;&THICS 
 
 FOR 
 
 Voung'Peopli 
 
 Everett 
 
 GiNN 8c Company 
 
 ZOSa 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Received yf^W 4 1893 . 1^9 
 
 ^Accessions No, l\^'^2'^ , Class No. 
 
V. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/ethicsforyoungpeOOeverrich 
 
ETHICS 
 
 — FOR 
 
 YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 C. C. EVERETT 
 
 BussEY Professor of Theology in Harvard University; Author of "The 
 Science of Thought," " Poetry, Comedy and Duty," etc. 
 
 yU^ 09 THK 
 
 %rm.^ 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY 
 
 1892 
 
Copyright, 1891, 
 By C. C. Everett. 
 
 ^ 7 
 
 TYPOOHAPHV OF PRESS OF 
 
 C. H. HEINTZEMANN, BOSTON. Q'NN & COMPANY. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Morality in General . 
 Duties Towards One's Self 
 Duties Towards Others . 
 Helps and Hindrances 
 
 Chapters 
 
 I-X. 
 
 XI. -XX. 
 
 XX.-XXIX. 
 
 XXIX-XXXVI. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies , i 
 
 II. The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies, — 
 
 Continued . . ... . . -4 
 
 III. The Relation of the Different Sciences to 
 
 Reality 7 
 
 IV. Ethics as a Way of Life . . . .11 
 V. The Ethics of Custom 13 
 
 VI. The Imperfection of the Ethics of Custom , 16 
 
 VII. Principles in Morality 19 
 
 VIII. The Breaking Up of the Ethics of Custom . 23 
 
 IX. The Epicureans 26 
 
 X. The Stoics 30 
 
 XI. Fortitude ^ • 33 
 
 XII. Courage • 37 
 
 XIII. Courage, — Continued 40 
 
 XIV. Heroism 43 
 
 XV. Different Kinds of Heroes .... 46 
 
 XVI. Contentment 53 
 
 XVII. Ambition 58 
 
 XVIII. Education as a Duty 61 
 
 XIX. Self-Education as a Duty .... 64 
 
IV 
 Chapter 
 
 XX. 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 XL. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Self-Respect. . . . . . .67 
 
 Self- Respect continued (including Cleanliness 
 
 AND Purity) 71 
 
 Self-Control 74 
 
 Self-Reliance 'jZ 
 
 Relations to Others 84 
 
 Selfishness 88 
 
 Obedience ....... 92 
 
 Love and Sympathy 96 
 
 Usefulness 99 
 
 Truth and Honesty . . , . .103 
 
 Good Temper 106 
 
 Courtesy no 
 
 The Playground 114 
 
 Fun 119 
 
 Friendship . . . . . . .125 
 
 The Home . 130 
 
 The School 137 
 
 Patriotism ....... 143 
 
 Kindness to Animals 149 
 
 Companions 152 
 
 Reading . . . . . . .156 
 
 The Imagination . . . . . .160 
 
 Industry 165 
 
 Habit 169 
 
 Temptations 173 
 
 The Conscience 178 
 
 Conclusion 184 
 
'^^^ Qt THE >^ 
 
 (UBflVERSIT' 
 
 ETHICS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO OTHER STUDIES. 
 
 Ethics is the science of morality. By science is here 
 meant the systematic treatment of any object of study. 
 
 Ethics is called a science, because it presents the 
 principles of morality in a systematic form, and seeks to 
 find the basis upon which they rest. 
 
 A comparison with these departments of study may 
 make more clear the nature of the subjects of which 
 Ethics treats. 
 
 There are three kinds of science. 
 
 There are in the first place the sciences that treat of 
 facts, of their relations to one another, and of the laws 
 that govern them. It is to these that the name sci- 
 ence is more commonly given. 
 
 These sciences have to do with facts past and future 
 as well as present. m 
 
 Geology pictures to us the state of the earth long 
 ages ago, and astronomy that of the heavens. The 
 astronomer can also foretell the position of the planets 
 at any moment in the future, if he cares to make the 
 calculation ; and the geologist can foretell the future of 
 the world, though with less exactness as to time. 
 
2 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 To these sciences one fact is as important as another 
 if it reveals the working of a general law. The insect, 
 the dust that fills the air, in a word, anything may be 
 an object of study. 
 
 You would hardly believe, for instance, how much the 
 frog has contributed to the knowledge of the world. 
 
 The web of the frog*s foot is so thin and transparent 
 that under the microscope the blood can be seen mov- 
 ing. Looked at in this way the blood is perceived to 
 be not a mere fluid. You can see what look like circular 
 discs borne along, something like the cakes of ice that 
 are carried by a stream in a freshet. In this way the 
 student of anatomy can learn in a moment more about 
 the circulation of the blood than could be taught in any 
 other way in a much longer time. Moreover, what he 
 sees he knows as he does not know what is merely 
 told him, just as, though you may have learned in 
 books about the hippopotamus, for instance, the sight 
 of one first gives you real knowledge about it. 
 
 Further, Professor Frog is not merely a teacher, he 
 is a discoverer. The changes seen in the blood when 
 the web of the foot is inflamed, taught more in regard 
 to the nature of inflammation than had ever been known 
 before. 
 
 Through the frog, galvanism was discovered. Gal- 
 vani, an Italian, noticed that the leg of a dead frog that 
 was being prepared for the table twitched violently 
 under certain circumstances. This led to examination 
 and experiment, and, as I just said, galvanism was dis- 
 covered. 
 
The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies, 3 
 
 In addition to all this, so much has been learned from 
 the frog in relation to the nervous system, that it would 
 take almost a book by itself to describe it. 
 
 Let any boy think of all this when he is tempted to 
 throw a stone at a frog, and ask himself whether he 
 is likely ever to do so much good as frogs have done. 
 
 You probably know how Franklin discovered that 
 the lightning is a form of electricity by flying a kite 
 in a thunderstorm. I remind you of these things to 
 show that there is nothing so tl'ivial that it may not 
 have an interest for science. 
 
 It would be a good plan for every boy and girl to 
 study some science, so that they could understand and 
 take an interest in flowers or rocks, or some other natural 
 objects. Then, wherever they went, they would find 
 something to occupy their minds. They would learn 
 to keep their eyes open, so that they would see in the 
 world a thousand things that they would never have 
 dreamed of otherwise. 
 
 I repeat, that what is commonly called ** science" 
 treats of facts, and that all sorts of facts are interesting 
 to it. 
 
Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO OTHER STUDIES. 
 
 Continued, 
 
 There are, in the second place, other sciences that 
 treat of the means by which certain desirable ends may 
 be reached. 
 
 Heahh is one of the most desirable things in the 
 world, and thus there is a science called Hygiene, that 
 treats of the methods by which health may be pre- 
 served. 
 
 The health of the state is perhaps more important 
 than that of the citizen ; so there is the science of Polit- 
 ical Economy, that shows the conditions on which the 
 prosperity of the state depends. 
 
 Indeed there is nothing which we try to do that has 
 not or might not have its science. There is a science 
 of music or a science of painting. There might be a 
 science even of base-ball. The kind of curve that the 
 pitcher must give the ball so that it will change its course 
 just in time to baffle the stroke of the batter would be a 
 matter of very interesting scientific research. 
 
 Such a study is called an art when the application of 
 principles is more dwelt upon than the principles them- 
 selves. Thus we have both the science and the art of 
 speaking, of painting and of other matters which men 
 try to accomplish. 
 
 If a man would really accomplish anything he must 
 
The Relatio7i of Ethics to Other Studies. 5 
 
 generally add to the science or the art what can best be 
 called a '' knack." By this I mean the skill that comes 
 mostly by practice, added to a certain mental fitness or 
 common-sense. A student of medicine may know 
 all about diseases and cures who could hardly tell the 
 measles from the small-pox when he first saw them. 
 The boy is taught how to pitch a ball ; but at first try- 
 ing it goes all awry. All at once it goes just as it 
 should, while he seems to himself to be doing just what 
 he did before. 
 
 The sciences that teach us the conditions upon which 
 depend the ends that we wish to bring about we may 
 take together and call the science of means. 
 
 A third kind of science shows the ends which are in 
 themselves desirable. This is the science that is called 
 Ethics. 
 
 A man, for instance, wishes to succeed in business. 
 His studies and his practical training have fitted him 
 to do this. He seeks out all the methods by which he 
 may reach success. He shrinks from no labor of mind, 
 or, if need be, of body, for this end. In all this he is 
 right. We admire skill, industry and pluck. There is, 
 however, one kind of means that he may not use. He 
 may not stoop to fraud of any kind. He may desire 
 and seek wealth ; he must desire and seek honor and 
 honesty. These are among the ends that morality in- 
 sists upon, and that may not be sacrificed to anything 
 else. 
 
 Thus while the first class of sciences that I named 
 has to do with all facts, and the second only with 
 
6 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 those that help or hinder the reaching of certain ends, 
 Ethics has to do with the ends themselves. 
 
 Ethics is thus the science of living; not of living 
 healthily and long, — the science of Hygiene has to do 
 with that, — but of living well ; that is, in such a way as 
 to make life really worth the having. 
 
Relation of Different Sciences to Reality. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE DIFFERENT SCIENCES TO 
 REALITY. 
 
 The science of facts has changed greatly men's thought 
 of the world. Men used to think that the earth stands 
 still and that the sun revolves about it. They knew 
 nothing of steam as a means of power, and were igno- 
 rant of many things that are so familiar to us, that a 
 schoolboy knows more about to-day than the wisest 
 men who lived long ago. 
 
 This kind of science has not changed the worlds it 
 has simply found out about the world. The facts and 
 laws of which it treats were what they are now, whether 
 men knew them or not. 
 
 Men were, for example, whirling around the sun 
 with the earth, when they thought that the sun and the 
 stars were whirling about them. Electricity was as 
 active then as now, though it had not been set to work. 
 The laws of the universe have not changed ; only men's 
 notions about them have changed. 
 
 There are doubtless a great many laws of the world 
 which we do not yet know ; and a great many elements 
 and forces that we have not yet discovered; so that 
 the people of future ages will know as much more than 
 we do as we know more than our forefathers. 
 
 By science, then, we are slowly learning to see the 
 world as it is. The change is in us, and not in it. 
 
8 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 The science of means and the arts that spring from 
 it have really changed the world. This constitutes a 
 great difference between the science of facts and that of 
 means. Think of all the cities and railways that have 
 been built, all the forests that have been cut down, 
 of all the instruments that have been invented. This 
 is because men have been bringing about the ends 
 that seemed desirable by what seemed to them the 
 best means. 
 
 They have not always used the best means ; they 
 have merely used the best that they knew. 
 
 The best ways were always the best ways, even before 
 men found them out, or before they were able to use 
 them. The savage used to kindle his fires by rubbing 
 two dry sticks together till they became so hot that 
 they burst into a blaze. This was the best way for him 
 because it was the best way that he knew. It was, 
 however, not really the best way, for a friction match 
 would have been better, if he had had knowledge and 
 wit to invent it. — The laws of Hygiene have been al- 
 ways the same, though cities have invited disease by 
 being undrained and filthy. The laws of Political 
 Economy, though there have been foolish and harmful 
 laws and social customs, are always the same. 
 
 The best ways are thus always the same, just as the 
 laws and forces of the world are the same. The science 
 of means is simply finding out these best ways ; just as 
 the science of facts is finding out the truth about the 
 world. 
 
 The science of ends has also changed the world very 
 
Relation of Different Sciences to Reality. 9 
 
 much. In some former times men were much more 
 cruel than they are now, and cared less for others, ex- 
 cept when these others were their friends. Those who 
 were strong often robbed or murdered the weak or held 
 them in slavery. They cared very little how others 
 lived. Now there is more helpfulness, as well as less 
 cruelty in the world. Many are interested that the sick 
 should have better homes. There is still a great deal 
 of selfishness and cruelty in the world, but this care for 
 others has removed many of the evils of life. We 
 are as comfortable and happy as we are to-day because 
 among those who have lived before us there were those 
 who did not seek merely their own good. 
 
 ^he__l aiJUS of right dning- are thus absinyf: thp. ^n/mp^ 
 whether men know and obey them or not. 
 
 One difference between the science of ends and other 
 kinds of science is, that men have x\ ot_ on 1 v to | ^ara 
 what is right, but have also to be willing to do it. If 
 men really want to accomplish anything, and really 
 know the best way of doing it, they will hardly fail to 
 take this way. On the contrary, they may know what 
 is right and yet be unwilling to do it. 
 
 If one does not know what is right, he cannot be ex- 
 pected to do it, or blamed if he does not do it. Though 
 the life of love and helpfulness, of care for the stranger 
 and the weak, is and always has been the true life, it 
 was not the fault of the savage, living in barbarism, that 
 he did not follow it, if he knew nothing better than his 
 own cruel way of living. 
 
 The science of morality, like the science of facts, seeks 
 
lO Ethics for Young People. 
 
 to l earn what i s. It does not invent the laws of right, 
 it finds them . The laws of right do not grow. They 
 have always existed, as truly as the laws which govern 
 the motion of the planets. 
 
 Future ages will probably look down upon our bar- 
 barism, as we do upon that of the savage. It will not 
 be because the laws of right have become different. It 
 will be simply because men will have learned more of 
 what is right, and will have become more willing to 
 practice what they know. -♦'^ 
 
Ethics as a Way of Life, 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ETHICS AS A WAY OF LIFE. 
 
 The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word ' that 
 means custom or habit. The word Morality is derived 
 u om a Latin word ^ having a like meaning. Thus both 
 words meant at first what is habitual. Habit and cus- 
 tom, here, probably refer, not to the custom of a people, 
 but that of men and women taken separately. 
 
 Everybody has a way of life that has become to a 
 certain extent habitual with him. 
 
 In regard to a person that you know very well, you 
 form some idea of his way of life, as really as you do of 
 his personal appearance. You know pretty well what 
 to expect of him. You know that you can trust one 
 person and that you cannot trust another ; that one boy 
 will probably be rude, and another courteous ; that one 
 will probably have his lesson, and that another will not ; 
 that one will join in some piece of unkind mischief, and 
 that another will not. 
 
 You sometimes hear a story about some one whom 
 you know very well, that you do not believe. You 
 say, ** It is not like him, he would never do so in the 
 world." Sometimes we judge the representations in 
 novels in this way. We say of the act of some charac- 
 
 * 'E^o^-. * Mos, in the plural Mores. 
 
12 Ethics for Yoimo; People. 
 
 ter, ** It is not natural." We have learned to know the 
 character so well that we feel that the author has made 
 a mistake. 
 
 This *' way of life " shows itself in the occupations 
 and amusements which different persons prefer. Some 
 young people would rather play than read ; others 
 would rather read than play. Some enter heartily into 
 their work or their play. Some are lazy and indifferent 
 in both. Some join heartily in one, but not in the other. 
 
 The difference in people's ways reaches to matters 
 much more minute than those that I have named. You 
 cannot describe a man's ' way ' any more than you can 
 his face, but you know it all the same ; and his looks 
 and his ways together make up your general notion of 
 him. 
 
 It is this difference in people's ways that is largely 
 the reason why you like to be with one person rather 
 than with another. Friends are apt to be those whose 
 ways are similar or at least harmonize. 
 
 People sometimes change their ways so that they be- 
 come better or more agreeable. Thus a person is 
 sometimes said to '' mend his ways." 
 
 It is a poor excuse for one's negligence or selfishness 
 to say, '' Oh, it is his way." This makes the matter 
 worse rather than better. 
 
 Though the word Ethics referred originally simply to 
 the habits and ways of different people, it soon came to 
 mean a study of the best way of living ; that is, of the 
 ends and methods of life that are most to be desired. 
 
The Ethics of Custom. 13 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 
 
 At all times the manner of life of the individual has 
 been greatly influenced by the customs of the society 
 in which he lived. Our lives to-day are shaped to a 
 great extent by the lives of those about us. 
 
 In the earlier times, this law of custom was the only 
 standard of morality. What was customary was recog- 
 nized as right, and was often believed to rest on divine 
 authority. A large part of life was thus determined by 
 custom. In what was not thus determined a man could 
 do what he pleased. 
 
 Many things that we consider very wrong were thus 
 justified by custom, and were sometimes even com- 
 manded by it. Such have been, sometimes, the putting 
 the aged to death, which was required by custom among 
 the Fiji Islanders ; and the murder or the neglect of 
 children, which was permitted. A Roman father could 
 bring up his child or not, as it pleased him. He had 
 the power of life or death over his family. Slavery has 
 been thus justified, and has often been very cruel. You 
 know how perilous it is, even to-day, for a stranger to 
 find himself in the midst of barbarians, as in the heart 
 of Africa. The barbarians feel it neither wrong to slay 
 strangers nor a duty to protect, them. They do in this 
 matter just what they happen to feel like doing. 
 
14 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 The morality of custom is thus a very imperfect kind 
 of morality, both in what it commands and in what it 
 allows. 
 
 In spite of its imperfection it has, however, been of 
 great service to the world. The customs of civilized 
 men have, in some respects, improved from age to age, 
 and these better customs have tended to make men bet- 
 ter, and thus to introduce still better customs. 
 
 Suppose we all had to start for ourselves, without 
 finding any principles of action recognized in the world, 
 we should be much worse than we actually are. If we 
 had to learn each for himself, that it is wrong to kill 
 and to steal, for instance, many more would fail to learn 
 the lesson than do now. 
 
 Many persons at the present day recognize no moral 
 standard except that of the custom in the community 
 in which they live. They are in this like those who 
 lived in more barbarous times ; only the custom which 
 they obey is often, though not always, very much bet- 
 ter than that of the barbarians. 
 
 The social customs of the present day represent the 
 result of the lives of all who have lived before us. 
 Their way of living makes the foundation upon which 
 we stand. 
 
 These customs are different among different sets of 
 persons even in the same town. It is the average mo- 
 rality that determines the lives of most. 
 
 This average of custom in morals is like the mode, or 
 fashion, in dress. A lady asks, for instance, " What 
 are they wearing this season ? " 
 
The Ethics of Custom. 15 
 
 The lowest and worst form of the morality of custom 
 takes shape in the proverb that tells us that '' When we 
 are in Rome we must do as the Romans do." — This 
 commonly means that a man need never try to be bet- 
 ter than those about him. 
 
 If men had always acted according to this rule, the 
 world would never have improved ; for the world im- 
 proves by the help of some, in every age, who are bet- 
 ter than those about him, and thus raise the general 
 level of life. If men had always acted in the spirit of 
 this proverb, there would have been no heroes, for the 
 hero is one who is heroic : that is, who is braver and 
 nobler than other men. 
 
 You would not think much of a boy or girl who is 
 always ready to do what the rest do, whether it is good 
 or bad, wise or foolish. Yet there are a good many 
 people, old and young, who act upon this principle. 
 
 On the other hand, the morality of custom keeps 
 many men from sinking to lives much lower than they 
 actually live. If it does nothing to make the world bet- 
 ter, it often prev ents it from growing worse. It helps 
 to keep society from losing the ground that it has 
 already gained. 
 
 It is a good rule of life that one should never fall below 
 the average morality of the society in which one lives. 
 
 This is a pretty low standard, and we shall have 
 higher ones as we go on. If all would act according to 
 this rule, however, we should escape drunkenness, vice, 
 dishonesty, impurity, and many other bad things which 
 arc the sediment and mud of social life. 
 
1 6 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE IMPERFECTION OF THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 
 
 While the morality that rests on custom is better 
 than nothing, it is yet very imperfect. 
 
 It represents, as we have seen, only the average moral- 
 ity of any time or place. Thus the influence of the 
 best men is not felt in it except indirectly ; that is, so 
 far as they may in time affect the general custom. The 
 man whose morality rests on that which prevails about 
 him does not ask what the best men do, but what 
 average men do ; or, as it is often expressed, what *' they 
 do." 
 
 The morality that rests upon custom is uncertain. 
 Customs vary in different communities, and, as we hav^e 
 seen, in different circles of the same community. 
 While certain gross faults and crimes are forbidden by 
 the average morality, the judgment in regard to other 
 matters varies so much that one who is looking to cus- 
 tom to know what we should do might easily become 
 confused. 
 
 Further, he might live so wholly in some one circle 
 that he should take its judgment for that of the commu- 
 nity. Before the French Revolution, for instance, the 
 nobles thought that their standard of right and wrong 
 was that of the nation. They oppressed the people in 
 many cruel ways; but when the Revolution broke out 
 
Imperfection of Ethics of Custom. 1 7 
 
 they had no support against the popular fury. PoHti- 
 cians have sometimes a low standard of political action^ 
 that they think is the popular one, when perhaps it is 
 one for which the best people have a contempt. In 
 certain trades or professions there may be ways of busi- 
 ness which contradict the general principles of honesty 
 even as they are recognized by the world at large. 
 In a school or college there may be a standard of pub- 
 lic sentiment very different from that of the outside 
 world ; or in a group of scholars there may be ways of 
 acting and feeling which contradict the best sentiment 
 of the school at large. One's moral sense may thus be- 
 come confused and blinded. 
 
 A morality based iipon custom is variable.. As one 
 passes from one circle to another, or from one commu- 
 nity to another, his own morality is likely to vary with 
 his surroundings. Many, who in a well-ordered soci- 
 ety had lived respectable lives, have sadly fallen when 
 they went to newer communities, where people's ways 
 of living were of a low order. When boys and girls 
 go from their homes to school or to college, they often 
 find a standard of thinking and acting very different 
 from that to which they had been used. What they 
 had supposed wrong they sometimes find regarded 
 as right, or at least very slightly condemned. It is 
 often the same when they go from school out into the 
 world. 
 
 The morality that rests upon custom does not refxlly 
 belong to the man who practises it. If he be good 
 among the good and bad among the bad ; more or less 
 
1 8 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 honest according to the habits that are about him; 
 ^high-minded or low-minded, according as others' minds 
 are high or low, he has no real virtue of his own. If 
 he has what seem to be virtues, it is by a happy acci- 
 dent. 
 
