Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles \52A This book is DUE on the last date stamped below - «' .. JUL , 1 S 1928 • MY 20 1 929 AUG 5 T9?9 i Li JU/V § " : ■ ■?■• 3 «<$ Form L-9— 5w-5,'24 Contiuct as a fine art THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT By NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN CHARACTER BUILDING By EDWARD PAYSON JACKSON iVe study Ethics for the sake of Practice Akistotlb BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLTN AND COMPANY (3Ebe lituersiDe }3it9s, CambrtDfle 1892 Copyright, 1891, By NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN AND EDWARD PAYSON JACKSON. All rights reserved. THIRD EDITION. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped aud Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. I 5 Gr42L THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT By NICHOLAS P. GILMAN CHARACTER BUILDING By EDWARD P. JACKSON THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT By NICHOLAS PAINE OILMAN Health of mind consists in the perception of law Its dignity consists m '» mi; under law Embbson €0 tljc flalXc 9rma of CcarljrrS This attempt to aid the cause of Moral Education in the Public Schools of America is dedicated with sincere estt< m. O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule And sun thee in the light of happy faces, Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces ; And in 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 in seemly show, Tiie 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 and die, But Love is subtle and doth proof derive From her own life that Hope is yet alive ; And bending o'er with 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 Love. Yet haply there will come a weary day, When overtasked at length, Both Love and Hope beneath the load givp way. Then with a statue'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 : Richard B. West- brook, D. D., LL. B., President of the Union, Philadel- phia; Felix Adler, Ph. 1)., 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 in 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 Chapter I. Life under Law 21 II. Obedience to Moral Law : >4 4 III. Self-Control 4r> IV. Truthfulness 55 V. The Law of Justice . 06 VI. The Law of Kindness '•■» VII. The Great Words of Morality 86 VIII. Home 94 IX. Work 100 X. The Law of Honor ....... 106 XI. Personal Habits 114 XII. Our Country ........ 1-- 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 the 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 of 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 facts of astronomy which affect men's daily life — such as the so-called rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, 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 INTRODUCTION. to the exact reason why a man loves, or should love, Lis 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, Ave 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 final 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 upon 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 usual 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 which 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 uf action as a test of its moral quality. So far as these MORALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 5 two keep company, the teacher, then, 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 conduct 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 that 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 why right is right or wrung is wrong. If sectarians or religious people of any faith should denounce this abstinence from disputed matter as in itself unwise, wrong, 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. 1 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 taught ? " 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 our 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 memorizing 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 THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 7 tion for a part of the school day, and 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. 1 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 ! j 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. But 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 were 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 SCHOOLS. 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 urged 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 fmd peojrfe 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 INTEODUCTION. girls between eight and fourteen years of age (in the grammar schools, where moral education has its most fruitful field) wili 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 scholars ; 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 ;ire 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 example, 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 poem ; 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 saying to remember in the schoolroom. 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. 1 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 teach.]' 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 a/nd 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 boys and girls. 16 INTRODUCTION. in the pulpit, or teachers in the 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, li3 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 followed. 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- planation 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 Rule, tlie 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 1 8 IN Tli OD UCTION. have seen, heard,, felt, or done, at home, in school, or elsewhere. The object of the Notes is to furnish 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 ah 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 I MORALS IN THE 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. 90; Moral and Industrial Training, by G. R. Stetson, Andover Review, vi. 351; 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 Adler'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. Compayre"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; The 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 in 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 Xation, 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 accused 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 lias 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 he was afterwards punished according to the law. He disobeyed ; but he had to take the con- sequences which the law threatened against disobedi- ence. So with 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 law 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 laws, 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 person 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 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. and sunshine. It is a law of nature that water shall ran 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- fonr hours ; that apples should grow in the ground like potatoes, and that rivers should run over hills instead of going around them. Xo 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 than we could say it of the wisest laws of man's making, "They cannot be broken : they 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 wive 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 mure sure we become of the uni- formity of nature. This truth is 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, what 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 Avill 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. Ho we have a science of mental physiology LIFE UNDER LAW. 27 which is mainly made up of what men have found out about the organs and functions of 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 lis 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. "When 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- per 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 conclusions, 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 whether 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 in 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 ami words and feelings which may be called moral or 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. Xo 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 lie 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 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. State would perish, 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 from 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 always 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. Nowhere 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, and 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 suiter 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 bei as we are that there are laws for the body, which must be observed if one would have good health. The first thing lor ;i rational human being here to do i-> 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, the uni- formity of nature, and the inclusion of human life under law. He will be aided himself by such hooks as J. S. Mill's Logic, The Principles of Science, by W. 8. 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 universal 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 Commomcealth, Wood- row Wilson's The 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. Mankind 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 onr bodies on the earth ! When we are td 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. AVe, 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 flat. 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 which 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 study 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)parently, 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 pure air is always 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 surfer 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 them in our practice, the larger will be the measure of our welfare. 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 lata ; that there are rides 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. There 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 pros- 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 weak and helpless children must for years be cared for, and sup- OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 39 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 will 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 whenever 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 his portion. It is the natural function of the child, the scholar, the ser- vant, the workman and the soldier, to act according to orders, — 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 ought 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. 1 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 1 Compare St. Paul (First Epistle to the Corinthians, xii. 14-26), and Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, I. i. OBEDIENCE TO MORAL LAW. 41 their own fancy, and idled or worked as the humor seized them, the factory would soon 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 Ave 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 never outgrow the necessity of obedience to moral law. " Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward must ? Ha and his works like sand from earth are blown." NOTES. The desire to command, or the love of power, is one 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 Emerson 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 Marcus Aurelius and Epic- tetus, have dwelt forcibly on the virtue of obedience. The in- scription ou the monument at Thermopylae ran: "Go, stranger, and tell at Lacedsemon that we died here in obedience to her laws." The citizen of the ancient city was a devotee to its wel- fare. So A. H. Clough has said: "The highest 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 discipline. 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 tbem." (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 Morals, 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 much 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 up. 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 can 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 walks along whis- tling and thinking how fortunate he is that he 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 could 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. When 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 that 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 the 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 know to be the proper thing for us 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-CONTROL. 49 " lines of least resistance ; " her ringers 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 difficulty 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, Ave 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, 1 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. 1 " Habit a second nature,"' said the great Duke of Wellington "it is ten times nature I " 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. 51 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 Ave learn that the essential spirit of morality is self-control by reason. Morality 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 (/. 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. No one is really civilized until lie 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- jlves in the common relations of social life, but rather to preserve ourselves wisely, and to make the best and the most of ourselves, 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 1 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 teaches 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 animal, sensual, auti-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 AVill 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 Sacrifice, by Rev. 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 insight 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 Ave 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 think 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 Ave can alter them in our speech so that our words Avill 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- 56 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. sent fact, he is truthful. On the contrary, when, for any cause, he means to speak, and does speak, of things or events as they were not, 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. We are in a very high degree dependent on each 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 whole 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, Ave 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, we 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 we 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 think ; 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 who 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 perjury ; 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 who 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, " No." 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 worst 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 sufficient, 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 things he owes his employer. When "thought is speech and speech is truth " we can trust each other and join together with TRUTHFULNESS. 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. When 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 will 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 : " No 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 harmony and union with the whole universe so far ; but when we tell a lie we leave the world of reality, the only world that is, and enter a world of unreality which we have, for a brief 60 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. time, created, so to speak, out of nothing, and which 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 we are telling the truth, and great difficulty 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 fault. 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 TB UTHFULNESS. 6 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 iu 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. When the exaggeration is plainly understood, it does not deceive. But we should not allow 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- tain 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. Duplicity 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 Moral and 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- esting. Other works which give matter of value in this direction are Professor Noah Porter's Elements of Moral Science (Part II. chap. x. p. 416) ; John Bascom's Science of Duty, pp. 158-166 ; Mark Hopkins's Law of Love (on the " right to truth "), pp. 199- 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 offence ; but when a pupil made an assertion, lie accepted it with confidence. ' If you say so, that is quite enough ; of course, I believe your word.' By thus trusting and believing them, lie 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.' " {Lift 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 the 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 chddren 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 offence 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 account 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 another person's ' I 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 ease 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, in 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 memory," 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 into 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, brings 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 having 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 case 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 the moral law, each of us has 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 own, 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 ; i. 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 LAW 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 what 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 fliis 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. Keason 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 meum et tuum, 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 the 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 when we know that a thing does not 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. —-\ Justice is opposed to partiality 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. 69 bandage indicated that the just man should be blind to every 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 our 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 we 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 chapter, 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 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. first and nearest importance in his own eyes. Nature has given him consciousness of himself, and he can 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 be made to be 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, but 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 with another, or when it is a matter con- cerning meum et tuum, our safest, surest way is to obey the Golden Rule 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 nature 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 us 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 Ave 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 are 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 fo 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 hurt and changeth not ") ; re- gard for the reputation of others; fair methods of making money (read 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." CHAPTER 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 will probably seem to many that, so far, we have been making morality stem and forbidding, since Ave 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. We 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 feel in matters of conduct the 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 feelings} In many of its uses it means as much or nearly as much 76 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 Ave 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," i. e., is also " kind." Real 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 LAW OF KINDNESS. 77 ing and winning than the most careful, well calculated and deliberate justice can be by itself. Kindne ss^in fact, is the ideal of conduct toward the great body of our fellow-creatures. We 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 has another instinct, to be kind. Sympathy (L 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." a " 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 1 The teacher will ohserve 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 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. to all animals but her own young : to them she is affec- tionate. Equally it is the character or the dog to be fond of his master, and faithful to him. 1 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 Dryden. 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. Next " kind " comes to mean especially, in the case of human beings, having 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 ; " that is, were they all true to their nature as English- men, with no traitors among them. 1 " The bee," says Richard Rolle de Hampole, the old English writer, " has three kyndes ; 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 person, 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," i. 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 aw wont to say human society and human kind. Notice how this word "human" and the word "hu- 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 walking upright and having two hands, and a large brain with many 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. 1 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 civilization. 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 1 " Men that live according' to the right rule and law of reason live hut in their own kind, as heasts 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 well- 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 laws 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, — "tcRuTju'stly 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 tliis best way through our experience in our own homes. There our kin are our teachers in kindness. Nothing can surpass 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, united 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 whole 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 difficulty 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 charm, 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 refine and beautify human society. The law of kindness tends to put down all "sur- vivals" of the beast, (he 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 law. 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 on 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 hue sense, THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 85 Yet lacking sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." Read Rah 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 gives 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." CHAPTEE 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. But 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 culled " moral." We eat and sleep and do many other THE GREAT WORDS OF MORALITY. 87 things which all other animals do as a part of their ani- mal existence. These are not immoral but unmoral 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 apart 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 ; our rights are what others owe to us. Their rights are our duties ; their duties are our rights. " Right " (which comes from the same root as rectus, straight) means, first of all, " in accordance with rule or law." Righteousness, or Tightness, is equivalent to rectitude, which means going straight by the rule or measure. 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. Right 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. might 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 vlr, 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 full 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-scio) signify, but "knowing with " what ? 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 j_ 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 up and quickened by thinking earnestly 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 the 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 must do it. Right is noted as the straight and obvious course in these lines: — " Beauty may he the path to highest good, And some successfully have it pursued. Thou, who wouldst follow, he well warned to see That way prove not a curved road to thee. The straightest way, perhaps, which may he 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 progress 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. CHAPTER 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. We 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 Ave 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 ;is 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 have a natural right to command 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 Rule 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, Ave 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 helpfulness 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 show so plainly what we are, — kind and true and helpful, or selfish ami 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 Avhich 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 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. gods. Their images were in every house ; a perpetual lire 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 in human history. Such a book as E. B. Ty- lor'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. Susan F. Lesley, are suggestive. s ^«o«^r u i,os j^GBl-^' 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 nse 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 work 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 third 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/where, 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 Ave idle when we should be wmking, 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 use 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 day'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- pearance 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. Xo 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 WORE. 103 work : he 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. Not 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 iu 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 upou 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 1 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 " tbe secret of all culturef he says). " Idleness," says old Burton, " the bane of body and mind, the nurse 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 with 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 possibly be spared from the necessary occu- pacious 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 Ave 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 than for the advantage to be gained from the crime. This man's law is Ins 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 which 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 laAv. 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. Morality 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 say what you like : I will do what I like." 110 THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. A reputation for honorable dealing has 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 us. In the school we can build life on honor, by refusing THE 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 Avork, 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 THE 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 prepares 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 biulding 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 crttching 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 modem 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 duty 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 which 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 arc 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 stimulants, 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 THE 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 office ; to be clean and pure and active and sound bodily, — this is a great matter in human life, for without physical virtue all other virtues 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 we 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 w T ill 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 PERSONAL 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 chiefly 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. The 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 should give to the training of our tongues and our tempers in the 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 charm. In the common social relations, then, at home and at school, for instance, we do wisely -to cultivate beauty in action. Modesty, cheerfulness, and kindliness in little things of manner belong to the beautiful. The "gentleman" and the "lady" show the excellence of refinement in conduct. Courtesy, which once meant the manners of court where the no- bility lived in wealth and leisure, is the Mower of right- doing, a flower which any one may cultivate. Strength is one of the two things which all men desire. The 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 uni- versally desired, comes into human actions with kind- ness. When it takes the form of politeness to all with whom 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 in 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 intentions, 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 power ; it is the best of all connsel. The allusion in the last paragraph of this chapter is to the following words of Rev. F. H. Hedge, D. D. : — " There are two 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 gooduess, power." CHAPTER 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 firm, or of a society for the advancement of ■ some reform, — Ave have special duties according to the I 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 to 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 the 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. Our 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 principle 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 that Ave 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 up arms 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 say " 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 first 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 he 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. Hare, 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 Avhole country as above party and creed, above North or South OUR COUNTRY. 125 or East or West, finds 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 duty 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 12G THE LAWS OF DAILY CONDUCT. each man by his single vote can affect the policy which is at last adopted b} r Congress, he should cast this vote intelligently. He should enlighten himself as to tariffs 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 should 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 w r hat 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 office, 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. But 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 sought 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 " Hervd 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 economics. Every citizen should understand somewhat of these laws and of the history of his country in which they have heen 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 Nordhoff's Politics for Young Americans, Professor J. Macy's Our Government, and 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 pur 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 which 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, i. 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, especially. 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 which 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. So 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 selfishness, 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 comes 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, Avhose 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 we, 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." 1 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 given 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 what 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- 1 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 unites 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 externa] 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, wotdd 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 meaning 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 Middlemarch. " 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 well ! So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. . . . The aids to noble life are all within." M. Arnold. The " literature of power," as distingnished 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- Stoties 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 thj 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 learn 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, the develojyment of entire humanity is figured and summarized in the growth 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 immorally 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. Nih if humani alienum a me puto, 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 PROGRESS. 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 clog 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 duties, 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. W T e can never be 140 THE 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 PEOGEESS. 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 field 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 full 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 fragrance 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 moral progress. " The world advances, and in time outgrows The laws that in 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 the 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. Alexander, contain 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 f ormer 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." CHAPTEE XV. LIFE ACCORDING TO THE GOLDEN RULE. Every art has its ideal, the standard of perfection, toward which the 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 lis all as the Golden Rule : Do unto others as you ■would 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 work, 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 LIFE ACCORDING TO THE GOLDEN RULE. 145 prime condition of every human good. If we briefly consider the history of the world down to modern times, we shall 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 fighting." 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, why would it not be right ? Is your own conduct toward him right ? Of course, we soon realize, when 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. Recognizing 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 would 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 must 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 Ave 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 Rule. 