans, on the particular subjects in debate, and he should in- form himself, generally, about the history of our coun- try, and have some knowledge, the more the better, of the sciences of politics and economics. The intelligent citizen who knows for what he is voting, and why, is the mainstay of the Republic. The illiterate voter who does not know what he is voting for, or why, is the greatest danger to free institutions. It is the duty of every citizen who has thus formed an intelligent opinion on political matters to do his part in creating and sustaining a sound public opinion. This he can do by feeling and showing an interest in politics in the good sense of the word : this is not a selfish scramble for oflice, but the discussion and settlement of great public questions according to reason and right, through men of ability and character. Especially in the case of reform movements in political life is it the duty of each individual to stand up for what he honestly believes to be the right, and to express himself openly and freely in favor of the specific measure which would save the Republic from harm. The history of all re- forms proves how important is the duty resting upon the private citizen to use his right of free speech. Slavery was abolished in this country as the final result of agitation by individuals endeavoring to arouse the conscience of the people. So it will be with the politi- cal evils of our own day : the faithful conscience of OUR COUNTRY. 127 the individual is the power which is to destroy them, sooner or later. No man who has the right to vote has a moral right to refrain from voting, whenever it is possible for him. The plainest part of his political duty, bound up with his very right, is to exercise the suffrage. He is not doing his duty to his country when he stays away from the polls on election day, whatever the real cause may be, — indifference, contempt, or absorption in business or pleasure. The one method that avails in our coun- try for procuring just laws and honest officials is to vote for capable and worthy men. Under this method each vote counts, and each voter should see that his own vote is thrown. He is not responsible when the opposite party succeeds in electing a bad man or in car- rying a wrong measure, if he has voted against them : the responsibility rests upon the other party. But he is responsible to the extent of his vote if his own party elects a bad man or passes a wrong law. Hence, he is not only bound to vote, and to vote intelligently, but to vote with a single eye to the public good, with a certain party or against it, according to his own reason and conscience. Few men are qualified by their abilities or character to serve the State in high political positions. Bvit in the civil service, as a whole, there is a proper opening for any one who desires to work for the town, the city, the State, or the Nation rather than for a private em- ployer. This routine business of the government has nothing to do with the political issues of the day, and should be kept apart from them and be conducted on strictly business methods and principles. When so conducted, it is open on equal conditions to every citi- zen who is capable and worthy, without regard to his politics. The representative offices should not be soiight by the private citizen ; but when his fellow-citi- zens call upon him to represent them in the town or 128 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. city government, in the legislature or in Congress, their summons should be heeded, unless there are strong rea- sons to the contrary. The talents and the worth of all its citizens are properly subject to the call of the com- munity, and the public service should be esteemed by every one as the most honorable of all services. In time of peace, then, the patriot thinks upon these political duties, — his obligations to inform himself, to spread right views, to vote, and to hold office at the will of the people. NOTES. I. The teacher will find without difficulty in the works of the leading American poets, and in " Speakers " containing extracts from our most noted orators, selections suitable for reading that are calculated to inspire an intelligent patriotism. Such poems are numerous in James Russell Lowell's works in particular : see " The Present Crisis " (" When a deed is done for freedom ") ; the Biglow Papers ; his poems of the war, his three centennial poems, and, most of all, the " Commemoration Ode." Longfellow (" Thou too sail on, O Ship of State "), Holmes (" The Flower of Lib- erty "), Whittier (" Democracy " and numerous war poems), and Bryant have written many noble verses of patriotism. Webster, Everett, Winthrop and G. W. Curtis are names of orators that will occur at once to the instructor of American youth ; Lincoln's address at Gettysburg is foremost. Relating to patriotism in other times and countries are such poems as Byron's lines " They fell devoted but undying;" " Horatius," by Macaulay, Brown- ing's " Herv^ Riel," and " A Legend of Bregenz," by Adelaide A. Procter. There are several good collections of ballads of heroism. II. " Defence against the attack of barbarians from within is as essential in our democracies as defence against the foe from without." (Guyau.) The demagogue, well set forth long ago in Aristophanes' Knights (see J. H. Frere's translation), is the chief pest of democratic countries. " The people's government " of which Webster spoke, " made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people," must conform to the laws of poli- OUR COUNTRY. 