 A person w^ho always does what those about him do, 
 is like a vessel with a broken rudder, that drifts with 
 the winds and the currents, and has no course of his own 
 any more than the drifting sea-weed. Such a life is un- 
 worthy of any one. Every one should have some moral 
 aim, and take the helm of his own life, and steer instead 
 of drifting. 
 
 All of this shows the need of some principles of 
 morality that are not dependent upon any chance com- 
 panionship, and that may belong to the man' himself 
 and not merely to his surroundings. 
 
Principles of Morality, 19 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 
 
 A PRINCIPLE is a point from which one starts. 
 
 Every science has principles which are its starting- 
 points. In geometry these first principles are called 
 axioms. If one wishes to show that a proposition in 
 geometry is true, he tries to trace it back to one or 
 more axioms which nobody disputes. 
 
 It is as when one has got lost in a forest and does 
 not know which way to go, if he can find his way back 
 and consider afresh the general direction that he should 
 take, he can start again with better hope of success. 
 
 Principles in morals furnish such starting-points in 
 the activities of our life. 
 
 One may ask in regard to any proposed act or 
 speech, ''Is it right?" ''Is it kind?" "Is it fair?" 
 "Is it true? " 
 
 If these words represent the principles upon which 
 one acts and speaks, the answer to these questions will 
 show him what he should do. 
 
 In morals one may have bad principles as well as 
 gooB^^principles. 
 
 TTman whose principle it is always to look out for 
 his own gain, whether the course he takes be right or 
 wrong, is a man of bad principles. He asks in regard 
 to any course, " Is it profitable ? " and acts accordingly. 
 
20 Ethics fo7' Young People, 
 
 If one says to him, ''This is not right," ''This is not 
 kind," or "This is not honest," it does not affect him. 
 For the right, the kind and the honest do not represent 
 the principles upon which he acts. 
 
 A man is sometimes spoken of as unprincipled. 
 This generally means that he has bad principles. 
 
 A man may seem not to have any principles 
 because his actions are so variable. At one moment 
 he may speak harshly, at another pleasantly, even when 
 the circumstances are very similar. At one time he 
 may be generous, at another selfish ; or at one time 
 honest, at another dishonest. Thus he may seem to 
 have no principles. It may be his principle, however, 
 to do at every moment just what he feels like doing. 
 This is obviously a form of selfishness, and may be a 
 principle like any other. The weathercock is often re- 
 garded as the very ideal of fickleness. It changes its 
 position so often that it seems the type of the lack of 
 steadfastness. But the weathercock is not fickle. It is 
 always true to the wind, and is thus steadfast in its rela- 
 tion to that. So the person of variable moods may be 
 always true to the principle of doing what pleases him 
 at the moment. 
 
 Persons often do not know what the principles on 
 which they act really are. The selfish person would 
 hardly admit even to himself that his principle is always 
 to look out for himself, without regard to other people. 
 Very few persons will admit that their principle is to do 
 always as other people do. 
 
 It would often be helpful to a man if he knew what 
 
Principles of Morality. 21 
 
 the principles are on which he acts. If they are poor 
 and base he might be ashamed of them and give them 
 up. 
 
 Other people often know what a man's principles are 
 
 better than the man himself does. They know this just 
 
 as we know the nature of a plant from its leaves, flowers 
 
 *or fruit. A man acts from his real principles, and thus 
 
 he also is known by his fruit. 
 
 A boy or girl that is stingy cannot have generous 
 principles. One whose word cannot be trusted cannot 
 mean to tell the truth. One who grumbles when any 
 service is asked of him and goes to it unwillingly, can- 
 not make it his principle to be helpful. 
 
 All this is plain enough when other people are con- 
 cerned. One would think that we might apply the 
 same method to ourselves, and find out what our own 
 principles are by observing our actions. It would often 
 be very helpful. 
 
 Persons who do not have distinctly good principles 
 are apt to act more or less from bad principles. 
 
 It is so much easier to act selfishly than to look out 
 for others, so much easier to go with the crowd than 
 against the crowd, that one who does not really mean 
 to take the better course is very apt to take the worse, 
 without thinking anything about it. 
 
 *' I did not mean to," the boy said, as we all so often 
 say, when he had done a piece of mischief by accident. 
 ** But did you mean not to ? " asked the teacher. We 
 all do more wrong things by not meaning not to, than 
 by meaning to ; that is, from the lack of any good 
 
22 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 principle rather than from any bad principle which we 
 possess consciously. 
 
 The life of Benedict Arnold gives a striking example 
 of the wretched results which may spring from the lack 
 of good principles that are distinctly held. After tell- 
 ing the story of his treachery, Mr. John Fiske says of 
 him, '' In better days he had shown much generosity of 
 nature. Can it be that this is the same man who, on 
 the field of Saratoga, saved the life of the poor soldier 
 who in honest fight had shot him and broken his leg? 
 Such are the strange contrasts that we sometimes see in 
 characters that are governed by impulse and not by 
 principle. Their virtue may be real enough while it 
 lasts, but it does not weather the storm." ' 
 
 1 John Fiske's "The American Revolution," vol. ii., page 217. 
 
The Breaking Up of Ethics of Custom, 23 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BREAKING UP OF THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 
 
 We have seen that in the early history of the world 
 the rules of morality were not distinct from those of 
 custom. There comes a time, however, when the cus- 
 toms of a people are so much disturbed that it is im- 
 possible that they should continue to be the only rule 
 of life. 
 
 This arises, in part, from the fact, that as life becomes 
 complicated, customs come into collision with one another , 
 so that a man cannot follow one without neglecting 
 another. 
 
 It arises also in part from the fact that the people of 
 one community come into relations with those of another^ 
 and find customs different from those to which they 
 have been used. 
 
 The condition of such a people is like that of the 
 boy or girl who goes from the home to the school, or 
 from the school into the world, and finds ways of life 
 very different from those that had been familiar. When 
 such a time comes in the history of a people, men are 
 forced to think for themselves instead of blindly follow- 
 ing any custom. Some will try to find out what is 
 really right and really wrong. Some will doubt whether 
 there is any right or any wrong. 
 
 We have an interesting picture of such a breaking up 
 
24 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 of the morality of custom, in the history of Greece. 
 One illustration of this may be found in the life of Soc- 
 rates. 
 
 The Greeks had certain oracles, the utterances of 
 which were recognized as authoritative. Men applied 
 to them, both in regard to public and private matters. 
 They asked whether they should engage in this or that 
 enterprise, and, indeed, sought an answer to any difficult 
 question. Socrates claimed that a divine power directed 
 him in his life, and especially, it would seem, warned 
 him what he should not do. That is, he had a private 
 oracle. Here we have an individual acting indepen- 
 dently of the custom. It was, in a sense, the introduc- 
 tion of the right of private judgment among the Greeks. 
 This excited great anger among the people. When in 
 spite of his goodness he was put to death, one of the 
 accusations which were brought against him was that 
 he had introduced new divinities. This meant that, 
 so far as his private oracle was concerned, he had acted 
 independently of the custom of the state. 
 
 In the Greek tragedies there are very striking pic- 
 tures of this law of custom. 
 
 One of these tragedies, for example, tells the story 
 of Antigone. The king had commanded that no one 
 should perform funeral rites for her brother. To per- 
 form such rites for those near to one was considered by 
 the Greeks one of the most sacred duties. Custom also 
 commanded that the king should be obeyed. Antigone 
 could not comply with both these requirements. She 
 was obliged to choose for herself what she would do. 
 
The Breaking Up of Ethics of Custom. 25 
 
 She performed the sacred rites for her brother and suf- 
 fered the penalty of disobedience to the king. 
 
 When the authority of custom was thus breaking up, 
 how could people determine what it was right to do? 
 They could only act as the young man or the young 
 woman does who goes out into a world of maxims and 
 customs that differ from one another, and from the 
 maxims and customs of home. They must try to find- 
 certain principles, according to which they could live. 
 
26 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EPICUREANS. 
 
 As Greece, when it was passing from its childhood 
 to its maturity, had to meet the same question which 
 the young man or woman has to meet to-day on going 
 out into the world, it may be helpful to consider one or 
 two of the answers that were given by the Greeks. 
 
 The question was, you will understand, " What are 
 the principles according to which life ought to be 
 guided?" Some of the answers given by the Greeks 
 have become very famous. 
 
 One of the most famous of these is that which was 
 given by Epicurus. It was that the true principle of 
 living is to get all the happiness that is possible. Men 
 should live to get happiness. 
 
 According to this principle, when one questions 
 whether he should or should not perform a certain act, 
 he should ask himself, whether the doing it, or the not 
 doing it, would make him the happier. If it is the tell- 
 ing a lie, or the taking something that belongs to 
 another, or the helping one that needs, the question is 
 not, *' Is it right?" but, '* Will the doing it make me 
 happier or unhappier? " 
 
 Epicurus got out of this a better morality than would 
 have seemed possible. He showed that one who does 
 what is right is, on the whole, happier than one who 
 
The Epiairemis. 27 
 
 does what is wrong ; that temperance brings more hap- 
 piness than intemperance, virtue than vice, honesty 
 than dishonesty. He thus taught what was practically 
 quite a lofty morality. 
 
 This morality that is based on the desire of happiness 
 has, however, two difficulties. 
 
 The first of these difficulties is, that one who lives 
 only to be happy is really less likely to gain happiness 
 than one who lives for something else. There is this 
 remarkable thing about happiness : those who make 
 it their chief business to find it are more apt to fail 
 than those who take far less pains about it. 
 
 When one thinks of living for happiness the most 
 natural thought is that he wants to live to amuse him- 
 self Now, there is no business that is more exacting 
 and wearisome than that of a mere pleasure-seeker. 
 He has a routine in his life like everybody else, and 'a 
 routine always tends to become mechanical. The word 
 amusement means away from the muses, and implies an 
 escape from the serious business of life. When there 
 is no such serious business, amusement loses its special 
 characteristic and much of its charm. If a boy were 
 playing games all day the games would become no 
 more interesting than work. 
 
 A second reason why one who lives only for happi- 
 ness is less likely to find it, is that only a part of his 
 life can be lived for pleasure. Few boys, for instance, 
 can play games all the time. Most have to go to 
 school or do some kind of work. The boy who cares 
 only to play is bored by all this, and enjoys himself 
 
28 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 only on the playground ; that is, for only a small part of 
 the day. The rest of the time, when he is busied with 
 his tasks, goes for nothing. He is simply impatient to 
 be through with them. The boy who likes his books 
 and likes to be helpful at home enjoys himself not 
 merely when he is playing, but also when he is working. 
 Thus the boy who cares only to play has a good time 
 only a small part of the day. One who cares for other 
 things has a good time all the day. 
 
 A third and more important reason why living for 
 happiness is likely to fail in the end is that happiness 
 for the most part springs from being interested in some- 
 thing outside one's self. It comes largely from self-for- 
 getfulness, and absorption in something for which one 
 likes to live. The mere pleasure-seeker is more shut 
 up within himself. His plans all have his self in view. 
 He thus more rarely escapes from himself into that free- 
 dom where happiness is most likely to be found. 
 
 In these ways we may illustrate the fact that the mere 
 pleasure-seeker is not likely to find as much pleasure as 
 one who seeks for something else. This is the first 
 diflficulty in the plan of Epicurus. 
 
 The second dif^culty is that if you make a person 
 really feel that pleasure is the great end of life, the 
 chances are that he will at once seize the pleasures that 
 are Clearest and easiest. 
 
 Epicurus taught that temperance brings more pleas- 
 ure than intemperance. But what if some one had said, 
 *' I know that for me the happiest life would be to eat, 
 drink, and be merry." He taught that there is more 
 
The Epicureans, 29 
 
 happiness in honesty than in dishonesty; but what if 
 some one had said, " For myself, I *know that this 
 money which I could get by a little trickery would 
 make me much happier than I could be without it." 
 I do not know what he could have said to those who are 
 persuaded that happiness could be best reached by 
 these means. 
 
 One who is honest simply because he has been taught 
 that honesty is the best policy, will probably become 
 dishonest when he thinks that honesty will not pay. 
 
 The word Epicure is derived from Epicurus. Now, 
 Epicurus would seem not to have been a man such as 
 we call an Epicure. The word, however, shows that 
 the world has felt that the tendency of his teaching 
 would be to make Epicures. 
 
 We should all seek happiness, it is true; but we 
 should have for the great object of our lives something 
 larger and better than happiness. 
 
 We should not do right, and be kind and helpful, 
 merely because we think that in this way we shall some- 
 how get more happiness for ourselves. We should do 
 right because it is right, and be kind and helpful because 
 we care for those about us. 
 
 At the same time we may learn from Epicurus that 
 so far as we seek happiness we must seek it in the way 
 of virtue ; and that vice, sooner or later, brings unhap- 
 piness. 
 
30 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE STOICS. 
 
 Another principle of conduct which was set forth 
 among the Greeks, and which has also become very 
 famous, was taught by the Stoics. 
 
 Their teaching was that we should let nothing dis- 
 turb our self-command and the repose of mind that 
 springs from that. We should always be masters of 
 ourselves. 
 
 Suppose that a man who was very rich has lost all 
 his property. He is perhaps wholly cast down and 
 wretched. The Stoic would say to him, *'What have 
 you lost? Your money was not a part of you." So, 
 if one is suffering pain and ready to despair, the Stoic 
 would say, *' Will you let the pain of your body disturb 
 the peace of your mind?" 
 
 Thus to the Stoic his mind, that is, his self, was a 
 fortress which he would defend against all attacks. He 
 would be lord of himself, no matter what might hap- 
 pen. 
 
 According to the Stoics it should not be the great 
 object of a man to live happily, or even to live at all. 
 Our principle should be that while we live we should live 
 wisely and well. It is not important under what circum- 
 stances we live, whether we be rich or poor, admired or 
 despised. It is important that we make the best use of 
 the circumstances, whatever they may be. 
 
The Stoics, 3 i 
 
 We may take an example from the stage. It does 
 not matter to a great actor what part he plays, whether 
 it be that of a king or a beggar ; but only that he plays 
 his part well. We applaud an actor, not because he 
 wears a crown or lives in splendor, but because, even 
 if he is in rags, he plays his part grandly. In life, 
 we are apt to think of the part we play as though it were 
 the most important thing; and we are apt to judge 
 men from the place they fill, rather than from the way 
 in which they fill it. 
 
 Epictetus, a famous Stoic, took an illustration from 
 the game of ball. In playing ball, he tells us, no one con- 
 tends for the ball itself, as though it were either a good 
 or an evil. Each player thinks only how he may best 
 throw it or catch it. The interest of the game does not 
 lie in the possession of the ball, but in the skill with 
 which the player catches and throws it. He means that 
 the outward things of life have in themselves no value ; 
 but that they are to be prized only for the skill with 
 which we use them. 
 
 Indeed, it is true that the happiest persons in the 
 world,- and the most useful, have not been the richest or 
 the most prosperous. They have been oftener those 
 with whom the world has dealt less kindly, but who have 
 known best how to use whatever came to them. 
 
 There were many noble men among the Stoics ; es- 
 pecially among the Romans, whose strong and stern 
 natures made them fit subjects for 'this teaching. There 
 was Epictetus, from whom I have just quoted. He was 
 not born in Rome, though much of his Hfe was passed 
 
32 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 there. He began life as a slave, but later he obtained 
 his freedom. There was, also, Marcus Aurelius, the 
 Emperor, who taught the doctrine of the Stoics. We 
 can still gain help from the writings of the Emperor, as 
 well as from those of the freedman, Epictetus. This 
 fact may illustrate the teaching of the Stoics, that circum- 
 stances in themselves are of small account. 
 
 As we have received from Epicurus the word Epi- 
 cure, so from the Stoics we have received the word Sto- 
 icism, which is used to-day to express a certain kind of 
 character and disposition. 
 
 Stoicism is the habit of mind that takes all things 
 calmly, that is calm in peril and peaceful in the midst 
 of pain and misfortune. 
 
 There is a higher morality than that of Stoicism ; but 
 Stoicism is something not to be despised. Indeed, every 
 man ought to be a bit of a Stoic, whatever higher virtues 
 he may possess. 
 
 A certain amount of Stoicism forms the best basis 
 upon which the higher virtues can rest. By this I mean 
 that fortitude, courage, patience and the like should 
 make the character strong; while love, sympathy, and 
 helpfulness make it beautiful. 
 
 We shall now consider some of the Stoical virtues, 
 and also some others which resemble Stoicism in that 
 they relate to the management of one's own life without 
 special reference to the happiness and welfare of others. 
 
Fortitude. 33 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 FORTITUDE, 
 
 The word Fortitude is most often used to signify the 
 brave bearing of pain or other suffering. 
 
 It does not mean insensibihty to pain, for some per- 
 sons whose natures are very sensitive have shown the 
 greatest fortitude. It means a self-command by which 
 one preserves his independence, and does not let the 
 pain of the body too much disturb the peace of the 
 mind. 
 
 This is a virtue of which the Stoics made great ac- 
 count, both in their teaching and in their lives. When 
 the word Stoicism is used to-day, in the more general 
 sense to which I have referred, and without reference to 
 the ancient Stoics, this heroic bearing of pain is what it 
 most often means. 
 
 A fine example of this is found in the life of Epicte- 
 tus, the Stoic. While he was a slave, it is said, his mas- 
 ter, one day, was beating him cruelly. Epictetus said 
 calmly, '' If you do not look out you will break my leg.'' 
 Presently, at a still heavier stroke, the bone snapped. 
 '^ There," said Epictetus, as calmly as before, *' I told 
 you you would break it." 
 
 Every boy ought to be enough of a Stoic to bear a 
 certain amount of pain without outcry or flinching. 
 
 Indeed, boys do show much of this stoicism in their 
 
34 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 plays. In base-ball, for instance, or in foot-ball, there 
 is often great suffering, which the looker-on would never 
 suspect unless he saw the blow, or the fall which 
 caused the pain. 
 
 This stoicism may be, in part, the result of a strong 
 will. The boy is determined not to lose his self-com- 
 mand. He orders his nature to hold out, and not let 
 itself be conquered by this attack. 
 
 This self-command really lessens the pain. Never is 
 it so hard as when the will gives up and lets the suffer- 
 ing have it all its own way. 
 
 In a winter morning one boy will go out crouching 
 with the cold. He feels it ten times as much as another 
 who puts a brave front upon it, takes a pride in meet- 
 ing it. This latter is really less cold, for the blood is 
 quickened with the manly will and warms the body to the 
 fingers' ends. 
 
 Physicians tell us that in hospitals some patients die 
 simply because they give up to their disease ; while 
 others get well, simply because they keep a strong will, 
 and do not surrender. Such power has the mind over 
 the body. 
 
 This self-command may be helped by a proper pride. 
 It is manly thus to bear what one has to bear. 
 
 When a boy gives way too easily to any pain he is 
 called by his companions a *' cry-baby." This means 
 that he has no manliness. A baby is not expected to 
 have self-command, or any pride that would keep it from 
 crying at any suffering, however slight. 
 
 We often see an amusing example of this pride when 
 
Fortitude. 3 5 
 
 a man falls on some slippery place in the street. When 
 he gets up, however much he may be suffering or mor- 
 tified, be is apt to look about him with a smile, as if he 
 thought it an excellent joke. He does not want people 
 to think that his spirit fell with his body. 
 
 This self-command is helped still more by interest in 
 other things. 
 
 The boy who is wounded in a game is so full of eager- 
 ness that this helps him to forget his pain. So, in a 
 battle, the wounded soldier may, till the fight is over, 
 hardly realize his suffering; and even then he may 
 forget InUt/ the triumph of the victory or the shame of 
 the defeat. 
 
 The early Christians were so full of the fervor of re - 
 ligious faith and love, that, in the persecutions under 
 the Romans, they seem hardly to have felt the smart of 
 the flames, or the tearing of the wild beasts. 
 
 The self-command that has been spoken of is often 
 shown by turning the thought away from the suffering 
 and fixing it upon something that interests and distracts 
 the mind. 
 
 If one would bear the evils of life heroically it is im- 
 portant that he should learn to interest himself in 
 things outside himself, so that he can occupy his mind, 
 and not be too much troubled by bodily ills. 
 
 So if one would help another bear any suffering, he 
 should not merely pity, and condole with him ; he 
 should try to interest him in something : perhaps in a 
 book that he reads to him, or some plan that he dis- 
 cusses with him. 
 
36 Ethics for Yotmg People, 
 
 Every person should train himself to bear oain 
 nobly; not by tormenting himself, but by making 
 the least possible fuss about anything that is painful 
 or unpleasant. He will find chances enough for this 
 without making them for himself, 
 
Courage. 37 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 COURAGE. 
 
 Courage is another of the Stoic virtues, and, like 
 fortitude, is one form of self-command. 
 
 As fortitude consists in bearing manfully that which 
 is painful or disagreeable, courage consists in not shrink- 
 ing from what is painful or disagreeable. 
 
 You know how you would manage with a shying 
 horse. The horse sees something by the roadside that 
 he is unwilling to pass. He wants, if he must go by it 
 at all, to make a great sweep about it; but what he 
 would rather do is to turn around and make off in the 
 opposite direction as fast as he can. But you, whom we 
 suppose to be riding, want to keep on your own 
 course. Then, too, you think the horse should be 
 trained. You want to make him know that what he is 
 afraid of is only a stump, or something quite as harm- 
 less. So you press him on, quietly but firmly, till you 
 bring him close up to the object of his fear. Then his 
 fear is all gone, and the next time you pass you will 
 have probably less trouble. 
 
 He will learn also to trust you, because he has seen 
 that you are wiser than he ; so the next time he will be 
 likely to approach what he is afraid of, if he finds that 
 you think it is all right. 
 
 Do you not think that you are as much worth train- 
 
38 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 ing as a horse? Do not you sometimes want to shy 
 and to baulk? And do you not need then to make 
 yourself feel the bit and the spur? 
 