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 Bule in one form or another. Let us hear what some of them say. The Buddhist Dham- vni i >n da, 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 we 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 true, 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 spoken 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 should do unto you, even so do ye unto them ! CHARACTER BUILDING A MASTER'S TALKS WITH HIS PUPILS By EDWARD P. JACKSON, A. M. TO Mr} father anb .flilotbcr WHOSE FAITHFUL TEACHINGS AND WHOSE LIVES OF SELF-SACRIFICE IN THE CAUSE OF HUMAN WELFARE INSPIRED WHATEVER IS WORTHIEST IN THESE PAGES THEY ARE AFFECTIONATELY AND GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 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 un sectarian, 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 : Richard 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, " The Laws of Daily Conduct," by Nicholas Paine Gilman, editor of the "Literary World" of Boston, and author of "Profit Sharing between Employer and Employee ; " and " Char- acter Building." Vl PREFACE. Although the two books were written with no refer- ence to each other, they seem to be, both in manner and matter, each the complement of the other. The defi- ciencies of each are, in great measure, supplied by the other. While " The Laws of Daily Conduct " is, in the main, synthetic and general in its treatment, the present work is more analytic and specific. The two are, there- fore, 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 avoidance of sectarianism was not a difficulty, but a relief. Although both writers wish to be known as friends of religion, they agree in the conviction that the public school, which belongs equally to representa- tives of all sects and to those of no sect, is not the place for special religious or theological instruction. There is enough in what is known as morals, without admix- ture of a distinctive religious creed, enough that the good, the pure, the noble, the patriotic, the philanthro- pic of all creeds can agree upon, to fill not one little book like this, but a library. The difficulty is, not to find material, but to select wisely from the abundance at hand. What use to make of the following pages each teacher must decide for himself. They may serve merely as hints as to methods, or they may supply subjects and their treatment, to'be presented in such other language as shall seem best adapted to different classes of hearers. Should the teacher or parent prefer to read them in their original form, the time required for each of the Talks will be found not to vary materially from that prescribed by " Dr. Dix," ten minutes, at most fifteen, of one day in each week of the school year. E. P. J. TABLE OF CONTENTS. » PAGE Preface. Prologue 1 I. Sincerity 3 II. What is Right ? 8 III. The Sense of Duty 14 IV. "Credit," and other "Rewards of Merit" . 19 V. Good Boys and " Fun " 24 VI. Virtue is Strength : Vice is Weakness . . 28 VII. More about Good Boys and '' Fun " . . :;:) VIII. Cleverness and Courage 38 IX. The Battle 4:J X. Wars and Rumors of Wars .... 47 XI. When the Good Boy will Fight . . . 52 XII. When the Good Boy will not Fight . . 58 XIII. " GOODY-GOODY " AND GOOD .... 64 XIV. The Knight "sans Peur et sans Reproche" G9 XV. The Attractiveness of Vice ... 75 XVI. Creeping, Walking, and Flying ... 80 XVII. The Doctor is Fairly Caught ... 84 XVIII. The Chains of Habit 90 XIX. The Alcohol Habit 96 XX. Beneficent Lions and Tigers .... 100 XXI. Truth and Truthfulness .... 106 XXII. Truth and Truthfulness (continued) . . 113 XXHI. Extravagance in Language . . . . 118 XXIV. Snakes in the Grass 124 XXV. Great is Truth, and it will prevail . . 129 XXVI. Honesty . 136 XXVII. Honesty (continued) 141 XXVIII. A Black List 146 • • • Vlll CONTENTS. XXIX. Honor 154 XXX. " When the Cat's away the Mice will play" 160 XXXI Nagging 164 XXXII. Industry, Wealth, Happiness . . . .171 XXXIII. Industry, Wealth, Happiness (continued) 176 •-~ XXXIV. Vocation, Vacation, and Avocation . .182 XXXV. Cruelty to Animals 188 XXXVI. Charity 195 XXXVII. With Hand and Heart ..... 199 XXXVIII. Politeness 205 XXXIX. Profanity and Obscenity .... 211 XL. What has Algebra to do with Virtue ? . 218 XLI. Home and Country : The Good Son and the Good Citizen 224 CHARACTER BUILDING. PERSONS REPRESENTED. John Dix, Ph. D., Principal of the Freetown Academy. His Puplls. PROLOGUE. " A time to keep silence, and a time to speak." Dr. Dix [concluding a moral lecture]. Well, Jenkins, what do yon wish to say ? Geoffrey Jenkins [with a sly wink at his classmates']. I beg pardon, but are we going to recite our Caesar les- son to-day ? Dr. Dix [glancing uneasily at the clock]. Is it pos- sible ! Really, I had no idea it was so late. I was so engrossed in my subject that I was altogether uncon- scious of the flight of time. No, Jenkins, I regret that we must give up our Caesar lesson for to-day. Jenkins should not have waited until it was too late before call- ing my attention. Ah, ha ! he knew what he was about, did he [laughing] ? Well, well, you need n't look so delighted. We '11 take a double lesson next time, and give our whole attention to it. I hope, however, that the time to-day has not been altogether lost ; and yet, as I said, I regret that our Caesar lesson must be post- poned. To be sure, the proper discussion of a great moral principle is more important than a lesson in Caesar : but we are told that there is a time for every- 2 CHARACTER BUILDING. thing ; and, in strict justice, we have no right to give the time that belongs to Caesar to anything else, or to any- body else, however worthy. Well, what is it, Watson ? Archibald Watson. " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." [Laughter.'] Dr. Dix. " And " — Why don't you finish ? Archibald Watson. "And unto God the things that are God's." Dr. Dix. Well put, my lad, well put. An excellent application of a famous epigram. The past hour justly belonged to the author of the " Commentaries," and we have given it to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It is nearly time for the bell, but I will mention to you a plan which I have been thinking of, and which I shall probably adopt. There are many things I wish to say to you not directly connected with your lessons. To avoid in future the mistake I have made to-day, it is my intention to set apart ten or fifteen minutes every Wednesday morning, not for set lessons, but for miscellaneous Talks. The time thus appropriated will be taken equitably from the various branches of study, and no one of them need to suffer perceptibly. But whether they suffer or not, I shall feel that I am doing no wrong ; and certainly no one can doubt the impor- tance of questions of conduct and motive in a school which professes to form character as well as to train the intellect. If I should adopt this plan, I cordially invite you all to join freely with me in the discussions, to suggest topics, to ask questions, and to feel no hesitation Avhatever in ex- pressing dissent from anything that may be said, — hon- est dissent I mean, of course. I hope no one will ever take part in a discussion simply to carry his point and win a victory, or merely to make a display of his skill at logical fencing. The one great object I wish every one to have before him is to discover and point out the truth. .., [Bell.] i. SINCERITY. Dr. Dix. Well, scholars, after further consideration and conference with certain ladies and gentlemen whose judgment I value very highly, I have decided to adopt the plan which I mentioned last week. Until further notice, then, the first ten minutes of each Wednesday will be devoted to what I hope will prove not only useful but interesting conversations. I say conversations, for I want you to do your share of the talking. As, however, I have a much greater store of experience to draw from than any of you, I expect that my share will be much larger than yours ; but I shall always take good care to give you a full opportu- nity to say all you feel inclined to say. You have only to indicate your Avish in the usual way, and it shall be granted. I desire that these Wednesday Morning Talks of ours shall have a distinct bearing upon the formation of character, that they shall be such as shall tend to make you loyal citizens, and good, noble men and women. And first, let me say, the easiest and cheapest part of morality is the discussion of it. Of all things in exist- ence, words — if they are mere words — are the cheap- est. Nothing is easier for some men, who can do little else, than to talk ; and of all subjects under the sun there are none upon which more empty words are ut- tered than upon questions of morality. As you have learned in your study of English Literature, some of the most exalted sentiments that have ever been expressed in our language have been uttered by men of essentially ignoble lives. 4 CHARACTER BUILDING. The first condition, then, that I shall impose upon you as well as upon myself in these discussions is en- tire sincerity. Louisa Thompson. Do you mean that we are not to speak of good things that we do not do ourselves ? Dr. Dix [smiling~\. I fear that such a restriction would close many eloquent lips. Louisa Thompson. And are all those eloquent peo- ple hypocrites ? Dr. Dix [with emphasis']. By no means, Miss Thompson. But the noblest human character is full of imperfections. Before any good act is performed, be- fore any noble quality is attained, it must be thought of and aspired to. The runner in a race must fix his thoughts intently on the goal towards which he is striving. By all means let our thoughts and words be in advance of our actual attainments. That is the very first requisite to progress, and the farther in advance they are the better. What I meant was, that we should not profess admiration of virtue or detestation of vice which we do not actually feel, — that, in short, we should not preach what we do not at least sincerely desire to practice, whether in our weakness we are able actually to practice it or not. I think we shall not find this too severe a restriction. I take it for granted that there is no one here who has not a genuine desire, more or less alive and awake, to become better, stronger, nobler, more admirable than he is. If this desire is encouraged — and there is no better way to encourage it than to think and talk about it — it will naturally grow stronger and stronger. As the desire strengthens, so will the power to gratify it. There is no other sin- cere desire of the human heart so absolutely sure to be realized as this. Do not let our talks end with mere talk. Do not let any of us discuss the beauty and nobility of truth- fulness, for instance, and straightway resume the prac- SINCERITY. 5 tice of the petty deceptions so common in the school- room, as well as elsewhere. Let us not sound the praises of industry, cheerfulness, forbearance, gener- osity, and immediately proceed to the indulgence of idleness, ill-temper, impatience, and selfishness. Susan Perkins. What is a hypocrite, Dr. Dix ? Dr. Dix. Let us hear your own definition first, Miss Perkins. Susan Perkins. Why, if we should do what you have just asked us not to do, we should be hypocrites, should we not '.' Dr. Dix. Not necessarily. No, not even probably. A hypocrite is one who attempts to deceive others in regard to his true character, especially one who pre- tends to virtue which he does not possess. I should not think of accusing any of you of such contemptible meanness, even if you should do what I have just asked you not to do. I should simply think that your sentiments, though strong enough to be expressed in words, were neither strong nor deep enough for the louder speaking of action. They would be like certain plants which put forth very showy blossoms, but which have not vitality enough to bear fruit. No ; far be it from me to suspect any of you of that degree of insincerity which amounts to hypocrisy, a thing so utterly mean as to be despised alike by the good and the bad. But if you give occasion, I shall, of course, recognize in you that unconscious sort of in- sincerity which makes us satisfied with mere words and fleeting emotions instead of action, — with im- pulse instead of steady, persistent purpose, — with the shadow instead of the substance, — the blossom instead of the fruit. As I said a little while ago, there is nothing cheaper than words. But even those whose words are held the cheapest are not always consciously insincere. Their emotions and sentiments may be real and vivid while 6 CHARACTER BUILDING. they last, though they may scarcely outlast the noisy breath that utters them. Whether justly or unjustly, it is the common disposi- tion of mankind to place a low estimate upon the ear- nestness of great talkers, and more particularly upon their will and power to do. There are familiar old pro- verbs illustrating this. Let us have some of them. Jane Simpson. "Empty vessels make the most sound." Charles Fox. " Still waters run deep." Lucy Snoiv. " Shallow brooks babble." Dr. Dix. Yes. Proverbs are called the wisdom of many and the wit of one. Those you have given are among the wisest and the wittiest. There is danger, however, that their very wisdom and wit may lead to their too wide application. One of the most familiar of the proverbs may well serve as a check upon all the rest. Can any of you tell me what it is ? Geoffrey Jenkins. " There is no rule without excep- tions." Jonathan Tower. And, "The exception proves the rule." Dr. Dix. If any of the proverbs needs the check of the first of these two, it is certainly the second. There is no rule with more exceptions, even in Latin prosody or German gender, than that " The exception proves the rule." It is not true that all or even the most of great talk- ers are deficient in earnestness or in the power and will to accomplish good in the world. The mission of such — I mean really great talkers — is chiefly to talk ; not to express what they do not feel, but sentiments and emotions which may be even deeper and more fervent than their eloqiient words, sentiments and emotions that live as realities in their hearts, that they will stand by to the death, if need be. Few men have wielded a more controlling influence SINCERITY. over their fellow-men than Pericles during the first years of the Peloponnesian War. Cicero attributes his power chiefly to his surpassing skill in oratory. But what could his oratory have accomplished if the men of Athens had not known that their eloquent chief meant every word exactly as he said it ? It was not the words that gave power to the man so much as it was the man that gave power to the words. Many an actor on the stage has equalled and perhaps surpassed Pericles in the tricks of voice, facial expression, and gesture ; but the sublimest triumphs of the stage last only so long as the illusion of reality remains. When the pageant is over, the consciousness of its unreality returns, and lo ! the burning words have lost their power, save as they please the memory and the imagination. And, again, it is not true that all " still waters run deep." There are shallow, stagnant little pools that lie more silent and still than the deepest tides of the M is- sissippi. Silence may be " golden " or it may be leaden. It may be the silence of wisdom and self-mastery, or it may be the silence of stupidity and cowardice, the silence of the owl, or the silence of the sphinx. Do not, therefore, be afraid to talk. Only talk at the right time and in the right place, and be thoroughly in earnest. Mean what you say. Feel yourself what you urge upon others, and be sure that your feeling is some- thing more than a momentary impulse. Do not mis- take a passing breeze for a trade-wind. II. WHAT IS RIGHT? Dr. Dix. I don't wish you to look upon this new move of ours as merely the introduction of a new branch of study. If that were all I sought, I should simply have proposed the addition of ethics to our curriculum. I should have selected a suitable text-book, assigned lessons to be learned, perhaps, and appointed an hour for recitation ; in which case some of you would proba- bly have thought more of your " marks " and " percent- ages " than of the branch itself, as I fear is true with some of you in other cases. No ; it is not merely the science, but the art and practice of morality that I wish you to acquire. If this object is to be accomplished, it must be chiefly through your own efforts. Something of the science we may learn by talking ; the art, like all other arts, can be acquired only by faithful, persevering practice. Charles Fox. What does ethics mean, Dr. Dix ? Dr. Dix \_looking around his audience]. Well, we are all waiting for an answer. Isabelle Anthony. The science of morality, or moral philosophy. Dr. Dix. And what is morality ? Isabelle Anthony. I should say it was a comprehen- sive word, including all our ideas of right and wrong. Dr. Dix. That will do very well for the present. I might ask what is meant by " right," and what is meant by " wrong." That would lead us at once into the very heart of the science of ethics. Charles Fox. And is n't that what you wish ? WHAT IS RIGHT? 9 Dr. Dlx. We can hardly practise an art successfully without knowing, either by acquisition or by instinct, at least the fundamental principles of the science which relates to that art. What I wish to guard against is, lest our talks, from which I hope so much, may degen- erate into distinctly intellectual exercises. I can imag- ine our pursuing the science of ethics precisely as we study chemistry or logic, and with very much the same result. I do not mean that that result would not in- clude moral benefit. I believe it would, just as I be- lieve the study of chemistry — ay, even of algebra — is morally beneficial (and we shall speak of this more at length some other morning). I mean that the moral benefit wonld be secondary to the intellectual benefit, which is exactly what I do not wish. I have often heard men of a philosophical and argu- mentative turn discussing ethical questions for no other purpose apparently 'than to while away a leisure hour, and to display their logical acumen. I have heard the loftiest conceptions of right and duty, in the abstract, eloquently set forth by men whose daily lives would indicate anything but a lofty conception of their own individual duty. Of course Ave must have something of what is known as the science of ethics, but not enough of it to allow the head to usurp the functions of the heart. We will consider that this ten minutes belongs peculiarly to the heart, and we will allow the head to act only as an aux- iliary. It is enough for him to be king the rest of the day, with the heart as only his modest and meek coun- sellor. Now I am ready to ask you what is meant by " right " and " wrong." Miss Thompson, what do you think those words mean ? Louisa Thompson. Eight is — is — why, it is that which is right. [Laughter. ~] Dr. Dix. And Avrong is, by the same process of rea- soning, that which is wrong, eh ? Well, I don't know 10 CHARACTER BUILDING. but that I ought to be satisfied with your answer. It shows, at least, that the words have a clear enough meaning in your mind. Eight is right, just as . gold is gold; and wrong is wrong, as dross is dross. And so, I suppose, the words have a definite meaning in the minds of all present. Still, it is possible that they may mean different things to different persons. Let us see how nearly we agree. Miss Thompson, will you try once more ? What is " right " ? Louisa Thompson. Eight is — doing good to others. Geoffrey Jenkins. I was going to say that, and then I thought you would ask what I meant by " good." So I would n't say it. Dr. Dix [smiling~]. Precisely what I was about to ask Miss Thompson, not for the sake of puzzling her or you, but for exactly the opposite reason — that we might begin with the clearest possible ideas. What is " good " ? Louisa Thompson. Whatever causes happiness is good, is it not ? Dr. Dix. Let us see. It is said that the effect of certain deadly drugs upon the nervous system is to produce a sensation of intense happiness. Are they good ? Louisa Thompson. No, sir ; but the sensations they produce are not true happiness ; besides, they cause greater unhappiness afterwards. Dr. Dix. Then, suppose we say that nothing is good, even though it may cause happiness — or what seems to be happiness — if it causes greater misery, or if it prevents greater happiness. But suppose I do something which causes happiness to certain persons and unhappiness, though in a less de- gree, to others who are innocent ; is that good ? Louisa Thompson. N-no, sir. Thomas Dunn. And yet that very thing is often done, and called right and good, too. WHAT IS RIGHT? 11 Dr. Dix. When and by whom ? Thomas Dunn. By the government, when innocent men are obliged to go to war to save their country. Dr. Dix [impressively']. " Dulce et decorum est pro patfia mori." l Men ought and often do count it their greatest happiness, as well as glory, to make that sac- rifice. Archibald Watson. Then why shouldn't everybody count it happiness to make sacrifices for others ? Dr. Dix. So everybody should, my boy ; but we are not speaking now of those who voluntarily make sacri- fice, but of those who require it of others. And it must be remembered that the same rules cannot be applied to a government that are applied to an indi- vidual. What would be perfectly right and good in the government might be a capital crime in an individ- ual. It would not be right for me to seek the happiness of some of you at the expense of the suffering of others who did not deserve it at my hands, — even though the total amount of the happiness I thus caused might over- balance the pain. So, though it is safe to say that all good is right and all right is good, yet we see that there is something involved in both the right and the good besides mere happiness. What is it ? Julia Taylor. Justice ? Dr. Dix. Yes. Justice and happiness may coincide, but we do not think of them as inseparably connected. Let justice be done is our instinctive feeling, whether happiness results or not. " Fiat just it ia, mat coelum" 2 George Williams. Is it not both right and good sometimes to set aside justice ? Dr. Dix. No. Justice may be "tempered with mercy ; " but it is never right nor good that it should be " set aside." Right demands that the mercy shown to some should never involve injustice to others, as, for 1 It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country. 2 Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. 12 CHARACTER BUILDING. instance, when a criminal, unrepentant and unreformed, is pardoned and let loose to prey again upon society. Well, what besides kindness, mercy, and justice are included in right ? Susan Perkins. Truth. Dr. Dix. Do not our commonest instincts teach us that nothing can he right or good that is not true ? A lie, even though it may cause no unhappiness to any living creature, is and must be forever wrong. Eight, rectus, means straight, true. A right angle is a square angle. Even in slang a man that does right is called " square " and " straight," while a rascal is sometimes called a " crook." Wrong is not straight nor square ; it is oblique, crooked. Its very spelling shows what it is, — w-r-ong, wrung, wrested from the true and the right. The wrong does not go straight on ; it tvrith.es, it wriggles. But there is one particular word which, with its equivalents, expresses the idea of right more exactly, perhaps, than any that we have used thus far. What is it ? That is right which — Thomas Dunn. Ought to be. Dr. Dix. That is the word, ought, owed. Eight is what is owed by somebody or something to somebody or something. Eight is a debt, debitum, something owed. And there are equivalents ; what are they ? Jane Simpson. Eight is what is due, duty. Dr. Dix. Yes. But we must be careful that we do not take those words in too narrow a sense. Some men seem to consider that they do their full duty to their fellow-men when they pay what they call their business debts. Are they right ? Many Voices. No, sir. Dr. Dix. What else do they owe ? Louisa Thompson. Kindness. Henry Phillips. Charity. Jonathan Tower. Help. WHAT IS RIGHT? 13 Lucy Snow. Forbearance. Jane Simpson. Friendship. Susan Perkins. Forgiveness. Dr. Dix. And the influence and example of a noble, upright life. These are all debts, as truly as those which are entered in their ledgers. III. THE SENSE OF DUTY. Dr. Dix. To do right, as we said last Wednesday morning, is simply to do one's duty. Now things al- ways do that. Observe, in this last statement I am not using the word duty in its strict metaphysical sense, which involves the idea of a right voluntary choice be- tween alternatives of action. I use it simply in its ety- mological sense, that of giving what is owed, what is due. As I said, things always do that. Thomas Dunn. Do they always ? Does a watch, for instance, do its duty when it refuses to go ? Dr. Dix. Always. If it is properly made in the first place, and is not abused afterwards, it will go until it is worn out, and then it is its duty to stop. If it is not properly made, and is badly enough abused, it is its duty, it is the law of its being, so to speak, not to go. Thomas Dunn. May not the same, or at least a simi- lar thing, be said of a man ? Dr. Dix. Yes and no. A man is like a watch only in that he does not do the impossible. He is entirely unlike a watch in that he does not necessarily do what he can. Yes, Dunn, things always obey the laws of their being. They always pay their debts. Joseph Cracklin. But they deserve no credit for do- ing so — they can't help it. Dr. Dix. Who does deserve credit for simply paying his debts ? However, we will not consider the credit for the present ; we will consider the fact and its re- sults, which are precisely the same as if things could do wrong if they chose, but always chose to do right. THE SENSE OF DUTY. 15 A part of the lesson we are to learn is the results of right-doing and of wrong-doing. If you and your watch- maker do your duty to your watch, it will infallibly do its duty to you. It will go on, never resting, never tiring, never losing a tick, whether the eye of its master is on it or not, working as faithfully through the long hours of the night as in the daylight. In a school reading-book in use when I was a boy, there was an ingenious little allegory entitled "The Discontented Pendulum," by Jane Taylor. The pendu- lum of an old clock, that had been faithfully ticking the seconds year after year, was represented as linally becoming utterly discouraged by its unintermitting la- bors and the prospect of their never ending, and ab- ruptly coming to a full stop. After pouring out its grief and discouragement to a sympathizing ear, listen- ing to a due amount of remonstrance for its ignoble neglect of duty and of encouragement to persevere to the end, — remembering that it never had but one swing to make in a second and that it always had the second to make it in, — it was finally persuaded to dry its tears and return to its duty. I remember that I liked the fable very much ; but, with all my admiration, I could not quite forgive the injustice done to the pen- dulum in even imagining it capable of unfaithfulness of which only a living creature could be guilty. No, things are never unfaithful. The stars never de- sert their posts for an instant throughout the ages. The planets never swerve a hair's breadth from the courses marked out for them by nature. Not an atom ever refuses to fulfil its duty, and its whole duty, in the unending work of the universe. The grand result of this unvarying fidelity to duty, this perfect obedience to the laws of nature, is perfect harmony throughout the physical universe. It is only in the moral universe that discord reigns. The lower animate creation is no less faithful to duty 16 CHARACTER BUILDING. than the inanimate. No allurements will tempt the mother bird, to desert her young. The working ant never idles away his time. Queens are only mothers in the hive and in the nest : neither kings nor queens are needed for government, for none of their subjects was ever known to violate a law of the realm. Geoffrey Jenkins. The grasshopper idles, if the ant does n't. Archibald Watson. Yes, sir ; and we have the fable of " The Ant and the Grasshopper." Dr. Dix. I have often thought that fable even more unjust to the grasshopper than Jane Taylor's to the pendulum. The grasshopper gets his living through the summer, his natural term of life, does he not ? Many a Western farmer has learned that to his sorrow. Geoffrey Jenkins. Yes, sir ; he steals his living. Dr Dix. No, I cannot admit that. Human laws of property are binding ouly on men, not on grasshoppers. They know only the laws of nature, which recognize no monopoly of the green fields ; they have never learned to read the warning legend, " No Trespass." But let us see what even the grasshopper will do when duty calls. When the devastating multitudes sweep over the plains, leaving no green shred behind them, attempts are sometimes made to check their pro- gress by lighting long lines of fire. Then comes the vanguard of grasshoppers, overwhelming the opposing walls of flame like an extinguishing wave of the ocean. There is no hesitation. Haucl mora} Like Napoleon's platoons at the bridge of Lodi, the countless multitudes go unflinchingly to certain death for the sake of the vastly greater multitudes behind them. That is the way the little voluptuary of the fable does his duty. I have compared him to the heroic sol- dier, the human type of that perfect fidelity which we have seen in the inanimate and in the lower animate 1 No delay. THE SENSE OF DUTY. 17 creation. The true soldier's one object and ambition is to do his duty, no matter what the cost. You have all heard the famous story of the burning of the Czar's palace at Moscow — how in the general confusion the order to relieve the royal sentinels was not issued by the proper authority, and how the heroic fellows paced back and forth upon the blazing balustrades as if they were on parade, until the falling walls buried them from sight. There was an example of fidelity to duty set before the world ! It was an example not only to the soldier guarding his sacred trust, but to all men in all stations and conditions of life. What seem to be little duties are as binding upon us as those which may gain for us greater glory and admi- ration. The regular army soldier is taught to be as faithful in the care of his horse and of his wardrobe as in the performance of his graver duties on the battle- field. Now, can you tell me why the sense of the impera- tiveness of duty should be so especially prominent in the mind of the soldier ? Why more so than in the minds of men in general ? Julia Taylor. It is no more so than in the minds of other faithful people. Dr. Dix. Very true. Heroic fidelity to duty is by no means confined to those whose trade is war. There are cowards, traitors, and shirks in the army as well as elsewhere. From the earliest ages, however, the soldier has been a favorite proverb of devotion to duty, and an idea so general must have some foundation in truth. Isabelle Anthony. One reason is, that bravery is so much admired, and cowardice so much despised. Dr. Dix. That is doubtless a part of the explana- tion. But to be brave is not the soldier's only duty : his first and greatest obligation is to obey orders. Thomas Dunn. I think the chief reason is, that 18 CHARACTER BUILDING. there is so much depending on his doing his duty faith- fully. If he sleeps on his post, the safety of the whole army is endangered ; if he is cowardly in battle, the vic- tory is lost ; if he is disobedient to orders, there can be no discipline, and without discipline an army is only a mob. Dr. Dix. Yes ; that is the explanation — necessity. Fidelity is indispensable to efficiency. An army com- posed of untrustworthy and disobedient soldiers would be like a watch — if such a thing is conceivable — in which the wheels should turn or not as they individu- ally chose ; or, to carry out my former comparison, like a universe in which the atoms should obey the laws of attraction and repulsion or not according to their sov- ereign pleasure. Such an army would be, as Dunn says, a mob : such a universe would be chaos. Now, boys and- girls, each one of us is like a soldier in an army — with this difference : however we might wish to do so, we can neither resign nor desert. We must ever remain parts of the great whole. Each of us is a little wheel in the great mechanism, and if we do not do our share of the turning, or if we turn in the wrong direction, we do so much to block the machinery, to disturb the general harmony that might prevail. Why should any of us feel the sense of imperative duty less strongly than the brave, true soldier ? Why should man, the apex in the pyramid of being, be less obedient to the laws of his existence, less faithful to his duty, than the wheels of his watch, than the ant or the bee, than the minutest atom that helps to hold the uni- verse together and keep it in harmonious motion ? IV. "CREDIT," AND OTHER "REWARDS OF MERIT." Dr. Dix. During my eulogy on things and the lower animals, last week, for always fulfilling the ends for which they exist, it was objected that they deserve no "credit" for doing so, because they cannot do other- wise. Well, as I replied then, who does deserve credit for simply doing his duty ? Joseph Cracklin. When a man pays a debt, it is put to his "credit" on the ledger. Dr. Dix [smiling']. That sounds like a very clever answer ; but it is only a play upon words. Even things deserve credit in that sense of the word. The farmer credits a field with the crop that he considers no mure than his due for the labor and money he has expended upon it. When Cracklin made the remark that " things deserve no credit," he used the word in an entirely dif- ferent sense, that of commendation for positive moral virtue. A man who merely pays his debts simply does n't do wrong. His act is like thousands of other acts, neither positive nor negative so far as their moral nature is concerned ; whereas the man who not only pays, but gives from benevolent motives, is "credited" with an act of positive moral virtue. Thomas Dunn. But did n't we decide, a fortnight ago, that kindness, charity, generosity were only debts that we owe our fellow-men ? Dr. Dix [laughing]. We seem to have stumbled upon one of those ethical subtleties that I was so anx- ious to avoid. It is not so subtle, however, as it seems. Words often have a very different force, according as 20 CHARACTER BUILDING. ♦ their application is high or low. We say, for instance, that this building is stationary. It is so only with ref- erence to the earth on which it stands. Referred to the heavens, we know that it is in rapid motion. So that which may not be a debt in the business sense, may be a most binding debt in the moral sense. The payment of such moral debts has positive moral virtue, and is entitled to moral credit. Let us consider this moral credit, as distinguished from business credit. It is a part of the natural and just reward of well- doing. The love of the approbation of our fellow-men is implanted in us by nature, and is entirely commend- able, if properly regulated. There is no motion with- out a motor. The steam-engine will not move without steam, neither will man act without a motive. He labors for food and other necessaries and comforts of life. Without reward of some sort he will not act, and this is right. As I said, the approval of his fellow- men is one of these rewards. But suppose it is the only or chief motive for doing good. You have read of a class of men who give alms that they ma} r be seen of men. You know what is said of them : " They have their reward." Do you not detect a subtle sarcasm in that laconic awarding of the prize of " credit " ? Are they really entitled even to the poor reward they re- ceive ? If men knew their actual motive, would they receive it ? No ; in order that their credit may be justly earned, it must be only a secondary motive of action. And the same may be said of all other re- wards which appeal to our selfish passions and desires. You may name some of the motives which impel men to do good and shun evil. Isabelle Anthony. I think the most general and poAverful motive is expressed in the old copy-book line, " Be virtuous and you will be happy." Frank Williams. People are afraid they won't get to heaven if they are not good. CREDIT, AND OTHER REWARDS OF MERIT. 