129 tics and ecoiiomics. Every citizen should understand somewhat of these laws and of the history of his country in which they have been exhibited. Happily there is a fast increasing number of good books on civil government, citizenship, and elementary eco- nomics ; there is now no sufficient excuse for ignorance in these matters. Among the best of these volumes are John Fiske's Civil Government in the United States, Charles NordhofE's Politics for Young Americans, Professor J. Macy's Our Government, ?i,iidi C. F. Dole's A merican Citizen. No public-school teacher can afford to be ignorant of Bryce's American Commonwealth. The Old South Leaflets contain the great documents of Anglo-Saxon freedom, which it is well to read entire. Mr. Fiske's book gives full bibliographical data for all who would inform themselves con- cerning our free institutions and their history. CHAPTER XIII. CHARACTER. A CHARACTER, if we use the word in its most literal sense, is a mark or sign by whicli we may know a thing or a person. Character in the most general sense is the sum of all the intellectual and moral qualities which make one human being different from another. We will speak here of moral qualities only. This man has a bad character, we say : he will drink, steal, lie, or cheat when he has opportunity. That man, on the con- trary, is a man of good character : he is truthful, tem- perate, honest, and industrious. The servant-girl leav- ing one situation for another asks her mistress to "give her a character." This illustrates another common use of the word in which we employ it as by itself equiva- lent to " good character : " it is the sense in which we shall speak of character in this chapter ; we mean by it the collection and blending of distinctively good traits or qualities in a person. A man's character, of course, is "what he is in him- self, not what he owns as something outside of him- self, or something he has personal relations with, as with his family or his partner in business. Now what he is in himself largely determines both what he will own and what relations he will have with other people. Very important, indeed, is it to a man, and to all con- nected with him, what he owns, — money, house, land, ships, warehouses full of goods, whatever it may be. But it is a great deal more important, both to himself and to others with whom he is in contact, what he is in himself, in his disposition and character. Health CHARACTER. 131 has more to do with happiness than wealth, and few persons, probably, would choose a fortune if compelled to take bad health with it. Health of mind, soundness of soul, comes from living morally, i. e., according to the laws of the life together, just as physical health is dependent on keeping the laws of the body. If we have health of mind and heart, this, again, is a still more important matter than what we own. Our wel- fare and the welfare of others with whom we are living depend far more on our being kind, truthful, and just, than on the number of thousands of dollars we may or may not own. Character is, therefore, properly, an aim in itself, *. e., a thing to be desired for its own sake. This we say not because it is out of relation to actual life or the persons in it, or can be separated from these, for all things in the world are related to one another, but be- cause it is so evidently of the highest value when logi- cally considered apart. We say that a certain man has a strong, independent, self-reliant character. He has the qualities in him indicated by these adjectives ; he is mentally and morally strong, self-contained, and able to stand alone against a number of men in the wrong. "When any occasion comes for showing strength of mind and will, he will be prepared. Plainly, it is well that he should have been accumulating this strength before- hand, if there is, indeed, any way to do it. So with the kindness, the power to tell the truth or to do justly, that we are needing every day we live. If there is any way to store up in ourselves moral strength and beauty, which are demanded by the life in common, surely the knowledge of it is most desirable. Two things we must here bear in mind, espeeiall3^ I. The good character that we show in our life-actions is not like a purse having so many dollars in it, out of which we take one or ten, as the case may be, and which we must be careful to fill up again before the 132 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. money is all drawn out. It is, on the contrary, like a muscle of the arm Avhich grows stronger by exercise, like a faculty of the mind, such as memory, which improves by practice. Our ability to tell the truth, to do honest actions, or to conduct ourselves graciously toward others, is a power that grows with use, and the good act becomes easier to us each time that we do it. II. Consequently we are wise