 Some boys dread to get up of a cold morning. How 
 they lie till the last possible moment, shivering with 
 dread, going through in imagination the shock of the 
 cold air over and over again, and having all the pain of 
 a dozen starts, before they make the real one. 
 
 Or here is a poor little fellow who is suffering with 
 the toothache. How he dreads to have the wretched 
 thing out, how he puts off the moment, making all 
 manner of excuses for the delay. All the while he has 
 both the real pain of the tooth, and the imagined pain 
 of the pulling, which is almost always a great deal worse 
 than the real. 
 
 We all have a great many unpleasant things to do in 
 life ; and a great many persons make themselves much 
 extra and needless pain in such ways as I have de- 
 scribed. They lack courage and resolution. So, instead 
 of doing the thing at once and being through with it, 
 they multiply the evil over and over again by hesitation 
 and dread. 
 
 Every person should make it a principle to train 
 himself to quick resolve and action in all these matters. 
 
 If there is a hard or unpleasant thing to be done, he 
 should take pride in facing it at once like a man, just as, 
 if he were riding, he would take pride in bringing his 
 horse promptly and quietly up to the dreaded stump. 
 
 He should take pride in having himself under com- 
 mand, so that he shall not make life mean and miser- 
 able by petty shrinking or fear. 
 
Courage, 39 
 
 So if it is only getting up on a cold morning, or 
 learning a hard lesson, or doing a bit of disagreeable 
 work, one should form the habit of meeting the thing 
 at once, and being through with it. In this way one 
 will have, not merely the sense of relief that the thing 
 is done, but a sense of manhood and self-command, 
 which is one of the pleasantest things in life. 
 
 An old farmer used to tell his boys, when they had 
 a tough bit of wood to split, to strike right at the 
 middle of the knot. This is a good rule for life. 
 
40 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 COURAGE {conti7iued.) 
 
 The word courage is most often used to mean the 
 resolute facing of danger. In this sense it may be 
 compared with cowardice on the one side and reckless- 
 ness on the other. 
 
 The coward is one who, in any relation of life, exag- 
 gerates the danger. When we think of it, we see that 
 there is no condition in which we are absolutely safe. 
 A mad dog might run into this room at this very 
 moment and bite us all. The house might take fire. 
 When we go into the street, a runaway horse might 
 knock us down, or we might meet a person that has the 
 small-pox. 
 
 All these things, and a great many others, might hap- 
 pen ; but we know that no one of them is likely to 
 happen, and so we do not trouble our heads about 
 them. We take what precautions seem necessary, and 
 then live as if we were absolutely safe. 
 
 The coward is one who under some circumstances 
 sees these unlikely things as if they would probably 
 happen. Instead of looking at the regular course of 
 events, he sees only these almost impossible chances. 
 If he is in a boat he expects that she will go to the bot- 
 tom, or if in a train, that it will run off the track. 
 
 Sometimes such cowardice is constitutional. It is 
 
Courage. 41 
 
 like a disease. I knew once a very learned and wise 
 man who would never trust himself on a railway train. 
 I have seen him going down to the station, dressed in 
 his best, before the train was to start ; and when it had 
 gone, I have seen him going home again. He had 
 actually been afraid to get into the car. A dog would 
 put him into a great panic. People would, of course, 
 laugh a little about it, but they thought none the worse 
 of him, for they saw that his fear was like a disease 
 that he could not help. 
 
 No one likes to be thought a coward; for, in the 
 whole history of the world, a coward has been looked 
 upon with great scorn. 
 
 This is for two reasons. One is that cowardice im- 
 plies often a lack of common sense. The coward does 
 not see things as they are. That which is so unlikely 
 that we can leave it wholly out of the account, the cow- 
 ard looks upon as sure to happen. 
 
 Another reason why the coward is despised is that 
 he lacks manliness and fortitude. He not only thinks 
 the evil will be sure to come ; he thinks he cannot bear 
 it if it does. The brave man thinks less of the possibil- 
 ity of the evil ; but if the evil does come, he means to 
 bear it like a man. 
 
 Recklessness is just the opposite of cowardice. As 
 the coward sees danger where there is, practically 
 speaking, none, the reckless man does not see it where 
 it actually exists. 
 
 The reckless boy, after the first cold night, will skate 
 out over the deep water, without thinking whether the 
 
42 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 ice is strong enough to bear. He will go out in his 
 boat, in a high wind, without calculating the strength 
 of the wind as compared with his own strength and 
 skill. 
 
 This in a sense is bravery, but it is not the real brav- 
 ery. If a child sits playing on the railway track when 
 the train is coming, we do not say, *'How brave is that 
 child ! " We think that it has not wit enough to know 
 its danger. So, such cases as I have referred to are 
 what we call /^^/-hardiness ; that is, they show the 
 courage of a fool, rather than that of a brave man ; for 
 in these cases the boy or the man rushes into danger of 
 which he does not dream. 
 
 The really brave man does not overlook the danger. 
 He does not let his mind dwell upon it ; but if it exists 
 he knows just what it is. He takes, however, two things 
 into the account. 
 
 One of these is his own strength and skill. His no- 
 tion of these is not based upon vanity. He has tried 
 himself and knows pretty well what he is able to do. 
 
 Another thing that he considers, is the occasion of 
 the risk, if there is any. A man who should rush into 
 a burning house simply to show his courage, we should 
 call a fool. When the fireman goes in, perhaps to save 
 a child, he goes knowing all the danger, though he does 
 not stop to think of this ; but he feels that it is his duty, 
 and he is willing to risk his own life in the hope of sav- 
 ing that of another. Thus we admire him for his cour- 
 age as well as for his self-forgetfulness. 
 
Heroism, 43 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HEROISM. 
 
 The persons who are thus brave in a good cause are 
 called heroes. I suppose there has never been a coun- 
 try or a time which had not its heroes. 
 
 When we look back at the history of the world, we 
 see how much we owe to these heroes of the past. We 
 owe to them our liberties, and indeed all that makes 
 life really worth having. 
 
 There is no reading more interesting and more help- 
 ful than the lives and deeds of such heroes. Such 
 reading is helpful because it makes us feel how grand 
 it is to be heroic, and may make us resolve to catch 
 something of the same spirit. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to think that the names 
 of all the heroes are written in history. There have 
 been many heroic lives which have been humble and 
 unknown, but which deserve the admiration of the 
 world just as much as those that have been more fa- 
 mous. They perhaps sometimes deserve our honor 
 more; because those who lived them knew that they 
 should never receive honor from men. After a battle, 
 men celebrate the deeds of the leaders in the fight ; but 
 there has been just as much bravery among the pri- 
 vates, whose names are never heard out of their own 
 little circle; and the fortune of the day depended as 
 
44 Ethics for Voiuig People, 
 
 much upon their courage, as upon that of the general 
 in command. 
 
 There is one danger in reading these stories of heroic 
 lives. They may sometimes make us feel as if we were 
 also heroes, when, perhaps, there is very little that is 
 heroic in our lives. We think what we would do if 
 some great occasion offered, and it does not occur to us 
 that we are cowards in the little occasions that meet us 
 any day. 
 
 A boy, for instance, walks along the street, thinking 
 of the knights, the story of whose exploits he has been 
 reading. He wishes that he could have lived in these 
 old times, and thinks what a brave knight he would 
 have been, how he would have protected oppressed 
 ladies, and would have fought the cruel and false 
 knights in the face of any odds. As he thinks about 
 all this, he sees a boy tip over the table of a poor apple- 
 woman by the sidewalk, and then run away and jeer at 
 her from a little distance. Now the boy that was 
 dreaming about the knights-errant pities the poor 
 woman, and would like to stop and help her pick up 
 her apples ; but he does not, for he is afraid that he 
 shall be laughed at. He feels very angry with the boy 
 that played the cruel trick on her, and would like to 
 punish him ; but he is afraid that the other might 
 prove to be the stronger. So he passes on and gives 
 no sign of the pity or the anger that he feels. I hope, 
 however, that he does not imagine himself any longer 
 to be a brave knight of the olden time, for he has shown 
 that he is nothing but a sneak and a coward. 
 
Heroism, 45 
 
 From this it will appear that there are a great many 
 opportunities for heroism in the life of an ordinary man, 
 and even of a boy or girl. 
 
 It requires, sometimes, a great deal of heroism to do 
 right, or even not to do wrong, when one's companions 
 may make fun of him for it. They may sometimes 
 call him a coward simply because he is so brave, while 
 they are the cowards who go against their will with the 
 majority. 
 
 It requires heroism to stand up for one whom others 
 are tormenting because he is weak, or a stranger, or, 
 for some fancied reason, happens to be unpopular. 
 
 It sometimes requires heroism to interfere to save 
 some poor animal that is being abused and tormented. 
 
 Fighting is not generally a good thing ; but if a boy 
 fights, let it be for some good cause such as I have 
 named, for the protection of the weak and the safety of 
 the suffering, rather than in a quarrel about some per- 
 sonal matter. Such fighting is in the spirit of the 
 heroes whose deeds we so much admire. 
 
46 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 DIFFERENT KINDS OF HEROES. 
 
 If we knew what a man really admires, we might 
 form some guess as to what sort of a man he is, or at 
 least what sort of a man he is likely to be. This, of 
 course, applies only to moral qualities ; since a very 
 plain person, for example, may admire beauty, and a 
 weak person may admire strength, all the more for not 
 possessing it. 
 
 Even so far as moral qualities are concerned the 
 principle has exceptions which we need not consider 
 here. There is truth enough in it to show that it is of 
 great importance to consider what are the qualities 
 which we really admire. 
 
 An Indian was once looking at some portraits of 
 other Indians. There was one which represented a 
 person of mild and thoughtful character. It was the 
 one which we perhaps should have selected as the most 
 pleasing of them all. But the savage did not like it. 
 That, he thought, was a pretty poor kind of Indian. 
 There was another picture that represented a chief who 
 was stern and fierce ; who seemed as if he would shrink 
 from no act of cruelty. This, the Indian, who was him- 
 self wholly uncivilized and fresh from the wilderness, 
 thought was an Indian worthy of the name. This ad- 
 miration showed what he was at heart, and tended to 
 make him more and more like that which he admired. 
 
Different Kinds of Heroes. 47 
 
 Because our admirations have so much importance it 
 is well to consider a little what kind of persons are 
 admired by one and another. The world has always 
 admired its heroes. It is worth while, then, to notice 
 that there are different kinds of heroes, some of whom 
 are worthy of admiration and some are not. 
 
 Courage, strength, energy, skill, grace, all these are 
 worthy of admiration, even when they are displayed in 
 sport. So far as they are within the reach of any one, 
 they are worth being imitated as well as admired. 
 They certainly do not represent the highest kind of 
 heroism. They should not be admired to the exclusion 
 of better types ; but they may well receive the enthusi- 
 astic applause that is sometimes given to them. 
 
 There is something that sometimes passes for heroism 
 which is not heroism at all, and which deserves only 
 contempt. This is found in those who show their 
 strength only at the expense of the weak. A ** bully " is 
 a person who likes to make those who are weaker than 
 himself fear and obey him. The *' bully" is sometimes 
 found on the playground as well as in the larger life of 
 the world. There are often those with whom he passes 
 for a hero. He is apt, however, to be a coward. If 
 he were not, he would chose the strong rather than the 
 weak to measure himself against. 
 
 There are others who are called heroes who have 
 really strength and courage ; who face real peril bravely, 
 but who do this that they may win something that does 
 not belong to them. They rob and oppress and injure. 
 
 Among these are the pirates and banditti who are 
 
48 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 the admiration sometimes of boys who have seen very 
 little of real life. Their ideal of a hero is some sort of 
 robber-king. 
 
 The stories of wild, free life in which the buccanneer 
 or the pirate figures, may have a certain fascination, 
 but they have this for us only when we look at them 
 from the outside. I mean that it is when we consider 
 the courage and the craft, and forget those who are 
 robbed or slain. 
 
 If a man should creep into your house, should steal 
 whatever he could lay his hands on, should perhaps kill 
 some member of the household, should brave the 
 police, and should escape with his booty, he would 
 have shown courage and skill ; but I think you would 
 hardly admire him, even if he gave a part of his plun- 
 der to the poor. Now the pirate or the bandit is only 
 the same mean thief dressed up in gayer clothes, and 
 surrounded by more picturesque associations. He is 
 like a carrion bird dressed out in gay plumage. We 
 may admire the plumage, but we can have only disgust 
 for the poor figure that is left when the feathers are 
 torn away. 
 
 We may learn how much the qualities of daring and 
 adroitness are really worth, when we see them admired 
 and perhaps cannot quite help admiring them ourselves, 
 even in such wretched associations as we have just con- 
 sidered. 
 
 Of very much the same stamp are many of those 
 whom the world admires. I mean the great conquerors 
 who have sought to win glory and power and even 
 
Different Kinds of Heroes. 49 
 
 wealth for themselves, without regard to the happiness 
 or to the rights of others. Many of the heroes that the 
 world honors are thus no better than the buccanneer or 
 the bandit whom the schoolboy has taken for his hero. 
 
 In such cases we may admire the powers which are 
 shown by the world's conqueror; but these must not 
 blind us to the real nature of his deeds. He has finer 
 feathers than the bandit king, but is, at heart, the same 
 mean and selfish being. 
 
 What is meaner than for one man to cause the death 
 of thousands, to take away all the joy of countless 
 homes, simply that the world may say what a great 
 man he is and bow down before him? 
 
 It is a great lesson that the world has been slow to 
 learn, to find that meanness and selfishness are always 
 the same, no matter how fine a dress they wear, or how 
 many unite to shout their praise. 
 
 How different is military glory whe^t it is won in the 
 defence of 07ie' s country y or in that of the oppressed y from 
 what it is when it is sought merely for its own sake. I 
 think that the world will sometime outgrow its admira- 
 tion for the glory that is won for selfish ends alone, but 
 it will never outgrow its reverence for patriotism and a 
 chivalry that is impatient of any wrong which is inflicted 
 upon the weak. 
 
 There is no kind of service to mankind that has not 
 had its heroes. There have been heroes for truth, for 
 justice, for philanthropy. 
 
 There could be no heroism more worthy of honor 
 than that of Dorothea Dix, who devoted her life to the 
 
50 Ethics for You7ig People, 
 
 relief of the terrible suffering of the insane in this coun- 
 try. She was a woman with delicate health and, at first, 
 without money or prominent friends ; yet she caused 
 a revolution in the treatment of the insane. 
 
 You have no idea to what cruelty the insane had 
 been exposed. They had been kept in filth, without 
 fire or comfort of any kind. It was not because people 
 were so cruel ; it was simply because they thought that 
 this was the way to treat the insane. 
 
 Miss Dix, moved by her intense pity, used all her 
 great energy and good sense, travelled from state to 
 state, and from country to country, aroused interest in 
 others, and guided the interest which she had aroused. 
 New hospitals were built, wiser and tenderer care was 
 used, better methods were introduced, so that now we 
 can hardly believe that things ever were so bad as they 
 were before her day.' 
 
 I will mention another hero who was very different, 
 but who showed his heroism also in reference to the 
 insane. 
 
 Charles Lamb was a writer of charming essays,^ full 
 of wit and fancy. He seemed to the world as far as 
 possible from a hero ; yet his life was heroic. He was 
 engaged to be married to a woman whom he tenderly 
 loved ; but his sister became insane and killed their 
 mother ; and he gave up all his plans, and lived for her. 
 He undertook to take care of her. She lived with him ; 
 only when her attacks of insanity returned, he took her 
 
 * See the Life of Dorothea Dix, by Frances Tiffany. 
 ^ The Essays of EHa. 
 
Different Kinds of Heroes. 5 1 
 
 to a hospital till she had recovered. It was a sad sight 
 to see the brother and sister walking across the fields to 
 the hospital together, when she felt that the trouble was 
 coming on. His life was lived for this sister, so sweet 
 and lovely when she was herself, so wild and ungovern- 
 able when her fits of insanity came upon her; who in 
 her insanity had committed that terrible deed. This 
 was, you must remember, while the insane, in general, 
 were treated with the cruelty that I have described. 
 
 I have in mind many heroes of all kinds, to whose 
 lives I should gladly refer, but I have no space. 
 They are found in all forms of life. There are railway 
 engineers, who, when they saw that a collision could 
 not be avoided, have remained at their place to lighten, 
 if possible, the shock, and have been killed; sea cap- 
 tains, who have remained at their posts till all others had 
 left, and have gone down with their ships ; physicians 
 and nurses, and sisters of charity, who have not shrunk 
 from pestilence in order to save life, or to comfort the 
 dying. There was Father Damien, a catholic priest, 
 who so pitied the lepers, who were confined to an island, 
 deprived alike of the comforts of this world and of the 
 consolation of religion, that he went and lived with 
 them. He knew that when he once joined them he 
 would probably take their disease, and, in any case, 
 could never leave them. But he went to them and 
 shared their lot, living and dying with them ; seeking to 
 do them good. 
 
 I would advise each of you to keep a book of heroes, 
 and put down in it the names of all the heroic persons 
 
52 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 of whom you read in history, or in the newspapers, or 
 of whom you hear in your daily Hfe. You can make 
 divisions and classes of heroes, according to the purpose 
 of their acts, whether for patriotism, or science, or phil- 
 anthropy, or religion, or whatever cause. Then you 
 can decide who are the greatest heroes, and whom you 
 would rather be like. Only remember that keeping a 
 book of heroes is not to be heroic ; seek really to be a 
 hero in your own life. 
 
 There are many who have been heroes in the most 
 common lives ; boys and girls who have sacrificed many 
 pleasures to obtain an education ; boys and girls who 
 have given up the idea of an education because they 
 felt that they were too much needed by their parents or 
 by their younger brothers or sisters ; those who have 
 given up the dearest plans, or the most attractive pleas- 
 ures, for the sake of those who were dependent upon 
 them. It is as heroic to give up one's pleasure for the 
 sake of the sick at home, as to go to serve in a hospital. 
 Heroism needs no setting-off of romance to be worthy 
 of the name. 
 
 Such unpretending heroes as I have described are 
 worthy to have their names in your hero-book ; and to 
 be imitated in your lives. 
 
Contentment 53 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CONTENTMENT. 
 
 For contentment are needed both the fortitude and 
 the courage of which we have been speaking : fortitude 
 to bear cheerfully whatever may be disagreeable in the 
 present ; and courage to meet bravely the uncertainties 
 of the future. 
 
 The habit of discontent is something like cowardice. 
 As cowardice sees all possible elements of danger, but 
 does not see the elements of safety which far outbalance 
 the others, so discontent sees only what is unpleasant, 
 and overlooks the mass of pleasant things which for the 
 most part outnumber these. 
 
 As there is always, theoretically speaking, some vague 
 and remote possibility of the perils which cowardice 
 fears, so discontent is never wholly without reason. In 
 every life there are actually some things that are not 
 agreeable. Discontent sees these and thus justifies it- 
 self. Its mistake is that it sees these alone, or out of all 
 proportion with other things. 
 
 If you are discontented, the feeling is probably based 
 upon something which is really unpleasant, and you 
 may, in thinking upon this, feel that your discontent is 
 justified. What you have to consider, however, is 
 whether this bit of discomfort is not outweighed by 
 pleasant things, and whether you are right in letting 
 
54 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 this take away the comfort of your life. There is rather 
 a slangy proverb which has a good deal of common 
 sense in it. It says of something that one does not 
 fancy, ^' If you do not like it, you must lump it." — 
 That is, you must not take it by itself, but let it find its 
 place in the whole of your life. 
 
 There is a story of a man who determined that one 
 person in the world should be perfectly happy. He 
 found a poor woman living most wretchedly, and took 
 her out of her wretchedness, and gave her a nice little 
 cottage, with a pleasant garden, and clothing and money 
 and all that seemed needed for her comfort. In a year 
 he came to see her to hear the story of her happiness, 
 but he found her as wretched as ever. Her neighbor 
 had a pea-hen, the voice of which was very unpleasant 
 to her. This took away all her pleasure, and she was 
 as unhappy as she was at first. This woman was per- 
 fectly right in not liking the voice of the pea-hen, which 
 is certainly not musical ; but she was wrong in letting 
 this single bit of unpleasantness take away her satisfac- 
 tion in all the pleasant things that were around her. 
 
 It might be thought that the habit of discontent 
 would bring its own cure. Certainly it brings its own 
 punishment. We often try to correct faults by showing 
 the unhappiness that they will bring : but the habit of 
 discontent, by its very nature, brings unhappiness, so 
 that the connection between the two does not need to 
 be pointed out. 
 
 It is as if at a table there were several dishes of sweet 
 and pleasant food, and one of food that is bitter to the 
 
Conte7itment, 5 5 
 
 taste ; and a person should take of the bitter food and 
 mingle it with all the rest, so nothing should be agree- 
 able, and should then complain of the bitterness of all. 
 So the habit of discontent spoils the more abundant 
 good by spreading over it the less abundant evil. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, however, the habit of discon- 
 tent brings certain satisfactions with it. 
 
 One of these is that it is associated with a certain feel- 
 ing of superiority. The discontented person often thinks 
 that great dissatisfaction with that to which other persons 
 submit quietly, shows a greater delicacy of nature than 
 these others possess. 
 
 Hans Christian Andersen tells a story of a queen who 
 wished her son to marry only a true princess ; so she 
 devised a test by which the true princess should be 
 known. She piled on the bedstead half a dozen beds, 
 and under the lowest of these she placed a rose-leaf. 
 She made one and another, for whom the hand of the 
 prince was sought, sleep on the bed thus prepared. 
 When they came down in the morning and said that 
 they had slept beautifully, her thought was, " Ah, you 
 are not a true princess." At last, one came down in 
 the morning saying that she had had a fearful night, and 
 was all black and blue ; for there was something hard 
 in the bed that took away all her peace. She had felt 
 the rose-leaf under all the feathers that buried it ; and 
 by this the queen recognized the true princess. 
 