21 Dr. Dix. And what do you think of such motives, unmixed with others ? Isabelle Anthony. I think they are purely selfish. Dr. Dix. Do you think they are entitled to much of the credit we are speaking of ? Isabelle Anthony. No, sir. Dr. Dix. .Suppose no such rewards were offered, — suppose — if such a thing is conceivable — that virtue did not gain the approval of our fellow-men or lead to happiness, what do you think the effect would be on general human character ? Jane Simpson. There would n't be much good done. Thomas Dunn. I do not think there would be any good at all. Dr. Dix. So you think all good acts have at bottom some selfish motive ? Thomas Dunn. It seems to me that it must be so. Dr. Dix. Do you think the Good Samaritan was selfish ? Thomas Dunn. He might have been purely so. He could n't help pitying the man he saw suffering. Pity is no more truly an act of the will, I suppose, than sur- prise, or fright, or any other sudden emotion. His pity caused him a kind of suffering, and he took the most direct and effectual way of relieving it. Dr. Dix. And so he was entitled to no credit ? Thomas Dunn. I don't say that. I only say that his good act might have been purely selfish. If my head aches, I try to relieve it. I do the same when my heart aches. Besides, he might have heard of its being " more blessed to give than to receive," and he might have been business-like enough to do that which would secure to himself the greater blessing. Julia Taylor [indignantly]. I don't believe it pos- sible for him to have had any such sordid thoughts. I don't believe the most remote thought of himself or of 22 CHARACTER BUILDING. rewards of any kind entered his noble heart. I believe his act was one of the purest and most unselfish benev- olence. Dr. Dix. Miss Taylor's supposition is at least as reasonable as yours, Dunn. I had no idea you were such a cynic. Thomas Dunn. You invited us to express our views without restraint. Dr. Dix. Certainly. I am not reproaching you for expressing your views ; I am only surprised that such fully developed cynicism should come from such young lips. Thomas Dunn. I merely repeated what I have heard from older lips. But I only said what might be pos- sible. Dr. Dix [more graciously']. But what in your heart you felt is not probable. That is not the way you ordinarily judge your fellow-beings. Only those with- out virtue themselves disbelieve in its existence in others ; only those without benevolence themselves be- lieve others destitute of that virtue. Thomas Dunn. But the Good Samaritan was not one of my fellow-beings ; he was only an imaginary character, after all. Dr. Dix. He stands for the good heart of all man- kind. In maligning him, you malign your race. Don't lose your faith in human nature, Dunn. It would be one of the greatest losses you could suffer. There is no doubt that selfish motives actuate a great amount of the good that is done in the world ; but, thank heaven, not all, nor nearly all. The mother thinks only of her be- loved child in danger. She thinks no more of herself than the planet thinks of itself as it wheels unswerv- ingly in its celestial orbit. The hero who clings to the lever of his engine as it hurries him on to his' death thinks only of the hundreds of precious lives entrusted to his care. He has no time to think of the glory CREDIT, AND OTHER REWARDS OF MERIT. 23 which his eyes shall never see, or of the fame of which his ears shall never hear. Xapoleon's soldiers may have thought of la gloire, as they marched on to their fatal Lodi ; but it was not that alone which led them on : there was besides the irresistible impulse to do their duty because it was their duty. V. GOOD BOYS AND "FUN." Dr. Dix. The other morning I said that I took it for granted that all here feel a sincere desire to improve in character. Now, I am a pretty fair reader of counte- nances, and I must confess that I noticed what seemed to me a hesitating look here and there. I will not ask any one to speak for himself ; but I wish some of you would express what you suppose may possibly be the feeling of others. James Murphy. Please, sir, good boys don't amount to anything out of school hours. \_Laughter.~\ Dr. Dix [graciously"]. Thank you, Murphy, for your free expression of opinion. I have urged you to express your views without restraint, and I am glad that one, at least, has shown his willingness to do so. If what Murphy says is true, I confess it is a new fact to me. Now, will you please be a little more definite. What do bad boys " amount to " out of school hours more than good boys ? James Murphy. "Why, sir, good boys are afraid of a little fun, and — and — they don't know how to have any fun, any way. Edward Williams. They are n't so smart as bad boys. Richard Jones. It 's all well enough for girls to be good ; but with boys it is different. Sally Jones [with jealous indignation]. Girls are just as bad and smart as boys are ! [Loud laughter, in which the Doctor himself joins.] Dr. Dix. Our young friends of the Sixth Class show a spirit of competition worthy of a better cause, which, GOOD BOYS AND "FUN." 25 whether it be so candidly expressed in words or not, unfortunately prevails among many of larger growth. I trust they have not expressed the actual public senti- ment of Eoom No. 6. At all events, they have furnished us with a subject for our Talk this morning. "Good boys donH amount to anything out of school hours" because "they are afraid of a little fun." Now, whether that is a fact to be lamented or not de- pends on what you mean by " fun." If you mean mali- cious mischief, the inflicting of injury or annoyance upon others for the sake of the pleasure it may afford to the perpetrators, or if you mean indulgence in immoral or injurious pleasures, then I must admit that you are perfectly right when you say that good boys and girls are afraid of it. But is such fear a thing to be ashamed of ? There are two kinds of fear, that of the coward, and that of the hero. The bravest soldier is mortally afraid of one thing — disgrace. The noblest soul shrinks in terror from dishonor. "Without this kind of fear the highest kind of cour- age cannot exist. The man that boasts that he is not afraid of anybody or anything is most likely to be an arrant coward at heart. Everybody is, by this time, familiar with the story of the Xew York regiment re- cruited from the worst criminals and " toughs," — how it was confidently expected that they would show at least one virtue, that of desperate courage, and how, to everybody's amazement, — no, not everybody's, for there were some that already understood the true rela- tion between manhood and vice, — they proved as ut- terly worthless on the battlefield as in the camp, show- ing that the only danger they were not afraid of was that of shame and disgrace. One of the most valuable lessons our great war taught was, that the best men make the best and the bravest soldiers. He that is truest to his duty in peace will be the most certain to be true to his flag in war. So much for the good boy's fear. 26 CHARACTER BUILDING. " Good boys donH know how to have fun, any wayP Assuming for the present that the word fun has been correctly defined, I think you will all agree with me that it would be a most blessed thing for the world if all knowledge of it were forever lost. There are some kinds of knowledge which are a terrible loss rather than a gain. Many and many a youth knows altogether too much of certain things, and not enough of others, for his own happiness and good. There is a kind of " fun " that is anything but funny in its results, a kind that brings far more tears than laughter. This is the kind that the good boy neither knows nor wishes to know how to have. " Good boys are not so ' smart ' as bad boysJ' I presume that " smart " is here to be taken in its American sense, as meaning clever, able, energetic. If so, I confess that the idea expressed is a novel one to me. Does it require more cleverness, ability, energy, to do wrong than to do right ? Most people find it quite the reverse. Which is easier, to give a wrong solution of a mathematical problem or the right one ? Any one can answer a difficult question wrongly ; only the " smart " ones can answer it correctly. It is the same in the moral as in the intellectual field; to do right requires effort, power ; to do wrong generally re- quires neither. Joseph Cracldln. I have heard my father say that a rascal will work harder to steal a dollar than an honest man will to earn ten. Dr. Dix. A very wise and true saying it is, too. But the effort I am speaking of now is the effort of power, cleverness, ability, energy — not the effort of weakness and folly. The making of great efforts does not neces- sarily indicate power. A fool will work harder to ac- complish nothing than a wise man will to build a ship. Then, again, some kinds of effort, desperate as they may seem, are much easier to make than others. Your rascal GOOD BOYS AND "FUN." 27 would find it harder to make up his mind to honestly earn one of the honest man's ten dollars than to work day and night to steal a hundred. No, it is not true that evil requires more power than good. Men are wicked because it is easier to be wicked than it is to be good. Like the lightning, they follow the path of least resistance. Susan Perkins. "The way of the transgressor," I have always been told, " is hard." Dr. Dix. Ah, that comes later. Julia Taylor. Don't we often hear it said in praise of certain good people, that they find it easier to do right than wrong, — that it comes more natural to them ? Dr. Dix. I am glad you asked the question, for it suggests the most striking and admirable characteristic of all kinds of power, moral as well as intellectual and physical — the ease with which it accomjdishes its re- sults. The athlete does without apparent effort what might be an impossibility for the ordinary man. The genius dashes off in an hour a poem that we common mortals could not produce in a lifetime of effort. How have these good people you speak of attained their power for good ? By long-continued perseverance in the paths of virtue. That which you say " comes natural " to them is simply the second nature of habit. Jane Simpson, Is all virtue only second nature ? Are there- not some people who seem to have been born good ? Dr. Dix. Certainly some people inherit better natures than others, just as some .inherit more vigorous bodies and keener intellects. We are not all favored alike. The point I am urging is, that good requires more power than evil ; whether inherited or acquired is not now the question. This power may be inherited in vastly differ- ent degrees by different individuals ; but one great truth I want to impress upon you : Every virtuous life that has ever been lived has been a life of persistent effort. VI. VIRTUE IS STRENGTH: VICE IS WEAKNESS. Dr. Dix. Every virtuous life that has ever been lived has been a life of persistent effort. Let no one palliate his own self-indulgence and belit- tle another's self-denial by saying, " It is easy for him to be good, he could n't be bad if he tried." Vice per se is always easier than virtue. The apparent excep- tion I have already explained. If there are those of such exalted virtue that it seems well-nigh impossible for them to go wrong, it is because of their strength. Their inability is like that of the athlete who cannot act the invalid, the giant who cannot be a pygmy. I say again, vice per se is always easier than virtue : self- indulgence is always easier than self-denial ; to resist temptation is always more difficult than to yield ; to ut- ter the angry word or strike the angry blow requires far less power than to restrain the tongue or withhold the hand. Joseph Cracklin [pertly, looking about for applause]. Some men have found out that there was considerable power in one of Sullivan's angry blows. [Laughter, more or less restrained.] Dr. Dix [with cold displeasure"]. We have been speaking of " smartness," and we have thus far used the word in its colloquial sense. When correctly used, how- ever, it has for one of its meanings shallow aggressive- ness of speech or manner, with the added notion of im- pertinence. I think your attempted witticism, Cracklin, and more particularly your manner of making it, was a very good illustration of that kind of smartness. It was VIRTUE IS STRENGTH: VICE IS WEAKNESS. 29 shallow, because it betrayed a total failure to compre- hend the subject we were discussing; and, in fact, had not the slightest bearing upon it. We were speaking of a power far greater than that of a puny arm of flesh and bone, even that of the notorkms bully you named. It was impertinent, that is, not pertinent, for the same iv;ison. It was aggressive — not in respectfully ex- pressing honest dissent, which would have been proper and welcome — but in interrupting our discussion for the mere sake of displaying your wit. Joseph Cracklin. I beg your pardon. Dr. Dix. That is " smart " in the colloquial sense, Cracklin. It is right, and therefore strong. The other was wrong and therefore weak. We will let the one offset the other. And now let us return from the di- gression. Virtue is a constant resistance to force, which tends to draw the soul to its ruin ; vice is the simple, passive yielding to that force. The universal experience of mankind has led to the comparison of virtue to an as- cent hard to climb, and of vice to a descent down which it is easy to sink. What does Virgil say on this sub- ject, Miss Perkins ? Susan Perkins. " Fact/ is descensus Averno ; seel re- vocare gradum, — hoc opus, hie labor est." 1 Jonathan Tower. But simply because virtue is a climbing and vice a sinking, I don't see how it follows that the good are necessarily cleverer or more power- ful. I happen to know some clever people who are not regarded as very good, and I also know some very good people who seem to me rather weak than strong. Dr. Dix. You have evidently misunderstood me. Perhaps you thought I was speaking of persons, when, in reality, I was speaking of actions. Jonathan Tower. Pardon me, Dr. Dix, I have sup- 1 The descent to Avernus is easy ; but to return, — this is the diffi- culty, this the task. 30 CHARACTER BUILDING. posed from the beginning that the subject was one of persons. I thought the very question we were dis- cussing was, whether, as Williams expressed it, " bad boys are smarter than good boys." Dr. Dlx. Not precisely. Virtue and vice is the sub- ject we are discussing. I asked at the outset whether it requires more power or cleverness to do wrong than to do right, and Virgil's famous epigram, quoted just before you spoke, treats of actions, not of persons. Jonathan Tower. I cannot understand the essential difference between speaking of actions and speaking of actors. Does not either word imply the other ? Dr. Dlx. There is a very essential difference, my boy, between speaking of an action and speaking of the actor. Though, as you say, one implies the other, yet I should not necessarily pronounce one good or bad, weak or strong, because the other is. We are told that one may hate sin, but love the sinner. Wise people very often do foolish things, and foolish people, wise ones. So, though I may say with perfect truth that all evil is weakness and folly, and that all good is strength and wisdom, I could not say with truth that all good men are in all respects strong and wise, or that all bad men are in all respects weak and foolish. History is full of famous wicked men, and we all know plenty of good souls, strong and wise only in their goodness. In general, however, it is fair to presume that among the doers of wise things there are more wise men than among the doers of foolish things, and vice versa. From this presumption alone I should feel perfectly safe in declaring that by far the larger share of the world's in- tellect and power is arrayed on the side of virtue. And when we look abroad we find that universal testimony confirms the deduction. The most intelligent and pow- erful nations are, on the whole, the most virtuous. Charles Fox. I have read that criminals are, as a class, men of a very low order of intellect. VIRTUE IS STRENGTH: VICE IS WEAKNESS. 31 D?\ Dlx. A state prison warden of many years' ex- perience once told me that the most intellectual prisoner that had ever been under his charge was distinguished, not for any special breadth or depth of mental power, but simply for an intense keenness of cunning, which operated in the narrow circle of first defrauding his victims, and then attempting to outwit his keepers. Considered by itself, there is a wonderful amount of in- genuity displayed in the invention of instruments and other aids to the commission of crime ; but how utterly insignificant it appears, both in quantity and quality, when compared with that employed for the benefit of mankind ! Of course, the single instance mentioned by the warden would not prove a universal rule ; but it is safe to say that there is some fatal deficiency in the intel- lectual as well as in the moral make-up of every thor- oughly bad man. In the conflict between good and evil that is ever in progress, it is a most fortunate thing for us all that the enormous preponderance of intellect and power is on the side of good. It is to this that we owe the practically perfect safety with which we go unarmed and unattended from ocean to ocean. The bad are everywhere, and fain would make us their victims ; but the strong right arm and the vigilant eye of justice-loving humanity are ever about us, and with so mighty a champion, we look upon evil lurking in its dark caves and feel no fear. Archibald Watson. Men are robbed and murdered sometimes. Dr. Dix. Alas, yes. We rarely take up a newspaper without seeing accounts of thefts, robberies, and mur- derous outrages. It is not that evil is not mighty and prevalent, but that good is vastly more mighty and vastly more prevalent. So great is the difference that, as I said, Ave have practically no fears for ourselves or for our friends. So little, as a rule, do we actually 32 CHARACTER BUILDING. suffer of wrong from our fellow-men, so little do we suffer from the combined efforts of all the intellect and power of the wicked, that, in order to complain at all, we pour out our bitter bewailings upon some petty three-penny tax or other that we feel to be unjust ! Think of it, scholars ! Think what might be the con- dition of the world to-day if evil were actually more clever and strong than good ! What would become of our asylums, hospitals, and life-saving stations ; our schools, churches, and libraries ? What would become of veneration for the aged, of respect and homage to woman, and of the almost universal value placed upon sacred human life ? In short, what would become of the law and order, national and international, which protects not only the humblest subject or citizen in his rights, but the feeblest state in its independence ? Frank Williams. Dr. Dix, when I said that good boys were not so smart as bad boys, I was n't talking of men, I was talking of boys. Dr. Dix. And, pray, what should make a difference ? The proverb says, " The boy is father of the man." Our other proverb, " There is no rule without excep- tions," applies here, of course ; but you will find it to be generally the case that the bad men of to-day are the bad boys of twenty years ago, and vice versa. VII. MORE ABOUT GOOD BOYS AND "FUN." Dr. Dix. One of the specifications in the recent indictment of the typical good boy was, that he " is afraid of a little fun," and another was that " he does n't know how to have fun, any way." Defining fun as malicious mischief, or as injurious pleasure, we admit both specifications, with no palliat- ing circumstances. But if you mean by fun pure, honest enjoyment of the pleasures so lavishly given us to enjoy, we deny both specifications. An indispensable requisite to the highest enjoyment is a healthy, natural condition of mind and body. You have all heard of the miserable dyspeptic who finds no pleasure in the most luxurious table, and of the healthy hunger which finds a sweet morsel in a dry crust. The principle applies to all kinds and conditions of real enjoyment. Thomas Dunn. You speak of real enjoyment ; do you mean to imply that there is none in what are called forbidden pleasures — that wickedness actually renders men incapable of real enjoyment ? Dr. Dix. I mean that forbidden pleasures always entail more pain in the end than pleasure. So, if we strike the balance, or get what I may call the algebraic sum, it is nothing — less than nothing. I mean that every sinful indulgence diminishes the power of enjoy- ing even the forbidden pleasure itself, until at last the power of enjoyment of the good or the bad may be utterly lost. 34 CHARACTER BUILDING. The opium-eater always secures the greatest effect from his first dose, because his nerve-system is then in its most vigorous condition, and therefore most capable of responding to the stimulant. His next dose must be larger to produce an equal effect upon his impaired susceptibility. • Thomas Dunn. You are speaking now of an indul- gence which we all know to be injurious. Are there not immoral indulgences which are not necessarily inju- rious, — that is, I mean, to the health ? Dr. Dix. Do you know of any such ? Thomas Dunn. I know a good many that are called immoral, — going to the theatre, for instance, or dancing. Dr. Dix. I cannot see how anything that is not inju- rious to the mind, body, or heart can be immoral. If drinking wine and smoking cigarettes were not injuri- ous, they would not be sinful ; if malicious pranks upon our fellow-pupils were not injurious, both to them and much more so to ourselves, — for health of body is not the only or the most important kind of health, — they would not be forbidden pleasures. Henry Phillips. You just remarked, Dr. Dix, that health of body is not the most important kind of health. Dr. Dix. I did. Henry Phillips. Is not health of body the foundation of mental and moral health ? and is not the foundation of anything the most important part ? Dr. Dix. The foundation is a necessary part, but not the most important. That which rests on the founda- tion, that for the sake of which the foundation exists, is the most important. As to whether physical health is the foundation of mental and moral health, we say, on general principles, that if one member of an organism suffers all will suffer. The mind suffers with the body, the body with the mind, and, if the law is true, the heart must suffer with both. MORE ABOUT GOOD BOYS AND "FUN." 35 Louisa Thompson. It does not seem to me that the law can be true. Have not some of the most famous minds been found in inferior, weakly, and diseased bodies, from old iEsop down to George Eliot ? Julia Taylor. And do we not often hear of poor suffering invalids who show the best and noblest hearts ? Dr. Dix. Yes, all that is true. Still such apparent exceptions neither prove nor disprove the law. It can never be known whether those famous intellects were really strengthened or brightened by physical defects and sufferings. Disease often stimulates the faculties to abnormal but short-lived brilliancy ; but is that real strength ? "We do not look upon the maniacal strength which fever sometimes gives as real strength; cer- tainly not as we look upon the substantial and enduring strength of health. Some physiologists regard that which we call genius as nothing more nor less than a form of brain disease. If only the physically feeble were intellectually and morally strong, the case would be different ; but the truth is, that the majority of the world's leaders in great moral reforms as well as in intellectual achieve- ments have been blessed with bodily health and vigor, have had the mens sana in corpore sano. 1 As to the saintly invalids of whom Miss Taylor spoke, we have all known of them ; of all mankind they are most deserving of love, tender sympathy, and admira- tion : they prove to us that disease may exert a most benign influence upon men, that "as gold is tried by fire, so the heart is tried by pain : " they show us what lessons of heroic patience and sweet resignation may be learned by physical suffering. Yet who knows that the hearts even of these sainted sufferers might not have throbbed with still stronger love if the blood that vital- ized them had been richer and warmer ? Do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. For no con- 1 A sound mind in a sound body. 36 CHARACTER BUILDING. sideration would I disparage the merits of any of my fellow-men, — least of all those who most deserve our sympathy and appreciation ; nay, our emulation. It is their fate to suffer rather than to do, and to suffer with godlike patience and fortitude is even nobler than to achieve with godlike power ; in its influence upon other hearts and lives, even its achievements may be more beneficent. But, though disease may sometimes exert a most holy influence, it is not only never to be sought, but it is always to be avoided by every means in our power, — except the violation of a higher duty. Body, mind, and heart are all stronger, better qualified to do their duty, in health than in disease. And, to return to the subject with which we began this morning's Talk, one of our duties is to enjoy. We exist not only to make others happy, but to be happy ourselves. Both happiness and misery are contagious. Other things being equal, our happiness is in propor- tion to our health ; and again, other things being equal, our health is in proportion to our goodness, — that is, as I have already shown, in proportion as we obey the laws of our being. Jonathan Tower. Dr. Dix, what do you mean by " other things being equal " ? Dr. Dix. By other things, I mean in the one case character and external circumstances, and in the other natural constitution and external circumstances. Thus, the bedridden invalid may sing with joy, while the vig- orous criminal who never suffered a day's illness endures mental tortures that only he and such as he knows ; or while the mother, herself in perfect health perhaps, is weeping for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. Thus also one with inherited dis- ease, or one placed in circumstances beyond his control, or one heroically discharging his duty, may to the very best of his ability obey the laws of his being, and yet MORE ABOUT GOOD BOYS AND "FUN:' 37 be sick unto death ; while another who cares little for law or duty may live on in comparative health. But, " other things being equal," both health and hap- piness are in exact proportion to goodness. " The good boy does ?i't know how to have fun " ? I tell you he is the only one who does know how to have it. Compare his cheek ruddy, his eye bright, his laugh loud and ringing, his pulses bounding, from his faithful obe- dience to nature's laws ; his brow open and unclouded, his heart loving, light, and hopeful, from his obedience to the law of right, — compare these with the cheek pallid, the eye listless, the blood vitiated and sluggish, from nature's laws violated; the heart heavy, filled with dull, aching discontent, from the ever-living sense of wrongs done in the past and unrepented in the present, — compare all these, I say, and then judge who it is that "knows how to have fun." VIII. CLEVERNESS AND COURAGE. Helen Sawyer. Dr. Dix, I think we are all convinced that in reality the intelligence, power, and courage of the world are on the side of virtue rather than vice ; and yet it seems to me that it is very common for even older people than we are to look upon good people as rather slow and uninteresting, and upon bad people — at least somewhat bad people — as — as — Dr. Dix. As fast and interesting ? Helen Sawyer. As more clever, and enterprising, and courageous, and all that. Dr. Dix. Among many unthinking people no doubt such an impression prevails, — only, however, among those who know very little of what real goodness is. If there is any cause for it, aside from perversity of heart and judgment, it must consist in certain advan- tages which the unscrupulous possess over those who are restrained by their sense of right and wrong. To illustrate: Witty things may be said on certain occa- sions which would be wrong on account of their unkind- ness, irreverence, impropriety, or perhaps their profan- ity. A good man would not say them even if they came unbidden into his mind ; a bad man would. There are persons who cannot be witty or brilliant without being at the same time cruel, immodest, or profane. A very cheap kind of wit and brilliancy, is it not ? Again, keen, shrewd, brilliant acts may be performed which would be wrong on account of their unkindness or positive dishonesty. A good man would not perform them, not because he lacks the shrewdness or the bril- CLEVERNESS AND COURAGE. 39 liancy, — he may possess these qualities or he may not ; a bad man would not hesitate, if he thought of them, and thus he might gain a reputation for " smartness " and enterprise which his honest, honorable neighbor must needs forego. Scholars, do you know any such clever men in public or in private life ? Do you envy the reputation they have gained ? How do you sup- pose they are regarded in the secret hearts even of those who profess to admire them ? With contempt, — yes, even by those who applaud the loudest. Many and many a time I have seen men laughing at the wicked drollery or cunning of some smart buffoon or scapegrace. Did he fondly imagine that he was winning their real ad- miration ? Perhaps he did not care, so long as he won their noisy applause ; but the fact is, there was not one of them who did not despise him in his inmost heart, not one of them who would not feel degraded by hav- ing him at his own table or fireside. Archibald Watson. Those of his own kind would n't feel so, would they ? Dr. Dix. I believe that even those of his own kind, congenial spirits, would, way down deep, feel a contempt for him, as well as for themselves for being of his kind. There is implanted somewhere in every human heart an unconquerable contempt for evil and admiration for good. Few men are so abandoned that they do not honestly wish their children to follow a path different from their own. There are times in the lives of all bad ■ men when this inner sense awakens, and they feel the impulse to escape from their degradation ; to be some- thing like the good and the noble, whom they cannot but admire. In this inner sense, which, I believe, never utterly dies, lies the germ of hope for every living soul. For a reason similar to that I have given, another common impression among the unthinking is that the good are apt to be wanting in hardy courage. A bad man will fight — sometimes, not always — when a good 40 CHARACTER BUILDING. man will not simply because his conscience will not let him. Fighting, as a test of courage, is apt to be greatly overestimated. There are few men, either good or bad, who cannot or will not fight on occasion. The whole human race has descended from a fighting ancestry. Every war has demonstrated this fact ; and how the best compare with the worst, when the occasion renders fighting necessary and therefore justifiable, the story of the New York regiment to which I have already alluded most strikingly illustrates. When fighting is neither necessary nor right, it generally requires more real cour- age to resist the impulse to fight than to yield to it, inasmuch as it is harder for most men to endure ridi- cule, the suspicion of cowardice, or the smarting sense of wrong unavenged, than to endure physical pain and danger. This is not always true, of course. We must admit that there are some physical cowards who refuse to fight, not because they think it wrong, but because they are afraid of the bullet, or, among the more vul- gar, of the bloody nose. That is a kind of peaceable- ness which is not goodness. It is even worse than the coinbativeness of the wicked man ; for physical courage is a virtue, — one of a low order, it is true, when unat- tended by other virtues, one which we share with the brute creation, but Still a virtue, — whereas cowardice, whether physical or moral, is not only no virtue, but one of the most justly despised of all despicable traits. If, then, there is a boy among you who, on being in- sulted, refuses to fight, before you stigmatize him as a coward, satisfy yourselves why he refuses. If it is be- cause it is against his conscience, admire him, honor him, crown him with the olive wreath of a victor ; for he is a conqueror of the most heroic type, he is greater than one that taketh a city. If, on the other hand, it is certain — but how can you know ? — that it is only because he is afraid of a black eye or a bloody nose, why, then you are at liberty to despise him, or rathei CLEVERNESS AND COURAGE. 41 his cowardice, a little more even than you despise the cowardice of the bully who insulted him. Charles Fox. Why do you say cowardice of the bully who insulted him ? Dr. Dix. Because a bully is almost always a cow- ard. In the case supposed he is certain to be one. It requires not even physical courage to insult one who will not resent the insult. Xow, boys, don't look so complacently warlike. I have not been pronouncing or even hinting a eulogy upon the " manly art." I said distinctly that the good boy will not tight unless he is absolutely compelled ; but it is n't because he is afraid to fight : the only thing he is afraid of is wrong. And, girls, don't look so indif- ferent and uninterested. There are more ways of fight- ing than with the fists — there are other wounds than those of the body. Good people are generally terribly shocked at a desperate set-to between two fiery-tem- pered, brawny-armed fellows, their eyes glaring, their breasts heaving, their muscles straining, their blood, perhaps, flowing. And well they may be shocked, — it is a disgraceful scene, worthy only of game-cocks and bull-dogs, a scene that rational beings should be ashamed of, as they would be ashamed of wallowing in the mud, grubbing their food out of the gutter, or of any other act of pure bestiality. But, brutal as it is, and disgust- ing to all persons of true refinement, there are other ways of fighting that do not bring into play even the virtues of brute courage and fortitude, ways meaner and more contemptible, if less brutish. Better be bru- tish than fiendish. Helen Mar. Are those the ways girls fight ? Dr. Dix [joining in the general laughter]. Did I seem to imply that ? If I did, I most sincerely beg your pardon. Those ways of fighting are not confined to any sex, class, or age. I am happy to believe we have as little of them in this school as in any civilized community of equal number. 42 CHARACTER BUILDING. But the time approaches to engage in an entirely different kind of contest, one neither mean nor brutal, but most honorable and ennobling. Helen Mar. Before the tocsin sounds for that strug- gle, may I ask whether the desire for victory, which must be the chief motive in all contests, is not in itself purely selfish ? The expressions "magnanimous foe," " generous rivalry," and the like, which we so often hear, have always seemed to me somewhat paradoxical. Even in our studies, the desire to stand first involves the desire that some one else shall stand second. How can that justly be called magnanimous or generous ? Dr. Dlx. The question does you great credit, Miss Mar. But we are none of us accountable for the pos- session or lack of natural endowments. To make the best use of those we possess is a solemn obligation which must be evident to all. If we outstrip others in the race, it is strong presumptive evidence that we are faithfully fulfilling that solemn obligation, and we are justly en- titled to the satisfaction which always rewards the performance of duty. This is the only satisfaction re- sulting from victory which is really magnanimous or generous. If we desire either that the endowments of others shall be inferior to our own, or that they shall neglect them for the sake of our triumph, we are not merely selfish, but actually malevolent. But the desire to do something better than has yet been done is neither selfish nor malevolent. It is grand, noble. It is the lever which has lifted the race of men throughout the generations of the past to higher and higher planes of being, and which will continue to lift them throughout the generations to come. IX. THE BATTLE. Dr. Dix. Scholars, it is not my intention to appro- priate any part of this short period to individual dis- cipline. The time is to be kept sacred to the purpose originally announced. One of the most effective means, however, of accomplishing that purpose is to take ad- vantage of passing occurrences in school life, and I shall begin with the very unpleasant occurrence of yes- terday. In last week's Talk I hoped I had impressed you all with not only the wickedness, but the vulgarity also, the low brutality, of pugilistic encounters. I learn this morning, however, that after school yesterday two young men, from whom I had every reason to expect better things, committed the very fault I had so recently con- demned. [Hisses, which the Doctor's raised hand in- stantly checks .] I can account for the unpleasant circumstance only in one of two ways : Either it was due to a deliberate defiance of my expressed opinions and sentiments, and in deliberate opposition to the influence I was trying to exert — Geoffrey Jenkins. Dr. Dix, I beg you will not think that. Archibald Watson. And I, too, Dr. Dix. I assure you it was not so. Dr. Dix. I am very glad to hear so much from you both. The only other supposition, then, I can enter- tain is, that our Talk suggested and actually led to your committing the offence which was its subject. 