when we aim directly at the good quality or moral faculty in itself. In other words, it is always well to do right because it is right. It is usually a difficult thing to trace out in our minds the probable consequences of this or that act which we are purposing to do, to imagine how it will affect this or that particular person, and a whole multi- tude of others. But if we know that it is right, so far as we can see, and that to do it will strengthen in our- selves the power to do right again, then we have con- sidered, in the vast majority of cases, all that we need to consider. We must bear in mind that mankind has been living many thousands of years on this earth, and that all this time men have been learning from experi- ence, hard or pleasant, sweet or bitter, how to live the life together. The teachings of this great, this vast experience have been solidified into the common moral rules concerning truthfulness and honesty and peaceful- ness and industry and all the other virtues and their opposite vices. These rules are repeated, again and again, in books, in proverbs about conduct, and in the daily talk of men giving advice to one another, or prais- ing or condemning other men's actions. We ought to profit by this experience of multitudes of men who have been before us, so as to avoid their errors and defeats, and imitate only their wisdom and their victories. Obedience to a few plain rules is all that we need most of the time. But the few strong instincts, of which the poet also speaks, are not strong enough in us to bring about complete and constant obedience. CHARACTER. 133 We wish to have our own way and do as we please, without regard to the effect on other people, who have just as much right as we — i. e., none at all — to have their own way and do as they please. 80 we act as if we lived in a world where the most important of all affairs, the dealings of men with each other, were not subject to steadfast laws which take no account of your conceit or my selhshness, but forever determine that if men are to live in society and become civilized, they must do thus and so, as the severe and beautiful moral laws declare. Otherwise society cannot prosper : it cannot even be at all, and every individual must suf- fer accordingly. When we consider how perpetually we are acting and reacting on each other, and how our human life is three fourths conduct, if not more, we see how vastly important it is to make morality easy and natural to ourselves so that we shall, indeed, seem to be acting always from those " few strong instincts." How shall we do this ? In just the same way, fundamentally, that any one must follow who would acquire any other art. If a boy would learn to be a carpenter he must handle the saw and the chisel often : if a girl would be- come skilful on the piano-forte, she must first prac- tise scales and other exercises by the hour. Faculty conies from practice : skill is the result of industry in doing the thing. We see about us in the world men and women who are brave and generous and capable and true and kind and noble and sweet and gracious, whose words and acts are a great power of good to all who meet them or know of them. These persons are masters in the moral art. What they have done wo, perchance, can do ; and we can begin to do it, in a small way and a slight degree. We gain strength and skill with practice, like the blacksmith at the anvil or the player at the piano-forte ; thus we find, in time, the moral line of least resistance, and do the right easily, 134 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. naturally, and spontaneously. Until we do it so, it is not done beautifully, and no art is perfect until it comes to beauty as well as to propriety. The higher powers and graces of conduct are unattainable until the ordinary virtues have become so natural to us through habit that we do right without thought, as without diffi- culty. " Habit a second nature," said the great Duke of Wellington ; — "it is ten times nature." ^ We can remake ourselves to an indefinite extent, in- side the limits of human nature, and the method is the formation of other habits. A certain good action may be very hard for us to do at first, but if we continue to do it, the difficulty diminishes and at last disappears : the action has become natural to us. But the " nature " we have in mind, in so speaking, is not the undisci- plined nature we had two or ten years ago as it was, but that nature trained and cultivated by the exercise of will, aiming at a certain moral strength. We have left a lower character beneath us, and have climbed up to a higher. We should then, each one of us, take ourselves in hand and realize that moral goodness is, least of all things, to be (jiven by one person to another, that, be- yond all other desirable possessions, it is an art to be acquired by personal practice and individual experience ; that more than in any other direction, we can learn here from the errors and the excellences of others v/hat to avoid and what to pursue ; that here supremely, to be is better than to seem, and that if we aim to be like the good and the true, to enjoy their repute and wield their power, we must patiently acquire their skill in goodness, their faculty of righteousness. We should encourage ourselves with remembering the immense aid we can derive from the record of the lives of the men and women who have made morality the finest of all human arts, not by their sublime in- ^ This saying will bear a second quotation. CHARACTER. 