 There are those who think that to be troubled by 
 every little annoyance shows their superiority, as if they 
 were true princes and princesses. They might as well 
 be proud of a poor digestion or of a lame leg. 
 
56 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 The habit of discontent has another satisfaction some- 
 what similar to this. The dissatisfied person has enjoy- 
 ment in thinking that his surroundings are very far 
 below his deserts. He has such a sense of his own im- 
 portance that he feels injured by anything that is not 
 quite to his satisfaction, and this sense of injury increases 
 the sense of personal importance. 
 
 This kind of discontent may perhaps be lessened if 
 the discontented person should really ask himself how 
 it is that he has deserved so much ; what he is or what 
 he has done, by which he can claim to have only 
 pleasant things in the world, while so many have so 
 much suffering. 
 
 It may be helpful to think of others, good and true, 
 who bear cheerfully evils, compared with which those 
 that cause the discontent are as nothing. 
 
 The habit of discontent arises in general from the 
 mistake of supposiiig that any arrangement of outward 
 things can in itself make us happy. Certainly it is eas- 
 ier to be happier in some circumstances than in others ; 
 but none in themselves can bring happiness. 
 
 Every one should learn the art of living, and this art 
 consists in being able to use the circumstances of life, 
 and not to be at their mercy; to live cheerfully even 
 when everything is not precisely as one would have it. 
 
 You have seen the pretty wood carvings that are 
 made in Switzerland. You would be surprised to find 
 with how simple an apparatus they are made. You go 
 into the workshop and expect to find a great array of tools. 
 You find, perhaps, a young man with nothing but a piece 
 
Contentment, 57 
 
 of wood and a jack-knife. So out of the simplest ma- 
 terials, and with the poorest tools, many have carved 
 beautiful lives which have been a joy to themselves 
 and those about them. 
 
 But, after all, this is very much a matter of habit. 
 We see what we look for and what we are in the habit 
 of seeing. One used to correcting proof, for instance, 
 will see at a glance a page disfigured by typographical 
 errors that another would never notice, simply because 
 he has made it his habit to look for them. 
 
 So, one that has formed the habit of seeing unpleasant 
 things will see them and perhaps will see little else; 
 while one in the habit of paying more attention to 
 what is pleasant than to what is unpleasant will find this 
 a almost every turn. 
 
 There are few things that are more important for the 
 happiness of life than to form a habit of taking a cheer- 
 ful view of the circumstances in which one is placed. 
 
58 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 AMBITION. 
 
 The habit of contentment which we have been consid- 
 ering may, in some respects, be carried too far. One 
 may be too contented. While we should make the best 
 of things that cannot be changed, and not let our lives 
 be poisoned by discontent, it is a mistake and even a 
 fault to be satisfied with what can without loss or injury 
 be made better. 
 
 This sort of contentment sometimes takes the form 
 of shiftlessness. We sometimes pass a house in the 
 country where the gates are off the hinges, the fences 
 are broken, the grounds are full of weeds, when a little 
 labor would make all these things right. We think that 
 the man who lives there takes things too easily. 
 He is too contented. He needs a little dissatisfaction 
 to spur him on. 
 
 The habit of mind that seeks to accomplish the best 
 is called ambition. 
 
 Ambition may be a very good or a very bad thing, 
 according to its object. As it is the powder in the gun 
 that sends the ball whizzing on its way for good or for 
 evil, so it is ambition that gives energy and movement 
 to the life. It is as important to have ambition directed 
 rightly as it is to have a loaded gun pointed in the right 
 way; but a life without ambition is of little more use 
 than a gun without powder. 
 
Ambition, 59 
 
 A true ambition may be directed to improving the cir- 
 cumstances of one's life. It is a good ambition for a 
 poor boy to think that he will work hard and will some 
 day have a comfortable home for himself and those 
 whom he loves. Even the ambition to be rich is often 
 a worthy one; only it must be remembered that riches 
 may be purchased at too dear a price. 
 
 It is a worthy ambition to do well whatever one does. 
 This is an ambition that nobody should be without. 
 Even in the play-ground one should have an ambition 
 to play well, to be a good pitcher or catcher, or to excel 
 in whatever part one has to play. A boy who is care- 
 less and indifferent in a game of ball will not be likely to 
 accomplish much anywhere. 
 
 We like to see even a horse ambitious, and not mov- 
 ing only as fast as the whip forces it. We like to see a 
 workman ambitious to turn out good work, whether it 
 be a stone wall that he is building, or shoes that he is 
 making. We like to see a scholar ambitious to take a 
 good place in his class and to have his lesson perfectly. 
 
 This sort of ambition makes play even of the hardest 
 work, for it puts life into everything that one does; 
 while the lack of ambition will make work even of play, for 
 if one has no interest to do well what one is doing, then 
 even base-ball is little better than a task. 
 
 Above all, one should be ambitious to do the best 
 things. 
 
 There are all sorts of ambitions in life. We laugh at 
 the small boy the height of whose ambition is to strut 
 through the street with a cigarette in his mouth. We 
 
6o Ethics for Young People, 
 
 despise the young man whose ambition is to be a little 
 faster than his fellows. We have also a contempt for 
 the man who is simply trying to get rich while he cares 
 nothing for the good opinion of his fellow citizens, noth- 
 ing for honesty or honor, or for the needs of those that 
 he can help. 
 
 We admire the ambition of one who means to be a . 
 manly man, to be a kindly friend, to get on in the world 
 himself and to help others get on in it ; who, in a word, 
 means to be an honorable and useful citizen. 
 
Education as a Duty, 6i 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 EDUCATION AS A DUTY. 
 
 We have seen that the ambition to make the most 
 and the best of one's self is worthy of all praise. One 
 of the most important helps in accomplishing this end 
 is education. To obtain an education so far as is pos- 
 sible is thus one of the first duties which one owes to 
 one's self. 
 
 By education I mean the teaching which one may 
 receive at home, at school, at college or elsewhere, and 
 also that which one may give to one's self. 
 
 Boys and girls go to school, — some because they 
 have to, and some as a mere matter of course. Perhaps 
 very few ask themselves what is the real good of going 
 to school.^ This I will now try to explain. 
 
 Men differ from the lower animals, in part, because 
 whatever one generation gains is passed on to the next, 
 so that each starts with some little advantage over the 
 one that went before it. 
 
 Each generation of animals, so far as we now know 
 them, starts just where the former generation started. 
 
 That is, each generation of birds builds its nests in 
 the same way that birds of its kind have built them, so 
 far as we know anything about them. So the bees 
 make honey and the beavers make dams just as their 
 parents and grand-parents have done for centuries. 
 
62 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 There was probably a time in the past when the present 
 skill was reached by slow and hardly perceptible ad- 
 vance ; but so far as our definite knowledge goes, there 
 has been little> if any, change from generation to gener- 
 ation. 
 
 There is, also, this difference between man and the 
 lower animals, that what man does he has to learn how 
 to do, while the animals are able to do the most that 
 they accomplish by what we call instinct ; that is, with- 
 out having to learn how. 
 
 Some things, indeed, that seem most natural to them, 
 the animals have to learn. Thus the birds would not 
 sing unless they heard other birds sing. If a bird is 
 brought up with birds of a different kind, it will often 
 sing their song instead of that which belongs to it. 
 Thus the canary has to be put, as we might say, to 
 school to an older canary that is a good singer, or it 
 could not sing any more than a child that has never 
 been taught. But most things that the animals do, they 
 do without teaching. I suppose the bees would make 
 honey, and the birds would build their nests, and the 
 beavers would make dams, even if they had never seen 
 these things done by their parents. 
 
 You can now see why boys and girls should go to 
 school. 
 
 It is in order that they may get the advantage of all the 
 generations that have gone before^ and may make a fair 
 start with the one that is just beginning. A boy or girl 
 who is not taught the most important of thes^ results of 
 past ages, might just as well have been born hundreds 
 
Education as a Duty. 63 
 
 of years ago in a savage hut. And the boy or girl who 
 is unwilling to be taught is trying to throw away the ad- 
 vantage of living to-day, and is really seeking to have 
 no better start in life than a savage boy or girl could 
 have that was born hundreds of years ago. 
 
 I have said that the boy or the girl is taught the most 
 important results of all the experience of the past. ^ Of 
 course it is very little that can be thus taught. We are, 
 as the poet Tennyson says, *' the heirs of all the ages;" 
 but all that the child or the youth can be taugiit is how 
 to get all these great possessions. \ 
 
 Think what a gain it is simply to be able to read, aid 
 to read intelligently, and to love to read. As soon as 
 one has accomplished this, all the treasures of the 
 knowledge and the thought of the past are open to him. 
 It is as if the key of a great treasure-house were put 
 into his hand and he were told to go and help himself 
 to whatever he would have. 
 
 The same is true of whatever else is taught at school. 
 Each study well pursued puts a key into the hand of the 
 scholar, by which he may unlock one of the doors of 
 the world, which would otherwise be closed to him. 
 
 But after all, the mind itself is the best tool; and 
 the best thing that the scholar learns at school is to use 
 his mind. 
 
64 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SELF-EDUCATION AS A DUTY. 
 
 We hear often of self-educated men. By these words 
 are meant men who had little advantage of instruction 
 in early life, but who, by making the most of themselves 
 and of the opportunities they had, have reached, often, 
 positions of great honor and usefulness. In our country 
 we have had many such men, of whom President Lincoln 
 may serve as a striking example. 
 
 But, in fact, all men who amount to anything are in a 
 sense self-made men. The best teachers in the world 
 cannot make a youth amount to anything, unless he 
 takes the matter into his own hands, and works with 
 them, as well as in ways that lie outside their teaching. 
 
 This is another point in which man differs from most 
 lower animals. You have to train a horse. The horse 
 does very little towards his own training, except to be 
 docile in the hands of his master. Some animals, in- 
 deed, do very much more than this and try to train 
 themselves. An elephant is sometimes found practising 
 by himself the lessons he has been taught ; and a parrot 
 will drill itself, trying to get the words which its owner 
 wants to teach it. These are, however, exceptional 
 cases. 
 
 Self-education lies outside the school-room as well as 
 in it. There is no part of the nature which one ought 
 not to try to educate. 
 
Self- Education as a Duty. 65 
 
 The body should be educated. The limbs should be 
 made strong and supple. Most of us do not know even 
 how to stand or to walk. See a civilian stand or walk 
 by the side of a soldier, and how crooked and lumpish 
 does he almost always appear. The soldier has learned 
 how to carry himself; the civilian has not. Out-of-door 
 games do much for such training, — rowing and running 
 and ball and the rest. Then there is the gymnasium 
 which develops the form regularly and gives the man the 
 mastery of himself. 
 
 The senses should be trained to sharpness and accuracy. 
 Now and then, by way of advertisement, a prize is 
 offered to the person who guesses most nearly the 
 amount held by a big teapot, or some other vessel of 
 the same sort. People guess wildly and for the most 
 part have no idea what the amount should be. Some- 
 thing like this, in a systematic way, would be good 
 training for every one. 
 
 A boy should not think that he has learned the tables 
 of weights and measures till he has some idea what the 
 words really mean. He should be able to tell whether 
 the weight that he holds is a pound, whether the space 
 he marks off is a foot. 
 
 You could easily make a game out of such training, 
 with prizes or whatever else would give interest to it. 
 Who can tell most correctly how many acres there are 
 in such a field, or when he has walked a mile? All this 
 should be tried till it is no longer mere guessing, but 
 one knows something of what he is talking about. 
 
 Then, too, the senses should be trained to observe. 
 
66 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 How many go through the world without seeing any- 
 thing. I have already suggested that it is a good plan 
 to study some science, so that one will get into the 
 habit of noticing what is before him. 
 
 The hands, too, should be trained to skill. It is a great 
 thing to have the mastery of tools. If one has only a 
 jack-knife, it is a great thing to be able to make some- 
 thing definite with it, and not merely to whittle a stick 
 into nothing but whitilings. 
 
 It is still more important to cultivate the mind. Any- 
 body who can read can do this. I shall speak of this 
 again later, so I will not dwell upon it now. 
 
 One should not be afraid to seek - information and 
 help from the older persons that one is with. Espe- 
 cially in the school one should consider the teacher as a 
 friend, who is ready and eager to help, and whose busi- 
 ness it is to help. 
 
 There is another matter that we may often forget, and 
 that is the training of the feelings. One who is lazy, 
 or quarrelsome, or selfish ought to try very hard to 
 make something different of himself. 
 
 In a word, you should consider what sort of a man 
 you would like to be. Think of those you have known, 
 or those of whom you have read or heard, and when you 
 make up your mind what sort of a man you would like 
 to be, take yourself in hand, and try to make of yourself 
 such a person. Treat yourself as if you were somebody 
 else that you had charge of, and see what a good training- 
 master you can be. 
 
Self Respect. 6/ 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SELF-RESPECT. 
 
 Self-respect is the foundation of all true manliness 
 and womanliness. When a person has lost this, there is 
 little that can be done for him. 
 
 This is largely the basis of the virtues that we have 
 been considering. Ambition, courage, fortitude, and 
 all forms of self-control imply that a person has such 
 respect for himself, that he likes to fill his place well, 
 and to hold his own in the world. It is because the 
 coward lacks self-respect that he is willing to flee. It is 
 self-respect that inspires fortitude, and prevents one 
 from ignominiously collapsing in the presence of what 
 is painful or unpleasant. 
 
 Self-respect is a great help in meeting and bearing 
 whatever mortifies our vanity, or tempts to envy and 
 jealousy. 
 
 Vanity finds its delight solely in the good opinion of 
 others ; self-respect is to a great degree independent of 
 the opinion of others. 
 
 We should, up to a certain point, seek the good 
 opinion of those about us ; and it is natural to find it 
 pleasant to possess this. But self-respect will not stoop 
 to any meanness to gain it, and though the person who 
 respects himself may be troubled when this good opin- 
 ion is lost without good cause, he will not fret too much 
 
68 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 about it. There is something that is to him more im- 
 portant than the good-will of others ; that is his respect 
 for himself 
 
 It is well to remember that there is no unfailing 
 recipe against trouble in the world. The good person is 
 not always happy. Even religion does not undertake to 
 make men perfectly happy in the world. It helps them 
 to bear trouble, and to get some higher good out of it. 
 But this implies that there is still trouble to be borne. 
 
 Thus the self-respecting person may be pained by 
 dislike and neglect; but he will not feel them as a 
 person does whose only support is in the good opinion 
 of other people. 
 
 Self-respect is a great help against envy and jealousy. 
 How much there is to provoke to jealousy, even among 
 young people at school. One scholar stands higher in 
 the class. Another has finer clothes. Another is more 
 popular among the other scholars. 
 
 An envious or jealous person will find in all this the 
 source of great unhappiness. He will perhaps hate his 
 rival who is preferred, and hate the teacher or the 
 companions who give the preference. He will perhaps 
 become discouraged or ill-tempered. 
 
 Instead of trying to tell you how a self-respecting 
 boy or girl would meet all this, I will tell you how a 
 self-respecting boy did meet it. 
 
 One of the most brilliant writers of France has pub- 
 lished a book, which is, he tells us, in its first part the 
 story of his own life.^ The hero of the story, in whom 
 
 * " Le petit Chose," by Alphonse Daudet. 
 
Self-Respect. 69 
 
 the author represents himself, is a poor boy, who 
 lived in the city of Lyons, in France. He obtained 
 an opportunity to attend, without expense, a school 
 made up mostly of boys from rich families. He went 
 wearing a blouse, such as is often worn by the poorer 
 men and boys in France. When he entered the school- 
 room, his first glance showed that his was the only blouse 
 there. He saw the boys tittering, and from every side 
 he heard whispered, *' He has come in a blouse ! " As 
 days went on, even the master was mean enough to take 
 part against him because he was poor. The master 
 never called him by his name. When he spoke to him 
 it was, " Come here, What's-your-name," or, '' What 
 are you about, What's-your-name ? " Another boy 
 might, as I have said, have become discouraged, 
 envious, jealous, and very unhappy. But see what this 
 boy, who respected himself, did. He said to himself, 
 '' If I am to take any position in this school / must 
 work twice as hard as the other boys!' This he did. 
 Later, when he was a great man, we may imagine with 
 what pleasure and pride he placed as the title of the 
 book which was the story of his life, the words which 
 the master had so often addressed to him in contempt. 
 This title we may translate freely into '' Little What's- 
 his-name." 
 
 A person who respects himself will not stoop to what 
 is mean or dishonorable. If his sense of duty should 
 not be strong enough to preserve him from such things, 
 his self-respect would keep him from them. He would 
 be ashamed to do a dishonorable thing. 
 
70 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 We can now compare, better than we could have 
 done before, self-respect with pride. 
 
 Self-respect is a kind of pride. It is the good pride. 
 The bad pride is that which compares one's self with 
 others, and looks down upon them. 
 
 Pride differs from vanity, in that the proud man has 
 such contempt of others that he does not care very- 
 much what they think of him. 
 
 When I was a very small boy, a lady was talking with 
 me about ^^ easily besetting sins." She said that her 
 besetting sin was pride. I looked at her in innocent 
 wonder and exclaimed, ''Why, what have you to be 
 proud of ? " I saw at once by her confusion that I 
 had made a very impudent and unlucky speech. We 
 cannot ask this question of others ; but if anyone who 
 is disposed to be proud should ask himself the question, 
 '' What have you to be proud of? " and answer it truly, 
 it might do him good. 
 
 Self-respect is a pride that makes no comparison with 
 others. The man who respects himself is simply 
 ashamed to do anything that would be unworthy of 
 him. 
 
 He respects himself as he would have others respect 
 him. One who does not respect himself cannot expect 
 to be respected by others. 
 
Self-Respect. 7 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 SELF-RESPECT {continued). 
 
 Respect for one's self is shown in many ways besides 
 those that have been mentioned. It is seen, for instance, 
 in neatness or cleanHness. 
 
 It is pleasant to see a young woman, however poor 
 she may be,' never forgetting to keep herself clean and 
 neat. Even a little personal adornment, however simple, 
 shows that, in spite of difficult circumstances, she has 
 not lost her self-respect. 
 
 It is unpleasant to see a dirty child, although it is not 
 the child's fault. You can see, however, from the dis- 
 gust that you have in seeing a dirty child, how disgust- 
 ing a filthy person always is. 
 
 Even most animals like to keep clean. We are some- 
 times disgusted with the filth in which the hog lives ; 
 but that is not its fault, but its owner's. Even a hog 
 would keep clean if it could. I knew of one that had 
 a sleeping-room in the barn, from which an opening 
 led into a little yard outside. This yard was like other 
 pig-sties; but the sleeping- room was kept perfectly 
 neat. The straw which was given it for a bed, it cut up 
 with its teeth so that it was fine and soft. All this it 
 kept swept, I do not know how, neatly in a corner, 
 where it could lie with its nose at the opening so as to 
 get the freshest air possible. When I see pigs living 
 
72 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 in filth, I think of this one and pity them ; for I know 
 that they would be neat if they could. From this it 
 appears that a person who does not like to keep clean is 
 worse even than a pig. 
 
 While the hog, from the way in which men make 
 him live, stands, in spite of himself, as an illustration of 
 the disgusting nature of filthiness, the cat may serve 
 as an example of personal cleanliness. How the cat 
 likes to wash herself with her tongue. A poor way, we 
 should think, but it is her only way, of keeping clean. 
 
 A cat was not well and needed medicine. She re- 
 fused to take it, just as some children do. She had, 
 however, a better excuse than they, for no one could 
 tell her that it was for her good. She did not like it, 
 and saw no reason why she should take it. A bright girl, 
 fresh from Ireland, exclaimed, ^' Give me some grease 
 and I will make her take it ! " She mixed the medicine 
 with the grease, and smouched it over the cat's fur. 
 The cat disliked the taste, but she disliked more to have 
 her fur soiled, so she licked it all off, and was cured in 
 spite of herself 
 
 Neatness and cleanliness, by showing the self-respect of 
 the person who is neat and clean, go far to win for 
 him the respect of others. When a young man or 
 woman seeks a position of any kind, there is hardly any- 
 thing that could harm the chance of success more than 
 an untidy and uncleanly appearance. 
 
 A self-respecting person would be ashamed to live in 
 an uncleanly or untidy house. 
 
 Cleanliness here has also its practical side. Typhoid 
 
Self-Rcspect. 73 
 
 fever, and other terrible diseases, are caused, as we now 
 know, by little living things, far too small to be seen 
 except with the help of the microscope, that get into the 
 body and work these evils. These little beings are bred 
 to a large extent in filth. We see this illustrated on a 
 large scale by the fact that when a pestilence visits a 
 community, it is the lack of cleanliness in certain local- 
 ities that does the most to invite it, and to stimulate its 
 ravages. 
 
 Much worse than outward filth is inward impurity. 
 No person with any self-respect would stoop to this. 
 Impure thoughts are far more disgusting than unclean 
 face and hands. 
 
 How would a person who encourages impure 
 thoughts feel if his mind were suddenly thrown open to 
 the world, so that all could see them. One should 
 never do or think what he would be ashamed to have 
 those about him know. 
 
 Indeed, the exposure that was suggested in the last 
 paragraph takes place up to a certain degree. One 
 who is given to this kind of thought tends to show the 
 effect of it, at last, in his face. He thinks that nobody 
 suspects ; but those who have insight and delicate feeling 
 see what the condition of his mind is, and have a loath- 
 ing such as few other things can cause. 
 
 There are many other things which a feeling of self- 
 respect leads one to avoid. Indeed it is the enemy of 
 all the vices and the encourager of all the virtues, as it 
 is the heart and soul of manliness. 
 
74 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 SELF-CONTROL. 
 
 One of the most important lessons that one has to 
 learn is that of self-control. 
 