44 CHARACTER BUILDING. Although, as I have implied, your formal trial and pun- ishment must be reserved for another hour, yet you may, if you are willing, state whether this supposition is correct or not. Jenkins ? Geoffrey Jenkins. Well, it came about in this way : We got to talking after school about what you said about fighting. AVatson said he believed every fellow that was not a coward would fight if he were insulted. I told him I did n't believe anything of the sort. He insisted upon it, and said that I would fight myself if I were insulted badly enough. I said I would n't, and I was no coward either. He said he would like to see it tested. I said I could nH be insulted, any way. " Oh," said he, " so that 's the kind of fellow you are, is it ? " Well, this made me pretty mad ; but I kept quiet. I only explained that anybody who insulted me would be too low to be noticed. He said all that was very grand talk, but if the trial really came I would n't find it so easy as I thought. Well, the talk went on in that style, when all at once, before I knew what his game was — He may tell the rest. Dr. Dix. Go on, Watson. Archibald Watson [hanging his head]. I slapped him over the mouth. I only wanted to see if he was the saint and hero he pretended to be. Dr. Dix. And you, 'Jenkins ? Geoffrey Jenkins. My fist struck out before I could help it. He did it so quickly he did n't give me time to think. [Applause, which the Doctor does not check.'] Dr. Dix. And you, Watson, having satisfied your curiosity, having found out that he was n't " the saint and hero he pretended to be," took the blow in good part, laughed, and asked his pardon ? Archibald Watson [coloring with shame], N-no, sir. He hurt me a good deal, and — and I struck back, and — • Dr. Dix. Well, what then, Jenkins ? Geoffrey Jenkins. Then we had it. THE BATTLE. 45 Dr. Dix. Yes, your appearance indicates pretty plainly that you both "had it." [Laughter."] Your senseless quarrel is a fair type of quarrels in general. Very rarely are both sides equally to blame ; still more rarely is one side altogether blameless. Perhaps in the present instance one of the parties is as near an ap- proach to — Archibald Watson. Dr. Dix, may I say something more ? Dr. Dix. Go on. Archibald Watson. I have been thinking about the affair ever since it occurred, and I want to say that I was entirely to blame [ Voices. " Yes." " That 's true."] — and I want to ask his pardon here and now. [Applause.^ Geoffrey Jenkins. No. I was partly to blame. [Voices. u yr Q j » u j$ | »-j yes, I ought to have carried out my boast. Archibald Watson. But he couldn't. I did n't give him time to think. His fist struck out almost of its own accord. He couldn't help it. And he served me right, any way. [Applause.] Geoffrey Jenkins. It is not quite true about my not being able to help it. A sort of half-thought flashed through my mind, "Xow is the time to prove my boast- ing true. Now is the time to do what Dr. Dix talked about ; " — but with it came the other thought, " I 'd like to do so well enough; but I 'd rather show him that he can't slap my mouth without getting his own slapped a good deal harder," — and I want to ask his pardon for that. Archibald Watson. Well, any way, I was the most to blame. Was n't I, Dr. Dix ? Dr. Dix. Your schoolmates evidently think you were ; and, since you ask, I have no hesitation in pro- nouncing you very much the more to blame. According to the account, in which you both agree, you were the entirely unprovoked aggressor. 46 CHARACTER BUILDING. Archibald Watson. And he was not at all to blame, was he ? Dr. Dix. That does not concern you so much as it concerns him. He insists upon it that he was. Well, boys, in spite of me and my plans, you seem to have pretty nearly settled the whole affair between your- selves. So I will say what little remains to be said about it now. You were both to blame, though in very different degrees : one of you for his uncalled-for, his utterly unjustifiable insult to his friend and school- mate ; and the other for not yielding to the noble im- pulse of his higher nature, which, though feeble and momentary, he acknowledges he felt. Both of you are grievously to blame for the unrestrained rage to which you afterwards gave way. The actual physical pain you inflicted upon each other was the least part of your offence, and I will allow it to stand for a part of your punishment. Not only this, but so far as that physical pain cleared away the angry clouds from your brows and from your hearts, and led you to the magnanimous confessions you have publicly made this morning, I con- sider it a positive good. It certainly was far better than an outward peace preserved at the cost of bitter wrath and hatred rankling in secret. So now you may shake hands in token of your mutual forgiveness and the renewal of a friendship which, I hope, will be strengthened by the wrench it has re- ceived. We will consider the purely personal part of this discussion at an end. X. WARS AND HUMORS OF WARS. Dr. Dix. When I began these Talks, I was not so sanguine as to expect that the wrong pointed out would thenceforth be invariably shunned. If evil were so easily abolished and good so easily established, the world would have reached perfection ages ago, and the occupation of those who seek to do good, like Othello's, would be gone. But character is not spoken into existence by the utterance of a few words, as were the palaces of the " Arabian Nights " by the magician's voice. It is formed by long, slow processes. It grows, like a tree, cell by cell, fibre by fibre, branch by branch; it is builded, stone by stone, like real palaces whose foundations are on the solid earth. But if it cannot be spoken into ex- istence, neither can it be destroyed in an instant, by the magician's voice. Once builded, it is firm and solid " from turret to foundation stone." It is even firmer and more solid than any material palace or castle ; for no enemy can batter down its walls, no treacherous torch can reduce it to a heap of ruins. No hand but the owner's can harm or deface it. I expect no magical results from these appeals. I hope and expect something better than magic, — pro- gress towards the good and the true, which shall be real progress, slow though it may be. The incident of yesterday neither surprised nor dis- heartened me. Our Talk against fighting did not pre- vent an actual fight from taking place within a week. According to the account given by the participants, it 48 CHARACTER BUILDING. even suggested and in a certain way induced it. Did the Talk then do no good ? Nay, did it not do positive harm ? I trow not. I will not be over-anxious ; for when the physician attempts to cure a disease, he some- times finds its peculiar symptoms aggravated, rather than reduced, by his first treatment : but that does not trouble him ; he knows that he must awaken the enemy before he can drive him out. I do not expect that talking will altogether prevent fights and quarrels in the future ; but, scholars, is it too much to hope that it will make them fewer, less bitter, and sooner mended ? that it will make them more odious in your eyes, and make peace, harmony, and love more beautiful ? I have already characterized pugilistic encounters as low, vulgar, and brutal. Of all forms of contention among human beings, they seem to me the most so. I cannot perceive any respect in which man-fights or boy- fights of this kind differ essentially from dog-fights, except that, as a general rule, the dog exhibits more desperate pluck and fortitude than the man. Very few men would allow themselves to be torn limb from limb rather than relinquish their desperate grip on the ad- versary, as many a dog has done. There is sublimity as well as terror in the spectacle of armies battling with each other amid the roaring of artillery, the flashing and clashing of steel, and the thundering, rushing tread of armed hosts. Even the spectacle of a pair of duellists, calmly facing each other with their deadly weapons, horrible indeed though it be, cannot inspire the utter disgust and loathing in the civilized mind that it feels at the sight of a pair of human beings, insane with rage, doing their utmost to pound the " divine semblance " out of each other's faces with their fists. The human hand is a noble and beautiful object. Whether it wield the author's pen, the artist's pencil, WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS. 49 or the artificer's tool ; whether it invoke the soul of music, thrill the heart of friendship or love with its warm grasp, or sway multitudes with its wide sweep, the human hand is a noble and beautiful object to con- template ; — but the human fist ! faugh ! how does it differ from a hammer or a club, except that it is not so heavy, hard, or deadly ? As a weapon it is inferior to almost any other that nature has provided. Camivora have terrible teeth and claws ; the larger herbivora have horns and hoofs ; other animals are armed with swords, arrows, or stings, — each kind showing that in its com- bats it only carries out the design of nature. Man was made for nobler things than fighting with his fists or with less vulgar weapons. And now I wish you to notice how, as we ascend in the scale of being, we find the beastly instinct of fight- ing less and less developed. Savage man, in all ages and in all countries, is continually at war with his fel- low-savage. The barbarian enjoys longer or shorter intervals of peace according to his degree of advance- ment beyond savagery ; while civilized man frequently lives through entire generations without knowing war save in history. As the world advances in civilization we see the tendency still more strikingly shown. In ancient times war seems to have been the chief occupa- tion of even the most civilized nations. The wonder is that, with such continual cutting and slashing at one another, such endless pillaging and burning, the human race, with the works of its hands, was not altogether exterminated. Thomas Dunn. Their weapons were not so effective as those of modern times. Dr. Dix. True. If they had been as effective, wars could not have been protracted through whole genera- tions, as they sometimes were. The superiority of mod- ern arms is often assigned as the reason why there is less fighting than formerly. Doubtless this is one great 50 CHARACTER BUILDING. reason ; but another and more adequate explanation is the improved moral and intellectual status of modern man over his ancient progenitor. As his intellect ad- vances, he devises more and more effective means of destroying life ; but meanwhile his heart and soul keep pace with his intellect, and hence his disposition to make wanton use of his deadly inventions diminishes, and his disposition to settle his differences by arbitra- tion increases. Florence Hill. Do you suppose the time will come when war will be entirely unknown, when all disagree- ments between nations will be settled by arbitration ? Dr. Dix. The civilized part of the world have the best of reasons for looking forward to such a time. It is a point in perfection towards which civilized man is slowly but surely advancing. Florence Hill. That will be the time when men shall " beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks." Dr. Dix. Try to imagine such a golden age, scholars. No repetition possible of such horrors as your fathers and mothers witnessed only a short quarter-century ago ; no such evils as exist even in the peaceful to-day ; no millions of treasure wasted in the making of arms and munitions and in the building of fortifications ; no hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men taken from the ranks of useful labor to consume in idleness the products of others' industry ! Florence Hill. Do you believe, Dr. Dix, that such an age will actually come ? Dr. Dix. Why should I not ? The history, philoso- phy, and faith of mankind all point to that glorious consummation. Geovt/e Williams. And yet when it comes there will be something lost to the world. Dr. Dix. Possibly. The proverb says, " There is no great gain without some small loss." What do you think will be lost ? WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS. 51 George Williams. Well, it seems to me such an age must be exceedingly tame. There will be no grand military heroes to admire, — no Grants, nor Shermans, nor Sheridans, nor Custers, nor Stonewall Jacksons. In private life there will be no father nor brother who has shown his courage and patriotism by going to the wars. Florence Hill. Among all the horrors and sacrifices of our great war, did it not have at least one great and good effect ? Did it not make men and women sud- denly forget their selfishness and their avarice, and be- come devoted patriots ? Dr. Dix. We will reply next Wednesday. XI. WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL FIGHT. Dr. Dix. If there were no wars, there would cer- tainly be no grand military heroes, no soldier fathers, brothers, husbands, or lovers to admire and be proud of — or to 'mourn. But Peace has its heroes as well as War. There is other glory than that of the battlefield. The most he- roic bravery may be shown in saving life as well as in destroying it. Does a young man weary of the taine- ness of peace, and thirst for the glory that heroic self- sacrifice brings ? There is no lack of opportunity ; the bravest soldier that ever charged battery, or leaped over parapet, was no braver than the physician or the nurse who remains unflinchingly at the post of duty, while others are fleeing from the pestilence that wasteth at noonday ; or the fireman who dares wounds and death more terrible than those from the bullet or the bayonet ; or the engineer who saves his train at the cost of his own life ; or the ship captain who will not leave his sinking wreck until all others are saved, from the cabin passenger to the miserable stowaway ; or the lifeboat- man ; or any one else who flings himself into the breach at the trumpet-call of duty, — not, mark you, to shoot and cut and thrust and stab, not to kill, but to save ! Xo opportunity for heroism when wars shall have been banished from earth ? Think of Father Dam ien ! Susan Perkins. Can there really be such a thing as a righteous war ? Dr. Dix. Most people think so. We Americans look upon all our great wars as righteous, at least on one side. WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL FIGHT. 53 Susan Perkins. And I suppose those who fought on the other side thought the same for their side ? Dr. Dix. Unquestionably. Susan Perkins. But both sides couldn't be in the right. Dr. Dix. That seems evident. Susan Perkins. Does the side that is in the right always win the victory, as we Americans have always done ? Dr. Dix [smiling~\. " We Americans " have not al- ways been victorious ; in our last war half of us were defeated. Now let me ask you a question : If millions of civilized people think one thing right, and millions of other civilized people think just the opposite, who is to decide which is really the right '.' Susan Perkins. Why, I suppose the stronger party will decide. Dr. Dix. When strength has been appealed to, strength has always decided ; and the world has gener- ally concurred in the decision. " Might makes right." Susan Perkins. But it is n't always really true, is it, that might makes right ? Dr. Dir. By no means. But in purely political wars, not involving any great moral question, it has always been so regarded. The party that revolted against the existing form of government, if successful, were " glo- rious revolutionists ; " if defeated, they were " traitors and rebels." Susan Perkins. I don't understand how the time can ever come when it will be otherwise. Dr. Dix. As I said, the nations are growing more intelligent and more humane. The time was when it was thought not only just, but perfectly rational, to de- cide by a mortal combat between private individuals which of them was in the right. The world has out- grown this palpable absurdity. Why should it not in time grow intelligent enough to perceive that a national 54 CHARACTER BUILDING. combat is no more rational a criterion of right and jus- tice than a private combat is ? Susan .Perkins. Then, if the stronger nation is not to decide, who will ? Dr. Dix. If what are called the " Laws of iSTations " are not definite enough in themselves to settle a disa- greement between two nations or two parts of the same nation, it will, by common consent, be referred to a commission of other friendly powers. This is what we mean by arbitration. What is the most famous instance of the sort that you know of ? Susan Perkins. The commission that sat at Geneva on the Alabama Claims. Dr. Dix. Yes. Undoubtedly it prevented what, less than a century ago, would have been a long and bloody war. Susan Perkins. That might always have been done, might it not ? Dr. Dix. Certainly, if only the parties interested had agreed to it. Susan Perkins. Then I don't understand how any war that was ever fought can be called a righteous war. Dr. Dix. Simply because it " takes two to make a bargain." It is not enough for one side to be willing to appeal to arbitration. If one side will not assent to this peaceable mode of settlement, then nothing re- mains for the other side but to fight or submit to what it considers wrong. As the world advances, the general sentiment of humanity will grow so strong in favor of arbitration, and its indignation at the barbarous crim- inality of forcing a war will be so overpowering, that no nation will dare to brave it. Wars will go out of fashion as duels have already gone. Florence Hill. Dr. Dix, you spoke of one nation be- ing forced to fight or submit to wrong. Are we not taught that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong ? WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL FIGHT. 55 Dr. Dix. Better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, always, either for a man or for a nation. But, though we may rightfully submit to wrong in our own persons, we have no right to allow others to suffer through our neglect. Especially is it our duty to see that our be- loved country suffers no wrong from its enemies that we can prevent by any personal sacrifice ; to see that future generations inherit no burden of injustice or oppression from our cowardice or neglect of duty. It is because our fathers did their duty in this respect so nobly and heroically that we are now enjoying our inalienable rights to liberty and the pursuit of happi- ness, with no earthly power to disturb us or make us afraid. Charles Fox. Is it ever right to fight except as a soldier for one's country '.' Dr. Dix. "Ever" is a very comprehensive word. I can truly say that I never saw the time in my own life when I thought it was right for me, and I hope you will never see the day when it will be right for you. Charles Fox. But it mny come, may it not? Dr. Dix [laughing']. How natural it is for a boy to love to talk about fighting ! If you should ever see as much of it as my comrades and I saw during the war. perhaps it will not seem so fascinating to you. Man is a combative animal ; but he is generally pretty easily satisfied: a few weeks in the hospital are likely to cure him entirely. Well, since you insist upon it, I believe I made the statement a while ago that the good boy will not fight unless he is absolutely compelled. That implies that there may be circumstances when it is not only not wrong, but positively his duty to fight. Fighting is not wrong in itself: it is the hatred, cru- elty, injustice, selfishness, pride, vanity, greed, or un- reasoning anger that so often accompanies fighting that is wrong. 56 CHARACTER BUILDING. Jonathan Tower. You said a good boy will not fight unless he is absolutely compelled. Even a coward will fight then. I have read that the most timid animals sometimes defend themselves fiercely when driven to desperation. Dr. Dix. The time when the coward will fight may be the very time when the good and really brave boy will not. Charles Fox. Dr. Dix, will you please say when you think it would be right to fight, except as a soldier for your country ? Dr. Dix. You seem to think this is one of those oc- casions. [Laughter. ,] You seem most desperately deter- mined to carry your point, at all events. Well, I will ask you to suppose a case. Charles Fox. If you should be walking with your mother or sister, and a ruffian should attack her. Dr. Dix. That would be a trying situation, indeed ! The boy or man that would not fight then would be rather a sorry specimen of humanity. [More seriously.'] And, scholars, don't you think the case supposed is an ad- mirable illustration of the situation in which the loyal, patriotic citizen feels himself when his mother country is attacked by ruffians ? Many Voices [heartily']. Yes, sir. Dr. Dix. Yes. There is a very close kinship between the instinct of patriotism in the noble soul and filial affection and faithfulness. Well, you may suppose other cases. Henry Jones. When you see a big fellow abusing a little one [glancing resentfully "t Joseph Cracklin]. Joseph Cracklin. Sometimes little fellows deserve to be punished for their insolence. Dr. Dix [with keen significance']. A fellow with a big soul as well as a big body never recognizes " inso- lence" in a little fellow. Henry Jones. And I only told him he was a — WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL F]GHT. 57 Dr. Dix. And a little fellow with a big soul never tries to shield insolence with his little body. But enough of this. Go on with your cases. Frank Williams. If a burglar should break into your house. James Murphy. If a robber should attack you in the street. Dr. Dl.r. With all due respect to your coolness and courage, boys, I think it scarcely probable that many of you will enjoy such opportunities to display those ad- mirable qualities, however much you may covet them. Never mind doubling up your fists now, — there's no immediate danger that I can see. [Laughter. | Without reference to any incident that has occurred among us, let me remind you that there is a wide dif- ference between a blow struck in self-defence and one struck in mere revenge. And let me remind you, bm s. and girls too, that there is a kind of self-defence besides that against blows upon the right cheek. There are enemies within our own bosoms far more dangerous than any we are likely to encounter without. Against them the good boy and the good girl will fight with all the heroic chivalry they possess. Mary Bice. I understood you to justify self-defence, Dr. Dix. Are we not told that if any man smite us on the right cheek, we are to turn the other also ? Dr. Dix. I am not aware that I have as yet expressed any decided views on the subject of physical self-de- fence. We will talk further upon this subject next week. XII. WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL NOT FIGHT. Dr. Dix. Suppose that when men were struck upon the right cheek they always turned the other also, how would the great aggregate of righting and quarrelling the world over be affected ? Mary Rice. It would be very much diminished, of course. Florence Rill. I should say it would disappear alto- gether, if everybody acted on that principle, for nobody would strike in the first place. Dr. Dix. Well, suppose half the world were inclined to strike, but the other half were not inclined to return the blows. Thomas Dunn. I think the effects would be very different with different people. Some would no doubt be satisfied with the blow they had already given, and would have no disposition to repeat it. Dr. Dix. Do you think they would have no feeling besides that of satisfaction ? Thomas Dunn. They might think the blow was de- served, that no more than justice had been done, and they might suppose that the reason why it was not returned was because the other party viewed it in the same light. Dr. Dix. Even granting this to be the case (which, as human nature is constituted, would not be likely to occur very frequently), how would they probably regard such an exhibition of patient submission to justice? Thomas Dunn. They might admire it; that is, if they didn't despise what might seem a want of spirit. WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL XOT FIGHT. 59 Dr. Dix. But the supposition is that they regard the forbearance shown as due only to the sense of justice. Thomas Dunn. In that case, of course they couldn't but admire it. Dr. Dix. Don't you think it possible that they might even feel something like regret, — that they might wish they had shown a like forbearance ? Thomas Dunn. Some might feel so. Dr. Dix. A person of real magnanimity would, would he not ? Thomas Dunn. Yes, sir. Dr. Dix. And if he were not a person of magnanim- ity, would it matter very much to the other how he felt? Thomas Dunn. I suppose not. Dr. Dix. At all events, the quarrel would be stoj pe I. Thomas Dunn. It might be, in that case. But there are other people who, if they find they can abuse any- body with impunity, will keep on doing so. Dr. Dix. Do 3 t ou think there are many such ? Did you ever see an example ? Thomas Dunn. Indeed I have. He is known among schoolboys as a bully. Among grown-up people he has different names. I lived in a town once where there was a man who was always cheating the minister, be- cause he thought he was '"'too pious to quarrel." Dr. Dix. And did the minister submit without pro- test ? Thomas Dunn. I never heard of his protesting. All I know is that the same thing was going on when I left the town. Dr. Dix. "What do you think the minister ought to have done ? Thomas Dunn. I think he ought to have prosecuted the rascal for swindling. He ought to have done so for the sake of his family, if not for his own sake. Because he was smitten on his right cheek he had no right to 60 CHARACTER BUILDING. turn their left cheeks also. Because a man took away his coat he had do business to give him their cloaks, whatever he did with his own. Dr. Dix [coldly']. It seems to me you make a digres- sion for the sake of the opportunity to be caustic. We were speaking of quarrelling, not of prosecution in a court of justice. Thomas Dunn. Isn't prosecution a species of quar- relling ? Dr. Dix. A court of justice bears a relation to pri- vate individuals similar to that which a court of arbi- tration bears to nations. The legitimate purpose of both is the same : to prevent or settle quarrels and see that justice is done. So, in a legal prosecution of the man who wronged him and his family, your minister could not justly be charged with quarrelling. On the contrary, if he found that personal appeals to the man's conscience and generosity were of no avail, he should be credited with resorting to the only peaceable means of righting a wrong that lay within his power, arbitra- tion. Is it not possible, however, that the good man feared lest the remedy might prove worse than the evil, — lest, in short, it might prove more costly to go to law than to submit to the imposition ? Thomas Dunn. My uncle offered to pay all the costs if he would sue the man. Dr. Dix. Ah, there might be costs that your uncle could not pay. I know something of the relations be- tween country clergymen and their parishioners. Louisa Thompson. You called a court of justice a court of arbitration to prevent quarrels. In reality is there not more quarrelling there than almost anywhere else ? Is n't the prosecution itself generally one long quarrel between the lawyers ? Dr. Dl.r. We must admit that even lawyers are not In'" from human imperfections. [Laughter.'] There WHEN THE GOOD BOY WILL NOT FIGHT. ix. Xot necessarily, for the most trivial insult was often punished in this way, though it might excite onlv the laughter of all save the aggrieved party him- self. Charles Fox. You refer to the duel ? Dr. Dix. Yes. That was the only means of redress men once had for all offences which were too subtle in their nature for the clumsy hands of the law to lay hold upon. If we look back far enough in history, we shall find that there was no other redress even for theft. Be- tween that day and this, when such offences as libel and the " alienation of affection" are punishable by law, there is a wide gulf indeed ! If the improvement goes on, if the time ever comes when all things shall be esti- mated at their true value, and those offences which are in reality the worst shall meet with the severest penal- ties, the mere stealing of one's purse will stand lower 138 CHARACTER BUILDING. in the list than it stands to-day. The slaying of the body is not the only crime that is worse than robbery or libel ; the slaying of the soul is immeasurably worse than either. Is it not a singular commentary on the civil code that the chief offence attributed to the im- personation of all evil is rarely punishable by human laws ? They among men who most closely resemble that impersonation in their wickedness, they whose lives are devoted to the work of undermining virtue and purity in the souls of their fellow-men, are, so far as human laws are concerned, very often totally unwhipped of justice. Joseph Cracklln. Dr. Dix, do you believe there is such a being as the devil ? Dr. Dix. It matters not whether I do or not. Suffice it that there is a spirit of evil rampant among men, a moral gravitation which tends to draw their souls downward, as the earth draws their bodies downward. Against this power there is an inward force which tends to hold them erect. And as their bodies grow strong by continual resistance to the downward pull of earth, so may their souls grow strong and erect by their never- ending battle with evil. In what I said before this digression do not under- stand me to belittle the wickedness of theft. That there are still lower depths of wickedness does not diminish the depth of this. Its guilt is so obvious, so palpable, that though, as I said, it has not always been subject to legal penalty, there can never have been a time when it was not looked upon as a heinous offence. Helen Sawyer. The ancient Spartans are said to have encouraged and rewarded it. Dr. Dix. The ancient Spartans were an exceptional people even for the savage times in which they lived. They encouraged theft, not as a meritorious act in itself, but as affording opportunities for the exercise of the courage, skill, and address which they prized so highly. HONESTY. 139 If these virtues were lacking, as shown by failure in the attempt or by detection, both the attempt and the lack of virtues were punished together. From the very first the undisturbed possession of property must have been regarded by men in general as one of their inalienable rights. It has always been indispensable to their comfort, happiness, even life Without it, the most powerful incentive to industry and the exercise of skill would not exist. The rudest savage must always have looked upon it as the just reward of his labor. The bow and arrows he had made, the hut he had built with his own hands, were, as a matter of course, his very own ; and the attempt on the part of his fellow-savage to deprive him of them, with- out giving him a fair equivalent, was, as a matter of course, to be resented and punished. Julia Taylor. But when his chief required them, even without recompense, I suppose he had no thought of resisting. Dr. Dix. Like his civilized brother he was obliged to yield to superior force ; but the inmost feelings of his heart were, no doubt, very much the same as yours would have been in his place. Out-and-out, naked theft or robbery is one of those gross crimes which I described the other morning as needing no comment. Its revolting name is comment enough for all in whose sovds the light of conscience is not yet extinguished. But there are forms of stealing and robbing which may well be commented on in a se- ries of Talks on Morality, because their real nature is not always recognized. Like some forms of lying which we have mentioned, they are disguised by euphemisms : they are not naked, out-and-out thefts and robberies, but " embezzlements," " defalcations," " breaches of trust," " sharp practice," " able financiering," etc. Mas- querading under these more or less respectable aliases, they take their places among other business transac- 140 CHARACTER BUILDING. tions as well-dressed thieves and robbers mingle among honest men. But, in reality, two little words name them all, just as one little monosyllable names all forms of intentional deception. The man who takes that which does not justly belong to him, either by intelligent, free gift or fair exchange, is a thief or a robber, whether he does it with or without the sanction of the law. He may call himself, and others may call him, a clever busi- ness man, an able financier ; he is a thief or a robber as truly as if he had literally as well as virtually picked his victim's pocket. Henry Phillips. Why is it necessary to use two words ? Why is not simply " thief " enough ? Dr. Dix. Because there is an important moral as well as legal distinction between the two words. Theft is properly defined as the wrongful appropriation of property without the owner's knowledge or consent, while robbery is the wrongful appropriation of it with his knowledge and with or without his consent, which may be wrongfully gained, as, for instance, by threats or violence. There are numerous legal subdivisions of each of these crimes, but the moral law is but little concerned with them. In its view all who take that which does not rightfully belong to them are either thieves or robbers, whether they do so with or without the sanction of the civil law. Isabelle Anthony. Why does the civil law ever sanc- tion the wrongful appropriation of property ? Susan Perkins. Why, indeed, does it sanction any act that the moral law condemns ? Dr. Dix. That is too broad a subject to enter upon to-day. We will try to answer you next time. XXVII HONESTY, CONTINUED. Dr. Dix. "Why does the civil law ever sanction the wrongful appropriation of property? Why, indeed, does it sanction any act that the moral law condemns ? " One reason is that its province is necessarily so largely confined to what is external, material, and tangible. What a man does with his bod}- may be known to all ; what he does with his mind is known fully only to him- self. Every offence of the one may, therefore, unit with full recompense at the hands of the law. while the deepest wickedness of the other may be unrecog- nized and unpunished, save by that moral retribution which awaits both open and secret sins with equal cer- tainty. So what a man involuntarily suffers in his body through the means of another may be known to all and the offender may be duly punished ; what he suffers in his mind and character through the baleful influence id an evil companion maybe known scarcely to himself. This deepest of all wrongs is the one which most com- pletely evades the civil law. But though the civil law may permit the ruin of my soul with impunity, why, you ask, need it permit the theft or robbery of my purse, a purely physical matter ? Because, though my purse is a purely physical mat- ter, the act by which it is wrongfully taken from me may not be ; it may be, in fact, as jiurely psychical as the act by which my virtue is taken from me. If a man puts his hand into my pocket and takes my purse without my knoAvledge, he is a thief, whom the 142 CHARACTER BUILDING. law may severely punish ; if he snatches it from my hand, or takes me by the throat and rifles it from my pocket, he is a robber, and may be punished with still greater severity ; if he persuades me to part with it by promise of a material equivalent, and does not make good his promise according to specifications, he has ob- tained it "under false pretences," and may be dealt with, but not so severely as the technical thief or rob- ber ; if he persuades me to part with it by offering or promising that which he knows to be valueless, or of less value than the price I pay, he is a swindler, and may or may not be punished, according to circum- stances. But there are plenty of ways in which he may wrong- fully take it from me with absolute impunity, so far as human laws are concerned. He may do it without my knowledge, as by charging unreasonable profits ; or with my consent obtained through my folly, ignorance, or weakness (which is morally the same as no consent), as by selling me some worthless or worse than worthless nostrum, or by inducing me to invest in some enterprise which he knows to be hopeless. In either case he is as truly a thief as the poor, unskilled wretch who knows not how to steal according to statute. Again, he may do it with my full knowledge and in contemptuous defi- ance of my indignation and powerless attempts at self- protection, as many a millionaire, trust company, or other monopoly has done and is doing to-day. How does he or they differ in reality from the strong, bold, insolent robber who seizes his victim by the throat and rifles his pocket? Joseph Cracklin. Are millionaires, trust companies, and monopolies always robbers ? Dr. Dix. Your question is not a call for information, but an implication against my fairness and candor. You know very well that they are not always robbers, that some of the noblest men the world has ever seen have HONESTY. 