135 tellects or their illustrious deeds, but by heroic per- severance in self-control and self-devotion. Greater than this help even is the aid that we can all impart to one another by living sympathy and helpfulness. Sweetness and light, — we can give a small portion of these to one another every day, making the burdens easier and the path plainer. Cogitavi vias meas : " I have considered my ways." When we consider them well we ask for guidance from the noble and the true of the past and the present. By dwelling on their ex- ample and on the ideal of the perfect man who imites all virtues and all excellences, we are inspired to be- come something better than we are ; by patient continu- ance in well-doing we are slowly transformed into the image of our hope ! NOTES. The teacher of morals will do well to conclude every lesson by striking the note of character, distinguished from the note of external consequences as a test of conduct, and from the note of circumstances as a rule of action. "The character itself should be to the individual a paramount end, simply because the exis- tence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any abundance, would go further than all things else toward making human life happy, both in the comparatively humble sense of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaniug of rendering life not what it now is almost uni- versally, puerile and insignificant, but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have." — J. S. Mill, Logic, Bk. vi. Ch. 12. " It always remains true that if we had been greater, circum- stances would have been less strong against us." — George Eliot in Middlemnrch. " A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun journeys towards that per- 136 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. son. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong." (Emerson, " Character.") The Chinese have a proverb : " He who finds pleasure in vice and pain in virtue is still a novice in both." " Even in a palace life may be led icell ! So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. . . . The aids to noble life are all within." M. Abnold. The " literature of power," as distinguished from the " litera- ture of knowledge," tends to shape character in manifold ways. A large part of the great literature of the world, judged by lit- erary standards, has immense influence, directly and indirectly, in forming the conduct of men. Lectures, sermons, and vol- umes on character are innumerable : see, simply as specimens, four books, Emerson's Conduct of Life, Character Building, by E. P. Jackson, Character, by S. Smiles, and Corner-Stones of Character, by Kate Gannett Wells. The importance to refinement of character of an early ac- quaintance with the best literature is well emphasized by Mary E. Burt in her Literary Landmarks and in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1891 ; see also C. D. Warner's article in the same periodical for June, 1890, and " Literature in School," by H. E. Scudder, in the Riverside Literature Series. " He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again : His action won such reverence sweet, As hid all measure of the feat." CHAPTER XIV. MORAL PROGRESS. The first place where we leani about the moral laws is, of course, the home into which we are born. The family is the earliest and the latest school of morals. If we observe how children advance naturally in know- ledge and practice of the right, we shall find the broad lines on which the moral progress of the world at large has taken place. For, as the philosophy of evolution teaches us, tlte development of entire liunutnitij is figured and summarized in the groictli of each child. When the child has learned to obey father and mother, and when it will speak the truth to them con- stantly, it may still conduct itself unmorally or immor- ally toward persons outside the home bounds. Chil- dren not rarely tell an untruth to a mere acquaintance or a stranger without any sense of wrong-doing, while they would think it very wrong to tell a lie to father or mother or brother or sister. This will not be so strange to us when we reflect that they have not yet learned to know any larger world than the home, that their ideas of right and wrong naturally take a very concrete form and are concerned with a very few persons. Eight is, for them, to " mind " father's and mother's commands, to do as they are told to do, and to tell their parents the truth. The general and abstract idea of obedience to the Moral Law applying to all mankind comes later and gradually with experience and enlarging power of thought. All the mistakes and imperfections of the morals of children can be paralleled from the practice of savages 138 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. or barbarians now living, or from the records of early, historic mankind. The savage obeys his chief and