 The person who is without self-control does at every 
 moment just what he feels like doing. He will speak 
 the words that come into his mind, no matter how cruel 
 or unkind they may be. He will eat what he feels like 
 eating, and drink what he feels like drinking, no matter 
 how harmful the thing is. 
 
 He is like anything else that is untrained ; like a 
 troublesome child, or a dog that has never learned to 
 mind. Only in this case it is himself that the person 
 has never taught to obey. 
 
 It is worth while, sometimes, to keep from doing 
 something that is not harmful, but very tempting, simply 
 to see that one has this mastery of one's self: just as we 
 forbid a dog that we are training to do this or that ; not 
 that there is any harm in the thing, but so that he may 
 learn to mind our word. 
 
 I have seen a dog sit up with a piece of meat on his 
 nose, and make no motion to -eat it until the word of 
 command was given. Such a dog is in fine training. We 
 ought to have the same mastery over ourselves that his 
 owner has over this dog. One who has not this mastery 
 is at the mercy of anything. He is like one who is 
 
Self- Control, 75 
 
 driving a horse that is not well broken. At the critical 
 moment the horse may start, and dart to one side, or 
 run ; and he who seemed to be the driver, because he 
 held the reins, may be dashed to the ground. 
 
 Long ages ago, in both Greece and India, philoso- 
 phers compared the senses to horses well or ill trained ; 
 and the comparison may be helpful to us now. 
 
 The habit of eating everything that comes in one's 
 way if it tempts the taste, is called gluttony. This often 
 does much to destroy the health ; as well as, by the 
 habit of greediness, to prepare one for all kinds of loath- 
 some vices when one is older. 
 
 Still more dangerous is the habit of drinking whatever 
 tempts the taste. This, when what is so drunk is in- 
 toxicating liquor, is called intemperance. 
 
 Intemperance is one of the most contemptible and 
 loathsome habits into which one may fall. It is also one 
 of the most dangerous. It springs from the lack of 
 self-control, and it destroys what little self-control may 
 still exist. 
 
 A person who *' drinks " gives up all self-command. 
 He is like a man who, in the midst of a perilous region, 
 throws the reins over his horse's back and lets him take 
 what course he will. The best tempered man, when he 
 has drunk too much, may become quarrelsome ; the 
 kindest hearted one may become brutal and cruel ; the 
 most sensible one may become a fool ; and all become 
 alike ridiculous. 
 
 One great peril about this matter of drink is that one 
 who indulges in it may reach a point where he has-no 
 
76 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 mastery of himself . He may think that he will take a 
 glass now and then and be none the worse. He does it 
 because a friend offers it, or because he thinks he must 
 treat a friend, or because others do, or because he is be- 
 ginning to like it ; and, all at once, before he has dreamed 
 that it was possible, the drunkard's thirst may be kindled 
 before which he feels himself powerless. 
 
 I suppose that there is nothing more terrible than the 
 drunkard's thirst. It is stronger than his love for his 
 parents or his wife or his children, stronger than his love 
 of respectability, stronger than his dread of poverty or 
 ridicule. It is a burning thirst, terrible in its torment and 
 never to be satisfied in its demands. 
 
 In some, this thirst is kindled much more easily than 
 in others, but there are none who are wholly free from 
 the peril of it, and no one can tell in advance how soon 
 his turn may come. He may laugh at another who has 
 fallen, but at the next moment he may find himself at the 
 mercy of this raging demon. 
 
 Far above the falls of Niagara, one may row down 
 the river and turn back when he will. But as he goes 
 down further, there comes a point beyond which he can- 
 not turn back. The trouble is that he can never know 
 when he is reaching that point. He thinks that he is 
 safe and will turn back : but the stream has him in its 
 power, and hurries him on, down towards the terrible 
 plunge of the cataract. So it is when one begins to 
 drink intoxicating liquor. He cannot tell in advance 
 when the point is reached beyond which he is helpless. 
 
 I do not say that it is ever too late for the drunkard 
 
Self' Control. 77 
 
 to reform but, if he does, it is at the cost of a struggle 
 more terrible than we can conceive, and in which few 
 have the strength and the resolution to win. 
 
 For boys and young men, at least, who are exposed 
 to temptation, and all boys and young men are liable to 
 be so exposed, the only safe way is to taste nothing that 
 will intoxicate. In this way one is safe. But if one 
 takes such drink, however rarely at first, he may find 
 himself drawn into the deadly current. 
 
 One may laugh at this peril, but it is like laughing at 
 the danger from some contagious disease. One may 
 say in his pride of health, '' I am safe, " and the next 
 moment the disease may have taken possession of his 
 body. 
 
yS Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 It is important to learn early to rely upon yourself; 
 for little has been done in the world by those who are 
 always looking out for some one to help them. 
 
 We must be on our guard not to confound self-reli- 
 ance with self-conceit, yet the difference between the two 
 cannot easily be defined in words. 
 
 The difference is something like that between bravery 
 and foolhardiness, which was spoken of in an earlier 
 chapter.' 
 
 The self-conceited person takes it for granted that he 
 is superior to others. The self-conceited girl thinks 
 that she is handsomer, more graceful, or more talented, 
 than other girls, that her work is nicer, or that her com- 
 position shows more genius. Whatever is to be done, 
 she thinks that she can do it better than another, and 
 that her way is always the best. The self-conceited boy 
 looks upon himself and his exploits in the same way. 
 It is hard to correct this, because all that such self-con- 
 ceited persons do seems to them so nearly perfect that 
 they are liable to grow more and more conceited. 
 
 It is one advantage of going to school that girls and 
 boys are apt to have the conceit more or less taken out 
 of them, because they are often thrown among others 
 
 * See chapter XII. 
 
Self-Reliance. 79 
 
 who are superior to them, and because their companions 
 have little patience with such pretence. 
 
 Self-reliance is very different from this. The self-re- 
 liant person is often very modest. He does not say 
 about anything that is to be done, '' I am so strong and 
 wise that I can do it." He says, '' I will try, and if pa- 
 tience and hard work will do it, it shall be done." 
 
 One way in which a person may become self-reliant, 
 IS never to seek or accept help till he has fairly tried 
 what can be done without it. 
 
 Some scholars, if they come to a problem that seems 
 hard, run at once to the teacher, or an older friend, 
 or perhaps even to another scholar, who is brighter or 
 more self-reliant than themselves, in order to be told 
 how to do it. Always try it yourself. Even if it is noth- 
 ing more important than a conundrum, do not wish 
 somebody to tell you the answer till you have fairly 
 tried to conquer it. 
 
 It is a pleasant feeling that comes from having done 
 a difficult thing one's self, a feeling that those never 
 have who are helped out of every hard place. 
 
 It is like the feeling that one has after having climbed 
 a steep mountain. There is a healthy pride in having 
 conquered the difficulty of the ascent. There is also 
 the comfortable feeling that comes when the muscles 
 have been used without being unduly strained. There 
 is a similar pleasant sensation when the mind has been 
 exerted successfully, in learning, for instance, a difficult 
 task, or solving a hard problem. 
 
 One who has overcome one difficulty is ready to 
 
8o Ethics for Young People. 
 
 meet the next with confidence that it, too, will yield to 
 his attempt. 
 
 See how much such a person has gained. In later 
 life, while others are hesitating what to do, or whether 
 to do anything, he goes forward and accomplishes what 
 he undertakes. 
 
 It is often better to do a thing by a way that is not 
 the very best than not to do it at all. 
 
 Self-reliance is as important in thought as it is in 
 action. 
 
 Some people find it hard to make up their minds. 
 They run to one and another to get advice. Perhaps 
 it is in regard to nothing more important than the color 
 of a dress. Perhaps the bits of advice which they re- 
 ceive conflict with one another; then such people are 
 worse off than they were before. 
 
 No person knows better the real value of advice than 
 he who is self-reliant. He has measured his own pow- 
 ers so often that he knows where he needs help. 
 
 When advice comes from those who have wisdom 
 and experience, it is to be taken thankfully. 
 
 So far as people in general are concerned, it is often 
 hard for them to put themselves into your place suffi- 
 ciently to give the advice that you really need. The 
 very fact of having to do a thing often suggests the 
 best way of doing it. Your own thought in regard to 
 anything that you have to do is thus often better than 
 that of the companion whose advice you seek. 
 
 It is pleasant, and sometimes helpful, to talk over our 
 plans with a friend ; but we must remember that it is 
 we ourselves who must make the decision. 
 
Self-Retiance. Si 
 
 Did you ever think why it is that so many of the 
 great men of our country are found among those who 
 began life in hardship and poverty? Many of them 
 grew up in what was, when they were young, the west- 
 ern frontier, where they had to work hard ; where they 
 had no schools, and few comforts and conveniences. They 
 have come from these circumstances that seemed so 
 discouraging, and have become presidents, judges, 
 generals, or millionaires. 
 
 You would find it interesting to put down the names 
 of those who have reached such success from such hard 
 beginnings, and keep a list of them. If you are careful 
 to learn about such persons, and to write down their 
 names, you will be astonished to see how long your list 
 will become. Such a list you could keep as a special, 
 division in the book of heroes of which I have spoken 
 in another place.^ 
 
 Many who were thus situated in their youth did not 
 reach such prominent positions. They became often, 
 however, enterprising and useful citizens. They will 
 not be added to your list, but they lived no less success- 
 ful, and perhaps happier, lives than those whose names 
 have become familiar to the world. One reason why so 
 many that had such an unpromising beginning have won 
 such success is that because they had so few helps, they 
 were forced to help themselves. They thus became 
 self-reliant. When they went out into the world they 
 went straight ahead. Without waiting for any one to 
 
 ^ See page 51. 
 
82 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 make a place for them, they made a place for them- 
 selves. Without waiting for any one to do for them, 
 they did for themselves. Without waiting for people to 
 advise them they trusted themselves. They were 
 prompt, energetic and sensible. Thus people trusted 
 them and honored them. 
 
 Though you have the helps that such men were 
 forced to do without, yet you can cultivate the habit 
 of self-reliance. You can solve your own problems, do 
 your own tasks, and meet your own difficulties ; and 
 thus you, too, can be preparing to do your own part in 
 the world. 
 
 When I was a young man, I was with a friend on the 
 shore of a lake in the Maine woods. We wanted to 
 fish ; we found a boy, perhaps ten years old, who got a 
 boat for us, showed us where was the best place to fish, 
 pulled with us out on the lake, and made himself very 
 serviceable. When we had finished we offered him 
 some money for the boat and his help. He refused to 
 take it. He straightened himself up and said, '' I 
 wanted to fish myself" 
 
 I have often thought of that manly boy, self-reliant 
 and contented with himself. He did not want favors 
 that he did not need from strangers whom he did not 
 know. 
 
 All this reminds me of a fable that I read when I was 
 a boy, and which I have remembered ever since : — 
 Some larks had a nest in a field of grain. One evening 
 the old larks coming home found the young ones in 
 great terror. *^ We must leave our nest at once," they 
 
Self- Reliance. 83 
 
 cried. Then they related how they had heard the 
 farmer say that he must get his neighbors to come the 
 next day and help him reap his field. ** Oh ! " cried 
 the old birds, *' If that is all, we may rest quietly in our 
 nest." The next evening the young birds were found 
 again in a state of terror. The farmer, it seems, 
 was angry because his neighbors had not come, and 
 had said that he should get his relatives to come the 
 next day and help him. The old birds took the news 
 easily, and said there was nothing to fear yet. The 
 next evening the young birds were quite cheerful. 
 " Have you heard nothing to-day? " asked the old ones. 
 *' Nothing important," answered the young. '' It is 
 only that the farmer was again angry because his rela- 
 tives also had failed him, and he said to his sons, ' Since 
 neither our neighbors nor our relations will help us, we 
 must take hold to-morrow and do it ourselves.' " The 
 old birds were excited this time. They said, ** We 
 must leave our nest to-night. When a man decides to 
 to do a thing for himself, and to do it at once, you 
 may be pretty sure that it will be done." 
 
84 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 RELATIONS TO OTHERS. 
 
 Thus far we have considered chiefly what may be 
 called the duties that one owes to one's self. Nearly 
 all that has been said would be true if one lived inde- 
 pendently of all others, and had to seek only a peaceful 
 and happy life. 
 
 But we do not live thus independently. Every one 
 of us is united with others. He is a member of a 
 family. He belongs to the town, to the state, to the 
 nation, to the whole world of persons. He is connected 
 with the past and the future as well as the present. 
 
 It has been sometimes thought that society was 
 formed by the free choice of men who had before been 
 independent, living each for himself, but who gave up 
 a part of their liberty for the sake of the protection and 
 aid that come from living with others. We now know 
 that from the earliest tirnes men have lived in social re- 
 lations with one another. 
 
 Indeed, man would be nothing if there were taken 
 from him what he has received, and what he is always 
 receiving, from the community in which he lives. 
 
 Did you ever lose yourself in the city or in the 
 woods? If you ever did you can understand how 
 dependent we all are upon those with whom we live. 
 
 It is a very strange and painful feeling that one 
 has when he is lost in a city ; especially if one is with- 
 
Relations to Others, 85 
 
 out money. One who is thus lost sees only strange 
 streets, strange buildings and strange people. If he 
 seeks food or shelter, he is looked at coldly. He has 
 stepped out of his place in the world, and is helpless 
 and homeless, till he has found his place again, or has 
 made a new one for himself. 
 
 One is still more helpless who is lost in the woods. 
 The trees may wave, the sun shine, the flowers bloom, 
 the birds sing ; all may be beautiful : but one who is 
 lost has no part in it all. He has no food but the 
 berries, no shelter but the trees, no friend to whom he 
 may speak. 
 
 This will show how little any one of us amounts to 
 when he is left wholly to himself; and how we really 
 live in the social life around us. 
 
 You have all read, I hope, the story of Robinson 
 Crusoe. You may think that there was a man who 
 lived by himself, and independent of the world. 
 
 But think, how sad he was, and how he longed to be 
 with human beings once again. 
 
 Think, also, how much he took with him that other 
 people had made, without which he would have per- 
 ished. He had food with which to begin his life on the 
 island; he had tools with which to provide for his 
 needs. All these things and other conveniences were 
 the product of the civilization that he had left. 
 
 Notice, further, that in making a place to live, in mak- 
 ing a boat to sail in, and in whatever else he did, he was 
 acting according to the experience that he had had, and 
 the observation that he had made before he left home. 
 
86 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 When he went beyond all that his experience had 
 given him, he used the results of the training that he 
 had had, and the habits of mind that he had inherited 
 from the past. 
 
 He was thus simply a member of European society, a 
 representative of European civilization, and a product 
 of European history, who happened to be separated 
 from the social world of which he was a part. He lived 
 on the island, illustrating as far as circumstances 
 allowed the results of European history and European 
 civilization. 
 
 If he had belonged to a savage community, though 
 he might in some things have done just what he really 
 did do, yet he would, on the whole, have thought, felt, 
 and acted like a savage instead of thinking, feeling, and 
 acting as a European. 
 
 This shows how impossible you would find it to live 
 as if you were alone in the world. As I said before, if 
 you could give up all that you have received from the 
 past and from the social world of the present, there 
 would be actually nothing left of you. 
 
 If a leaf on a tree could think, it would be just as 
 easy for it to try to be something without regard to the 
 other leaves and to the tree on which it grows, as for a 
 man to try to be anything by and for himself, without 
 regard to the social order of which he is a part and a 
 product. 
 
 The leaf may fall from the tree and wither, but it is a 
 leaf just the same : only it is a shrunken and withered leaf. 
 So a man may try to live as if the rest of the world had 
 
Relations to Others, 87 
 
 no interest for him ; but he cannot help being a part of 
 this world : only, in trying to live without regard to it, 
 he may lose something of the fullness and strength of 
 his life, just as the fallen leaf loses so much of its 
 beauty. 
 
88 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 SELFISHNESS. 
 
 If thus no one lives merely for himself, but is a part 
 of the community, the family, the town, the state and 
 the world to which he belongs, it is clear that one's 
 first business in life is to fill his place properly and 
 well. 
 
 One who would live merely for himself, without regard 
 for others, is like a musician in a band or orchestra who 
 seeks to make as much noise as he can, and thus at- 
 tract attention to himself, instead of simply filling his 
 place in the great whole. Such an one would attract at- 
 tention to himself, but he would simply make himself 
 disagreeable and ridiculous. 
 
 This does not mean that one is not to seek his own 
 good or his own happiness. It would be a very dull 
 and spiritless world if no one cared for his own interest 
 or pleasure. 
 
 Indeed, if one does not take care of himself under 
 ordinary circumstances, he cannot fill his place in the 
 great body to which he belongs. The soldier must 
 keep well and strong and in good spirits, or he cannot 
 be what he should in the march or the battle. Many a 
 soldier who has been kept back by sickness or suffering 
 from taking part in some difficult and perilous move- 
 ment in which the army corps to which he belongs 
 
Selfishness, 89 
 
 takes part, has regretted his failure to be in his place 
 and to do his share of the work, more than all the pain 
 that he is suffering. 
 
 The world in which we live is like a great army in 
 which each has a place. The family, the school, all the 
 relations in which one stands, are like the divisions of 
 an army, at least in so far as this, that each supplies a 
 place in which one must stand, and gives also duties 
 which belong to this place. 
 
 While, then, one seeks his own interest and pleasure, 
 he is not to seek these as if other people did not have 
 their own interests and pleasures which are worth as 
 much to them as his are to him. 
 
 The living as if one were alone in the world, or rather 
 as if other people were in the world simply to serve us, 
 is called selfishness. It consists in the disregard of 
 others, and in seeking to fulfil one's own desires as if 
 other people had neither desires nor rights. 
 
 Selfishness, we might almost say, is the one bad thing 
 in the world, for all crimes and all misdeeds, great and 
 small, spring from it. 
 
 It is selfishness that robs and cheats. The selfish 
 man wants money. He does not care that others have 
 also their want^ and their rights. They have money 
 and he wants it ; so he takes it in any way that he can. 
 
 It is selfishness that is the source of intemperance and 
 all the degradation and crime to which it leads. To see 
 the drunkard, poor and ragged, despised and ridiculed, 
 you would hardly think that he went into it for the sake 
 of having a good time. If he went into it for that, it 
 
go Ethics for Young People, 
 
 does not seem to have been a success. But it is because 
 at the first he thought merely of his own immediate 
 pleasure, and forgot the happiness of father and mother, 
 or of wife and children, that he sank to this low condi- 
 tion. 
 
 It is selfishness that leads to the neglect of the poor 
 and the helpless, that makes men so stingy and mean 
 that they are often unwilling to help others even when 
 it can be done at little cost or trouble to themselves. 
 
 It is selfishness that speaks the cruel words or makes 
 the jest that gives another pain. 
 
 It is selfishness that takes pleasure in tormenting an- 
 other ; that takes pleasure in tormenting the dumb ani- 
 mals. 
 
 In a word, selfishness seeks to get the most good pos- 
 sible out of the world, and to do the least that is possi- 
 ble for others. 
 
 It is easy from this to see what a mean thing it is to 
 be selfish. Indeed, what we call meanness is selfishness 
 on a small scale. But selfishness on a large scale is just 
 as contemptible and just as mean as the other. You 
 have a contempt for the child that gets ofi" by itself, so 
 that it can eat its cake or candy without having to share 
 it with its friends. You have a greater contempt for 
 the child that gets possession of its playmate's share of 
 the good things that children love so much. But self- 
 ishness of older people, in regard to things considered 
 much more important and dignified, is just as mean and 
 contemptible and childish as this. The selfishness of 
 the great conqueror who gratifies his ambition at the 
 
Selfishness. 91 
 
 cost of the lives or happiness of millions ; or that of the 
 demagogue who misleads the people, arousing their 
 discontent and passion, that his schemes of ambition 
 may be aided, is just as mean as that of the child that 
 seizes its playmate's cake or apple. 
 
92 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 OBEDIENCE. 
 
 We have seen that every man is a member of the 
 body that we call, in general, '' Society." First he be- 
 longs to the family, and then through this to larger 
 organizations. Selfishness we have found to be the at- 
 tempt of a person to live as if he existed merely on his 
 own account and as if other people existed for him. 
 
 There are several ways in which the relation to this 
 common life makes itself felt. Some of these we will 
 now consider. 
 
 One of the most outward, and yet one of the most 
 important of these, is obedie^ice. 
 
 It is obedience by which the man takes the place that 
 belongs to him by yielding to the claims which society 
 makes upon him. 
 
 These claims differ according to the age or the posi- 
 tion of the person upon whom they are made. So far 
 as one neglects them and lives merely on his own ac- 
 count, he loses, as we have seen, his best life. 
 
 The boy sometimes feels that it is childish to obey the 
 rules of the home or the school. He feels that to set 
 them at defiance is manly. On the contrary, it is 
 obedience that is manly a7id disobedience that is childish. 
 
 The baby knows no rules. It seeks only what seems 
 pleasant to itself. It is kept only by force from doing 
 
Obedience. 93 
 
 what would be harmful to itself, or to the persons and 
 things about ir. 
 
 Soon, however, in the case of a child properly trained, 
 the rules begin, and it never is free of them again so 
 long as it lives. 
 
 The first lesson that the child has to learn is the 
 general one of obedience. // must learn to obey^ for this 
 lies behind and beneath all other lessons. 
 
 In this the training of a child is like the training of a 
 dog or a horse. When the animal has learned v/hat it is 
 to mind it can learn a great many other things. 
 
 This does not mean that the child must have hard and 
 harsh rules. The best obedience is learned quietly and 
 pleasantly, and almost without the sense of constraint. 
 Even a dog is best trained in this way, and then it 
 thoroughly enjoys performing its tricks. 
 
 You may have been surprised at being told that it is 
 manly to obey, and that men and women have to do 
 this. At school the scholar has to mind the teacher, 
 and the teacher seems only to command. But the 
 teacher has to obey as truly as the scholar. What would 
 you think if, when you went to school, you should find 
 that the teacher had gone off for a day's pleasuring in 
 the woods? You might like it, but what would your par- 
 ents or the committee think? What would they think 
 if the teacher did not hear your lessons, and did not see 
 that you learned them ? Thus you see that the teacher 
 has to obey as well as the scholar. 
 