143 been men of great wealth honestly obtained. You know, furthermore, that combinations of men for greater effi- ciency in business do not necessarily involve dishonesty in dealing, that such combinations may be, and often are, of the gi*eatest benefit not only to the individuals composing them but to the general public also. Thomas Dunn. It is true, however, is it not, that such combinations, especially when they amount to mo- nopolies, offer very strong temptations to dishonesty ? Dr. Dix. Great power is always a great temptation, whether it be physical, moral, political, or financial. But virtue may be strong enough to withstand even that temptation. Of actual monopolies, as they are frequently secured and managed, I have no defence to make. Too often their prime object is fraud. Secured by the ruth- less crowding-out of weaker rivals, one by one at first, and finally by hundreds or by thousands at a time, and when secured carried on by the wholesale legalized plundering of society, — what name can be properly applied to them but that of gigantic robbers ? If, however, men were as mighty in virtue as they are in intellect, even monopolies might be as powerful agents for good as they are for evil. Henri/ Dill lips. How would that be possible ? Dr. Dix. There is nothing necessarily dishonest or cruel in organization. On the contrary, when its pur- poses are right and just it is most beneficent in its effects. If all the charitable people, for example, in our State should unite into one body and carry out their schemes of benevolence under one well-managed system, their power for good would be immensely in- creased. That would be nothing more or less than a monopoly of practical beneficence. So if all the com- petent workers at the various guilds should be allowed by their stronger representatives respectively to organ- ize for the more efficient and economical carrying on of their business, there might be a grand system of 144 CHARACTER BUILDING. monopolies that would be of incalculable benefit both to the workers themselves and to society in general. Thomas Dunn. Always supposing the controlling powers were honest and public-spirited. I suppose the civil codes of an age afford us a pretty fair means of judging of the average standard of morality of that age. Dr. Dix. It is often said that the rulers elected by a people fairly represent their average morality. As to the laws which those rulers enact, they more gener- ally represent the average standard aimed at as attain- able than that actually attained. How far short of the standard of the moral law that is, we have already illus- trated to some extent. And yet the conduct of many so-called respectable men shows plainly that the civil law is their highest standard. In all their dealings their aim seems to be to keep just within its require- ments. So long as they do this they defiantly challenge criticism of their conduct, though they may rob the widow and the fatherless with relentless cruelty. Julia Taylor. However great future improvements may be, I don't see how it can ever be possible for the two standards to be the same. Dr. Dix. If the day ever comes when they are the same, it will certainly not be by the enforcement of such civil penalties as are now in vogue. When the civil law requires, as the moral law has always re- quired, that the rich shall not grind the faces of the poor in any way whatsoever, that the intelligent and the educated shall not use their intelligence and educa- tion to oppress the ignorant and the simple, it will be obeyed not through dread of fines or imprisonments, but through the fear of overwhelming public obloquy, — a far more terrible penalty to many persons than either fine or imprisonment. Susan Perkins. If the time you speak of ever comes, there will be no need of the civil law ; the moral law will be all-sufficient. HONESTY. 145 Dr. Dix. Not quite all-sufficient, Miss Perkins. The prevention of crime is not the only function of the civil law. The simplest form of society — even of those whose intentions were morally unexceptionable — could scarcely hold together without laws governing their in- tercourse in many ways upon which the moral law has no bearing. Such laws are the only ones in which mul- titudes to-day are personally interested so far as their own conduct is concerned. Did you ever think how small a proportion of the crowds that walk the streets of a city have any personal relations with the blue- coated guardians of its peace, — ever notice, in fact, whether they are on their beats or not ? Helen Mar. I was struck by your mention of the abuse of intellectual as well as physical power. A strong-armed ruffian that overpowers his victim and robs him of his purse is looked upon and punished as one of the worst of criminals, but the strong-brained ruffian that overpowers his victims by the thousands, perhaps, and robs them of purse, house, and land to- gether by his superior intellectual power is looked upon, as you have said, only as a great financier. I do not see why one is not in reality a criminal as well as the other, and as much greater a criminal as his robbery is greater. Dr. Dix. So the moral law regards him ; so in fact he is. XXVIII. A BLACK LIST. Dr. Dix. You may mention this morning some of the common ways in which the law of honesty as re- spects the right of property is violated. Archibald Watson. Shall we include those we have already talked about ? Dr. Dix. Yes. Archibald Watson. Well, then, there is plain out-and- out stealing, such as is recognized and punished by the law. James Murphy. And robbery. Frank Williams. And obtaining goods under false pretences. Henry Jones. Forgery. Lucy Snow. Counterfeiting. Charles Fox. Overcharging for goods or services. Jonathan Tower. Failing in business. Jane Simpson. Is it necessarily dishonest to fail in business ? Dr. Dix. No more than in any other department of human effort, — no more than it is dishonest to fail in art, or authorship, or oratory. Jonathan Tower. But does n't a man who pays only twenty-five cents to a man to whom he owes a dollar cheat him out of seventy-five cents ? Dr. Dix. Whether you can properly call it cheating or not depends entirely on the circumstances. Men in the business world sustain a very close relation to one another: the misfortune, folly, inefficiency, or guilt of one necessarily involves others in difficulties for which A BLACK LIST. 147 they are in no wise responsible ; unforeseen changes in demand and supply often reduce one to ruin while they may raise another to affluence, through no fault of the one or merit of the other. It is for the general interest of all that failures from such causes should not be ir- retrievable, — that the unfortunate should be allowed a fair chance to go on in their business or to begin anew. By just provisions of the law and by general consent they are allowed to do so. Jonathan Tower. When I said "failing in business," I should have added " to make money." Dr. Dix. Ah, that is a very different matter. No one will dispute the dishonesty nor the meanness par- ticularly contemptible of that kind of " failing." Well, scholars, you may go on with your black list. Henry P lull i [it. Usury. Jane Simpson. What is usury ? Dr. Dix. Phillips'.' Henry Phillips. Charging more than the legal rate for the use of money. Jane Simpson. I should n't think you could call that dishonest. You needn't borrow money if you don't want to pay what the lender asks for it. Henry Phillips. The trouble is, you may be obliged to borrow, whether you want to or not. Jane Simpson. Then go to some one else. Dr. Dix. In ether words, if you don't want to be robbed, go to some one who will not rob you. That is rather a poor plea for the robber, is it not ? So the murderer might say of his victim, "If he didn't want to be killed, he should n't have come to me ; he should have gone to some one who would not have killed him." Henry Phillips. Besides, there might have been no one else who would be willing to lend. Jane Simpson. But is n't usury ever right ? Dr. Dix. Yes, there are circumstances when it might 148 CHARACTER BUILDING. be justified. Suppose, for instance, a man should ask a loan of a person who would rather keep his money for other purposes than lend it at the legal rate, but who could afford to accept a higher rate. There would be nothing morally wrong in a mutual agreement satisfac- tory to both, unless, indeed, the borrower were of that improvident class who are always trying to borrow at ruinous rates, and who need to be protected from their own recklessness. Geoffrey Jenkins. Are there not some people who hold that all interest is wrong ? Dr. Dix. It is difficult to understand the basis of their objection. It is, of course, more advantageous to me to have my money in my own possession than in that of another : if I submit to disadvantage for the benefit of another, it seems no more than equitable that I should be compensated. However, this may be one of the con- troverted topics that are ruled out of our discussions. Go on. Helen Mar. One of the worst and most cruel forms of dishonesty is taking advantage of the necessities of the poor to buy their goods or labor for less than their value. Dr. Dix. Yes : this is what we mean when we speak of " grinding the faces of the poor." Ah, when will the day come when the heart of Mercy will no longer be wrung by the sight of man's inhu- manity to man ! The poor woman in Hood's " Song of the Shirt " may speak for all her suffering kindred. Miss Mar, will you repeat the poem ? Dr. Dix. But sometimes it is the poor man who ■wrongs the rich man. He says to himself, " A few pen- nies or a few dollars are nothing to him ; but they are bread to me." So he feels no compunction. He wrongs his rich neighbor, but he wrongs himself still more. What is bread to his body is poison to his soul. A BLACK LIST. 149 Geoffrey Jenkins. Should he starve to death rather than steal ? Dr. Dix. Happily that is an alternative to which few are forced in this age, at least in this country. Charity, public or private, will generally corne to his aid long before that extremity is reached. Susan Perkins. Xot always. A few days ago I read of a whole family dying from starvation in the very heart of Kew York city. Dr. Dix. I read the same account. Before they would call for help they were all too far gone to make their condition known, and it was not discovered till too late. Terrible as was their fate, therefore, they were themselves chiefly responsible for it, — not, of course, for the state of society that makes such extreme pov- erty possible. Society itself is responsible for that, and a fearful responsibility it is. Who knows what a fearful reckoning may come some day ! Florence Hill. That family might never have been able to make their condition known. Perhaps they would not have been believed if they had tried. Dr. Dix. Yes ; all that is possible. Lucy Snovu If it was so, it was no better than mur- der. Isabelle Anthony. It was no better than murder as it was. Geoffrey Jenkins. Dr. Dix, would you have blamed those poor people if they had stolen to save themselves from starvation ? Dr. Dix. It would be a hard heart, even if a just judgment (which I do not say it would be), that would do so. Yet if they had had the energy to steal they would have had the energy to beg. Jane Simpson. Some poor people would rather starve to death than either beg or steal. Dr. Dix. But they have no right to starve to death if they can prevent it. Begging is humiliating, but not 150 CHARACTER BUILDING. wrong if unavoidable. Suicide, whether by starvation or any other means, is an immeasurably greater crime even than theft. Geoffrey Jenkins. So, if one must either starve or steal, it would be right for him to steal ? Dr. Dix. My best answer is to say that the English judge who not only acquitted the poor, starving woman who snatched a loaf of bread from a baker's stand, but took up a subscription in her behalf, did precisely as any other man with a heart in his bosom would have done in his place. But, as I said, there is little probability that any of you will ever be forced to choose between these terrible alternatives. Let us return to our list. The wealthy employer is not always the defrauder ; sometimes it is the poor laborer. How ? Jonathan Tower. By joining in a " strike." Dr. Dix. Ah, that is one of the controverted sub- jects that we must not discuss here. Jonathan Tower. I beg your pardon. By wasting time when working " by the day." Joseph CrackJin. By slighting his work when work- ing " by the job." Henry Phillips. By doing more than he knows is required or desired when the opportunity is given, for the sake of getting more pay. Dr. Dix. Please illustrate. Henry Phillips. Why, for instance, a mechanic sometimes puts very fine work into an article that he knows is to be used only for common purposes. Isahelle Anthony. And a doctor sometimes continues to make his calls upon a patient when he knows that his services are no longer needed. Dr. Dix [laughing]. I suppose the physician him- self must be allowed to be the best judge of that. Go on with your black list. Julia Taylor. Borrowing without intending to repay, A BLACK LIST. 151 or without being reasonably sure of being able to repay, or carelessly neglecting to repay. Lucy Snow. Returning borrowed articles in a worse condition than when borrowed. Jonathan Tower. Borrowing goods and returning them when the market price has fallen. Thomas Dunn. Borrowing money when prices are low and returning it when they are high. Dr. Dix. That 's rather a subtle point for this place, is n't it, Dunn ? Thomas Dunn. I don't think it need be ; it is about the same thing Tower said. Dr. Dix. Yes, that is true, goods being the price of money. Go on. Frederick Fox. Coining silver. Dr. Dix. That topic 1 rule out altogether. Try once more. Frederick Fox. Making " corners in the market." Dr. Dix. I think I will allow that. You may ex- plain. Frederick Fox. The usual way is for capitalists to buy up all they can get of some article for which there is, or may be, a demand, store it away, and thus pro- duce an artificial scarcity. This brings the article up to an unnatural price. Articles of absolute necessity, such as wheat or other grains, are most often chosen for this purpose, because the profits are surer : men must have bread whatever its prices may be. It is, in my opinion, the most gigantic and villainous kind of robbery that can be committed, because by it everybody is robbed. Dr. Dix. Your language is strong ; but perhaps none too much so. Proceed. Geoffrey Jenkins. Giving false returns of your prop- erty to escape taxes. Archibald Watson. Moving out of town just in sea- son to escape taxes. 152 CHARACTER BUILDING. Charles Fox. Not paying a debt until long after it is due, when you know that no interest will he asked for. Dr. Dix. Yes ; great cruelty is often inflicted in this way upon poor people who are dependent on prompt payments. Isabelle Anthony. Being less careful of a hired horse or house than you would be of your own. Florence Hill. Putting the best fruit on the top of the barrel. Susan Perkins. Selling water for milk, sand for su- gar, and slate for coal. Jane Simpson. Men do worse than that ; if they did n't put poison in our food, we could, perhaps, tolerate their water, sand, and slate. Julia Taylor. Not paying your fare on the cars if the conductor forgets to collect it. Helen Mar. Wantonly injuring private or public property, as, for instance, whittling fences, marking on walls, books, etc. I heard a story once of a man who whittled the counter in a store. The proprietor came behind him and snipped off a piece from his coat. " What did you do that for ? " asked the whittler in great indignation. " This piece of cloth will just pay for that chip of wood," replied the proprietor. Sally Jones. They were both thieves, were n't they ? Dr. Dix. Yes, they were both thieves ; but the petty vandal richly deserved his loss. Go on. Frank Williams. Not trying to find the owner of anything you have found. George Williams. Putting a few cents' worth of sarsaparilla and iodide of potassium into a bottle and selling it for a dollar. Henry Phillips. Gambling. Joseph Cracklin. I know that gambling is wrong; but I don't see how you can call it actual dishonesty. Henry Phillips. If a man takes another man's prop- A BLACK LIST. 153 erty without giving him an equivalent, what else can it be ? Joseph Cracklin. But he does that whenever he accepts a gift. Henry Phillips. "Winnings are not gifts. Dr. Die. They are not looked upon as such by either the loser or the winner. Until they are paid they are regarded as debts as truly as if they were so much bor- rowed money. Henry Phillips. They are considered even more sa- cred: they are called " debts of honor." Joseph Cracklin. But there is a sort of equivalent given. Dr. Die. What is it ? Joseph Cracklin. An equal chance to win the other man's money. Henry- Phillips. An equal chance to rob the other man of his money, that is. That does not prevent it from being robbery, any more than the equal chance on both sides to take life prevents duelling from being murder. XXIX. HONOR. Dr. Dix. My good boy — my hero sans peur et sans reproche — is the " soul of honor." What does that mean ? It means that he is honest, not because " hon- esty is the best policy," but because it never occurs to him to be dishonest. If dishonesty were the best pol- icy, as some shrewd men seem to believe, if we may judge by their conduct, he would still be honest. It means that he is truthful, not because he is afraid of the penalty that might follow if he were detected in a lie, but because he loathes a lie with his whole soul : the very thought of it makes his lip curl with scorn. It means that he is generous, not because he hopes and expects to be rewarded for his generosity, but because it is as natural for him to be big-hearted as it is for an athlete to be broad-shouldered : he could n't be dishon- orable or mean any more than a giant could be a dwarf ; if he should try, he would n't know how to set about it. He will stand by a friend, not because he expects his friend to stand by him, but because that is the only thing to do : active and suggestive as his mind is, it is not suggestive enough to think of leaving his friend in the lurch. It means that he is grateful for benefits re- ceived, not because it would not look well to be un- grateful, not because men would despise him if he were ungrateful, but because he can't help being grateful. You have heard of antipathies. There are some per- sons who will grow faint at the sight of a spicier, and others who will almost become wild at the sight of a snake. It is useless to convince them that the spider HONOR. 155 and the reptile are actually as harmless as butterflies, — they are not harmless to them. The soul of honor has a very similar antipathy to all things that are mean and contemptible. The soul without honor has no such antipathy : to it they may seem as harmless as butter- flies ; it might not even be able to recognize them- as mean and contemptible except that it has learned that they are so regarded by others. The general sense of mankind is a very important guide to those who are below the average in honor and virtue : whatever they may be within their own hearts and souls, it enables them to preserve a certain respec- tability in their outward conduct. The fear of what others will think of them is the chief or only restraint upon their meanness and wickedness, unless it be the stronger, even more ignoble fear of what others will do to them. But though they have learned that there is a generally recognized standard of honor and respectability above their own natural standard, still they cannot believe in its reality : in their secret hearts they believe it is an artificial standard, raised from motives of general pol- icy. In other words, they cannot help judging others by themselves. Living in a valley and breathing its noxious gases, they cannot see the heights above them where others dwell in a purer atmosphere. To them there are no really honest men. " Every man has his price, if you only bid high enough." Fabricius, who " could no more deviate from the path of honor than the sun could leave his course in the heavens," is to them a myth, an impossibility. Boys and girls, put no faith in the man who believes that there is no honor in his fellow-men : be sure he is judging others by himself. There are authors who describe only villains, — they little know that they are only showing to the world their own bad hearts. Dean Swift had a clever brain, but a villainous heart. 156 CHARACTER BUILDING. Lucy Snoiv. Is not the general sense of mankind im- portant to the honorable as well as to the dishonorable — ■ That is not exactly what I meant to say. I meant, Ought not every one to regard the opinions of others ? Dr. Dix. Most certainly, Miss Snow. But while the man of honor duly values the opinion of others, he val- ues his own opinion of himself still more highly. Lucy Snow. What is the difference between that and vanity or egotism ? Dr. Dix. The difference is, that vanity and egotism are most sensitive to the opinion of others, while honor is most sensitive to that of self. Vanity thirsts for ad- miration on account of personal beauty, dress, wit, hue horses or houses, graceful accomplishments, etc. ; when the objects of the desired admiration are less frivolous, such as intellectual achievements, social, financial, mili- tary, or political power, vanity rises to ambition more or less laudable ; when the object is still higher, virtu- ous, benevolent,' honorable conduct, it becomes no longer vanity, but a most noble and praiseworthy aspiration. The man of honor may feel all these in due measure, but high above them all is his desire for the approval of his own conscience and self-respect. To the man absolutely devoid of honor his own opin- ion of himself is nothing : that of others is everything, either on account of the love of approbation, which the lowest possess in some degree, or for a worse reason. Frank Williams. For what worse reason ? Dr. Dix. For the reason that a sheep's clothing some- times serves a wolf better than his own. The moral furnishings of some persons are very much like the household furnishings of a famdy I once visited with my father on his professional rounds, when I was a very small lad, so small that the family did not think it necessary to keep me confined in the " show rooms " where their other callers sat. As you will never know who this family were or where they lived, I do not feel HONOR. 157 that I am violating confidence in telling you about them. The contrast between the " show rooms " and the rest of the house was so strong that it made an indelible impression upon my childish mind. Such neatness and elegance here, such abominable dirt and squalor there ! Nothing, evidently, was too fine for the parlor, dining- room, and guest chamber, where the outer world some- times penetrated ; but as to the kitchen and family bed- rooms, what did it matter? "No one would see them." Ah, how many of us furnish the secret chambers of our minds and hearts as richly as we furnish the parlors '.' Most people are exceedingly lenient critics of them- selves ; they rarely underestimate their own wisdom, cleverness, or personal attractions, and as to their moral qualities, they generally consider them well up to the average. They may be conscious of having committed acts which they would severely condemn in others, but then there are always peculiarly mitigating circum- stances in their own cases. It is astonishing how ten- derly a culprit will view his own derelictions from duty. Surely no one else was ever so strongly tempted ; it was the fault of his peculiar temperament, and. pray, how could he help that? Besides, what he has done was not so very bad, after all, under the circumstances; others have done worse ; you yourself would probably have done the same if you had been in his situation. Or he may go still further and throw the blame entirely on some one else who put the temptation in his way, and virtually obliged him to yield to it. If men in gen- eral always judged others by themselves there would be few misanthropes ; it would be a pretty good sort of world, after all. James Murphy. What is a misanthrope, Dr. Dix ? Dr. Dix. Well ? Helen Sawyer. One who hates or despises the whole race of men — except himself. Dr. Dix. Sometimes he includes himself, but oftener 158 CHARACTER BUILDING. he judges himself in the lenient way I have been de- scribing, and maintains the balance in his judgment by undue severity towards others. But the man of honor is his own severest critic. What he might pardon to the weakness or peculiar temptations of others he cannot pardon in himself. He is especially severe in regard to what he does or is tempted to do in secret. " Coward ! " he will say to himself, "would you do this thing because there is no eye to see you ? Shame upon you ! " We will suppose that a private letter falls in his way. He sees from the superscription that it is in- tended for his political rival. It probably contains in- formation that would be of the greatest importance to himself. The seal has already been broken : he might read it through and through, and no man but himself would be the wiser. Does such a thought enter his mind ? If so, he spurns it from him as if it were a ■venomous reptile. He encloses it in an envelope and addresses it to his rival with a polite note of explanation. The receiver opens it and — turns pale. His wily plans are all known ; he knows what human nature is, he knows what he would have done. As the sender has not condescended to make any statement, his conviction is the stronger. He acts upon his conviction : he informs his hench- men that it is all up with them, and gives his grounds for the information. Indirectly it comes to the ears of the finder of the letter that he took the dishonorable advantage which fortune threw in his way. What does he do ? Geoffrey Jenkins. The time was when he would have taken the only recognized course to vindicate his honor. Dr. Dix. Challenged his slanderer ? Geoffrey Jenkins. Yes, Dr. Dix. Dr. Dix. And would that have accomplished his purpose ? HONOR. 159 Geoffrey Jenkins. It would at least have silenced the tongue of slander. Dr. Di.r. As well as his own tongue or that of his antagonist forever. But how would that have aff< the fact of his real honor or dishonor ? Whatever that fact was, the challenge would probably have followed the accusation. Geoffrey Jenkins. It would not have affected the real fact in the least. Dr. Dix. What would he probably do in this more civilized age ? Geoffrey Jenkins. He would indignantly deny the charge, and trust to what men already knew of his char- acter for the vindication of his honor. Dr. Dix. Yes ; that would probably be all-sufficient. But a far better course would be to treat the accusation as utterly beneath the notice of the man of honor he professes to be. His friends — who could testify that whatever he might have discovered from the tempting document he kept scrupulously to himself — would do the rest. XXX. "WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY THE MICE WILL PLAY." Dr. Dix [entering his schoolroom late and finding it in disorder']. Ah, it seems that I have interrupted your diversions and pastimes. This sudden unnatural still- ness is quite oppressive. — Pray go on just as if I were not here. — Well, why don't you go on ? Why don't you throw that crayon, Cracklin, as you were intending to do ? Joseph Cracklin. Do you order me to throw it, sir ? Dr. Dix. By no means. I asked you to do as you would if I were not present. Would that justify you ? Would it release you from the proper penalty of your misconduct ? Joseph Cracklin. N-no, Dr. Dix. But I was not the only one ; the others were — Dr. Dix. We have already expressed our sentiments on the courage, manliness, and honor of throwing blame upon others. They will undoubtedly speak for them- selves. Geoffrey Jenkins. I threw crayons, Dr. Dix. Archibald Watson. And so did I. Jonathan Tower. And I. Dr. Dix. That is very well so far. " Open confes- sion is good for the soul." Does any one else wish to relieve his mind ? Henry Phillips. I drew that picture on the black- board ; but — but I was intending to rub it out befoue you came. Dr. Dix. And you think, I suppose, that that inten- tion palliates your offence. I shall allude to that kind THE CAT AWAY, THE MICE WILL PLAY. 161 of palliation presently. I await further acknowledg- ment that any one has to make. Charles Fox. I called on Butters to make a speech. Dr. Dix. Yes ; and, Butters, did you respond ? Trumbull Butters. No, Dr. Dix. He and the rest of the boys are all the time nagging me, — all except Dunn. He tried to keep order while you were away, — he and some of the big girls. Dr. Dix. Nagging is another subject that we shall do well to consider. Dunn and the " big girls " deserve, and hereby receive, my hearty and sincere thanks. Susan Perkins. I am sorry to say, Dr. Dix, that all the "big girls" are not altogether blameless; I for one am not. I confess and apologize. Jane Simpson. And I wish to do the same. Dr. Dix. That is the most honorable thing you can do now, except to resolve not to offend again. Well, if there are no more confessions, I will now hear any fur- ther excuses or explanations that any one has to offer. Geoffrey Jenkins. We only thought we would have a little fun ; we did n't think there was any harm in' it as long as you were not here. We could n't do much studying, you know. Dr. Dix. Why not ? Geoffrey Jenkins. Because — because there was so much noise. \Laughter.~\ Dr. Dix [joining in the laugh~\. If all your fun was as funny as that, you must have enjoyed yourselves ! Archibald Watson. But do you really think, Dr. Dix, there was any harm in our having a little fun as long as you were not here to direct our work ? Dr. Dix. Fun is a most excellent thing. It is one of the greatest blessings conferred upon our race ; it is good for the body, for the mind, for the heart, for the soul. Laugh and grow fat ; be jolly and long-lived. I will not yield to any one in my fondness for fun. But no good thing, even fun, is good at the wrong time and 162 CHARACTER BUILDING. in the wrong place. The time you have given to it this morning belonged to work. What if I was not here ? When the hours of work and play were laid down for you no such condition was affixed as "if Dr. Dix is here." I may be late again, as I was this morning. You say, " We wanted a little fun." Who are the we ? It seems there were some of your number who did not want it, — some who " tried to keep order." They wanted the time for study, and they had a right to it. Why should you defraud them of their right ? Your fun, therefore, was of the kind we spoke of some time ago, that which injures or annoys others. It is not unlikely that that fact had something to do with its being funny, — that and the other fact that it was in violation of the rules of school. Are you quite sure that if it had not been for these two conditions it would not have been rather tame fun ? I say, what if I was not here ? Am I to understand that my presence is indispensable to the performance of your duty ? Do you do right only because you are afraid of me ? If that is the case, how do I differ from the policeman who stands with his billy on the corner of the street, and how do you differ from those who are watching for him to disappear around the corner ? Is that why your fathers and mothers obey the civil laws, — because they are afraid of the policeman? Is that why you will obey the civil laws when you in your turn become men and women ? School is a civil community on a small scale ; it is governed by its laws just as the state and the city are governed by their laws. If you need a teacher-policeman to keep you from small viola- tions of law here, what guarantee have we that you will not need a rougher policeman to keep you from greater offences and harsher penalties hereafter ? Susmi Perkins. Dr. Dix, we need your presence here, not because we are afraid of the punishments you may inflict, but because we are afraid of displeasing you. THE CAT AWAY, THE MICE ]VILL PLAY. 163 Dr. Dix. It is very gratifying to hear you say so ; still, the principle is the same, for my displeasure is a punishment to those who care for it. I believe you all do care for it, and for this time it shall be your only punishment, — at least the only one / shall inflict. But I wish you to observe that I have more than ordinary reason to be displeased. Have you forgotten our last Talk ? What was its subject ? Several Voices. Honor. Dr. Dix. Your lowered tones and your downcast eyes show how you think you have illustrated that subject this morning. Does the man of honor need a policeman to keep him to his duty ? What cares he for a policeman, whom a whole regiment with fixed bayo- nets could not drive from the path of duty ! As I said a long time ago, I cannot expect that one Talk or a hundred will work a complete transforma- tion. Character is a structure that is slow in building ; but it is all the more solid when built. But may I not hope that both our Talk and the practical lesson of this morning may do something to strengthen the principle of Honor in this school ? XXXI. NAGGING. Dr. Dix. I promised to speak of nagging. The glances of resentment and strong disapproval which were directed to the boy who publicly reported his griev- ance did not escape my notice. " The boys are all the time nagging me," he says. Perhaps you think, boys, he was not honorable in reporting you. Well, since " honor is the subject of my story," let us consider his course and yours from that standpoint. In the first place, I wish to give you full credit for the manly courage and promptness with which you reported your own misconduct, and, girls, I pay a like tribute to your womanly courage and promptness. The young man in question acted the part of an informer, a talebearer ; hence your glances of scornful disapproval. I think I understand your feelings. I was a boy myself once ; I did not spring into an existence of full maturity, like Minerva from the brain of Jove. And I have not forgotten how I felt when I was a boy ; so I suppose you are willing to admit my competency to discuss this matter with } t ou. I say I have not forgotten how I felt when I was a boy. Why don't I feel in the same way now that I am a man ? Is it because I have grown less generous and honorable ? I should be sorry indeed to believe so. Is it because my judgment is less clear ? I can hardly believe that, since judgment is one of those faculties which are usually most strengthened by years and ex- perience. No; my philosophy is, that boys develop unsymmetrically in their judgment and sentiments, just NAGGING. 165 as they do in their bodies. While they are growing, sometimes their legs and arms are too long for their bodies and sometimes they are too short ; sometimes their hands and feet are too large and their shoulders too narrow, or they are otherwise " out of drawing." Never mind; healthy maturity will bring symmetry, or at least an approach to it. There are similar disproportions in growing minds and hearts, which, full healthy maturity will go far to correct. The imagination and fancy, for example, like the legs, are too long, while the reason and judgment, like the body, are too short. "The Bloody Scalper of the Plains" is the ideal hero, who will hereafter subside into the vulgar criminal he is. But especially is the immature sense of honor out of proportion. I know of scarcely anything more gro- tesque in the whole range of human nature than the average boy's notion of certain points of honor. Don't feel hurt, boys; I don't include all points of honor, by any means. On some of the most important, boys are generally admirably strong and sound. On none are they more utterly absurd than the whole human race, young and old, has been time and again. As the biolo- gists say, the life-history of the race is repeated in that of the individual. Our race has passed through its in- fancy and childhood ; but whether it has fully emerged from its boyhood is a question that can be determined only by comparing its present with its future develop- ment. Surely no boys' code of honor could be more thoroughly wanting in the first principles of true honor or common sense than that which has been especially dignified by that title. But I think the individual case we now have in hand will illustrate some of the points of honor on which boys as a class are not always particularly strong and sound. Let us consider the facts. Butters told me nothing that I did not already know. I am not quite deaf nor quite blind. I see and hear 166 CHARACTER BUILDING. more, perhaps, than yon think. The only question I was in doubt about was, whether your continual " nag- ging " really troubled him. He bore it with such good- natured indifference, so far as I could see at least, that perhaps you were in equal uncertainty with myself in regard to its actual effect upon him. Archibald Watson. No, Dr. Dix; we knew it really plagued him, or we should not have kept it up. Dr. Dix. Ah, then I must give you credit for clearer perceptions than my own. And yet I might have known, for the advice I always give in such cases is, let them see that you don't care for their nonsense, and they will soon tire of it. That is precisely what I thought Butters was doing, and I rather Avondered why the usual effect did not follow. But then I knew how persevering boys are in such matters ; if they showed a like perseverance in a worthier cause we should see better results on Promotion Day. Let us return to our facts. You " knew it plagued him," and therefore you "kept it up." Could we have a better illustration of the kind of fun you have all agreed with me in condemning ? Is it in accordance with the boys' code of honor ? I wish it had not plagued him. There are some strong natures that really care no more for such petty persecution than for the buzzing of flies. But we can- not all be like them. Because the elephant's hide is impervious to the mosquito, the same does not follow of the horse's hide or even of the tiger's. Trumbull Butters. But boys are bigger than mos- quitoes, — some of them are bigger than I am. They would n't have nagged me so much if they were n't. [Laughter. ] Dr. Dix. A palpable hit, Butters. You seem able to defend yourself with your tongue, at least. Trumbull Butters. I think I could defend myself if they did n't all side against me. Twenty to one is too big odds. NAGGING. 