complies very carefully with the customs of his tribe ; he tells the truth, in a rough way, to his fellow-tribes- men, and in general, he deals with them according to his rude notions of justice. But he has no notion that men of another tribe have any rights that he is bound to respect. He can deceive, cheat, maltreat, or kill them, in peace or in war, and his conscience will never trouble him. He has a tribal conscience, just as the child has a home conscience. So in later times, and down even to our own day, persons of one nation or race hate those of another or of all others, and con- sider themselves practically free from this or that obligation of truth or justice toward them. Such are the actual relations, too often, of the white man and the man with a black or a yellow skin ; of the Englishman and the Irishman ; of the French and the Germans. But as respects the extent to which the moral law applies, it is very plain that we do not reach a logical limit until we have included the whole human race. Morality is conterminous, i e., has the same bounds and limits, with humanity, with all mankind. There are special duties and great differences in the degree of obligation according as we live in closer or looser relations with other human beings, from the nearness, constancy, and immediateness of home life up to our most general relations to the great mass of men whom we never even see. But whosoever the man may be, American, Negro, or Chinaman, with whom we have dealings at any time or in any place, the universal moral law dictates that he shall be treated justly. Nihil hummii aUenuni a me 2Juto, says a character in a play of the Roman writer, Terence, " I esteem nothing human foreign to me." So morality might speak if we were to personify it. Every relation of man to men, without regard to country or complexion or race or age, is sub- MORAL PIWGRESS. 139 ject to moral judgment. Ethics is a science of a part of universal human nature : and morality is an art to be practised by us toward every other human being. Progress in general morals is going on, and must go on, until all mankind recognize that they live under one great moral law. This progress is marked by the discussion and agitation of the rights of this or that class of human beings that is constantly going on. What are the rights of women ? What are the rights of children ? What are the rights of the Negro or of the Chinaman in this country ? This word " rights " very often means " political privileges," such as the right to vote, with which we are not concerned in this elementary book. But the moral rights of women and children, of negroes and Chinamen, for example, are much more important to them than these political privi- leges. Moral progress consists, in one aspect, in the increasing recognition, theoretically and practically, of the fact that there is the same measure of right and duty for every human being. Each person has a right to himself, to his own per- son : so slavery, the ownership of one man by another, as if he were a piece of property like a dog or a horse, is wrong, whether the slave be white or black in color. Women have peculiar duties as wives and mothers ; but as human beings in a civilized state they have the same general rights as men to education and property and labor. Children are morally bound to obey their par- ents and other superiors in authority ; but parents are bound, as well, to respect the nature of the child and to give him an education to fit him for mature life. So there are the rights of workmen and servants, as well as their dvities, which are to be borne in mind by mas- ters and employers. As a rule, it is a bad sign for any person, man or woman, to be talking very much about rights ; commonly, he would have fully enough to do in attending to his duties. We can never be 140 TUE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. too well aware that each right has a corresponding duty in our relations with every other human being. So much, then, for the extension of the ideas of right and duty to all mankind. We can make progress, as well, in the thoroughness with which we conceive and apply the idea of our duty to the persons with whom we have the most to do. In other words, our morality may be intensive as well as extensive. As we come to make no exceptions in the matter of persons, and thus include all other human beings in the range of duty ; so we also make progress morally by deepening and intensifying the moral life, — thought, feeling, word, and act. Some persons seem to think or to care very little about right and duty ; they do not pay attention to their own ways and habits to see if these may be improved morally, so as to be juster or kinder. Their life may not be vicious ; and, if they are naturally amiable and cheerful, it may have much in it to commend. But thoughtlessness about one's own conduct can never properly be praised. The art of human life together is the greatest of all arts, and it can never be learned too thoroughly. We can make the most and the surest progress in it by " giving heed " to it. We are not to become morbid and think overmuch about ourselves : we should look out, not in ; up, not down; forward, not back; and be ready to lend a hand. But observation of the moral life in others, who excel in truth and goodness, should be frequent, that we may learn of them to be and to do better. We should not be satisfied with a low standard of right, content to do as most others are doing in our neighbor- hood, or town, in our political party, or our section of the country. To do a thing because others do it is not a sufficient reason. We are bound to consider if it is right, according to our highest and most correct ideas of right ; if it is not right we are bound, in reason and MORAL PROGRESS. 