 What should you think of a shop-keeper who should 
 shut up his shop every now and then, when he wanted 
 
94 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 a little fun? or of a doctor who, when he was sent for, 
 should send back word that he was reading a novel and 
 that he did not wish to leave off ? In all such cases we 
 should not say, *^ How manly these people are to do 
 what they feel like doing, without regard to the demands 
 that are made upon them. " We should say, "■ How 
 childish they are ! " Thus you see that to obey is man- 
 ly; to refuse to obey is childish. 
 
 The man has to obey more strict laws than the boy 
 or the girl knows anything about. On a ship, the sailors 
 think what an easy time the captain has. He seems to 
 have nothing to do but to give orders. But the sailors, 
 except when the weather is specially bad, have their 
 hours of work and their hours of freedom ; their watch 
 above and their watch below. But the captain is never 
 quite free He not only has to obey the orders of the 
 owners of the ship, but, in doing this, he has to have 
 thought for everything, for the wind and the currents, 
 for the barometer and the clouds. He is subject thus 
 not merely to the direct orders of the ship's owners, but 
 to every change of wind, and to all the facts a^ut 
 him, to what we may call the law of things. 
 
 This law of things is more pressing and continuous 
 than any other. It is to this that men and women are 
 especially subject. 
 
 Above all there is the law of duty, the obligation to 
 do right, from which one can never escape. 
 
 Obedience is in life what subjection to law is in the 
 natural world. It is this that keeps the planets in their 
 places, and brings seed-time and harvest each in its sea- 
 
Obedience, 95 
 
 son ; just as it is obedience that makes all the difference 
 between a civilized society and a horde of savages. 
 
 This is what Wordsworth had in mind when in his 
 magnificent '' Ode to Duty " he exclaimed : 
 
 * * Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. " 
 
 One who has not learned to obey can hardly find a 
 pleasant or satisfactory position, in a world that both 
 physically and socially is held together by obedience. 
 
96 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 Every person, as we have seen, is bound to the social 
 order by obligations which require obedience. This 
 bond is, however, an outward one. There is an inner 
 bond which is even more important, by which each one 
 of us is, or should be, united to those about him. This 
 is love or sympathy, 
 
 A little while ago we saw that no man can live by and 
 for himself, and how dependent we are upon the world 
 of men and women, the world of the present and the 
 world of the past, for all that we have and are. The 
 same thing may be more clearly seen in the fact that any 
 person becomes unhappy if long separated from his 
 kind. We all need the companionship, the sympathy, 
 and the love of others. Hardly any punishment is so 
 severe as a long term of solitary imprisonment. In 
 Hawthorne's story of '^ The House of the Seven Gables," 
 the character of Clifford Pyncheon shows how a person 
 becomes weakened and stupified by such imprisonment. 
 It is indeed well for all sometimes to be alone. Too 
 much and too constant intercourse with others may hin- 
 der our best life. But nothing is more painful and more 
 dangerous to the best life than prolonged separation 
 from other people. 
 
 I have known a case in which an ox, whose yoke-fel- 
 
Love and Sympathy. 97 
 
 low had died, died itself shortly after from mere loneli- 
 ness. Men and women are hardly less dependent upon 
 companionship. 
 
 The world is so made that it probably never happens 
 that a person lives who has not, or has never had, any 
 one to love him. There is the love of parents, of 
 brothers and sisters, of relatives and companions. 
 
 On the other hand, it is as rare to find a person who 
 does not love some other person, or at least some ani- 
 mal ; though some persons are so bound up in them- 
 selves that this love seems to be very weak if it exists. 
 
 Love and sympathy may generally be regarded as 
 stronger or weaker examples of the same thing, or as 
 different aspects of the same thing. There may, how- 
 ever, be sympathy where there is no love, and love 
 where there is little sympathy. 
 
 There may be sympathy without love, for you may 
 sympathize with the grief of a person who is a stranger, 
 and even with that of one whom you dislike. 
 
 It seems less natural that there can be love without 
 sympathy. A person may, however, be selfish enough 
 to cause pain to another whom he loves, with no thought 
 of what he is doing. A young man may, by disobe- 
 dience or evil habits, cause great grief to his parents 
 whom he really loves. 
 
 Sympathy needs a certain thoughtfulness as its root. 
 One must think of others and put himself in their place, 
 and consider what will please and what will wound 
 them. Strange as it may seem, nothing can be more 
 cruel than love that is thoughtless in regard to its object. 
 
9^ Ethics for Young People. 
 
 Every one knows that other people have feelings like 
 his own. But though we all know this, it takes some 
 people a long while to really feel that it is so, to realize 
 that others have feelings that can be pained. 
 
 Every one should have such a sense of this fact that 
 he will shrink, by a kind of instinct, from giving another 
 unnecessary pain, just as he shrinks from giving him- 
 self unnecessary pain. 
 
 We should thus extend our own personalities, so that 
 we shall feel with and for others somewhat as if they 
 were a part of ourselves. 
 
 This interest in others, whether it be love which we 
 can feel only for a few, or sympathy which we should 
 feel more or less for all, may take the hardness out of 
 the duty and obedience which were spoken of in the last 
 chapter. 
 
 The doctor going to see his patient may go, not be- 
 cause it is his duty, or merely to gain this special fee, 
 but because he is interested to help him. The boy may 
 do what his parents wish because he loves to please 
 them. 
 
 If we cannot live without the companionship of others, 
 and if we are all surrounded by affection and interest 
 that give the charm to our lives, how careful should we 
 be to meet such love and sympathy with a correspond- 
 ing love, and a thoughtful sympathy, so that we shall 
 not receive everything, and give nothing in return. 
 
Usefulness. 99 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 USEFULNESS. 
 
 We have seen that every one is, or should be, bound 
 to the world of men and women, outwardly f)y obedience^ 
 and inwardly by love and sympathy. In these ways each 
 becomes a member of the great organization that we 
 call society. 
 
 Growing out of these is another form of relation 
 as important as these ; namely, that of usefulness. 
 
 This means that each one has his place, and that, if 
 he fills this place properly, he is of service to others and 
 to the great body of which he is a member. 
 
 Notice the workmen when some large house is being 
 built, and see how, while they are busied in many dif- 
 ferent ways, each one is helping on the common work. 
 The hod-carrier carries up the bricks and mortar; the 
 mason places the bricks carefully and evenly where they 
 belong; the carpenter, the glazier, the painter, the 
 slater, and all the rest, do some one kind of work, and 
 others another ; and all, under the direction of the con- 
 tractor, carry out the plan of the architect, till what was 
 at first merely a thought in the mind of the architect 
 becomes a finished building, fitted for use, and perhaps 
 an object of beauty. From the architect to the hod- 
 carrier, no one of the workmen could be spared. 
 
 We see the growth and the beauty of a tree. Here 
 
lOO Ethics for Young People, 
 
 also every part is of use. The roots draw up the nour- 
 ishment from the soil. The trunk and the limbs give 
 strength and form, and furnish channels through which 
 the sap runs to every part. The green leaves are the 
 lungs through which the tree breathes. The flowers 
 and fruit prepare and cherish the seed from which other 
 trees spring. The lightest leaf, the gayest flower, the 
 most thread-like rootlet that is hidden in the black 
 earth, all are of service, and each helps on the common 
 life. 
 
 Look now at the world of men and women, and see 
 how every calling is an opportunity for some form of 
 usefulness by which society is the gainer. The doctor, 
 the lawyer, the minister, the shoemaker, the gardener, 
 the shopkeeper, the dressmaker, and all other workers, 
 are each filling a place in the great social body. If 
 these places were not filled, the life of the world would 
 be lacking in something. 
 
 Men enter these callings for the most part, perhaps, 
 to get a living. It is, however, an important fact that to 
 get a living, one needs, for the most part, to perform 
 some service ; just as the flowers earn their right to 
 their place in the plant and to the sap that comes to 
 them, by preparing and protecting the germs that are 
 to become seeds. 
 
 The man fills his place in the world very poorly who 
 considers merely how much money he can make by his 
 labor. Think how grand and noble a thing all labor 
 would come to be, if each one would perform it with the 
 thought that by it he is doing his part for the well-being 
 
Usefulness. ibi 
 
 of the world. Every one should make his life larger 
 by the thought of the usefulness and the importance of 
 what he is doing, and the thought that by it he is a living 
 member of the great body. 
 
 We sometimes fancy that we would like to live merely 
 to amuse ourselves, with no cares or duties. But when 
 we think more carefully, we see that this would be a 
 mean sort of life. One would be ashamed to have the 
 whole world working for him, and he to be doing noth- 
 ing for the world. 
 
 Besides these ways of usefulness that grow out of the 
 various callings of life, one who has the love and the 
 thoughtful sympathy that were spoken of in the last 
 chapter, will find many other kinds of special helpful- 
 ness. There are always about us those for whom we 
 can do something. People are always doing something 
 for us in these little ways, and it would be mean not to 
 do the like for them. Even if they were not helpful to 
 us, that is no reason why we should not help them. 
 We can pay to them a part of the debt that we owe to 
 those who have helped us, but whom we have not 
 helped. 
 
 For boys and girls in school or in college, the school 
 or the college is their place of business. They are get- 
 ting ready to take their part in the work of the world, 
 just as the growing twig is getting ready to bear its 
 part of the weight of leaves and fruit. 
 
 But while this preparation is going on, there are 
 chances enough for helpfulness. These are found at 
 home, among their companions, or with those whom 
 
I02 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 they chance to meet ; and everyone who has the right 
 spirit will take both pleasure and pride in being helpful. 
 He would be ashamed merely to be taken care of in the 
 world without doing anybody any good, even if the 
 interest that he has for others would let him. 
 
Truth and Honesty, 103 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 TRUTH AND HONESTY. 
 
 We have seen that men are bound to society by obe- 
 dience, love, and usefulness. There are certain virtues 
 growing out of these principles, and certain vices corre- 
 sponding to these, a few of which we will now consider. 
 
 Prominent among these virtues are those of truth and 
 honesty. To these are opposed the vices of lying and 
 cheating. 
 
 Society is like a building, which stands firm when its 
 foundations are strong and all its timbers are sound. 
 The man who cannot be trusted is to society what a 
 bit of rotten timber is to a house. 
 
 How often we see the effects of dishonesty in the 
 building of houses. Every now and then we read of 
 some great crash, which has occurred because the con- 
 tractor who was putting up a building had been dishon- 
 est. He had used poor material, or had put his 
 material carelessly together. So the building falls per- 
 haps even before it is finished. 
 
 This is bad enough; but what the man is, is even 
 worse and more harmful than what he does. He him- 
 self is a piece of rotten timber, to which no one can 
 trust ; and he is tending to make society itself as unsta- 
 ble as the house that he was pretending to build. 
 
 Society exists because men trust one another. On the 
 
I04 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 whole, men can be trusted, if one uses a reasonable care. 
 The dishonest man thus does not belong to a civilized 
 society. He belongs to the times of barbarism before 
 men had learned the worth and importance of trust- 
 worthiness. 
 
 He thus is in the position of a barbarian who is mak- 
 ing war upon civilization, just as the hostile Indian 
 lurks about some settlement in the wilderness, seeking to 
 plunder and destroy. 
 
 What contempt we have for a man who robs another, 
 who picks his pocket, or knocks him down in some 
 lonely place and strips him of whatever articles of value 
 he may have. But the man who cheats is a -thief just 
 as truly as the pickpocket and the robber. 
 
 There are kinds of cheating that the law cannot or 
 does not touch. The man who practises this kind of 
 dishonesty is even worse than if he were doing that 
 which the law punishes. He uses the law which was 
 meant to protect society as a cover from which he can 
 attack society. 
 
 The boy who cheats in his games really spoils the 
 games. The game is not for the sake of the victory. 
 It is the idea of the victory that gives zest to the game. 
 It is the playing according to rule, and the winning, if 
 one can win according to the laws of the game, that 
 give all the fun there is in it. Thus the boy that cheats 
 does for the playground what the man that cheats does 
 for society. 
 
 As the boy that cheats in his games puts himself 
 outside the community of his playmates, and makes war 
 
Truth and Honesty, 105 
 
 upon it, so he, when he grows up to be a man, will 
 probably be the one who will, by dishonesty, separate 
 himself from society and make war upon it. 
 
 Lying is a form of dishonesty, and a very bad form of 
 it. What would become of the world if we could not 
 trust to one another's word ? 
 
 A lie is told for one of two ends : either to get 
 some advantage to which one has no real claim, in 
 which case it is merely a form of cheating; or to de- 
 fend one's self from the bad consequences of something 
 that one has done, in which case it is cowardly. 
 
 It is always mean for a man or boy *^ to go back," as 
 we say, on a friend. It is still worse, if possible, to 
 ''go back" on one's self. A brave man or boy will 
 manfully take the consequences of his act, and if they 
 are bad, will resolve to do better another time. 
 
 The worst sort of deceit is that by which one lets an- 
 other bear the blame, or in any way suffer, for what one 
 has one's self done. Such meanness happens some- 
 times, but it is almost too bad to be spoken of. 
 
 It is a great thing to call acts and actors by their 
 right names. If we would always do this, I think it 
 might save us from some faults. 
 
 If before speaking what is untrue, one would say to 
 one's self, ''That would be a lie, and if I should say it I 
 should be a liar;" or if before doing a dishonest thing 
 one would say to one's self, " If I should do this I 
 should be a cheat," I think fewer false words would be 
 spoken, and fewer dishonest acts would be done. 
 
lo6 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 GOOD TEMPER. 
 
 A MAN with a bad temper, like one who lies and 
 cheats, makes war upon his social surroundings : only he 
 does in an open and bold way what the other does 
 in a sly and underhand way ; and, further, his war is 
 with individuals, while one who lies and cheats attacks 
 the very foundations of society. 
 
 It is not, however, always wrong to be angry. There 
 are occasions when it would be wrong not to be angry. 
 In these cases it is, indeed, war ; but it is war in defence 
 of society, not against it. We do not call a man who is 
 angry only when it is right to be angry, a man of bad 
 temper. 
 
 If one sees a strong boy tormenting a small or weak 
 one, or abusing some helpless animal, anger is a proper 
 as well as a natural feeling. It is so, too, when one 
 sees another imposing upon some one more ignorant or 
 simple than himself, taking advantage of innocence and 
 simplicity. 
 
 One may sometimes be angry at wrongs done to 
 one's self, when one has been treated brutally, or has 
 been wickedly deceived. 
 
 Anger is in such cases a natural instinct of defence, 
 by which one wards off or punishes injury to others, or 
 to one's self. 
 
Good Temper, 107 
 
 In spite of this, anger, as it actually exists in the 
 world, is more often wrong than right. It is for this 
 reason that it is commonly spoken of as a fault. 
 
 It is a fault when one gets angry too easily. There are 
 persons who lose their temper at any little thing. They 
 are always thinking that others meant to injure them in 
 something that they said or did. They are always 
 thinking of their rights or their feelings. 
 
 This is a form of selfishness. It comes in part from 
 keeping the self prominent in one's thoughts, and think- 
 ing that whatever is said or done has had some reference 
 to this. 
 
 This appears from the fact that such persons have very 
 often less consideration for others than for themselves. 
 
 We should remember that anger is apt to be a very 
 unjust judge. Nothing exaggerates like anger. To 
 look at an act through an angry mood, is like looking 
 at an object through a magnifying glass. It is often 
 more like looking through a glass that distorts as well 
 as magnifies. In anger, everything looks out of propor- 
 tion. 
 
 One should be thoughtful to distinguish between 
 what is meant and what is accidental. Even a dog will 
 often show no anger if it thinks that one trod on it by 
 accident; whereas if it thinks the hurt was intentional it 
 will be filled with rage. We ought to be at least as 
 considerate as a dog. 
 
 Because anger exaggerates, the passion is often too 
 strong even where there may have been some real prov- 
 ocation. 
 
io8 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 '' Anger, " says an old Latin proverb, '' is a short mad- 
 ness. " The boys say something of the same kind when 
 they speak of being '* mad, " when they mean angry. 
 
 The person carried away with anger has no mastery 
 of himself. He does not know what he is saying or 
 what he is doing. He is really '' beside himself. " He 
 sees nothing as it is. Such a person is feeling very 
 heroic, but he is often appearing very foolish and ridic- 
 ulous. 
 
 Thus, anger is unreasonable. In anger we pronounce 
 judgment upon another, perhaps upon our best friend. 
 For the moment we see only his faults. We are com- 
 plainant as well as judge. As the criminal has no ad- 
 vocate, we should pause and plead his cause ourselves, 
 and ask, ''Is it certain that the accusation is true? Is 
 the case quite as bad as it looks? Has this person, 
 whom at other times we have loved, no good qualities ? 
 Is there nothing to be said in his defence? " 
 
 Anger is often too long-lived, even when it may have 
 been at first justifiable. At the first moment of passion, 
 perhaps, one can hardly pause to ask the questions that 
 were just suggested ; but after a little time one should 
 be able to do this, and thus control the wrath. 
 
 One should thus learn to forgive even when one has 
 really been injured. We should be able to see that the 
 act that offended us was far less evil than it seemed at 
 first ; or that it does not represent the real or the whole 
 person who offended us. Or at least we can judge it 
 calmly, as if it had been done to another. 
 
 If you are angry with a friend, you know, though you 
 
Good Temper, 109 
 
 may not think it at the time, that the anger will not last 
 forever. You may calm your rage by looking forward 
 to the time when you shall be again at peace with your 
 friend. 
 
 Some persons are by nature more quick-tempered 
 than others. By giving way to the fault, it will grow 
 worse and worse ; while by checking it, in such ways as 
 have been named, one may gain the habit of keeping a 
 better command over one's self. 
 
 I need hardly speak of the advantages of having a 
 good temper. Not only are one's relations to others the 
 pleasanter for this, but one can even guard his own in- 
 terests the better. The bad-tempered .person is apt to 
 harm himself more than others. 
 
1 1 o Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 COURTESY. 
 
 Early in this book, we saw that the words '' morahty " 
 and ** ethics " mean, in their etymology, simply manners ; 
 and we saw how this thought of manners formerly re- 
 ferred to the whole life. At present we use the word 
 *' manners, " simply to express the most outward rela- 
 tions of life. We speak of ''good manners" or *' bad 
 manners, " meaning by the words that a person con- 
 forms more or less perfectly to what are called the 
 ** usages of good society. " Thus a man may have good 
 morals and bad manners, or he may have good man- 
 ners and bad morals, or both his manners and his 
 morals may be either good or bad. 
 
 Of course, if we have to choose between them, it is 
 much better to have good morals than good manners. 
 A man's good manners may sometimes even help 
 him to carry out wicked plans. In this case, we dislike 
 him all the more for the good manners which he has 
 used to help him in his wickedness. 
 
 But one does not have to choose between the two; 
 and good manners, though less important than good 
 morals, are yet very desirable. 
 
 Some kinds of bad manners do no harm to any one 
 except to the person practising them. They are dis- 
 agreeable to see, but their greatest effect is that the bad- 
 mannered person shows himself to be a boor. 
 
Courtesy. in 
 
 If a man keeps on his hat in another person's house, 
 he simply shows himself unacquainted with what are re- 
 garded as the proprieties of life. 
 
 Now, it is not desirable to be a ** dude " on the one 
 side, or a boor on the other : but a little attention to 
 these matters will help to make one agreeable to those 
 whom one meets. 
 
 Young people sometimes think attention to such 
 things is foolish. When I was a small boy, I thought 
 it a ridiculous piece of affectation in the schoolmistress, 
 who insisted that I should say '' catch " instead of 
 '' ketch. " Now I am grateful for the breaking up of 
 any such bits of ill breeding. 
 
 Another kind of good manners is still more import- 
 ant. I refer -to habits of courtesy towards all with 
 whom we have anything to do. 
 
 Courtesy towards another shows a certain respeet for 
 his personality. We have seen that we should respect 
 ourselves : it is hardly less important to show respect to 
 others. 
 
 A habit of courtesy is like a delicate wrapping which 
 prevents one personality from rubbing and chafing 
 against another ; and it thus prevents much of the friction 
 and irritation of life. 
 
 Courtesy is perhaps most of all proper from the 
 young towards those who are older than themselves. 
 There is too little of this in our days. Boys and girls 
 will speak to their elders, perhaps even to their parents, 
 with rude familiarity, such as would be hardly proper 
 among playmates. 
 
112 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 When one meets even a stranger in any place where 
 the two are brought together, a little greeting does much 
 to take away the sense of strangeness. In Europe, 
 when one enters a public conveyance, or seats himself 
 at the table of a hotel, or meets another on a country 
 road, there is almost always a pleasant greeting, such as 
 is too rarely seen in this country. 
 
 The habit of courtesy from boys and men to ladies is 
 another mark of good manners which is not to be neg- 
 lected. 
 
 Ladies often show bad manners in taking such acts of 
 courtesy as if they had a right to them. If a man offers 
 a lady a seat, he has a little sense of injury if she seems 
 to regard it as her due, and does not even thank him 
 for what he has done. This sort of ill manners in 
 American women has tended to diminish such courtesy 
 towards them. 
 
 One should show courtesy to his companions. Boys, 
 even in their play, should be courteous to one another. 
 One who is always pushing for the best without regard 
 to others shows his ill breeding. A *' thank you " and 
 a '^ please " on proper occasions, are not out of place 
 even among the closest companions. 
 
 Perhaps in the family courtesy is more important than 
 anywhere else ; because hardly anywhere else are peo- 
 ple thrown so closely together ; and, thus, nowhere do 
 they need more the protection of courtesy by which 
 much unpleasant friction and much unhappiness would 
 be avoided. 
 