167 Dr. Dix. That deserves generous applause, boys. . . . There, that will do for the present. Trumbull Butters. They dou't mean it for applause, Dr. Dix ; it 's only some more of their foolish nonsense. But /don't care for 'em. Dr. Dix. Xo ; you 're wrong there, Butters. That was genuine, — was it not, boys ? Chorus. Yes, Dr. Dix. Geoffrey Jenkins. "Well, I will let him alone here- after. I should have been willing to apologize for my share of it, if he hadn't peached. Dr. Dix. No, Jenkins ; I beg your pardon, you would have done nothing of the sort. If he had not done ex- actly what he did do, you would have gone on indefi- nitely with the rest of the "twenty against one." Why should n't he " peach," as you call it '.' What other de- fence had he against your continued annoyance ? As he himself has so justly and pertinently said, there were too big odds against him to attempt his own defence. Geoffrey Jenkins [sullenly]. If he had wanted it, Ave would have given him fair play. Dr. Dix. You mean that you woidd have made a ring and let him fight it out with you, one by one ? Geoffrey Jenkins. Y-yes, Dr. Dix [suddenly coloring] — I — I did n't mean that — I " — Dr. Dix. Ah, I see you have some wholesome recol- lections of the past. Well, this becoming exhibition of feeling encourages me to believe that our Talks have not been entirely without effect. Suppose these battles had been fought, even if But- ters would have been justified in his share, — which, mark, I do not necessarily admit, but I need not tell you on which side my sympathies would have been, — what would you think of your own share in them ? Geoffrey Jenkins. I — I take back what I said. Trumbull Butters. I offered to fight 'em more than once, big as they are ; but they would n't fight, — they only guyed me worse than ever. 168 CHARACTER BUILDING. Dr. Dlx. Evidently our Talk on that subject has not converted you. Trumbull Butters [disconsolately"]. You told us that returning good for evil would make them ashamed. I honestly tried that for a while ; but it did n't seem to do any good. Then I thought I would try the other way. Dr. Dix. You did n't try long enough. It did more good than you thought. There 's not one of your tor- mentors Avho is not thoroughly ashamed at this moment, down in his secret heart. I challenge one of them to deny it. What do you say, Watson ? Archibald Watson. I never saw him try to return much " good for evil." He was always talking about fighting, but nobody supposed he really meant it. Trumbtdl Butters [valor ously]. They would have found out whether I meant it or not if they had tried. [Derisive laughter, which the Doctor instantly checks.] Dr. Dix. I suspect, Butters, that your attempt to overcome evil with good was rather feeble and short. I am thankful, however, that there was an attempt. I shall never cease trying so long as there is so much fruit as this. Come, my boy, you are now the only ob- stacle to a complete reconciliation. The boys have al- ready advanced a long way to meet you ; but you have not as yet yielded an inch. As long as you maintain this hostile and implacable attitude you cannot expect them to advance much further. Trumbull Butters. I am willing to be friends if they are. Dr. Dix. Then we '11 have no more talk about fight- ing. I say, boys, why should n't your victim peach ? Under what possible moral obligation was he to endure your abuse day after day and week after week ? Give him credit for the long time he endured it before he did peach. When your fathers and mothers are wronged, they do not wait until they can endure it no longer NAGGING. 1G9 before they appeal to the proper authorities for protec- tion and redress. Archibald Watson. They wouldn't mind a little nag- ging. Dr. Dlx. In the first place, we are not talking about a little nagging ; and in the next, grown-up men and women do not often indulge in such amusement, — their sense of honor is usually developed beyond that point. Of course you understand I am speaking of respectable men and women, as you are of respectable boys and girls. I will leave it to your own consciences and to the in- fluence of our past Talks to decide whether the joining of twenty against one — with the knowledge that that one could not defend himself by his own unaided power, and with the belief that in deference to the boys' code of honor he would not inform against you — was gener- ous or mean, manly or unmanly, chivalrous or dastardly, brave or cowardly, honorable or dishonorable. Now, a few words on the subject of nagging in gen- eral. When there is fair play, and when it is not carried to the extent of being really a serious annoyance, it is not an unmitigated evil. If one is too thin-skinned, it may be an excellent remedy. Socrates, as you know, placed a very high value upon one species of it as a means of discipline. But the option should always be allowed the subject of the remedy as to whether it shall be applied or not. If he is sensible, he will submit to it with a good grace and return the favor for the benefit of his physician, who should submit with equally good grace. If he is not sensible enough to do this, no one has the moral right to force it upon him. Joking at other people's expense is often very funny, and the victims are often as much amused as others. Sometimes, however, it is far otherwise ; you cannot always tell how deep the wound is under the indifferent or smiling exterior. If this kind of joking becomes a 170 CHARACTER BUILDING. habit, like all other habits it will grow until, before he is aware, the joker may have become intolerable to all his acquaintances. Intimate friends among boys, and girls too, are especially liable to the habit : they sometimes carry it to such an excess that nearly everything they say to each other is some sort of disparaging joke. All this may be very entertaining up to a certain point, but gradually the little stings, which at first only tickled the skin, begin to reach the quick. Never let your fun go as far as this. Watch yourselves. Re- member that too much of a good thing is often worse than none of it. If you find that pretty nearly every- thing your friend does or says suggests to you some unpleasant witticism at his expense, stop short ; forego for a while those stale, vulgar old insinuations in regard to his miraculous gastronomic powers or the superiority of his pedal over his cerebral development. [Laugh- ter.'] Let your next words to him be something really agreeable : you have no idea how refreshing and de- lightful you will both find the change. On the other hand, don't be oversensitive. Some persons have the notion that extreme sensitiveness is an indication of extreme refinement. It is more often a sign of extreme selfishness and egotism. It is only what offends themselves that excites their super-refined resentment ; the nerves of others may be rasped to any extent in their sight and hearing without disturbing them very seriously. And, above all, don't be that par- ticularly unlovable character that is always ready to give a thrust, but never ready to receive one. XXXII. INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. Dr. Dix. Among the habits of the highest impor- tance, from its effects upon health of body, mind, and heart, upon happiness and prosperity, is the habit of industry. Perfect health is that condition in which all the func- tions of body, mind, and heart are in harmonious action, in perfect harmony with their environments. Menrt/ Jones. "What are environments and func- tions ? Dr. Dix. Well? Helen Mar. Environments are surroundings : all things outside of us with which we have anything to do are our environments. Functions are offices to per- form, things to do. For instance, the function of the legs is to Avalk and run ; that of the eyes is to see ; that of the brain is to think. Dr. Dix. Yes, and if any part of us does not per- form its proper function it speedily loses its health and power. If the legs do not walk or run, they shrivel. Look at the poor cripple who rides every day through the streets upon his " velociman." If the eyes do not exercise their power of sight, they eventually lose it. Activity, then, is an indispensable condition both to health and happiness, — continued and regular activity ; that is, industry. Xo wish is more often felt and uttered than the wish for money enough to live without labor. Do those who so often feel and express this wish know what it really means ? It means for most people a wish to lose the 172 CHARACTER BUILDING. only thing which forces them to be healthy and happy. That lost, all that would remain would be their own sense of the usefulness of effort and their resolution to continue it in spite of its irksomeness. Do they know how efficient that sense and that resolution would be ? Let them try a very simple experiment : let them re- solve to take a mile walk every morning simply for its healthfulness. Hundreds and thousands of people do try this experiment, but I will venture to say that not one in a hundred continues it year after year. It works very well for a while, but gradually it gets to be less interesting, then somewhat of a bore, then most decid- edly a bore ; then a morning is omitted occasionally, then every alternate morning is omitted, — then the walk is taken only on very pleasant mornings, and finally it is dropped altogether in disgust. Indolence with its present ease and future penalties is preferred to industry with its present irksomeness and future re- wards. So the muscles are allowed to grow flabby, and the vitals to grow sickly and feeble. Such is the usual end of labor performed for the sole purpose of benefiting the health. But suppose the mile walk is a matter of necessity, to take a man from his home to his office, shop, or school. Unless it increases the tax upon his powers beyond the limit of health- fulness, — which is, of course, possible, — who but the incorrigibly lazy man ever thinks of it as other than a pleasant and wholesome variety to his life of enforced effort ? Joseph. Cracklin. The loss of the advantage of being obliged to work for a living may be a great loss, but I don't believe the person ever lived who could not -easily be reconciled to it. I think I could bear it myself with- out repining. Dr. Dix. I have no doubt of it, Cracklin. If such a misfortune should befall me, I don't think I should be utterly inconsolable. But neither good nor bad fortune INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. 173 is to be measured by the present rejoicing or mourning it occasions. Children often cry fur what their wiser parents know will not be good for them. The wisest of us are but children of a larger growth, and it is well for us that we have not the ordering of our own for- tunes. Both you and I might bitterly lament at a later day what we now might look upon as the best of good fortune. Joseph Cracklin. Nevertheless I should be perfectly willing to take the risk. Dr. Dix. You may have the opportunity. There's no knowing. And it might not, after all, prove a mis- fortune to you. All would depend upon your character. — the stuff you are made of. But however it might be in your individual case, with the majority the effect is more or less disastrous. Let us suppose a by no mi unusual instance : — One of the millions who sigh so eagerly for that great- est of all blessings, a fortune, suddenly falls into one. Ah, now he is going to be happy; no more grinding labor for him; he is now going to live a life of elegant ease, of luxury, of " style." He is not going to be abso- lutely idle, of course, — he understands that occupation of some sort is necessary to his health ; but now he can choose his occupation, — he is no longer forced to toil at his former uncongenial employment; he is going to improve his mind and his taste, — perhaps, now and then, he may even do some sort of work that is useful to others. "Well, he begins his new life with great enthusiasm. But somehow or other it does not prove just what he expected. He finds that improving his mind and taste is not so agreeable an occupation as he thought it was going to be : there is hard work in it that he had not counted on. He still finds it easier to read a cheap novel than a good one, a history, an essay, or a poem. He meant to study music and art ; but his wealth does not diminish 174 CHARACTER BUILDING. one iota the irksomeness of the laborious beginnings. To his dismay, he finds that the same is true of all the best things he looked forward to with such delight- ful anticipations ; they all cost hard work. The mere consciousness of his wealth, at first a delight in itself, soon loses the charm of novelty, and with it its power to delight, — all things do that, scholars, which are in themselves unchanging, and which demand no effort of mind, heart, or body ; the social position which his wealth gives him, that at least to which he aspires, can be maintained only by the cultivation of those graces which require work, work as hard as that from which his wealth delivered him, — ay, harder, for that he per- formed under the stimulus of necessity, while this costs the effort of resolution. Stronger and stronger the inclination grows upon him to do that which is agreeable in the doing, leaving the consequences to take care of themselves. Why should n't he follow his inclination? What is there to pre- vent ? Has n't he money enough to do as he likes ? And so it is the story of the mile walk over again. His muscles, once hard and strong, become flaccid and shrunken ; his mind, once full of energy and vigorous interest in his honest labor, becomes vacant and list- less ; the days, once too short for the unappreciated happiness that filled them, become long and tedious ; the nights, once almost unknown to his consciousness, are even worse than the days, — fortunate, indeed, is he if their weariness is not beguiled with the vices that lead by the shortest path to ruin of body and soul. The bitter " Curse of Nature " has been removed, but a bitterer curse has taken its place ; the grievous burden of labor has been lifted from his shoulders, but a heavier burden has fallen thereon. Julia Taylor. But the bitterer curse and the heavier burden do not always follow : did n't you say it depends on the character of the individual ? INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. 175 Dr. Dix. Yes, Miss Taylor, and I repeat it. I have told you the story of multitudes who have been lucky enough to come into a fortune through no effort or merit of their own. Charles Fox. Why should n't the same results fol- low, even if the fortune was acquired by their own ef- forts ? Dr. Dix. Because the habits of industry and energy which were necessary to acquire the fortune are gener- ally too firmly fixed to be easily dropped. Charles Fox. But the necessity to labor has been re- moved in either case. Dr. Dix. No. To one who has acquired through his own effort there is an ever-increasing necessity to ac- quire more, while the free gifts of Fortune are usually large enough to satisfy the ambition undeveloped by effort. " What comes easily goes easily." The only use of unearned money is to be freely spent. I have told you the story of multitudes who have been lucky enough to come into a fortune through no effort or merit of their own. It is not the story of all. To some strong, noble natures suddenly-acquired wealth proves really a blessing, and not a curse, but it is not because it relieves them from the necessity of labor. Industrious before, they are now still more industrious, if possible, and in a broader field. They are not obliged to toil for their daily bread, but there are other neces- sities which to them are more urgent than hunger or thirst. There is a hunger of the mind which impels to effort the day labouer knows not of ; there is a thirst of the soul which can be satisfied only by a life of pa- tient industry in the cause of human welfare. XXXIII. INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS, CONTINUED. Helen Sawyer. It does n't seem to me that the neces- sity to work for a living is indispensable to either health or happiness, notwithstanding the Talk of last week. Dr. Dix \_sni'diiig~\. I have sometimes complained that you young people do not generalize enough. Here is an instance of too wide generalizing. What we said last week of the majority, Miss Sawyer evidently un- derstood us to apply to all. If she had paid a little closer attention, or if she had remembered more accu- rately, she would not have ignored the important excep- tions we were so particular to make. Helen Sawyer. But it seems to me that there are a great many more exceptions than were mentioned. I know plenty of people who, I am sure, never earned a dollar in their lives and who never needed to earn a dollar, and yet they are healthy and happy enough, so far as I can see. They always seem to have enough to do, too : what with reading, writing letters, travel- ling, yachting, driving, going to the opera, playing ten- nis, visiting, and attending parties, their time seems to be pretty well occupied. And they are so bright and rosy, too, — at least some of them, — so full of life and spirits. I don't see what good it would do them to have to work for a living. I can't help thinking it would only make them dull and stupid ; at any rate, that it would take a good deal of the brightness out of their lives. Dr. Dix. You have drawn a most charming picture, Miss Sawyer. It seems an ungracious task to paint out INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. 177 any of those brilliant colors. And yet if the picture is to be true to life I fear it must be done. I must be the ogre in your paradise. Joseph Cracklin. In her " fool's paradise." Helen Sawyer [with spirit^. He would like to be one of the fools, all the same. We all heard him say so. \Laughter.~\ Dr. Dix. Well, if you two have finished your passage at arms, the ogre will proceed with his ungracious task. If the experience of all mankind has established one principle more firmly than another, it is that a life de- voted solely to pleasure-seeking is the one most likely to fail in its object. Such a life will do well enough for the butterfly, — it seems to be what it is made for ; but man was made for a different purpose, a purpose immeasurably nobler and higher, — a purpose upon which not only his usefulness, but his health and hap- piness depend. He is endowed with faculties and en- ergies which call for action, as his stomach calls for food, as his lungs call for air. If they are denied action they will starve. Mere pleasure is not their proper food nor their proper air ; it is only their confectionery and their wine. Hence a life devoted to pleasure is a life of mental and moral starvation. All that Miss Sawyer and the rest of us have observed may be true, so far as external seeming goes. Nature adapts herself wonderfully to circumstances. She will endure the violation of her laws for years, sometimes, without apparent penalty. Throughout the years of youth she is particularly forbearing. But the penalty is none the less sure because it is delayed. It is an infallible law that no pleasure is enduring that costs no effort of mind or body. Helen Sawyer. But some of the pleasures I have mentioned do cost effort, and plenty of it. Dr. Dix. Yes, I was coming to that. I was about to say that even those whose sole object in life is pleasure 178 CHARACTER BUILDING. have discovered the law, and hence some of their plea- sures call into vigorous play certain powers of mind and body ; in certain instances they even cost severe and irksome labor in preparation. These pleasures, I scarcely need say, are the longest-lived of all. But even these fail after a time, because their object is not high and noble enough to last. You have described the votaries of pleasure as they appear to you. But you see them only, perhaps, while their pleasures are yet new, before they have lost their charm. Seek them out a few years later, when they have withdrawn from the society that no longer inter- ests them ; when the wine of pleasure has lost its effer- vescence, and their jaded appetites find no substitutes for the sweetmeats that have lost their taste. Their powers, unused to effort, save for that which no longer pleases, refuse to be aroused by less stimulating objects : they cannot read, for the sensational novel is to them no longer sensational ; they cannot work, for labor is even more insupportable than ennui. In short, they are " the most mournful and yet the most contemptible wrecks to be found along the shores of life." Helen Sawyer. Oh, Dr. Dix, what a terrible ruin you have made of my " charming picture " ! And is that to be the fate of all those delightful people ? Dr. Dix. I truly hope that it may be the fate of no one of them ! I truly hope that the mere butterfly's life may satisfy no one of them for even one year of their bright, vigorous youth ! Their travelling and their sailing, their opera-going and their tennis-playing, and all the rest of their round of elegant pleasures are most excellent in themselves, — would that every human being could have his share ! — but they are excellent only as diversions, never as the regular business of life. To those who are not destined by Fate to labor for their daily bread, let me say, Do not be disheartened. \_Laughter.~\ Bread is not the only thing worth labor- INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. 179 ing for. Though you may be possessed of millions, there are yet objects enough in life to call forth all your powers of mind and body. Nay, it is in your power to count the bounties of Fortune among your greatest and truest blessings : rightly used, almost nothing else will so broaden your field of noble activi- ties. Archibald Watson. If work is so good for us, I don't see why it was made so disagreeable. Dr. Dix. Here is another example of too wide gen- eralizing. What is true of some work to some workers you have no right to predicate of all work to all work- ers. Aversion to labor is a frequent but not a universal feeling; nor is it normal in those to whom Nature has given the ability to labor. The beaver shows no dislike for his laborious task, nor the ant, nor the bee, nor the winged nest-builders. The change from an abnormal to a normal condition is often a disagreeable process, as every physician knows. Learning to like labor is such a process. Strength is gained only by overcoming re- sistance : if we had not always had gravity to overcome, none of us would have the strength to stand erect against it to-day, and the effort to do so would have been disagreeable. There is no greater or more obsti- nate resistance to overcome than our own indolence : while the process of overcoming it continues, all kinds of effort are disagreeable, but no longer. To man in his normal .condition work in proper amount is no more dis- agreeable than to the beaver or to the bee. On the con- trary, he finds in it his keenest pleasure ; a pleasure, too, that, unlike the pleasures of passive indulgence, never loses its zest while the ability to labor lasts. Frederick Fox. That may be true of some kinds of work. I can understand how the artist and the writer, who are gaining fresh laurels with every new achieve' ment, or the merchant and the manufacturer, who are continually adding to their wealth, may enjoy their 180 CHARACTER BUILDING. labor. But how can the man who does the same thing day after day for each day's bread help finding his toil disagreeable ? Do you suppose anybody ever did enjoy his daily promenade in the treadmill ? Dr. Dix. Probably not. Certainly not when, as is too often true, that " daily promenade " demands all his waking hours. But those are not the conditions of labor brought about by Nature's beneficent design. We are not now speaking of the abuse of labor, but of labor under normal conditions. Under such conditions its humblest form might be a pleasure as well as a benefit to the laborer. Why should not the artisan feel the same pride and enthusiasm that his more aristocratic kinsman, the artist, feels in making his work the very best possible ? That is the feeling of every man who enjoys his labor, — the artistic impulse. The stone- cutter, for instance, may take the same kind of interest in making his rough ashlar true and smooth that the sculptor takes in moulding the exquisite features of his Venus or of his Apollo : the difference is only in degree. I am not so disposed as many are to ridicule the cus- tom of certain people in comparatively humble employ- ments to call themselves " artists." If the ambitious title will only stimulate them .to do their very best to raise their employments to the dignity of arts, so much the better for their customers as well as for themselves. Jonathan Tower. Would you include bootblacks ? Br. Dix. Why not ? There is a wide range of skill in the blacking of boots, from that which covers them with a coarse, fibrous, lustreless paste to that which changes them to polished ebony. I tell you, I have seen an artistic zeal and pride in his work in a shabby, grimy little street Arab which would have redeemed many an ambitious canvas from ignoble failure. Surely this class of laborers are far more entitled to respect and sympathy than their opposites. I sincerely hope no one among you will ever look down upon his INDUSTRY, WEALTH, HAPPINESS. 181 business, however humble it may be in general estima- tion. If what ys>ii do is of real service and benefit to any fellow-creature, your position in life is immeasura- bly above that of the mere pleasure-seeker, though he live in a palace and wear a crown of diamonds upon his brow. Yes, the pen and the pencil, the hammer and the needle, even the pick and the spade are more honorable in human hands than the jewelled fan or the gracefully brandished walking-stick. If justice were done, the idler, whatever his station, would doff his hat to the humblest laborer. " He has the right to live in a world that is better for his living in it," he wonld reflect ; " he has the right to hold up his head in the proud con- sciousness that he has earned the coarse bread he eats and the humble clothes he wears. But what of me, whose only use in life is to consume what he and his fellow-toilers have produced ? " And the reflection should impel him, in deference to his own self-respect, to be no longer a mere parasite on human industry. XXXIV. VOCATION, VACATION, AND AVOCATION. Helen Mar. It seems to me, Dr. Dix, that there is more complaint nowadays against too mnch than against too little industry. Americans, in particular, are said to work too hard rather than not hard enough. Dr. Dix. Yes, Miss Mar, there is wrong and ruin in excess as well as in deficiency. " Drive neither too high nor too low," was the sun-god's advice to Phaeton. " In medio tutissimus ibis." 1 It is not enough that the engine of life be amply supplied with steam ; there must be a wise engineer in the cab to turn it on and shut it off as occasion requires. Without him the en- gine will either not move or it will rush on to its own destruction. Activity is indispensable to health and happiness ; but it must be regulated by wisdom and conscience. Alternate labor and rest is nature's law. Jonathan Tower. How shall we know when we have done work enough ? Dr. Dix. It will not be difficult to decide. The pen- alties of overwork are as plain as are those of idleness. Nature is a faithful sentinel, and she gives her warn- ings with no uncertain sound. The loss of cheerful- ness, of elasticity, the growing sense of weariness which the night's broken slumbers do not dispel, are unmis- takable warnings. If these are not heeded, others will come which must be heeded ; if rest is not taken as a sweet reward, it will be enforced as a bitter punishment. It is not long now, scholars, before vacation. The old-fashioned advice was, not to lay aside your books. 1 Thou wilt go safest iii the middle course. VOCATION, VACATION, AND AVOCATION. 183 Teachers and school trustees are wiser now. " Lay them aside," we say, " and don't touch them again till vacation is over." But that does not mean, Spend your days in utter idleness. Many students make that unhappy mistake. They congratulate themselves on having finished, for a time, their mental toil, and promise themselves the lux- ury of complete mental rest. They soon find, however, that rest is a luxury only while it is rest. As soon as the faculties have fully recovered from their weariness, if new and vigorous employments do not take the place of the labors of school, they find that rest degenerates into that ennui which I have already described as the permanent curse of the habitual idler. Nay, they find it even more insupportable than the habitual idler finds it, for inaction is in any degree tolerable only to powers which are torpid by nature or by habit. Jonathan Tower. Then how shall we spend our va- cations ? Dr. Dix. Spend them in such a manner as to give yourselves the maximum of rest, health, and happiness, in such a manner as best to fit yourselves for the faith- ful, vigorous performance of the next year's work. That is the best rule I can give you. Jonathan Tower. But how shall we do that ? Dr. Dix. In different ways, according to circum- stances, opportunities, tastes, and dispositions. There are few definite rules I can give you that will fit all cases. To those who are not actual invalids the only true rest is a change rather than a cessation of action. To the healthy mind and body there is no harder work than continued inaction. Each day nature supplies a certain amount of nervous energy, which demands an outlet in some direction. If it does not find that outlet it accumulates, and creates a growing sense of uneasi- ness : few maladies are harder to bear than what is known as the Lazy Man's Dyspepsia. 184 CHARACTER BUILDING. In order to be interesting and satisfying, the employ- ments of vacation need to be systematized as well as those of vocation. To depend upon the caprices cf each day for each day's occupations will do well enough for a while ; but soon the question, Well, what shall we do to-day ? becomes the dreaded bugbear of each successive morning. Plan for yourselves, then, some sort of sys- tematic employment that shall take a good part of your vacation. It matters little what it is, so long as it is honest, harmless, interesting, and as unlike your regu- lar work as you can make it. This last condition is especially important ; — your vacation employment should be literally an a-vocation, a call away from your vocation. Your daily instalment of nervous energy will then neither call into action those brain-cells or those muscles which are already exhausted, nor will it accu- mulate upon and congest your nerve centres, as it would do in complete and continued idleness, but it will find a safe and delightful outlet through a different set of brain-cells or a different set of muscles. Jonathan Tower. What avocations would you re- commend for us ? Dr. Dix. Oh, there is a long list. Some of them Miss Sawyer has already mentioned. I believe she be- gan with READING. To a student, reading as an avocation should be on subjects different from those he is studying at school. Should it, therefore, involve no study ? We will sup- pose its sole purpose is to give rest and pleasure to the tired brain. What a delightful sound there is to that well-worn phrase, " Summer Beading " ! What charm- ing pictures it calls up of luxurious hammocks on breezy piazzas, or of shady nooks beside mountain rivu- lets ! " I want something that I can read without the least effort," you say to yourself as you make your se- VOCATION, VACATION, AND AVOCATION. 185 lection, " something that will carry me along by its own power." And so yon gather up a score, more or less, of the freshest, spiciest novels, and nothing else. Essays you abominate ; histories you eschew utterly ; poems are a little better, but they require closer atten- tion than you feel like giving in vacation : so your stock of mental pabulum consists entirely of literary caramels and comfits and bottles of literary champagne, with something stronger for an occasional intellectual ca- rouse. Now, the natural and desired effect of healthful rest is to invigorate, to render brain and body better fitted for labor ; nay, to give them a renewed appetite and relish for labor. How a good night's sleep sweetens that which the night before was a dreary task ! Well, your summer vacation is over, your score, more or less, of novels have been read, and you resume your studies. How much do you find your mind rested, applying the test I have named ? how much keener is your relish for your trigonometry and your political economy than it was before vacation ? Helen Sawyer. I have done- almost exactly what you have described, over and over again, and I don't remem- ber that my school studies seemed any more distasteful on account of the novels. Dr. Dix. Neither you nor I can ever know how they would have seemed to you, if you had not done exactly what I described, " over and over again." Most pupils perform duties at school cheerfully that they could not be induced to perform anywhere else ; the stimulus of competition carries many through , studies that would otherwise be intolerably distasteful. Let me ask you how your long and uninterrupted courses of novel-read- ing have affected your taste for other kinds of reading ? how do you enjoy an elaborate magazine essay, for in- stance ? how do you like McMaster's United States or Macaulay's England ? 186 CHARACTER BUILDING. Helen Sawyer. To be candid, I never read such things : I have history enough in school, and magazine essays are generally altogether beyond my feeble com- prehension. Dr. Dix. Oh, no, Miss Sawyer, not beyond your comprehension, for you easily comprehend things here in school, quite as difficult and abstruse as anything in the average magazine article ; what you meant to say is, that they are beyond your inclination. Now I am not going to make an uncompromising at- tack upon novel-reading. If I should condemn it ut- terly I should only exhibit myself as a narrow-minded bigot. So long as the novel keeps its place, — the good novel, I mean, — it is one of the very best things in life. It is only when it usurps the place of other kinds of reading that it becomes a positive evil. But I think I am not extravagant when I say that, with the average mind, its inevitable tendency is to usurp the place of all other kinds of reading. Almost every librarian will tell you that the majority of his readers take scarcely anything but novels. Helen Sawyer. Well, suppose what the librarians say is true, — do not their readers find in their novels much truth, much valuable instruction, especially in re- gard to human life, motives, and character '? Is it not the novelist's peculiar province to — to unveil the hu- man mind and heart ? Dr. Dix. Yes, that is, or should be, the novelist's highest aim. If fiction were generally studied by the reader as well as by the writer with this object in view, it would justly take its place high among the fine arts. There are such writers and such readers. All honor to them. It is not of these that I complain, but of those whose motives are by no means so high or noble. Love of narrative is a natural passion, and should be gratified to a reasonable and healthful extent ; but it is a passion, the keenness of which is easily blunted by VOCATION, VACATION, AND AVOCATION. 187 over-gratification. In the normal condition of the mind the simplest narrative of actual events, or of events which might easily be actual, is interesting enough to carry the reader or the listener along without effort on his part. But the trouble is, that neither the average writer nor the average reader of fiction is satisfied with such narratives ; so the passion is gratified with so highly seasoned material that it no longer finds pleasure in the simple tales of nature and real life. The jaded appetite becomes finally too feeble to tolerate even the fragments of essay or actual history which are thrown in here and there to give " body " to the romance, and they are impatiently skipped in the languid desire to see "how the story is coming out." I can liken the mind in this pitiable condition only to a stomach which has been fed so long on confections, spices, and worse stimulants that it can relish only the strongest of these. Susan Perkins. Then it is better and safer to avoid novels altogether, is it not ? Dr. Dlx. No, indeed, Miss Perkins ; everybody ought x to read some fiction, but only the best. Why, indeed, should any but the best ever be read ? There is enough for all, and it is as cheap and as easily ob- tained as the poorest. Why should any one drink of the muddy, stagnant pool when the clear, sparkling spring bubbles just beside it ? But do not let even the best novels get the mastery over you. The moment you find that they have blunted the keenness of your relish for more solid reading it is time for your " vacation " in reading to end for a while. XXXV. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. Dr. Dix. Referring again to Miss Sawyer's list — Helen Sawyer. Oh, Dr. Dix, I didn't intend any- thing so formidable as a list. If I had, I should have given it in alphabetical order. Dr. Dix. Referring again to Miss Sawyer's casual remark, we find travelling mentioned among the favor- ite occupations of those who are privileged to do as they please. We may include it among our summer avocations ; but, mark you, it must be travelling with a definite object in view, not in the listless, fruitless way in which many travel. You might as well dawdle away your time and sigh with mental dyspepsia at home as in a palace-car. Miss Sawyer mentioned yachting : that must also have a definite object ; observe that no one enjoys this avocation or profits by it more than the man who sails the yacht. Tennis was another amusement she named, to which we will add cricket, base-ball, and all similar games ; but you must set about them with an energetic determination to excel, or they will afford you little of either pleasure or profit. Among still other avocations I will mention the collection of min- erals, plants, and — and — Trumbull Butters. Postage stamps ? Dr. Dix. Yes, though this is better suited to a me- chanic or a farm laborer than to a student. He needs something that will give him more physical exercise and out-of-door air. Charles Fox. Birds' eggs and insects ? Dr. Dix. I was about to mention these. I hesitated CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 189 for a moment because the thought of them suggested another subject of which I wish to speak, Cruelty to Animals. In the collection of minerals and plants there is noth- ing that need be painful to the most tender sensibility, though I heard a lady once say she never pulled a beau- tiful flower to pieces without feeling like a vandal. There is a wide difference between this lady and the man who for mere sport can wantonly destroy the most magnificent animal without compunction. Think of the heart that finds one of its keenest enjoyments in the destruction of joyous, beautiful life ! It has been ac- counted for, and it can be accounted for, only in one way : We are descended from a race of cruel savages, and the savagery has not all been civilized out of us. Joseph CracJclin. Would } r ou, then, forbid all hunt- ing, trapping, and fishing ? Dr. Dix. For mere sport, yes : for food or other legitimate uses that may be made of the poor mangled victims of mans superior strength, skill, or cunning, or for defence against their depredations, no. Joseph Cracklin. But would you thus not greatly re- strict one of the best means men have of cultivating their power, skill, and manly courage and hardihood '.' Dr. Dix. If they choose they can find plenty of other means equally good of cultivating their power and skill. It takes far more of either quality to study successfully the nature and habits of an innocent beast or bird, to find out where and how it lives, than to kill it. For my own part, I would rather hear a blackbird or a nightingale sing and note down its song on my musical scale, than to still its beautiful voice forever ; to watch it as it preens its feathers, than to ruffle and stain them with its blood, or as it builds its nest, than to leave its tiny architecture, all unfinished, to fall into ruin. As to "manly courage and hardihood," it takes a wonderful amount, truly, to make war upon harmless 190 CHARACTER BUILDING, creatures whose only wish or effort is to escape ! Think of a band of stalwart heroes armed with guns and mounted upon fleet horses, with an auxiliary force of bloodthirsty hounds, all in courageous pursuit of one little terror-stricken fox ! What paeans of victory should welcome their return with their formidable antagonist defeated and slain ! "See, the conquering- heroes come ! Sound the trumpet, beat the drum ! " Joseph Cracklin. I never looked at it in that light before : it does seem rather unfair to the fox, to be sure. Dr. Dix. Unfair ! I can admire the heroes of a lion or of a tiger hunt as enthusiastically as any one, but I confess I cannot sound my trumpet nor beat my drum very loudly in honor of the heroes of a fox hunt. Joseph Cracklin. But they don't boast of their cour- age in attacking and killing the animal ; they think only of their skill in the chase — they don't think of the animal at all. Dr. Dix. You mean, they don't think of the odds between them and their victim ? Josepjh Cracklin. Yes, Dr. Dix ; that 's what I mean. Dr. Dix. Because it is only an animal, and because the odds is so enormous that it eludes thought alto- gether. They would scorn to try their prowess with an inferior human antagonist, and the greater the dis- parity the greater they would deem their cowardice in such a trial. If we see a great, strong man abusing a defenceless child, our hearts swell with indignation and contempt ; but if it be a creature a thousand times feebler and more defenceless than the child, he may abuse it or kill it at pleasure, with little or no imputa- tion upon his manliness or chivalry. Henry Phillips. But, Dr. Dix, it is simply impossi- ble to look upon human beings and animals in the same light. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 191 Dr. Dix. I admit it. I admit that it is better that an animal should suffer pain and death rather than that a human being should suffer pain. I go still further : If the death of an animal can really benefit a human being, it is right that the animal should die. I do not admit, however, that it is right to take harmless lives, simply to gratify a cruel love of sport, or to gratify a still more cruel vanity — whether it be to adorn a lady's bonnet or an Indian's belt. June Simpson. Oh, Dr. Dix, do you compare the birds on a lady's bonnet to scalps taken by a savage ? Dr. Dix. To my mind there are striking points of resemblance : both are the trophies of a cruel warfare, — though in one case the fighting is entirely on one side, the slaughter entirely on the other, — both are the ornaments of hideous death. Jane Simpson. Ugh ! I will never wear a bird on my bonnet again. Geoffrey Jenkins. But what of killing birds for nat- ural history collections ? Dr. Dix. As the design of that is to benefit human beings by affording them better opportunities of study- ing nature. I have already expressed my opinion upon it. For the same reason, you remember, I began by ap- proving of the collection of birds 1 eggs and insects. But even this should not be done at the sacrifice of our humane sensibilities. Let the death of the poor mar- tyrs to our needs and conveniences be as nearly painless as possible; and, above all, do not waste the lives so precious to them. Do not rob the nest of all its store ; do not leave the tiny mother's tiny home utterly des- olate. Archibald Watson. I suppose there's no need of being careful about wasting the precious lives of insects injurious to vegetation. Dr. Dix. That topic has already been disposed of, since their destruction is beneficial to man. 192 CHARACTER BUILDING. Lives so precious to them, I said. Did you ever think when you thoughtlessly crushed the life out of some harmless little creature, that you had in an in- stant destroyed what the combined skill of all mankind could not restore ? that you had wantonly taken away one happy being's whole share in the universe of be- ing? Think how bountiful Nature has been to you, and how niggardly to your victim. Could you not, with your thousands of herds, have left it its one ewe lamb ? If it is cowardly to treat an inferior with cruelty, why should not the cowardice be estimated in proportion to the degree of the inferiority ? You say, we cannot look upon the human and the brute creation in the same light. This, in general, I have admitted. But pain is pain and death is death, whoever or whatever suffers them. The man or the boy who can inflict torture upon a dumb animal without a stirring of pity in his heart is not likely to be very tender of any suffering but his own. The timidity of the animal creation is a constant re- proach to man. The wild deer spies him in the dis- tance, and scours away in terror : birds that alight fear- lessly upon the broad backs of the buffalo dart away at man's approach, while their shaggy steeds plunge headlong over the precipice in their mad attempt to escape. It need not have been so. It is pathetic to witness the affection with which creatures so often maltreated return kindness. The Arab's steed loves his master with almost the love of a child for its father ; the dog's affection for his master is entirely unselfish ; birds can be tamed so that they will feed from your hand. Louisa Thompson. Alexander Selkirk in his solitude laments that the beasts that roam over the plain " Are so unacquainted with man, Their tameness is shocking to me." Dr. Dix. And shocking it should be to any humane CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 193 heart, but not for the purely selfish reason which made it so to him. It is well for us that there is no race on earth for whose sole benefit we ourselves are supposed to have been created. Who knows what there may be in future ages ? Science has shown that we have been evolved from this same inferior creation that we sacrifice so ruthlessly to our needs and pleasures : John Fiske to the contrary notwithstanding, who knows positively that there may not be evolved from us an angelic race as far above us as we are above the anthropoid apes — in all respects save the sense of what is due to infe- riors ? Imagine these glorious beings hunting, wounding, and slaying us for the sake of angelic, " snort," and for the sake of cultivating their strength, skill, and angelic courage and hardihood! Imagine them harnessing us into their chariots ; peeling the skin from our tongues and setting our teeth into agony with icy bits ; strap- ping our heads back till our necks ache beyond endur- ance, to make us look spirited ; blinding our eyes lest we should notice things by the way too curiously; and then, perhaps, driving us until we drop dead with ex- haustion. Imagine them forgetting us in our cages and letting us die of cruel hunger and still more cruel thirst, or leaving us to languish in unyisited traps and snares ; transporting us thousands of miles so closely packed together that we can neither stand, sit, nor lie without pain, and neglecting to give us food or drink because it would take^too much time and trouble ; destroying our fair-haired women by the thousands for the sake of their tresses to adorn their angelic bonnets withal ; col- lecting us for natural history museums and biological lectures. In short, imagine them inflicting upon us any of the myriad torments we so thoughtlessly and heartlessly inflict upon the unfortunate inferiors that Fate has thrown upon our mercy. Then, in fine, sup- 194 CHARACTER BUILDING. pose we should hear them justify their cruelty with the plea : " They are only men, and it is impossible to look upon men and angels in the same light! Florence Sill. But such things would not be possible with such a race of beings ; they would be as superior to men in kindness to their inferiors as they were in all other respects. Dr. Dix. You are right, Miss Hill. I supposed the exception only for the sake of helping us to see our- selves as others — angels, for instance — might see us. Such a race as I have imagined may never exist on earth, but I have no doubt that the Coming Man will be greatly superior to the present representatives of the race in kindness of heart as well as in all other respects ; and I believe that he will look back upon the atrocities of this age, those inflicted upon animals among the rest, as we look back upon the gladiatorial shows of ancient Rome or the torture of prisoners in ancient Carthage. Geoffrey Jenkins. Dr. Dix, all people are not cruel to animals. There are some who seem to think more of them than they do of human beings. I have seen ladies take better care of a snarling little puppy than they would ever think of taking of a baby. Joseph Cracklin. And I have seen girls pet a kitten while they were making mouths at their brothers. Helen Sawyer [promptly]. That is because kittens always behave so much better than brothers do ! \Laugh- ter.~\ Jpseph Cracklin. While sisters are always such pat- terns of gentleness, patience, and sweet — Dr. Dix. The time to close our discussion has come. XXXVI. CHARITY. Dr. Dix. In our last Talk we spoke of our duties to the lower animals : let us now return to our duties to our own race. We may dispose of Jenkins's remark, that some people think more of animals than of human beings, with the reflection that such sentiments can awaken only pity or disgust in any well-regulated mind. What should be our feelings and conduct towards our fellow-men, particularly those who need our sympathy and help, will be our subject this morning. I said awhile ago that no life is more certain to fail in its object than that one which is devoted to selfish pleasure-seeking. The rule extends to all self-seeking of whatever k,hid. The purely selfish man may gain all he strives for : wealth, power, learning, fame, idle amuse- ment, — all save the one thing that he most ardently desires, and to which all the rest are sought as merely stepping-stones — happiness. Xow how shall happiness be obtained ? It has been defined as that condition in which all the functions of mind and body are in perfectly harmonious action, ■ — perfect harmony with their environment. It is not probable that such a condition has ever yet been attained in this world, but the nearest approach to it has been where to a healthy body and mind has been joined a heart so filled with love for fellow-men that it has had little or no thought for self. For, scholars, Happiness comes to us most readily when she is not sought for her own sake. She is beautiful and sweet, but she is an arrant coquette. " Pursue her," says an old proverb, " and she will flee ; avoid her, and she will pursue." 196 CHARACTER BUILDING. But the selfish man will not believe this. Day by day, and year by year, he goes on straining all his energies for that which is designed to benefit only himself ; and with each successive triumph comes disappointment, astonishment, that the happiness he so fondly expected does not follow. He concludes, at length, that what- ever satisfaction there is in life comes in the process of acquiring and not in the acquisition itself, and so — he goes on, still striving. But he makes a fatal mistake. There is a satisfaction far greater than that of the mightiest and most success- ful struggle for self, — a satisfaction, too, which does not end with success, but goes on ever increasing. It would be Avell for him if the three spirits that visited Scrooge on that famous Christmas night would visit him also. Then, when he had seen how much wretchedness there is in this sad world that he might relieve, how many bitter tears that he might dry, how many heavy hearts that he might cheer, perhaps he could taste the happiness which all his years of labor and of triumph cannot bestow. Instead of feeling a dead weight of discontent, of unsatisfied longing for he knows not what, forever pressing down upon his heart, he might cry, like the transformed Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath, — " I don't know what to do ! I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school- boy, I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christ- mas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world ! Hallo, here ! Whoop ! Hallo ! " George Williams. Scrooge was a rich man : he had it in his power to do all those benevolent deeds. But if happiness depends on that sort of thing, there was n't much chance for the poor people he helped ; and he could n't have succeeded in making them really happy, after all, however comfortable he may have made them. Dr. Dix. Ah, "Williams, giving money is not the CHARITY. 197 only way to benefit our fellow-men. A kind word, a cheery smile, has many times lightened a sorrow-laden heart as money could not have lightened it ; and none of us are so poor that Ave cannot, now and then, give a crust of bread, a cup of cold water, or a helping hand to those in need. The giving of money, indeed, often does more harm than good. The careless rich, who sat- isfy their pride and their consciences by the indiscrimi- nate scattering of their bounty, are responsible for most of the culpable pauperism in the world. To give to a lazy, shiftless man is only to defeat the beneficent pur- pose of Nature and Fortune, which is to force him by the stern discipline of necessity to use the energies they have given him. To feed his laziness and shiftlessness is little better than to give strong drink to the drunkard or laudanum to the opium slave. The only help which those who are Avise and really sincere in their benevo- lence will vouchsafe such a man is encouragement and assistance to help himself. This is the best work of the great charitable organiza- tions which do so much to distinguish our age from the cruel past. Frederick Fox. I have heard bitter complaints against charitable organizations : that a great deal of the money given them is spent in fat salaries to officials and in useless decoration and printing, but especially that there is so much red tape about their operations that those who are actually most in need of their aid do not know how to set to work to get it, and, even if they did know, would have neither the time nor the energy to go through with the necessary preliminaries. Dr. Di.r. While there is probably some foundation for such complaints, you must bear in mind that there is nothing many people enjoy so much as fault-finding, and generally those who know the least of what they are talking about are the most severe in their criticism. Most frequently, I suspect, their criticisms are pro- 198 CHARACTER BUILDING. nounced merely as the most effective way of saving their own money. I have taken some pains to inquire into the methods of several of the best known charitable associations, and I have yet to find an official overpaid. On the contrary, most of them fill their offices at an actual personal sac- rifice. I have found no useless decoration, and as to printing, every business man knows how essential that is to the efficiency of any enterprise, whether charitable or otherwise. The " red tape " you speak of is not an unmitigated evil. I do not think there is generally any more than is necessary to prevent imposture. It is well, too, that help should not be obtained too easily, so long as it comes in time to those in actual need. Florence Hill. But how maliy thousands there are in the sorest need, to whom it never comes ! Dr. Dix. Alas, yes. If those who are so liberal with their complaints and criticisms would be but half as liberal with their help, they would find far less to com- plain of and criticise. Scolding is not the best way to correct abuses, scholars. Let me now make a practical suggestion to you : Whether you ever become active working members of such associations or not, at least inform yourselves tl'oroughly in regard to their methods and the steps necessary to secure their aid, so that when a case of need comes to your knowledge you may know exactly what to do, and how to do it in the best and quickest way. And, let me add by the way, do not wait for such cases to come to your knowledge accidentally. Seek them out. None of you will be too busy in your own behalf or in that of those dependent upon you to do an occasional act of kindness of this sort. Do it, not for the sure reward of happiness it will bring you, espe- cially on your last day, but for the love you bear your suffering brother or sister. XXXVII. WITH HAND AND HEART. Dr. Dix. Do your kindnesses, I said last Wednesday, with your heart as well as with your hand. This morn- ing I say, Do them with your hand as well as with your heart. The seed that germinates, but never sends its shoots into the sunlight, is no better than a stone ; the plant that puts forth leaves, but neither flower nor fruit, is little better. Jane Simpson. But didn't you say, a kind word, a cheery smile, often do more good than more substantial gifts ? Dr. Dix. And so they do. They are the flowers of kindness, and flowers are sometimes more, needed than fruit. Did you never see a beautiful, fresh bouquet brighten the eyes of a weary invalid as the choicest viands would not have brightened them ? I have, and I have seen a ragged child in the city laugh with de- light over a poor little nosegay, who would have pock- eted your dime with scarcely a " thank ye, sir." Lucy Snow. And what are the leaves of kindness ? Dr. Dix. Oh, they are merely Talks about kindness. All that we say here, if it results in neither a kind word and a cheery smile to those more in need of them than of the helping hand, nor in both the kind word and the helping hand to those in need of both, is " nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves." Helen Mar. And the germinating seed that never reaches the sunlight is, I suppose, the mere thought of kindness in the heart that never finds expression either in words or deeds ? 200 CHARACTER BUILDING. Dr. Dix. Precisely. But let us not run our figure into the ground, — I refer to the figure, not the seed. \_Laugliter.~] Do your kindnesses with your hand as well as with your heart : do not be satisfied with unspoken impulses, nor yet with eloquent panegyrics on the beauty and the nobility of benevolence. Florence Hill. If the hand does not obey the impulse of the heart, is there not good reason for suspecting the genuineness of the impulse ? Dr. Dlx. There is, indeed. A great deal of such im- pulse that is taken for real benevolence, especially by the subject himself, is but the flimsiest kind of senti- mentalism. Oh, what a vast amount of it there is ! what floods of tears are shed over the romantic sorrows of fair creatures that never breathed, by readers who can hear of real living distress without a tinge of pity ! what heart-throbs and suppressed sighs over the pictur- esque woes of the stage heroine in her velvet, satin, and jewels, — heart-throbs and sighs which even the know- ledge that the persecuted fair one gets her thousand dollars a night cannot mitigate ! Helen Mar. Such errief seems absurd enousrh when o o we think of it coolly, and yet I can't think it is entirely heartless. Only those whose imaginations are vivid enough to make the scenes read and witnessed a reality for the time being, can feel it. To them the suffering is real suffering, so the pity they feel and the tears they shed — their sighs and their heart-throbs — are genuine after all. Dr. Dlx. Don't lay too much stress on the reality, Miss Mar. Eeality would lead genuine feeling to some sort of action, whereas the most remote notion of being anything more than a passive spectator, whatever out- rages are perpetrated, never enters the most lively im- agination of the theatre-goer or the novel -reader. Geoffrey Jenkins. I never heard of but one man to WITH HAND AND HEART. 201 whom the persecuted stage heroine was a bona fide reality. Dr. Dix. Well, you may tell us about him, if it will not take too long. Geoffrey Jenkins. He was a big-hearted, chivalrous Irishman who, when he could restrain his outraged feelings no longer, stood up in his seat in the gallery, shook a most formidable fist, and shouted at the top of his voice, " Av ye don't lave her alone, ye currly-headed, murtherin' thafe o' the wurruld, 1 '11 — " But before he could pronounce the " murtherin' thafe's " doom he was summarily repressed. Dr. Die. There was heart and hand, surely. Archibald Watson. Or rather, heart and fist. Dr. Dlx. Yes, and, I remember, I made a distinction. No one could doubt the genuineness of his impulse. Whether Jenkins's story is true or not, it illustrates more forcibly than anything I could say the shallowness of sentimental emotions. The natural outbreak of a heart whose warmth and strength, unimpaired by artifi- cial excitement, overmastered its owner's judgment and reason, was simply ridiculous to his fellow spectators, who neither felt nor wished to feel more than the hol- low semblance of his emotion. There is a certain amount of sentimentalism in nearly all of us. Something of the theatrical or, at least, of the dramatic is needed to arouse our hearts to lively emotion. We read in our morning paper of a great rail- way disaster. If the reporter is a plain statistician, without imagination or power of word-picturing, how many of us feel more than a momentary thrill of horror ? how many feel even that strongly ? But let the story of one of the sufferers be skilfully told, and we lavish upon him the sympathy that we withhold from the many. Xay, let the story of suffering that we know was never endured be told with sufficient dramatic power, and it will arouse emotions, perhaps tears, that 202 CHARACTER BUILDING. not even Waterloo or Gettysburg has ever brought to us. Louisa Thompson. But the vivid emotion is only momentary, while the other is lasting. Dr. Dix. What there is of it. Louisa Thompson. Even if there is not much of it, do you think it necessarily implies heartlessness ? We cannot feel until we realize. The reality is too much for us ; we cannot feel it because we cannot compre- hend it. Dr. Dix. Yes, all that is true. But full realization does not always bring the emotions that are due, that would arise in a heart in its normal condition. I have heard the most eloquent pity poured out for a beggar- girl in a painting from people who I know would never notice the original. What I wish to impress upon you is that mere emo- tion) it matters not how vivid, does not necessarily imply real goodness of heart, nor on the other hand does the absence of vivid emotion imply a want of goodness of heart. We see this principle illustrated every day. It is not real distress that affects people of shallow emotional natures, but the pathetic manifestation of distress, par- ticularly if that manifestation is graceful and pleasing, a beautiful sorrow in the eye or a mournful music in the voice. Literary, dramatic, or musical pathos is the only pathos that will move them, whether in fiction, on the stage, or in real life. It follows that there must be nothing in the distress too disagreeable to witness, — nothing decidedly repulsive : the filth and squalor so often inseparable from it are utterly out of the ques- tion. In short, the chief concern is not so much for the sufferer as for self. " I cannot visit the homes of the extremely poor," says one of these tender creatures ; " my sympathies are too strong, — and as to hospitals, how any one with WITH HAND AND HEART. 203 a heart can bear to enter them, I cannot understand." And so the extremely poor might suffer on, the hospital patient might languish uncheered and unnursed, with- out disturbing his equanimity, so long as they remained out of his sight and hearing. I have heard a man boast, as if he thought it was really creditable to his good heart, that he always got away from a crowd assembled around an object in the street as quickly as possible, for fear it might be somebody killed or badly hurt. Joseph ' 'racklin. Would he show a better heart if he should elbow his way through the crowd and stand like them staring at the man that was killed or hurt, just out of curiosity '.' Dr. Dix. That there are lower depths of cruelty and seltishness than his own does not imply that he is not cruel and selfish. There are still lower depths than that to which probably any one in that crowd has sunk. People have lived who would not only gaze with pleas- ure upon suffering and death, but would, if permitted, help them along, as boys throw fuel upon a bonfire. The utmost that the man I spoke of can claim is neutral- ity to the suffering of others and tender consideration of his own sensitive feelings. He can claim no positive; gooclheartedness until, at the sacrifice of feeling, he has offered his help, or has learned that no help is needed. It is good to feel the heart swell with tender sym- pathy for the pain of others, it is good to express ten- der sympathy in well-chosen and effective words, but it is better — oh, immensely better — to do that which will help to relieve that pain. Do your kindnesses, then, with hand as well as with heart. Son, do not merely pity your anxious father, so sorely beset in the battle of life : stand by his side when he needs you most, and fight the battle with him. Daughter, when your sympathetic heart is touched by your overburdened mother's pale face and drooping fig- ure, do not be satisfied with embracing her and pouring 204 CHARACTER BUILDING. forth a wordy flood of pity and affectionate remon- strance, and then leaving your "cold-hearted,"' undemon- strative sister the humdrum task of actually lightening your poor mother's burden. Take hold bravely and help her with your own fair hands. Never mind if the strain on your long cherished selfishness and love of ease is a little severe at first, persevere ; it will do you good as well as her — though heaven forbid that this should be your prevailing motive — and you will find the strain grow less and less, until what was at first an irksome task will become one of your purest pleasures. XXXVIII. POLITENESS. Dr. Dh\ We cannot finish our Talks on Benevolence without some mention of Politeness, which may be de- fined as Benevolence in Little Things. The polite man desires that everybody around him should be at ease, and by being at ease himself, he docs what he can to bring about that result. He is polished, he has no rough surfaces to rasp those with whom he comes in contact, no sharp corners nor edges to push into or cut into them. Now, as a rule, we find the greatest development of politeness, or at least polish, where people are most thickly congregated together : hence our words urbane, from the Latin urbanus, belonging to the city; and civil, from civilis, belonging to the citizen in distinction from the savage, although it by no means follows that every resident of a city or a state is either urbane or civil, polite or polished. Some persons are so coarse-grained and obstinate in their natures that no amount of attri- tion will wear them smooth. There is an illustration of the process that polishes the manners of men which, though somewhat hack- neyed, is so good that I will give it : — Stones which have not been subjected to the attrition of one another or of water retain the rough surfaces and sharp corners and edges which they had when they were first broken from the earth's crust. But go down to the seashore or to the river-bed, and you will find that the continual washing of the waves and the roll- ing of the stones together have polished their rough 206 ' CHARACTER BUILDING. surfaces and worn off their sharp corners and jagged edges. So men who live much by themselves are apt to be rude and unpolished, to have, so to speak, sharp corners and jagged edges. More frequent contact with their fellow-men would render these roughnesses intolerable to themselves as well as to their neighbors, and so they would be of necessity worn off. The country farmer in the midst of his wide acres has plenty of room to stick out his elbows as far as he pleases, and as there are so few to be offended by his unpolished speech and his indifference to personal appearance, he may indulge in them with comparatively little inconvenience. But imagine a crowded city in which such were the prevail- ing speech, manners and dress ! what a chaos of rasping and elbowing, pulling and pushing, mutual anger and disgust, it would be ! With all the many and great dis- advantages of city compared with country life, it has, at least, one great advantage : it enforces mutual for- bearance and consideration. Susan Perkins. Do you mean to imply that city peo- ple are really more benevolent than country people ? Dr. Dix. By no manner of means, Miss Perkins. I have been speaking of external politeness, or polish, to show how it is produced and, merely superficial as it is, how essential it is to comfort and happiness in our in- tercourse with one another. No, real benevolence is peculiar to neither city nor countr}'. The roughest exterior may cover the kindest and noblest heart, while the most polished exterior may hide the basest .and most selfish. It is nonetheless true, however, that the noble heart would be all the nobler if it were not satisfied with benevolence on a large scale, but condescended to little kindnesses also. Life is, after all, more concerned with little than with great things. There are men who woidd not hesitate to lay down their lives for their families, who never think POLITENESS. • 207 of the little courtesies which make so much of the sun- shine of life. There are children who in their hearts love and ven- erate their parents, who nevertheless shamefully neglect the visible and audible manifestation of their love and veneration. Both parents and children should know that love is a plant that needs to put forth leaves, flow- ers, and fruit, lest, hardy as it is, it may languish and die. There are men, too, — you are quite as likely to find them on the farm or in the backwoods as in the most crowded city, — "Nature's noblemen," who are always polite, not according to any prescribed code of eti- quette, but from the unerring instinct of native refine- ment and a kind and noble heart. Theirs is the only politeness which has the true ring. I make a distinc- tion between true politeness and mere external polish : the one is solid gold, only brightened by the wear of daily lifelike the gold eagle passed from hand to hand; the other is but gilding, which soon wears off and shows the base, corroded metal beneath. But the purest gold is sometimes hidden under a sur- face of base metal ; it is good, indeed, to know that the gold is there, and that it will come out when emer- gency demands it, but how much better that it should always gladden the eye ! Let there be no base metal either within or without. Granting, then, that the heart is good and true, how shall the manners be polished ? I have spoken of men whose unerring instinct makes them always polite. But goodness of heart alone is not enough to give them this unerring instinct : there must be also refinement and good taste. In manners as well as in morals it is not safe for men to judge the standards of others by their own. What is good enough for them is not necessarily good enough for others. A half-blind man should not rely upon his 208 • CHARACTER BUILDING. own perception in preparing things for others to see. Untidy and ill-fitting garments may not offend their wearers, but their wearers should not suppose, there- fore, that others will view them with like indifference. A generous, whole-souled fellow may drum with grimy fingers upon his plate, or use his knife instead of his fork, with the most serene complacency, totally obliv- ious of the fact that he is inflicting a sort of mild tor- ture upon his neighbors, who never did him any harm. This is neither polite nor benevolent ; it is not doing as he would be done by. He should know that all skins are not as thick as his own. Trumbull Butters. But how can he be blamed if he does n't know any better ? Dr. Dix. He has no right not to know any better ; lie has no right to be guided by his own standard of taste and comfort where the taste and comfort of others are concerned. If he is to mingle with other people it is his duty to learn their requirements in manners as well as in morals. In fact, as I have already plainly said, good manners are properly included in good mor- als. No man can justly be a law unto himself in respect to either : he must abide by the accepted laws, and it is a recognized principle of all law that an offender cannot be exculpated on the plea of ignorance. Lucy Snow. I confess I never thought of the rules of etiquette in that light before. Dr. Dix. Is it not the right light ? The laws of good manners are as truly laws as are those of the civil government ; the rewards of obedience and the penalties of disobedience are as assured. JSow, the man who drums with grimy fingers on his plate, and substitutes his knife for his fork, is an ex- treme case of ignorance and vulgarity. He and others like him are not the only persons who are satisfied with too Ioav a standard of good breeding. The girl who shouts from the school-room window to a companion POLITENESS. , 209 across the street, who tears her French exercise into tiny bits and showers them down upon the floor in serene obliviousness of the uneasiness they cause her more tidy neighbors, who talks commonplace slang at home and abroad, apparently indifferent to, but secretly proud of, the attention she is attracting from total strangers — how should she know that their glances betoken either disgust or an admiration that she would rather not awaken ? — who is affable and sweet to those who care little for her and for whom she cares as little, but is cross and snappish to those who are all the world to her and to whom she is all the world, — this girl, most certainly, has too low a standard. She may have a heart of gold, but it is so deeply buried under the out- side coating of dross that it is difficult to believe in its existence, until some crucial test comes to burn away the dross and reveal the gold pure and sinning. And the boy who swaggers and swears, with the ab- surd notion that he is exciting general admiration for his spirit and dash, instead of contempt and dislike from all except those on or below his own low plane; who complacently sports his flashy jewelry (the African savage shows precisely Hie same complacency in his monstrous adornments) ; who makes himself obnoxious by his aggressive conduct in the public thoroughfares and conveyances; who treats with flippant disrespect those whose superior age, wisdom, and worth entitle them to his profound reverence ; who is unchivalrous to the other sex, especially his own mother and sisters, — this boy most assuredly has too low a standard, both of benevolence and of good breeding. Jonathan Tower. Is n't something more than benev- olence, native refinement, and good taste needed to make people always polite ? Br. Bix. I said that one who has these cpialifica- tions will always be polite, though he may not conform to any prescribed code of etiquette. 