141 honor, not to do it. No moral progress would be possi- ble if some one did not set the example of following his conscience rather than complying with a bad habit which many persons are practising. The strictly con- scientious and honorable people are usually in the minority ; but we should look to them, not to the ma- jority, to discover the whole extent of our duty. If the truly honorable of the earth are wise, their practice in a particular held must in time widen and widen, until it has become general. A very important part of our duty is to enlighten our minds by thought and discussion and reasoning on moral matters. We easily get into the rut of personal routine and class prejudice, and we often need to have a free play of fresh thought and feeling over the surface of our living. It is a good practice, in this re- spect, occasionally to go away for a time, from our work and our homes, even from those who are dearest to us. Returning, we find ourselves stronger and more inter- ested in our work, and more appreciative of the beauty and love at home. It is good, too, every day to read and consider some inspiring word about conduct by one of the many great teachers who can help us to live in the spirit. Like Goethe, we can refresh ourselves and lift up the whole level of the day with five minutes spent over a poem or a picture. Thus we learn, little by little, what magnanimity is, and, however slowly, come to live nobly. Upon our actual practice a stream of earnest thought should play ; and strength to do the highest right will come by exercise of the power we have, as we understand better and feel more deeply the fiill meaning of the whole moral law. So feeling, we rejoice to repeat the magnificent eulogy of the " Stern Lawgiver " in the " Ode to Duty " : — " Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragTance in thy footing treads ; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong." 142 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. With Wordsworth we join in the petition : — " To humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee : I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour ; Oh, let my weakness have an end ! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice ; The confidence of reason give ; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live ! " NOTES. The evolution of morals has been the theme of numerous writ- ers of the present day, who have industriously collected a great amount of information concerning the conduct of mankind in all times and countries. But the difficulties to ethical theory presented by the wide variations of conduct among men have long been a familiar topic with writers on ethics. See for an exam- ple of a recent treatment of the subject, in Paul Janet's Theory of Morals, the chapter on the universality of moral principles and moi-al progress. " Tlie world advances, and in time outgrows The laws that iu our fathers' days were best ; And doubtless after us, some purer scheme Will be shaped out by wiser men than we, Made wiser by the steady growth of truth." Lowell. Civilization grows largely in proportion to the willingness and ability of men to cooperate ; and cooperation demands great moral qualities which we cannot begin too soon to cultivate. " All are needed by each one : Nothing is fair or good alone." " The enthusiasm of humanity " is the name happily given by Professor J. R. Seeley to the highest type of desire to work for others. Mr. Leslie Stephen has worked out tlie conception of society as a moral organism in his Science of Ethics • the idea of " social tissue " is fully developed by him. He concludes, however, " But it is happy for the world that moral progress has not to wait till an unimpeachable system of ethics has been MORAL PROGRESS. 143 elaborated." Progressive Morality, by T. Fowler, and Moral Order and Progress, by S. Alexauder, coiitaiu able discussions of the advance of morality. The moral progress of most importance to each one of us is indicated in Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior " : — " Who not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last. From well to better, daily self-surpast ; " in Dr. Holmes's " Chambered Nautilus," and in D. A. Wasson's " Ideals." CHAPTER XV. LIFE ACCORDING TO THE GOLDEN RULE. Every art has its ideal, the standard of perfection, toward which tlie efforts of all who practise it are more or less consciously directed. In human conduct, the greatest of all arts for the mass of mankind, this ideal would be, theoretically, the realization in one life of all the virtues that we can name. But they are so