 From all this, it appears that courtesy is simply an 
 
Courtesy. 1 13 
 
 expression of thoughtfulness for others, and tnat rude- 
 ness and boorishness, though sometimes they spring 
 from ignorance, are more often the expression of selfish- 
 ness, which forgets the feehngs and the tastes of others. 
 
114 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE PLAYGROUND. 
 
 It may seem strange to speak of duties in connection 
 with play. One great charm of play is the escape from 
 the sense of duty. At school one has to be very 
 careful as to what he does and what he does not do. 
 There are rules at every turn, but on the playground 
 one escapes from rules. 
 
 There are rules of a sort, it is true. There are the 
 rules of the game. There are also certain kinds of 
 mischief that must not be done and similar general reg- 
 ulations ; but on the whole, on the playground one is 
 free ; and this makes a good part of the pleasure of the 
 sport. 
 
 It is a very pleasant thing to feel one's self free ; to be 
 able to do just what one feels like doing. It is a free- 
 dom like that which I suppose a horse feels, when he is 
 turned out to pasture, and can fling out his heels or 
 roll without any thought of whip or rein. 
 
 I do not wish to disturb the sense of freedom that 
 you have at play. Indeed it is because the playground 
 is so free a place that I speak of it here. There is, per- 
 haps, no time in the world when a person shows himself 
 for just what he is, as truly as Jie does when he is amus- 
 ing himself. Then he has no rules to observe ; he is 
 oiT his guard, and whatever of good or bad there is in 
 him is likely to show itself. 
 
The Playground. 115 
 
 The playground is a little world by itself. On it 
 there may be a great many of the virtues and the faults 
 of the great world in which men and women live. I am 
 sometimes tempted to think that a great deal that goes 
 on in this larger world is little better than play of a very 
 formal kind. But it is certain that the great world is 
 reflected in the little world where boys and girls are at 
 their games. 
 
 What an opportunity there is on the playground to 
 show the strength or the weakness of one's command over 
 himself. Some young people are always getting angry 
 in their play. They make themselves very disagreeable 
 to their companions. They may break up the merriest 
 party or spoil the best time. 
 
 There are many opportunities to lose one's temper at 
 play. It is not pleasant to lose the game; and some 
 must lose it from the nature of the case. 
 
 It is especially unpleasant to lose it by the bad play 
 of some one on your own side, and it is very often the 
 case that the game is lost in this way. 
 
 It is very easy to think that the other side has not 
 played fairly, and to get angry over the suspicion or 
 the belief. 
 
 It is very easy to get into a quarrel over the rules of 
 the game. 
 
 In some games it is very easy to get hurt and to ac- 
 cuse some one of being the cause of it. 
 
 There are, indeed, more ways of losing one's temper 
 than I have time or space to name. The boy or the 
 girl who is quarrelsome, could not have a better field 
 for showing this quality. 
 
Ii6 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 The boy or the girl of good temper and pleasant dis- 
 position has the same opportunity to show this. If 
 one can meet all the chances, of play pleasantly, he 
 shows great self-command, and by this experience he is 
 fitting himself more and more to take part in the great 
 game of life. Even in the hardest tussle one should 
 keep his temper. I was once passing a group of boys 
 at play, and heard one of them exclaim, '' Any boy 
 that can't fight without getting mad, had better not 
 fight at all." It was a wise saying, which has often 
 since come to my mind. 
 
 Selfishness shows itself as easily on the playground 
 as it does anywhere else. 
 
 How many there are who always want to have their 
 own way. No matter what others prefer, everything 
 must be just as these say. There are tyrants on the 
 playground as truly as there ever were in Greece or 
 Rome. 
 
 Sometimes these tyrants have their way because they 
 are strong, and their playmates are afraid not to do as 
 they wish. Sometimes, strange to say, they have their 
 way because they are weak. They make such an ado 
 when they do not have what they want that the others 
 follow them for the sake of peace. They think they are 
 leaders ; they would be a little disgusted if they knew 
 they were being treated like babies. 
 
 Selfishness may show itself in a hundred ways ; in 
 thoughtlessness of the feelings of others, in seeking 
 what is pleasant to one's self without considering any one 
 else, in taking more than one's share of what is pleasant 
 
The Playground, 117 
 
 All these things may be done under many different 
 forms. 
 
 Kindness and generosity have their place in the play- 
 ground. There may be a thoughtfulness for one who 
 is weaker than the rest, or who is a new comer, or 
 whom, for any reason, others may neglect. There is 
 an opportunity to stand up for those who are ill-used. 
 There is a generous sympathy for those who in any 
 way are having a hard time. 
 
 There is an opportunity for honesty and dishonesty on 
 the playground.' One may cheat in a game no less 
 than in business, and can show honesty no less. Indeed, 
 the term ** fair play " is used in regard to the most 
 serious affairs of life. In politics or in business of any 
 kind, we hear it said, '' Such a person did not have fair 
 play.'* In this use of the word we see the standard of 
 play applied to the actual affairs of life. 
 
 There is a great opportunity for energy or la^inesSy 
 presence of mind or carelessnesSy to show itself on the 
 playground. 
 
 In all these ways boys and girls, when they are at 
 their play, show pretty well what they are going to be in 
 later life. When Napoleon was at a military school, 
 the boys were one day playing at war. One set of 
 them held a fort which the others were trying to cap- 
 ture. The boy. Napoleon, led the attacking party. In 
 the midst of the fight there was a flourish of trumpets, 
 and a party of officers entered who had come to inspect 
 the school. The boys that held the fort forgot their 
 
 ' See, also, chapter XXIX. 
 
1 1 8 Ethics for Yotmg People. 
 
 play, and stood staring at the entering group. Napo- 
 leon did not lose his head for a moment. He kept his 
 party up to their work. He took advantage of the in- 
 terruption, and when the besieged recovered their wits, 
 their fort was captured. He was already the Napoleon 
 who in the real battles of later years knew how to turn 
 so many seemingly adverse circumstances to good ac- 
 count. 
 
 You may say, '' I cannot think of all these things 
 when I am playing ; if I did, I should have no time to 
 enjoy the game." This is very true. You can, how- 
 ever, think of them beforehand, and make up your mind 
 what you will do and what you will not do, so firmly 
 that your mind will obey when you are not thinking 
 about it.' Or if, in spite of your purpose, you do some- 
 thing that you meant not to do, you will remember it 
 afterwards, and your displeasure with yourself will help 
 you to do better another time. 
 
 ' In the chapter on Conscience, I shall speak more fully of this power 
 of self-command. 
 
Fun. 119 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 FUN. 
 
 The word '' fun " as it is used by young people, in- 
 cludes a great deal. So far as I can understand, it means 
 any kind of *' a good time.*' Certainly a good play, 
 such as was referred to in the last chapter, is called fun. 
 
 I shall here use the word fun in its stricter meaning. 
 Fun, in this narrower sense, refers to ** what is fiin7iyy 
 The word '^ funny " is itself used in a very loose way. 
 In common speech whatever is surprising is sometimes 
 called funny; sometimes even if it is something sad. 
 
 Properly speaking, only that is funny which is 
 laughable. I wish then to speak in this chapter of what 
 may be found comical by one or another, and of what 
 is done or said for the sake of raising a laugh. 
 
 We may often find in kindly and innocent mirth both 
 pleasure and refreshment. The opposite of mirth is 
 seriousness. One who has no sense of fun takes every- 
 thing seriously. It is not well for any one to be serious 
 all the time. For one who is so the strain of life is 
 often too hard. 
 
 President Lincoln was very fond of a funny story. 
 He felt the strain and the burden of the war so strongly 
 that, if it had not been for this relief, he would have 
 broken down long before the war was over. 
 
 It is a great thing to be able to see the ludicrous side 
 
I20 Ethics for Yoimg People, 
 
 of one's own mishaps or failures. What one person will 
 grieve over another will carry off with a laugh. One 
 may make a mistake, for instance, or meet with an acci- 
 dent which is not very severe, and be mortified beyond 
 measure. Another will see the funny side of it, and 
 find only amusement. A person who can never see the 
 funny side of such mishaps goes through life as if he 
 were riding in a carriage without springs. Every little 
 inequality makes a bump. 
 
 In the same way one may see the ludicrous side of 
 the troublesome blunders of others. I know a lady who 
 had a very stupid gardener. She wondered why the 
 bulbs that he had set out did not come up. At last 
 she dug down to see what had happened. She found 
 them all planted upside down. Of course she did not 
 like it ; but she amused herself with the absurdity of the 
 thing, imagining them at some future day sprouting up 
 in China to the wonder of the natives. 
 
 While fun is in itself a very good thing, it may, like 
 almost anything else that is good, be made a very bad 
 thing. 
 
 It may be made a bad thing in two ways. 
 
 In the first place it is bad wheft there is too much 
 of it. 
 
 While it is not well to take all things seriously, it is 
 worse to take nothing seriously. The great business of 
 life is serious, and one who finds only fun in every- 
 thing keeps himself outside the reality of life. He is 
 like a bit of thistledown which floats about in the 
 wind, while it has no real connection with anything. 
 
Fun, 121 
 
 In the second place fun may become a bad thing, be- 
 cause it is not of the right kind. 
 
 In the chapter on ** Different Kinds of Heroes " we saw 
 that a person may be judged pretty fairly by what he 
 admires. The object of his admiration shows the 
 kind of person he would like to be. A person may be 
 judged about as truly by what he finds funny as by 
 what he admires. 
 
 One kin 1 of fun which is wrong is that which gives 
 pain to others, or which makes sport of the misfortunes 
 of others. 
 
 There is hardly anything so painful or unfortunate 
 that some will not be found who will laugh at it. The 
 savages were sometimes in the habit of tormenting their 
 captives. The tortures that these underwent were to 
 them an occasion of mirth. Boys sometimes torment 
 insects or animals because their struggles seem to them 
 funny. 
 
 If we were without the feeling of sympathy, almost 
 any weakness or suffering might seem comical. Thus 
 to some the infirmities of age, or any deformity in the 
 person of another, seem fit objects of ridicule. 
 
 In all such cases a feeling of sympathy would change 
 the mirth into pity, or a friendly and helpful interest. 
 
 It would do this in two ways. In the first place we 
 should feel so sorry for the persons afflicted that we 
 should not feel like laughing at them ; and in the second 
 place, we should know that our ridicule, if they should 
 be aware of it, would add to their pain. 
 
 A kind sympathy would therefore make it impossible 
 
122 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 to laugh at the infirmities or misfortunes of others. 
 Those who do this show themselves unfeeling and 
 cruel. They put themselves on the level of the sav- 
 ages. 
 
 The same kindly feeling would forbid jests that would 
 in any way give pain to others. The idea of wit which 
 some people have is to say sharp things to another, 
 perhaps to twit him with something of which it is sup- 
 posed he would be ashamed. 
 
 A person of good feeling would never find sport in 
 what gives another pain. 
 
 I have read a story of a youth, who, while walking 
 out with his tutor, saw a pair of shoes that a poor 
 laborer had left under a hedge while he was busied 
 with his work. ''What fun it would be," exclaimed the 
 young man, '' to hide these shoes, and then to conceal 
 ourselves behind the hedge, and see the man's surprise 
 and excitement when he can not find them." *' I 
 will tell you what would be better sport," said the tutor ; 
 *' put a piece of money into one of the shoes, and then 
 hide and watch his surprise when he finds it." This 
 the young man did ; and the joy and wonder of the 
 poor laborer when he found the money in his shoe was 
 as good fun as he wanted. 
 
 It is much better sport to plan pleasant surprises for 
 people than to prepare unpleasant ones. 
 
 While we should not make jests that will give another 
 pain, we should, on the other hand, not be too sensitive 
 at jokes that are played on us. 
 
 Some people are very much annoyed, or perhaps lose 
 
Fun, 123 
 
 their temper if they are laughed at. It very often hap- 
 pens that those who are most ready to laugh at others 
 are the most displeased when the laugh is against them. 
 
 Such sensitiveness is very weak ; and a person who 
 is so weak makes sometimes an unpleasant companion. 
 We all laugh at one another sometimes in a friendly 
 way, and one who is never willing to be the object of 
 such kindly mirth may interrupt the pleasure of his 
 companions. 
 
 You should try not to be a person in regard to whom 
 your companions will always feel obliged to consider at 
 every turn, whether your sensitive feelings are likely to 
 be hurt. ** One must take as well as give " is a good 
 motto for the rough and tumble sport and business of the 
 world ; just as ^* One must give as well as takey' is a 
 good motto, so far as the pleasures of life are con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Another kind of joke which is wrong is that which 
 is filthy and indecent. It seems to some persons a great 
 stroke of wit to say something which would offend nat- 
 ural modesty. There is no kind of wit which is so 
 cheap, and none of which anybody who would be in the 
 true sense of the word a gentleman should be so 
 ashamed. 
 
 Another kind of joke which a right feeling would 
 avoid, is that aimed at what is to others an object of 
 reverence. To some, profanity seems witty as well as 
 manly. This is also a very cheap kind of joke which 
 needs no wit for its making. It also shows low and 
 unmanly tastes. .--•isi^^^^^^^'^^^^^^^^^s;?*^ 
 
 ^^''^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 fUiri7BRSIT7j) 
 
i'24 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 We find then three kinds of jest which a right feel- 
 ing person will avoid : the unkind, the indecent, and 
 the profane. 
 
 The play of wit and humor is thus very much like 
 other play. It is one of the pleasant and helpful things 
 in life. Like other play it must be kindly, good-tem- 
 pered and pure. Like other play it must not make up 
 the whole of life. Rightly used it may be one of the 
 best helps in bearing the burden and doing the work of 
 the world. 
 
Friendship. 125 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 While we should be courteous towards all with whom 
 we are brought into relation, and should take part in 
 the life that is going on about us, we cannot be equally 
 intimate with all. Thus within the larger circle of asso- 
 ciates are formed smaller groups of those who are spe- 
 cially bound together as friends. 
 
 What are known as friendships may be the result of 
 various causes. 
 
 Perhaps most often those who call one another friends 
 are those whom some chance has brought together ^ and 
 who are specially united in work or play. In this way 
 friends are often simply those who amuse one another. 
 
 Sometimes one considers another his friend because 
 he is flattered by him. This flattery may be either direct 
 or indirect. It is direct when it is open praise. It is 
 indirect when it is a conformity to one's moods, tastes, 
 or prejudices. If one thinks that he has been ill-used, 
 it is pleasant to have another join with him in indigna- 
 tion. It is pleasant to have all one's jealousies, ill-tem- 
 pers, and vanities thus sympathized with. Tyrants can 
 often find no other friendship than this ; and boys and 
 girls have sometimes such hangers on, who think it 
 worth the while thus to flatter them. The boy or girl of 
 right feeling will find nothing more disgusting than this 
 sort of companionship. 
 
126 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 True friendships are based upon two things. 
 
 One of these things is liking, and the other is respect. 
 
 People like one another when each finds the other 
 pleasant company. They have such similarity in tastes 
 and interests that they like to be together. 
 
 For real friendship, however, this is not enough. 
 For this, respect must be added to liking. You may 
 think it strange to speak of boys and girls respecting 
 one another. You may think that respect is to be felt 
 towards older people only. But boys and girls may be 
 as worthy of respect as men and women. 
 
 A woman got into a street car the other day some- 
 what burdened with bundles. A little girl of some ten 
 or twelve years at once sprang up and gave her a seat. 
 The child took her place by the side of her father, who 
 had just given up his seat in a similar way. As she 
 stood there, holding her father's hand, with a sweet look 
 on her face, I could not help respecting her for her act 
 of kindness, and for the pleasant way in which it was 
 performed. 
 
 Boys and girls who are honest and brave, to whose 
 honor and kindness you may trust, these are worthy fo 
 respect. If you will think of your companions, you 
 will find that some you respect, and some perhaps you 
 do not. They whom you respect may be as full of fun 
 as the others, but there is to them something besides 
 fun. 
 
 You want for a friend some one whom you would like 
 to have with you in trouble, should you meet it, as well 
 as in sport ; such an one is one who has your respect. 
 
Friendship. 127 
 
 Choose, then, for your friends, those whom you can 
 respect; and always act so as yourself to deserve the 
 respect of your friends and companions. 
 
 Nothing adds more to the pleasantness of life than 
 friendships. They involve^ however y certain duties ; and 
 we have now to notice some of these. 
 
 If one has a friend, 07ie should be loyal to him. This 
 loyalty may show itself in several ways. 
 
 If one is with those who speak ill of his friend, it is 
 very base to join in such evil speaking. It is very 
 base, for instance, to join in ridiculing a friend, except 
 in a way that he himself would regard as a harmless 
 jest. One should stand up for one's friend when he is 
 thus spoken ill of. 
 
 Loyalty to a friend is shown in looking out for his 
 interest and helping his plans in every honorable way. 
 
 One should 7iot be jealous of one's friend. Such jeal- 
 ousy may show itself in either of two ways. 
 
 One of these ways grows out of the desire to monopo- 
 lize the interest of a friend. Some persons are troubled 
 if their friend does not seem to be wholly bound up in 
 them. They do not realize that the larger the life of 
 their friend is, the better worth having is his friendship. 
 
 There is another kind of jealousy which it is more 
 difficult to avoid. I mean the unpleasant feeling that 
 may arise if one's friend gets, as we say, *' ahead'' of him. 
 Friends are apt to be pretty nearly equal in many ways, 
 so that a feeling of rivalry may very easily arise. This 
 is so common that there is a familiar saying to the 
 effect that a man always has a certain pleasure in hear- 
 
128 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 ing of the misfortunes of his best friends. I have seen 
 in '' Punch " a picture of a man reading a magazine 
 with a pleased look on his face. His friend, entering, 
 notices this, and asks, ** Are you reading a favora- 
 ble notice of your book?" '* No," is the answer; '* I 
 am reading an unfavorable notice of yours." For the 
 reason stated above, such things may easily happen 
 among those who call themselves friends. 
 
 A true friend will rejoice in his friend's successes and 
 sorrow in his defeats as though they were his own. 
 There is nothing more beautiful than such unselfish 
 sympathy. 
 
 A true friend sometimes finds it harder to bear the 
 trouble of his friend than his own misfortunes. One can 
 make light to himself of his own suffering and call him- 
 self weak for yielding to it ; but it would seem harsh to 
 treat in this way his friend's misfortune. 
 
 While you do well to seek from your friend sympathy 
 in your own trouble, do not overburden him with petty 
 complaints and discontents. 
 
 Show yourself brave and strong, and be sure that 
 you will receive more sympathy from your friend than 
 if you whine and grumble. If he sees you trying to 
 make light of your trouble, it will seem to him more 
 real. If you make too much of it, he will tend to make 
 light of it. 
 
 Be honest with your friend. Express frankly youf 
 own thought. No true person wishes a friend to be 
 what Emerson called '' a mush of concessions." If you 
 do not show that you have a character and personality 
 
Friendship. 1 29 
 
 of your own, what is there for your friend to respect 
 or love ? 
 
 If your friend does wrong, tell him kindly and hon- 
 estly. A friend who will not thus advise is not worth 
 the having. 
 
 If your friend reminds you kindly of your faults, take 
 what he says not only pleasantly, but thankfully. Few 
 treasures are worth as much as a friend who is wise and 
 helpful. Such an one alone can remind us of our 
 faults. 
 
 . While you seek in all honorable ways to serve your 
 friend, never say for him what is false, or do for him 
 what is dishonorable. 
 
 I once heard a man say, as the highest praise of 
 another business man, that he would not do a dishonor- 
 able thing to oblige a friend. 
 
 In school, no less than in business life, one is often 
 tempted to say what is false, or to do what is dishonora- 
 able for the sake of a friend. This a true friend will 
 never ask. If, when you refuse to do this, your friend 
 thinks that you show your lack of regard, you can an- 
 swer him in the spirit of words of the poet,' 
 
 '* I could not love thee, dear, so much 
 Loved I not honor more." 
 
 ^ Lovelace, " To Jocasta, on going to the wars." 
 
I30 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE HOME. 
 
 Besides the friendships which we form in the world 
 are those which grow up naturally in our homes and 
 which are apt to be, as they ought to be, the closest and 
 the dearest of any. 
 
 Almost all living creatures have their homes. The 
 birds have their nests, the wild beasts their dens, the 
 bees their hives. 
 
 To almost all creatures these homes are the dearest 
 places in the world. How gladly the birds fly to their 
 nests at night. How frightened are the parent birds 
 if a stranger approaches the nest where their little ones 
 are ! How fierce are the wild beasts if any one draws 
 near their lair ! Nothing rouses the fear or the rage of 
 these lower creatures so much as anything that seems to 
 threaten the quiet of their homes. How eager a horse 
 is to get back to the stable, often so very dismal, which 
 is his home. 
 
 To men, also, the home is apt to be, and should be, 
 the dearest place on earth. I suppose that no song 
 was ever sung so often or by so many people in widely 
 distant lands as that which is so familiar to us all, and 
 which many can sing who can sing little else, the song 
 of which the refrain is, 
 
 '' Home, home, sweet, sweet home." 
 
Home. 131 
 
 Though the animals have homes as we do, their rela- 
 tion to their homes is very different from our relation 
 to our homes. 
 
 Think how little while the animals are interested in 
 their young, and how soon the young cease to care for 
 their parents and for one another. The young come 
 into the world, and live together for a little while. The 
 parents take care of them. They feed them and keep 
 them warm ; they fight for them if need be ; some- 
 times they will even die for them. But very soon the 
 little group breaks up. The young birds, for instance, 
 in a few weeks grow strong enough to fly. They leave 
 their nests, and scatter, this way and that. In time 
 they build nests of their own, and I do not know whether 
 they would recognize one another or the parent birds 
 again. 
 
 In our homes boys and girls live for years before 
 they are able to take care of themselves. When at last 
 they go out into the world and have homes of their 
 own, they still remember one another and love one 
 another, and still remember with love and gratitude the 
 parents to whom they owe so much. 
 