210 CHARACTER BUILDING. Joseph Cracklin. That does n't matter much, does it? Dr. Dix. The education that one acquires in culti- vated society bears the same relation to manners that the education of school and college bears to intelligence and learning. One can be self-taught in both direc- tions ; but it is no more than reasonable to suppose that the combined judgment and good taste of many learned and cultivated people are superior to those of one person, however intelligent and refined by nature. It is the habit of some persons to speak slightingly of the rules of etiquette ; but they are generally those who know little of them. More intimate knowledge would convince them that, for the most part, these rules are founded in common sense and pure benevolence, — that they are the very best that can be devised to secure the highest degree of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure in social intercourse. XXXIX. PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY. Dr. Dix. Pro, before ; fanum, a temple. So the old Romans compounded the word from which comes our word profane. We picture to ourselves a low-browed, villainous- looking lout standing before the portico of a noble edifice, and with insulting gestures pouring upon it a torrent of vulgar abuse. What to him is the spotless purity of that Pentelican marble, the ineffable grace of those fluted columns with their exquisitely chiselled capitals ? What to him is that realization of the poet's loftiest dream, the marble imagery of the pediment; or the majestic symmetry of the whole structure, which seems instinct with the spirit of the goddess whose su- perb figure stands within '.' He sees them all, — the columns, the smooth, pure walls, the sculptured gods and nymphs; but they in- spire no noble awe or tender admiration in his base- born soul. He stands there like a dragon befouling them with his fetid breath. It matters not that the temple he profanes is the sanctuary of a pagan religion, that the divinity he in- sults exists only in the imagination of a deluded people. It is enough that the temple is a sanctuary, that the divinity is to many far nobler souls than his own a cherished reality, that to many other noble souls who may not believe in the religion they represent, they are, at least, the expression of a lofty ideal of beauty, power, and majesty. Louisa Thompson. That was the way in which the 212 CHARACTER BUILDING. most intelligent people of Greece and Rome looked upon their divinities, was it not ? Dr. Dix. So the best classical authorities assure us. Now, as you have been told repeatedly, this is not the place either to attack or to defend any of the forms and teachings of our modern religions ; but it is both my privilege and my duty to impress upon you the solemn obligation that rests upon you as moral beings, bound to do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, to treat with respect and veneration all that is sacred from the good there is in it or the good it may cause, whether it is ancient or modern, whether it is in itself a demonstrated reality or only the belief of good and honest hearts. Profanity is the violation of this most solemn obliga- tion, if it is not a very much greater crime. "Why does a man insult the name which so many millions of good men and good women regard as the most sacred of all names ? If he believes it is but a name, he can have no purpose but to insult those who believe it is infi- nitely more ; otherwise his words have neither point nor significance : if he believes as they do, what words can measure his awful wickedness ? Archibald Watson. Probably no one who swears realizes what he is doing. Dr. Dix. I am convinced of that. Surely no one who did realize it, whatever his religious belief or un- belief, would be guilty of an offence, which of all of- fences offers the smallest return. The profane swearer has been aptly described as the only gudgeon among men that is caught with an absolutely naked hook. His profanity brings him neither gold, power, nor glory. What does it bring him, boys ? what does any man swear for ? Geoffrey Jenkins. He thinks it sounds bold and reckless ; it gives him an air of jaunty hardihood, which he and others like him particularly admire. PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY. 213 Dr. Dix. Yes ; it sounds bold, and reckless, and hardy ; but, as we have said in a very different connec- tion, " words are cheap." And of all words, none are cheaper in a certain way (though they are dear enough in others) than the generality of profane oaths, — none more absolutely meaningless. Every one knows that the dire curses which fall so recklessly from the habit- ual swearer's lips are but the idlest of idle breath. He curses with ecpial vigor what he likes and what he hates, his sonorous profanity is applied with utter im- partiality to what strikes his vulgar mind as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, honorable or mean. As to its indicating real boldness or hardihood, any one that would be terrified by such senseless babble, however sonorous and blood-curdling (if it really meant any- thing), must be timid indeed ! " Shall I be frighted when a madman stares ? " asks Brutus of his choleric friend. With a very slight change, the question might be asked by any of us, Shall I be frighted when a madman swears ? They who understand human nature know very well that the loud-mouthed blusterer, whose hot oaths pour forth from his mouth like a stream of molten lava from the crater of a volcano, is very apt to be perfectly harmless as a fighting man. It is the quiet man, whose conversation is Yea, yea ; nay, nay, that is to be guarded against when his righteous wrath becomes white-hot within him. Joseph Cracklin. I should think that anything that serves as an escape valve for " white-hot wrath " must be a good thing, even if it is profanity. Dr. Dix. Not for righteous wrath, which is the kind I mentioned. No escape valve is wanted for that, — there is altogether too little of it in the world to cope with the evils that are rampant. 214 CHARACTER BUILDING. Joseph Cracklin. But what if the wrath is not right- eous ? Dr. Dix. Ah, then I grant you that even the pro- fanity of a blustering bully may be the less of two evils, — that is, supposing his profanity serves as a substitute for anything else, which, by the way, is not likely ; he is probably too cowardly to risk anything but terrible words. Joseph Cracklin. But there are others besides cow- ards and bullies who swear. Dr. Dix. Undoubtedly ; and their swearing does not prevent other forms of wickedness. A cool, courageous villain will accomplish his villainy — and swear too. The point is, that it is not his swearing that shows his courage or hardihood. He knows this as well as others, and he knows, too, that it is not his swearing that will test the courage or hardihood of others ; that if any one fears him it is on account of his lightning, not his thunder. We will admit that so far as sound goes, profanity is bold, reckless, and hardy ; but towards whom or what is the noisy boldness, recklessness, and hardihood shown ? If the speaker believes that the sacred names he blasphemes stand for nothing, wherein does his bold- ness consist, even in sound ? I have heard it said that when a negro child in the South Avishes to be particu- larly insulting to his playmates he abuses their m of It ers. Is it in a similar way that the profane swearer desires to show his manly courage by insulting what multitudes of good people hold most sacred ? If he believes as they do, is he willing to accept the penalty he believes he merits ? or does he expect to escape by timely re- pentance, and is that his notion of courage and honor ? Would he utter his blasphemies if he believed that merited punishment would follow instantly upon the offence ? Jonathan Tower. But a man does n't always swear PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY. 215 because he is angry, — lie does it sometimes simply to be emphatic and forcible, or witty. Dr. Dix. Yes, I have already credited him with perfect impartiality in the bestowal of his epithets. Things are profanely good and profanely bad, profanely great and profanely small, profanely sad and profanely funny, and so on throughout the list. I will make the same remark about him that I made about the drunk- ard : his force, emphasis, or wit is of a very cheap or- der. The really eloquent and witty man is dependent upon neither alcohol nor profanity for his elocpience and wit ; he shows the genuineness and power of his gifts by doing without such aids : nothing shows essen- tial poverty of mind and character like a reliance upon either. But besides being insulting to good men and to the Being whom so many good men believe in and worship, the profane man is unutterably vulgar. I return to my picture of the clown before the beautiful, noble temple, — he is like a dragon befouling it with his fetid breath. In fact, profanity is very often and very properly men- tioned with, as it is usually accompanied by, another still grosser form of vulgarity, of which I shall now speak. Virgil has typified obscenity in his Harpies, those "obscene birds'' than which "no more revolting hor- ror has come forth from the Stygian waves." While iEneas and his companions are feasting in the Stroph- ades, the disgusting creatures swoop down upon their banquet from the adjacent mountains, with hoarse, dis- cordant croakings, napping their great wings and emit- ting an offensive odor, and what they do not devour of the feast they defile with their horrible filth. The Harpies are not yet extinct. Their foul contact still pollutes many a choice banquet ; their trail is over many a fair fruit and beautiful flower. Obscenity is filth, — uncompromising, unmitigated 216 CHARACTER BUILDING. filth. And, like all other forms of corruption, it is found in the greatest abundance at the lowest levels. It is Mot usually the mountain top or the wind-swept plain that calls loudly for the cleansing besom, but the deep gutter and the rotting swamp. So it is among the lowest classes of men that both obscenity and profanity run their wildest riot. Savage races are almost invari- ably indescribably nasty in thought and word as well as in person and habits of life, while among civilized nations it is most often in the slums that the house- hold words include the foulest in the language. But corruption does not confine itself to the lowest levels. Its miasma rises and spreads, with greater or less attenuation, to all heights and distances. It enters the open windows and doors of palace and cottage. It is breathed alike by the strongest and by the most deli- cate lungs. So the foul word may fall upon the most jealously guarded ears. But it is not always in the glitter or in the swamp that the poison has its origin : the palace and the cottage may breed their own foul germs. So moral filth may gather in the millionaire's home, the impure thought may spring in the most delicately nurtured mind, and the foul word may soil the daintiest lips. What an incongruous combination, scholars ! a refine- ment that cannot brook a speck of physical dirt, but can tolerate, even enjoy perhaps, moral nastiness ! a fastidi- ous taste that is disgusted by the sight of a soiled glove, but cherishes the foul thought, and listens to and utters the foul word without wincing ! How can any one pretend to refinement or good taste who relishes dirt of any kind, on the outside of the platter or within ? And if there must be dirt in either place, is it not better that it should be on the outside ? Ah, yes ; far better soiled hands, the sooty face, and the dusty blouse without than the impure mind within. Would you keep clean from this kind of filth ? Keep PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY. 217 the windows and doors of your mind closed against it; keep the hearthstones within clean-swept, lest it gather from within. Tolerate no evil companion, book, or pic- ture. It is not that which is external, but that which is in- ternal, that defileth the man. The microbes of disease and death are well-nigh omnipresent ; they infest the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. But persons whose physical systems are in a state of vigorous health are rarely subject to their deadly inva- sion ; it is those whose vitality is already impaired that fall easy victims. So, if our hearts and minds are in vigorous health, and especially if our thoughts are fully occupied with good honest work and pleasure of one kind and another, the microbes of disease and death that infest the moral atmosphere will not find easy lodgment therein. " Blessed are the pure in heart" * XL. WHAT HAS ALGEBRA TO DO WITH VIRTUE? Dr. Dlx. We will now discuss a subject which we promised to consider a long time ago. You are accustomed to hear education coupled with morality, ignorance with immorality. The common- school system of America is looked upon as a greater preventive of crime than all her court-houses and pris- ons. Yet among the list of regular studies prescribed for schools there is rarely one which has a direct bear- ing upon personal morality. In introducing this series of Talks as a regularly appointed exercise, we have made an abrupt departure from long established custom. True, it is required and expected that instructors shall always exert a good moral influence over their pupils, that they shall use their best endeavors to make of them good citizens and true, noble men and women, but there is usually no special time set apart for this most important of all objects. On the contrary, the hours of school are so completely appropriated to purely intellectual work, that, unless some arrangement is made like that which we have adopted, whatever time is taken for moral instruction must in a certain sense be stolen or, to put it more gently, must be taken "un- der a suspension of the rules." Nevertheless, the desired result is in a great measure accomplished, — not so completely as could be wished, of course, or as we hope it will be accomplished under improved conditions, but yet so completely that, as I said in the outset, you are accustomed to hear education coupled with morality, and ignorance with immorality. WHAT HAS ALGEBRA TO DO WITH VIRTUE? 219 This being the case, it follows that intellectual work has a direct salutary effect upon the moral nature. It is difficult, at first thought, to understand what relation there can be between the two. How, for example, can the pure mathematics, which of all the subjects engag- ing the thoughts of men seems to have the least relation with either virtue or vice, make them more honest, kind, temperate, or patriotic '.' George Williams. I am glad you are going to talk about this subject, Dr. Dix. I have often wondered, when I have heard so much about school making people good, what algebra had to do with virtue. Dr. Dix. I cannot promise to answer the question to your satisfaction. There are a great many facts in nature which we can only accept as tacts : our attempts to explain iliem go but a very little way. Why one plant bears grapes and another thistles, no man can explain ; he can only know that such is the fact. Now, we know that intellectual culture is a tree that gener- ally bears good fruit; the experience of all ages and all countries has established this beyond question; and though we may not be able to explain it in full, we can present some considerations which may throw a little light upon it. We have already incidentally mentioned two of these considerations, which I will ask you to review. Frederick Fox. One effect of intellectual training is to inspire a love of truth and a contempt for error. It is only the untrained mind that is satisfied with half- truths, slovenly conclusions, unproved propositions. Dr. Dix. Yes ; and it seems natural that the mind that is in the habit of insisting upon the strict truth, or the nearest possible approximation to it, in matters of science, history, or mathematics should, at least, be strongly predisposed in favor of the strict truth in all other matters. Go on. Isabelle Anthony. In one of the Talks on truthful- 220 CHARACTER BUILDING. ness you remarked that the person who is thoroughly absorbed in his algebra or in his Greek cannot at the same time be engaged in blackening his neighbor's character. Dr. Dix. Or in any other kind of mischief. Every one will admit that, if there were no other good result of intellectual occupation, this would be enough to establish its moral usefulness. George Williams. May not the same thing be said of any kind of useful occupation, whether intellectual or physical ? Dr. Dix. Yes, with modifications. It is generally true that those who are usefully occupied in any way are not engaged in mischief at the same time, — not actively engaged, at any rate, although it does not necessarily follow that the mind and the hands are always occupied with the same thing. "While the hands are bus}' with good, honest work the heart may be as busy in nourishing hatred, revenge, envy, pride, or dis- content ; and the brain may be equally busy in devising schemes for gratifying the bad passions of the heart. George Williams. Is not that being "actively en- gaged in mischief " ? Dr. Dix. Xot in the commonly accepted sense of the phrase. That demands the actual execution of the evil designs of the mind and heart, which, so long as the hands are usefully occupied, is not usually easy. Florence Hill. The useful employment of the hands may not prevent the tongue from doing mischief at the same time. Dr. Dix. Very true, Miss Hill. Most employers will tell you, however, that an active tongue is not often found associated with very busy hands. Neither, in- deed, for that matter, are a mind and heart which are not fixed on the work of the hands. Even in the most mechanical employments the hands will sometimes lapse into idleness, that the thoughts may have freer play. WHAT HAS ALGEBRA TO DO WITH VIRTUE? 221 Helen Mar. Dr. Dix, you never attended a ladies' sewing circle, if you think that the tongue and hands cannot be busy at the same time. [Laughter.] Dr. Dix [smiling']. No, Miss Mar. I confess I have never had that pleasure. I am speaking from my own limited experience. With a more extended experience, I should undoubtedly modify some of my opinions. But let us go on : — It is evident that the only time we are absolutely secure from all temptation to evil is when the thoughts are completely absorbed in some good and useful, or at least harmless occupation. It is also evident that the mere employment of the hands is not enough : the homely old lines, — " For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do," should be understood to include idle brains and hearts as well. Now, it would be absurd to claim that algebra, Greek, geography, and the other branches that occupy so much of our attention here are the only things that can com- pletely absorb men's thoughts. It might even be said of certain individuals among us, whom I will not name, that these studies are about the only things that cannot completely absorb their thoughts. [Laughter.'] But we will suppose that they fulfil their mission, that they are among the good, useful, at least harmless, things which absorb men's attention, and thus keep them from possible mischief. "We have already a pretty good an- swer to the question, "What has algebra to do with virtue ? " Louisa Thompson. Why should unoccupied minds, or rather those which are free to act according to the impulse of each moment, — for I suppose it is true that no waking mind can be really unoccupied, — why should they be so prone to evil ? why shouldn't they be equally prone to good ? 222 CHARACTER BUILDING. Dr. Dlx. Why, indeed ? It is a question easy to ask, but hard to answer. It seems to be the general policy of Nature that good should be the prize of effort and evil the penalty of idleness. A garden left to itself bears a crop of ugly, useless, or noxious weeds, with only now and then a pleasing flower or a wholesome fruit. A mind left to its own undirected thoughts is very much like the neglected garden. What a crop of rambling, inane fancies, of unreasoning discontent, of foolish sighing for the impossible, or perhaps of hatred, envy, and impurity, with all their poisonous, bitter fruits, it will bear ! Frederick Fox. Yet some of the brightest thoughts in literature and even some of the important discov- eries in science are. said to have been struck out in an idle hour. Dr. Dlx. Not often, however, by habitually idle minds. The unoccupied hours of habitually busy minds are not what we are speaking of. The busiest worker must have his hours of rest. Still, there may be excep- tions to the rule I have been laying down. As I have said, the neglected garden may bear, now and then, a pleasing flower or a wholesome fruit. But the moral function of intellectual work is not alone to prevent evil or useless thoughts by preoccupy- ing the ground, — it has also a positive influence upon the moral nature. It is commonly said that a large proportion of our acts have none of what is called the moral qualit}^ ; that is, they are in themselves neither virtuous nor vicious. The act of buying and paying for a piece of property for pleasure or convenience might be mentioned as an instance. That of studying a lesson in algebra or Greek in school would seem, at first thought, to be another equally good example. A little consideration will show us, however, that it is essentially different from the first mentioned. In the first place, it calls into play WHAT HAS ALGEBRA TO DO WITH VIRTUE? 223 industry and, usually, self-denial, two important virtues ; in the next, it disciplines the mind, between which and the heart there is a closer connection than many sup- pose. Our three natures, the moral, the intellectual, and the physical, are not separated by distinct lines of demarcation, like adjacent states on the map : there is a subtle interweaving among them, like that of the three primary colors in a ray of light. The same blood that nourishes our muscles nourishes our hearts and our brains. Each of man's three natures suffers or is bene- fited with the rest. But what affects his intellectual nature seems to be especially marked in its effects upon the other two. Intellectual Greece and Rome, cruel as they were, surpassed the barbarians around them no less in humanity than in physical prowess. To-day the educated European is superior to the Australian savage both in his bodily and in his moral stature, and among civilized men those of purely intellectual pur- suits are, as a class, not only among the longest-lived, but also among the most virtuous. We conclude, then, scholars, that intellectual training does not stop with the intellect, but that it strengthens and ennobles the whole threefold nature of man. Joseph Cracklin. I have heard that it makes only the good man better, — that it makes the bad man worse. Dr. Dix. If that be true, the vast majority of men must be good, — otherwise our prisons and penitentiaries ivould be the centres of learning, instead of our schools and colleges. XLI. HOME AND COUNTRY: THE GOOD SON AND THE GOOD CITIZEN. Dr. Dix. The child's habit is to take things for granted, to accept the blessings of home and country as matters of course, like sunshine and water. As he grows older it gradually dawns upon him that these blessings do not come of themselves, but are the fruits of unremitting labor and care. Still later he begins to realize that the time is not far distant when he must bear his share of the burden. The management of such a country and government as ours is a most momentous responsibility. It requires the highest statesmanship, the stanchest loyalty, and eternal vigilance. Those upon whom that responsibil- ity now rests will soon pass away, and you and your generation will be called, by your suffrages and personal influence at least, to take their places. The older you grow, if you fulfil the law of your being, the less you will live for yourselves alone. Let us talk this morning of those great responsibili- ties that are coming to you all. In one of our earlier Talks, we spoke of the heroic soldier as a human type of that perfect fidelity to duty which we saw in the inanimate and in the lower animate creatures. Neither he nor they exist for themselves alone, but for the great wholes of which they are parts. The strength and efficiency of an army depend upon the faithfulness of each member of it ; the harmony of the universe depends upon the fidelity to law of each world that rolls, of each atom that vibrates. HOME AND COUNTRY. 225 The good citizen is another human type of the same fidelity to the general good. To make each one of you a good citizen is the great object of all these Talks and of all our other efforts in school. The first duty of either men or things is obedience. Universal faithfulness to this duty would bring about universal harmony ; universal neglect of it would bring about universal chaos. Xo stage or position in life is exempt from the duty of obedience. The child owes it to his parents, the pu- pil to his teachers, the workman to his employers, the soldier to his officers, the citizen to his rulers, and all to the laws under which they live, especially to the laws of morality and the dictates of conscience. George Williams. Suppose there is a conflict of au- thorities ? Dr. Dix. In all cases precedence is to be given to the highest, which 1 named last. George Williams. Then a child may disobey his par- ents if his conscience so dictates '.' Dr. Dix. Certainly. But he must be sure that his conscience is right and his parents are wrong: he must bear in mind their superior age, wisdom, and experience, and the possibility that he does not understand what may be good and sufficient reasons for their commands. If they should order him to commit an unmistakably criminal or immoral act, it is not only his right but his duty to disobey them ; in all other cases it is his duty to trust to their judgment and parental fidelity. Grati- tude and natural affection should incline him to obedi- ence where otherwise he might hesitate. Do you realize, boys and girls, what you owe your- parents ? Think of your infancy, of the tender care and the utter forgetfulness of self with which your helplessness was guarded and your every need supplied ; of the long, long years of your childhood, of the won- 226 CHARACTER BUILDIXG. derful patience with which your folly, petulance, and thoughtless ingratitude were borne, — not merely borne, but repaid with unremitting devotion to your happiness and welfare. This devotion still continues. Xever so long as you live will your parents cease to love you better than themselves, to hold your interests more sacred than their own. You can never repay them for all their love and self-sacrifice, — they do not ask for repayment, — but you can make them happy by your grateful rever- ence and obedience in your youth ; you can make them happy and proud by leading noble, upright, and aspir- ing lives in your manhood and womanhood, and you can bless their declining years by returning some of the devotion and self-sacrifice which they lavished so freely upon you in the years of your helplessness. You owe all this not only to them, but also to your- selves and to your country ; I for the most dutiful son is likely to become the most faithful citizen. As he passes out from under the parental roof, the filial obedience and fealty which he has so long practised will be most likely to extend to "Father-land," to "Mother-country." He Avill recognize a similar debt of gratitude for bless- ings received, great and manifold, and a similar obliga- tion to stand by and support with heart, brain, and hand. The man otherwise intelligent and honest who neg- lects his duties to his country, from indolence, culpable ignorance of what these duties are, selfish absorption in his own private interests, or the mistaken notion that she does not need his help, is unworthy of a country bought by the blood of his fathers and preserved by the blood of his brothers. She does need his help, his most earnest and constant help : to defend her from her enemies, and to strengthen the hands of her friends ; to protect her treasure from the spoiler, and her public places from those who seek to gratify only their own greed and selfish ambition. There was no lack of public i HOME AND COUNTRY. 227 spirit among the founders of the republic. It was their devotion to the public good and their sacrifice of private interest to it which gave us the best government on earth. It is only a like devotion among their descend- ants which can keep it the best government on earth. The immortal epigram, " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," was never more true than it is to-day, and it will never be less true. You hear men excusing their neglect of public duty by the plea that politics has degenerated to a contempti- ble, mercenary trade, and that no self-respecting man will have anything to do with it. Happily their charge is only partially true ; there are still noble, unselfish statesmen and loyal patriots in public places, there are still multitudes of men who vote, as they would fight, for their country's best good. But if the charge were wholly true, those who bring it could blame none but themselves. These very men, honest, honorable, intelligent, and at heart patriotic, are in the vast majority if they but knew it : they have the power in their own hands if they chose to exercise it. It is not the great mass of voters who are to be benefited (nor would they be bene- fited if they could) by the plunder of the public treas- ury ; it is not they that wish the chairs of office to be filled by those who seek only their own interests. If the good men and true of the nation would bestir them- selves, take a little pains to inform themselves of what is going on all around them, and of the proper steps to take the whole control of elections into their own hands, they would make short work of the fraud, corruption, and trickery which are such a reproach to our still fair republic. The " machine " is formidable only to those who are too indolent or too timid to walk straight up to it and see what a mere scarecrow it really is. It could not stand against the persistent opposition of the united honesty and patriotism of the land. 228 CHARACTER BUILDING. Frederick Fox. The general prosperity is so great, notwithstanding the evils you name, that it is hard to arouse the people. They see the public corruption plainly enough, but they think the country can stand it, and so they do not think it worth while to take the pains to correct it. Dr. Dix. Yes, Fox, that is the great trouble. As some one has truly said, the danger to a small republic comes from without, to a great republic it comes from within. When the existence of our government was unmistakably in danger, men forgot their pursuit of gain, pleasure, and personal power, and rushed bravely to its defence. Now that it is, as they imagine, no longer in danger of actual destruction, they do not concern themselves with the smaller dangers to which it is exposed. They* are like a man who will peril his life to protect his home from a pack of hungry wolves, but will carelessly and stupidly allow it to be slowly undermined by vermin or dry rot without lifting a fin- ger to save it. Cato said, "When vice prevails and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station." It was such sentiments as this which hastened imperial Rome to her ruin ; and if our own great republic shall ever fall, it will be due to the same cowardly and sel- fish sentiment prevailing among those who should be her saviours. But she will not fall. Men will not always love their private ease better than their country's good ; they will see that the " post of honor " is never a " private sta- tion" when she is in peril either from without or within. George Williams. It is of very little use for any one man or for any small body of men to come to her res- cue. Even if it is true that all the honest and patri- otic men might take the control of affairs into their own hands by uniting, what good is there in that, so HOME AND COUNTRY. 229 long as they will not unite ? What would the attempt of a few amount to ? Dr. Dix. It would amount to an honest, faithful attempt; it would amount to their doing their duty, even if all other " honest and patriotic " men neglected theirs. George Williams. But they could n't accomplish any- thing. Dr. Dix. Could n't accomplish anything ! They are the ones who are destined to accomplish the salvation of the country. Each year they will grow stronger; each year thousands will be encouraged by their grow- ing strength to rally under their standard. That is the way all great reforms, from the very foundation of the world, have been accomplished. Frederick Fox. One chief difficulty is that there are so great differences of opinion among really honest and patriotic men. Might not this alone give the balance of power to fraud ami corruption, even if indolence and selfish neglect of duty did not ? Dr. Dix. Differences of honest opinion there must necessarily be ; but they would be enormously dimin- ished if men would but take the pains to sift more care- fully the evidences on which their opinions are based. Jonathan Tower. How can they do this ? What one- party journal declares the other party journal contra- dicts, — and I suppose most men will believe their own paper rather than its political rival. Dr. Dix. When you get to be voters I hope you will not be slaves either to your party journals or to your parties themselves. Don't be satisfied with a party name, however respectable or historic. Attend its meetings, find out for yourselves what its principles and repre- sentative men are to be before you commit yourselves to its support. Do not receive your ticket already cut and dried; have a voice and hand yourself in its making-up. 230 CHARACTER BUILDING. Jonathan Tower. How can we do that ? Dr. Dix. By being alive and awake at the primary meetings. Not that your vigilance should end there. " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." But he who would control the course of an arrow will do well to have a hand and an eye in its aiming. Once sped, only a strong wind can turn the direction of its flight. Especially would I warn you against feeling in the least degree bound by the decisions of " our party," unless they accord with your own convictions of what is expedient » and what is right. Do not admit the necessity of choosing between evils. If you can agree with none of the great political parties in what you honestly regard as essential to the welfare and honor of the state, join the party with which you can agree, no matter how feeble and insignificant it may appear at first. If it is really in the right, it is destined to triumph sooner or later, and you will have the proud satisfaction, the glory, of being one of its pioneers. You are preparing to take your places among the educated men and women of our nation. Upon you as such will devolve the greatest power, the greatest influ- ence, the highest responsibility. Kemember that the noblest product of education is The Good Citizen. Job Date Mend by Tlme ;' Stab ''-■' No. Sect Sew by Score Press Strip Sect UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. ^\S> in L9-Series 444 AA 000 503155 4