many, and human beings have such different natural disposi- tions, temperaments, and talents that, practically, we do not expect any person, even the best, to be " a model of all the virtues : " such a phrase is ironical on the face of it. But there is one rule for conduct, observ- ance of which is universally allowed to be a mark of every thoroughly good person. It is the precept known to us all as the Golden Eule : Do unto others as you woiold that they should do unto you. This is so extremely important a rule of conduct to bear in mind constantly and to obey every hour, that we shall do well to consider it carefully. The beginning of morality, we have seen, is obedi- ence to the law of life together, and this means self- control, the willingness to do our part, — no less, — and to take our share, — no more. But the greatest foe of the good life is the intense and irrational impulse almost every person has to assert himself, even to the loss or injury of others, to take more than his due share of the good things, and less than his share of the Avork, the hardships and the sufferings of human life. The extreme point of this selfishness is murder and war. in which one takes away from others even life itself, the LIFi: ACCORDING TO TUB GOLDEN RULE. 145 prime condition of every human good. If we briefly consider tlie history of the world down to modern times, we sliall agree with Mr. John Fiske : " There can be little doubt that in respect to justice and kind- ness the advance of civilized man has been less marked than in respect of quick-wittedness. Now, this is be- cause the advancement of civilized man has been largely effected through lighting." The world is becoming more peaceful, we trust, and will advance hereafter more through peace than through war. But to check the extreme selfishness and passion which show them- selves in violence between persons, and in war between nations, to make peace — the condition of most of the virtues — between individuals and between countries possible and actual, some universal maxim of con- duct would seem to be desirable. This, obviously, should refer not so much to any special action, as kill- ing or stealing, as to the general disposition out of which all our acts proceed. Such a rule, applying to so widespread an evil as selfishness, should inculcate a spirit fatal to greed and violence and cunning. To obtain general acceptance it should be plain, direct, and searching. It should spring out of the actual experi- ence of mankind in all times and countries, and justify itself at once to rational beings. Such a rule has been hit upon, as a matter of fact, all over the world, we may say, in every country where men have risen from the condition of savages. It is a simple deduction from the elementary notion of justice. If you are acting in a certain manner toward another person, is it right that he should treat you in the same spirit ? If you say that it would not be right, wJuj would it not be right ? Is your own conduct toward him right ?. Of course, we soon realize, Avhen we have begun to reason about the matter, how difficult, if not actually impossible, it is for us "to see ourselves as others see us," and to judge our own acts, words, looks. 146 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. feelings, and thoughts, just as others do. In fact, a perfectly just judgment would have to take into account our thoughts and feelings as we ourselves alone can know them, as well as the expressions and words others see and hear. Eecognizmg this common difficulty of passing right judgment on others and on ourselves, the immeasurable experience of mankind has yet shown that the spirit in which we act is the main matter. If we have acted, if others have acted, in a spirit of sympathy ; if in the conduct of each there is an effort to imagine how his action would appear to himself if he were the other person, and to shape his conduct so as to approve it to himself, standing in the other man's place, — then we have gotten over the main evil in our conduct, we have risen, to a degree, out of self, and judged and acted im- partially. Thus doing, we are at least acting according to a rule, not according to a blind and foolish determi- nation to have our own way and get all we can, every- where and always. The result, shortly stated, of mil- lions upon millions of special experiences of men in social life is that the Golden Rule is the best attainable working rule of life : Put yourself in his place ; do as you woiild. be done by. This means : Try to see things as they are, not simply as they first appear to yourself, for you may be, you m^^st be, hindered from seeing them completely by your personal interests or limitations. It means : Try, as far as you may, to see your own conduct from the outside, as well as from the inside. This is the method of science. In every other di- rection we endeavor to see as all see, to know as all know, to find what is fact to everybody and what must be law for all, ourselves as well as others. Our con- duct will be rational, and so right, when we conform it to the universal laws of morals. Practically, the easi- est way for us so to conform it is to work according to LIFE ACCORDING TO THE GOLDEN RULE. 147 this Golden Rixle. The act that you are about to do, would you like to have it done to yourself ? The words that are on your tongue to speak, would you like to have them spoken to yourself ? These are very search- ing questions ! Beyond a doubt, if we paused to put them to ourselves and acted in accordance with the negative answer which we should often give, the world would be very much happier, very much better than it is. For it is one of the simplest facts of human nature that men naturally do as they are done by : wrong breeds wrong, and injuries are returned with interest, and so multiplied indefinitely. But if we are treated justly by others, we at least incline to treat them justly. Kindness, truthfulness, all the virtues, propagate them- selves in this way. . That men, then, should do rightly to others and be treated rightly in return, it is chiefly necessary that they should bear these others in mind and act with some view to their welfare. The most direct way to this end is to imagine ourselves in others' places, and then act accordingly. So all the greatest teachers of morals the world has seen are unanimous in laying down the Golden Eule in one form or another. Let us hear what some of them say. The Buddhist Dham- mapada, or Path to Virtue, declares : In all this "world evil is overcome only ■with good. The Jewish Book of Leviticus says : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Hillel, the famous rabbi, commanded : " What thou hatest thyself, that do not thou to another : that is the whole of the law." Confucius, the great moral teacher of China, thus expanded the rule : " That which you hate in superiors, do not practise in your conduct toward inferiors ; that which you dislike in inferiors, do not practise toward superiors ; that which you hate in those before you, do not exhibit to those behind you ; that which you hate in those behind you, do not mani- fest to those before you ; that which you hate in those 148 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. on your right do not manifest to those on your left ; that which you hate in those on your left, do not mani- fest to those on your right. This is the doctrine of measuring others by ourselves." Briefer is the an- swer which Confucius gave to one who asked him, " Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life ? " " Is not Reciprocity such a word ? " he replied ; " what you wish done to yourself, do to others." To the same effect spoke Isocrates the Greek orator, and Thales the Greek philosopher. So, in the most emphatic way, Jesus of Nazareth commanded : All things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them. The Golden Kule must not be understood as taking the place of the whole moral code. It inculcates the spirit in which Ave should act. Justice and truth and kindness, — these are the virtues we wish men to show to ourselves : they are the very virtues, then, that we should exhibit to them. The Golden Rule cannot in- form us precisely what is just, or true, or kind, in a particular instance ; but it does remind us to act accord- ing to the knowledge we have of the just and the ti'ue, in a kindly manner. Living in obedience to this Rule, we should cultivate in ourselves the intellectual power of imagination and the capacity of sympathy. '' The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. Half the cruelty in the world is the direct re- sult of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place." No one has a right to ask that we set aside justice in his favor, or that we shall tell lies to shield him from suffering or punishment. But the Golden Rule de- mands that justice be done in a spirit of kindness, and that the truth be si3oken in love. We have only to put it into practice to convince ourselves how excellent a LIFE ACCORDING TO THE GOLDEN RULE. 149 rule it is. At home, did parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister, mistress and maid, en- deavor to appreciate each other's duties, difficulties, burdens, and trials, and act in real sympathy ; did they enter into each other's feelings and thoughts, to help, to cheer, to bless and love : what a right, true, and happy home that would be ! If in the school-room the teacher is anxious to help the scholars, and the scholars to help the teacher, how that school would prosper in the giving and the getting of knowledge ! In the rela- tions of employer and employee, of buyer and seller, in our common social intercourse, in our use of power and property, of knowledge and talent and skill, in every place and in every time of human " life together," we have only to do as we would be done by, to realize the wisdom of those who gave the rule and the happiness of those who have obeyed it. When we do wrong to others as we think they have done to us, considering ourselves most of all, we live under an iron law of selfishness. When we only refrain from doing what we should not wish to have done to ourselves, this may be called living under a silver rule. But the one rule of conduct which deserves to be called Golden says, Whatsoever ye would that men shoiild do tmto you, even so do ye unto them ! 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