 To many the home in which their childhood was 
 passed continues, as long as they live, to be among the 
 places that they love the most ; and it is a great joy if 
 now and then, perhaps on Thanksgiving day or Christ- 
 mas, they can go back to it again. 
 
 The fact that children are so long in growing up, and 
 pass so many years together under the care of their 
 father and mother is most important in the history of 
 
132 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 the race. During this long period of growth in the 
 home they become fitted, as they could not in any 
 other way, to take their place in the larger world of men 
 and women. If children remained in their home as 
 short a time as the young of the animals do, it is prob- 
 able that men would have never risen above the state 
 of barbarians. The home has been the great civilizer 
 of the world. 
 
 We have seen in other chapters the importance in the 
 world of sympathy and affection, of obedience and trust- 
 fulness. All these are learned in the family as they 
 could not so well be learned anywhere else. 
 
 Through the habit of loving brothers and sisters and 
 parents men came very slowly to have somewhat the 
 same regard for other persons. Through obedience to 
 the commands of parents men have formed the habit 
 of obedience, so that they submit easily to the laws 
 of society. Thus it is very largely through the influ- 
 ence of the home, and from the fact that our childhood 
 lasts so many years, that the race of man has risen from 
 barbarism to civilization. 
 
 The life in the home, which is so important, and 
 which is to most so pleasant, involves many duties, a 
 few of which we will notice. 
 
 Since the home ought to be one of th^ pleasantesi 
 places in the world, it is the duty of every member of a 
 family to try to make it so. Rude ways of acting and 
 speaking, which would be faults anywhere, are greater 
 faults at home than anywhere else. 
 
 I have spoken of home as if it were almost always 
 
Home, 133 
 
 pleasant. It is not always so. To some their home is 
 very dreary. This is, most often, because some, or 
 perhaps all, do not try to make it pleasant. They live 
 each for himself, and do not care how much they may 
 wound those about them. 
 
 Some persons are pleasanter and more courteous any- 
 where else than they are at home. A voice that is very 
 sweet when addressed to outside friends or acquaint- 
 ances, becomes sometimes sharp and petulant when 
 addressed to members of the family. Some who are 
 very gracious and thoughtful towards other people, are 
 very rude and inconsiderate towards those who belong 
 to their own household. 
 
 Some persons, young and old, in their own family 
 are interested only in their own affairs. At home 
 they are silent and absorbed, though when they go out 
 into the world they may be lively enough. 
 
 One should be more courteous, more polite, more 
 thoughtful, more entertaining, and more helpful at home 
 than anywhere else. 
 
 It is indeed only those who are courteous at home 
 that are really courteous anywhere ; for if they are 
 rude there, their manners in the outside world do not 
 really belong to them. They are put on like their fine 
 dress, and are taken off again with that. 
 
 Some people, too, are slovenly at home, who look 
 very well when they go anywhere else. But home 
 should be always neat as well as pleasant. 
 
 But you may say, *' Is there no place, then, where 
 one can be himself ? where one can be free and easy 
 
134 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 without being troubled by the thought of how he ought 
 to speak and act and look?" 
 
 But what do you really consider yourself ? or what 
 kind of a self do you want? When you are fretful, and 
 disobliging, and sulky, and bound up in your own plans 
 or amusements, are you most really yourself ? Are you 
 not truly yourself when you are kind and thoughtful for 
 others, when by a pleasant word or kind act you make 
 those about you happier? This at any rate is what 
 ought to be yourself 
 
 Such a life as I have described in the family has two 
 results. It makes the home pleasant, and it makes the 
 boy or the girl really pleasant. 
 
 When one who has lived like this at home goes out 
 into the world, he does not need to put on a show of 
 good manners. His good manners have become a part 
 of himself 
 
 Thus the family may do for young people now what 
 it has been doing for the world all along ; that is, it 
 may civilize them. 
 
 To civilize is obviously to make civil. The uncivil 
 person is an uncivilized person. That is, he is so far a 
 barbarian. The most natural place to learn to be civil 
 is the home ; though one who has not learned it there, 
 must try to learn it where he can. 
 
 In the chapter on Obedience I have spoken of the 
 obedience due to parents. This is the first duty of a 
 child, except in the rare cases where the parent com- 
 mands something that is really wrong. • 
 
 The son and the daughter should also try to help 
 
Home, 135 
 
 their parents, and should do this, not as a matter of 
 duty, but out of love and interest. The boy should 
 not fret at having to bring wood, or to do something in 
 the garden, or to run of an errand. The daughter 
 should try to find little things that she can do about the 
 house. She should be glad to do a little sewing, to 
 help to care for the younger children, and especially to 
 take care of her own things. Sons and daughters 
 should do this out of interest, because it is their home. 
 Few things will please the father and mother more than 
 such interest in the home. 
 
 Sometimes the children have had advantages that 
 their parents did not have. Whatever good they may 
 have gained in this way they should try to use in such 
 a way as to make the home pleasanter and happier. 
 
 There is very much that brothers and sisters can do 
 for one another. This relationship ought to be one of 
 the pleasantest and most helpful in life. 
 
 Girls are apt to be more gentle and refined than boys ; 
 they can thus do very much to make their brothers gen- 
 tler ; not so much by formal lecturing as by the influ- 
 ence that comes naturally from intercourse with them. 
 Advice, when it is needed, from a sister to a brother, if 
 it is kindly given, may often do very much good. 
 
 Darwin, who was one of the most famous students of 
 nature, tells us that it was his sisters who made him 
 humane ; that is, who made him kind and thoughtful. 
 He began his studies of nature when he was a boy. He 
 made collections of birds* eggs. Through the influence 
 of his sisters he became so thoughtful for the birds that 
 he used to take only a single egg out of a nest, so that 
 
136 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 the old birds should not be troubled because their little 
 home had been broken up. 
 
 Young men are apt to think that young women are 
 in some respects better than they. A sister may at 
 least do something to make her brother keep this re- 
 spect for women, which may be an important thing in his 
 life. She may do this simply by the force of her own 
 character, not setting herself up as though she were 
 above him, but simply by being true and kind and sym- 
 pathetic. 
 
 Then, too, a sister should be glad to help her brother 
 as he may need with her needle and other womanly im- 
 plements. The boy is very helpless about many little 
 things with which the girl is quite at home. 
 
 The brother can help the sister in his turn. He is 
 stronger than she, and can do many a little service in 
 return for what he has received. He should be glad to 
 put his strength and courage and activity at her service. 
 
 If brothers can be so much to their sisters, and sisters 
 to their brothers, none the less may sister be helpful to 
 sister, and brother to brother. 
 
 It is a great thing to have so near a friend as a 
 brother or a sister, to whom one may confide whatever 
 happens to fill his heart, to whom one may always look 
 for sympathy and aid. 
 
 I know that the relation of brothers and sisters is 
 sometimes very different from this. It is a great pity, 
 when the good and the pleasure that may come from 
 this relationship are lost. When they are lost it is 
 always through somebody's fault. Be very careful that 
 it is not through yours. 
 
The School. 137 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE SCHOOL. 
 
 As was said in the chapter on Obedience/ the school 
 is the scholar's place of business. From this several 
 things will follow. 
 
 One is, that you should be regular in attendance. 
 You should always be at the school, unless there is 
 some really important reason why you cannot. What 
 should you think of a clerk who should stay away from 
 his place whenever he had a mind to ? 
 
 The mere attendance at school is training in regu- 
 larity. Unless one has a habit of regularity he will 
 accomplish very little in the world. Irregularity in 
 attendance also breaks up the work of the school. It 
 interrupts the connection of one day's work with that of 
 the next, besides burdening the scholar with extra work 
 to make up for lost time. 
 
 Try always to be in season. What would you think 
 of a clerk who should drop into the office or the store 
 half an hour behind time? I am afraid one who should 
 do this often would soon be told that he need not come 
 any more. 
 
 There are few more important habits than that of 
 punctuality, and in order to be sure of being punc- 
 
 ' Chapter XXVI. 
 
138 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 tual one should make it a habit. There is, on the other 
 hand, no habit more easily formed, or more trouble- 
 some, than that of always being a little behindhand in 
 an appointment. 
 
 Suppose one who has to meet half a dozen persons 
 at a given hour is ten minutes late. He puts back the 
 business ten minutes, and will have wasted just an hour 
 of other people's time. 
 
 The scholar who is late at school wastes otJier peo- 
 ple's time as well as his own. What a disturbance 
 it is when he comes lounging in and interrupts all the 
 other scholars at their work. 
 
 Always come neat and clean to the school. An 
 employer would soon dismiss a clerk who should come 
 with unwashed face and hands, and with untidy clothes. 
 The* scholar who comes to school untidy and unwashed 
 disgraces his home as well as himself. No matter if it 
 is his own fault, it is the home that will bear much of 
 the shame of it. Who would want to disgrace his 
 home? 
 
 Be honest at school. Scholars sometimes borrow 
 pencils, paper and other things, and do not return or 
 replace them. Books and instruments that belong to 
 the school are sometimes kept by the scholar. False 
 excuses for failures are sometimes given. All these 
 things are as bad as any other dishonesty. 
 
 At school attend to the work of the school. What 
 should you think of a clerk at his desk who, instead of 
 keeping accounts, should draw pictures in his account 
 books, or get up sly games with the other clerks. I 
 
The SchooL 139 
 
 fancy that he would very soon be told that he might 
 amuse himself elsewhere. 
 
 I have said that the school is your place of business. 
 I must now add that it is the place of your business. 
 It is for yourself that you are working at the school, and 
 for nobody else. Your parents and friends are inter- 
 ested in your success, but it is because your success in 
 school will fit you for success later in the world. 
 
 While the school is, as I have said, the place of your 
 business, you may be helped to fulfil its duties, by re- 
 membering the disappointment which your failure would 
 cause to your parents and friends. 
 
 You have perhaps heard of the famous French scien- 
 tist, Pasteur, to whom so many people have been sent 
 from this country, who have been bitten by mad dogs. 
 The discovery that he made in regard to the cause and 
 nature of hydrophobia is only one of many which have 
 been of the greatest service to mankind. When he was 
 a boy at school, Pasteur at first neglected his studies. 
 He preferred fishing and other amusements to the work 
 of the school. At last, however, he realized that his 
 father, who had little means, was making great sacrifices 
 in order that he might obtain an education. He then 
 began to study in good earnest. It was the thought 
 of what he owed to his father that made him what he is. 
 
 The scholar sometimes thinks of the teacher as if he 
 were his enemy. The teacher is called a ** master," or 
 " mistress," and the scholar feels himself to be in some 
 sort a slave. Really the teacher is simply working for 
 the scholar. He is his helper, performing for him one 
 of the greatest services that could be done. 
 
140 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 College students used sometimes to carry away the 
 chapel bell and hide it. They did this partly for the 
 fun of the thing, and partly, perhaps, with the idea that 
 the absence of the bell would be an excuse for irregu- 
 larity in attendance on college exercises. In most cases 
 a great disturbance was made about such an act. There 
 was a great examination of students, a great search 
 for the bell, and threats of punishment for the offender. 
 In one case, however, the president of the college sim- 
 ply said to the students, *' Young gentlemen, the bell 
 was solely for your convenience. It was thought that it 
 would help you to wake in the morning, and to be reg- 
 ular in attendance at college exercises. If you do not 
 want it, it is none of our affair. We shall take no trou- 
 ble to find it. You may do without it as long as you 
 like. But no student will be excused from absence or 
 tardiness on account of the absence of the bell." I need 
 hardly say that the bell was soon in its place. 
 
 All the rules of the school are like the chapel bell, 
 simply helps to the scholar in doing the work of the 
 school. Like the chapel bell they are on his account ; 
 only he cannot be left to choose whether he will, or will 
 not, disregard them ; for by such disregard his life 
 may be greatly harmed. 
 
 I know that young people are restless and fond of 
 sport. I know that the sunlight out of doors looks very 
 pleasant, and the thought of play is very attractive, and 
 I know that their attention is very easily turned ; in a word, 
 that they are bubbling over with life and activity. 
 This makes it all the harder for them to do the work 
 
The School, 141 
 
 which is needed, in order that they may be fitted to 
 take their place later in the world. All this shows the 
 importance of the rules that seem so hard. They are 
 helps in doing what the scholar cannot afford to leave 
 undone, and which most young people could hardly do 
 without. 
 
 Think how many have toiled under the most painful 
 circumstances to get knowledge. 
 
 William Cobbett, who was a distinguished writer on 
 political subjects in England, was in his youth a private 
 soldier, receiving as wages only six pence (about twelve 
 and a half cents) a day. He tells us how he studied. 
 When he needed a book, a pen or paper, he had to go 
 without some portion of food, though he was half- 
 starved. The edge of his berth when at sea, or that of 
 his guard-bed when on shore, was his seat to study in. 
 In the winter he could have no light, except that of the 
 fire, and that only in his turn. In this way he pursued 
 the studies that are made so easy for you at school, 
 especially English Grammar, which interested him 
 greatly/ 
 
 When Lincoln was practising law, he interrupted his 
 business in order to study mathematics, so as to learn 
 what it is *' to demonstrate.*' 
 
 Charles James Fox was a distinguished English states- 
 man. When he was appointed Secretary of State, he 
 took writing-lessons like a schoolboy, because some 
 one criticised his handwriting. 
 
 ' See Smiles' " Self Help," which contains many incidents of similar ear- 
 nestness. 
 
142 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 These men, as many others have done, pursued under 
 great hardship, or at great personal inconvenience, stud- 
 ies that are made so easy to those that can go to school. 
 At school the scholar has books, time, help, and every 
 thing that is needed for his work. Yet some think it is 
 hard to do, even under these pleasant circumstances, what 
 others have thought worth doing under great difficulty. 
 Yet what they learned was of no more value to them 
 than the learning that is forced into the laziest school- 
 boy is to him ; except that by their energy they could 
 make better use of it. 
 
Patriotism, 1 43 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 PATRIOTISM. 
 
 As it is natural to love our home, it is also natural to 
 love our country. As the poorest homes are sometimes 
 most tenderly loved, so the poorest and barest country 
 is sometimes held in most affection. There was per- 
 haps never a country in the world the inhabitants of 
 which have not, at some time or other, been willing to 
 suffer and die for it. 
 
 This affection is natural, because the town and the 
 nation in which one has lived is, like the home, bound 
 up with all the experiences of one's life. The games of 
 childhood, the affection of parents, the love of friends, 
 all the joys, the sorrows, the activities of life, are bound 
 up in the thought of one's native land; so that men 
 have felt for their country an affection made up of all 
 their other affections. 
 
 The love of one's country is called Patriotism. 
 
 It is not merely natural to be patriotic; it is reason- 
 able and right. Nearly all that makes life pleasant and 
 desirable comes through the town or the nation to which 
 we belong. Thus our gratitude should make them dear 
 to us. 
 
 Think how many thousands in our country have toiled 
 for us ! They have made roads and they have built 
 churches and schoolhouses. They have established 
 
144 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 mails and post-offices. They have cultivated farms to 
 provide for our needs, and have built ships that cross 
 the ocean to bring to us the good things which we could 
 not produce at home. They have provided protection 
 against wrong-doers. So if we sleep in peace, and 
 work and study and play in safety, and are wise and 
 trained in the various arts of life, it is to the town and 
 the nation that we owe very much of all this. 
 
 Then too, in every nation such good results have been 
 produced at great cost of suffering and life. It is be- 
 cause there have bee7i patriots who have loved their coun- 
 try better than they loved themselves, that we have a 
 country that we can love. 
 
 Especially the American ought to love his country, 
 because, in it, some of these results are reached more 
 perfectly than elsewhere. There is no country where 
 the people are so free, and in which the freedom of one 
 interferes so little with the freedom of all the rest. 
 
 We are so accustomed to see men of every class and 
 condition going to the polls, and voting for what are 
 called their rulers, though more truly they should be 
 called the servants of the people, that it seems to us a 
 wholly natural and common thing. We often forget 
 that this is something very uncommon ; and that there 
 are those in other countries who look with longing at 
 the freedom which we enjoy. 
 
 Such liberty is extending more and more in the world, 
 but it is largely through the example of our country 
 that this is accomplished. 
 
 This and the other good things which we enjoy have 
 
Patriotism. I45 
 
 been bought at a great price. No nation has had more 
 splendid heroes, who have braved all danger for their 
 country, who have toiled for it, and suffered and died 
 for it. 
 
 When the. bells are ringing and the cannon are firing 
 on the Fourth of July, you must not think merely of the 
 noise and the fun. You must remember those who on 
 that day agreed that they would risk their lives and 
 everything that was dear to them, that their country 
 might be free. You must think not merely of those, but 
 of those also who at other times of peril have given 
 themselves for their nation's good, of those who found the 
 land a wilderness, and suffered pain and privation, while 
 they made the beginning of a nation. You must think 
 also of those who ever since that time, whenever the 
 liberty or the unity of the nation were in peril, have 
 sprung to its defence. 
 
 These heroes are more in number than we can begin 
 to name. There was one, however, whose name is so 
 familiar that it has become commonplace to us, but 
 who was one of the greatest heroes, and one of the best 
 men, that ever lived. I mean George Washington. 
 Through the whole world, his name stands for honor 
 and courage, wisdom and patriotism. You must not let 
 the fact that his name is so common make you forget 
 that there are few heroes of history that deserve honor 
 so truly as he. 
 
 At the end of the war of the revolution, Washington 
 was at the head of a mighty army, and the object of the 
 enthusiastic love of the whole people. He might easily 
 
146 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 have made of himself a king or an emperor. It was a 
 marvel to the civilized world when he quietly laid down 
 all this power. He suffered himself to be twice chosen 
 President ; and then he became simply a private citizen. 
 This seems to us now the most natural thing in the 
 world, but really it was something very rare ; and gave 
 him a fame such as few heroes of the world enjoy. 
 
 You cannot realize, as those of us do who remember 
 it, the heroism that was shown in the war which pre- 
 served the union of our states, and put an end to slavery 
 in our country. Young men gave up what was dearest 
 to them in life ; mothers sent their sons to the war, hardly 
 hoping to see them again. This was done for the sake 
 of the country that they loved. You must remember 
 this on '' Decoration Day," and not merely look upon the 
 day as a holiday, with a show of processions with flowers 
 and music. 
 
 There have been heroes in peace as well as in war; 
 men who have conquered the wilderness, who have up- 
 held justice, and have helped on whatever was good and 
 noble. 
 
 We ought, then, all to be patriots, and love the coun- 
 try which has done so much for us and at the cost of 
 so many true lives. 
 
 But patriotism is not merely the loving one's country, 
 and the being proud of it. It has its duties as well as 
 its pleasures. We should not be contented merely to 
 take the good that others have won for us, doing noth- 
 ing ourselves for the country for which they did so 
 much. 
 
Patriotism, 147 
 
 There are those who are unworthy to live in our 
 country because they are not willing to suffer the least 
 inconvenience on its account. 
 
 There are those who are among the most prosperous 
 in the land, who have received more good from the 
 country than most others, who will not even take the 
 trouble to go to the polls and vote. They will see their 
 city misruled, and will not even take the trouble to cast 
 the ballot that would help to save it. 
 
 There are many men who sell their votes. Think of 
 all the cost of money and of noble lives at which our 
 liberty has been won. Think how in many parts of the 
 world men are looking with longing at the liberty 
 which we enjoy ; yet there are those to whom this hard- 
 won freedom means an opportunity to make a little 
 money by selling their vote. 
 
 There are those still worse. I mean those who find 
 in politics an opportunity to make larger gains in 
 meaner ways. They buy votes and sell those that they 
 have bought. They make bargains and '' deals." The 
 welfare of the country does not concern them. They 
 seek only their own gain. 
 
 There are those to whom the light laws that' are over 
 us seem grievous. They rebel against all restraint. 
 
 There are those who stir up excitement among the 
 people, setting class against class, that they themselves 
 may be advanced. 
 
 These things I name, that those who read these 
 chapters may resolve that when they are old enough to 
 have the rights of citizens, they will use them as patriots, 
 
148 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 and refrain from and oppose such corruption as I have 
 described. 
 
 There are other ways of serving the country besides 
 those that I have named. 
 
 All the private virtues, honesty and industry, are its 
 best helps. Whatever tends to make men wiser and 
 better is a service to the country. 
 
 The time may come, though I hope it may not, 
 when it will be necessary to repeat the sacrifices of the 
 past ; to give money and life and what is dearer than 
 life, that the nation may be preserved. If that time 
 shall come, meet it as heroes met it in the past. 
 
 The country will one day be in the hands of those who 
 are now boys and girls. Serve it and guard it, and do 
 all that you can to promote its good. 
 
Kindness to Animals, 1 49 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 
 
 We have considered the importance of kindness and 
 sympathy towards the persons with whom we have to 
 do. We should show a h'ke sympathy and kindness 
 towards the dumb animals, that have, also, their place 
 in our lives. 
 
 We all know that the animals can suffer as truly as 
 men can, but there are many who do not realize this. 
 If they did realize it, I think there would be less cruelty 
 to them. 
 
 A young man once told me that, when he was a boy, 
 he liked to torment living creatures, simply for the fun 
 of the thing; but when some one explained to him that 
 they really suffered, and that the movements which 
 amused him were expressions of pain, he had a horror 
 of such cruelty and never practised it again. 
 
 There are many reasons why we should be kind to 
 animals. One is because they are so much i^i our power. 
 The very fact of their weakness and our strength should 
 make us merciful to them. To take advantage of our 
 power is mean. It is like tormenting a child because it 
 cannot help itself. 
 
 Another reason why we should be kind to animals is 
 that so often we have to take their lives. They are 
 wholly at our mercy. Some we have to use for food. 
 
1 50 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 Others are injurious or unclean, and we have, in self- 
 defence, to destroy them. This fact should give us a 
 certain tenderness, so that we should avoid giving them 
 useless pain. 
 
 So far as the domestic animals are concerned, we owe 
 so much to them that gratitude should make us kind. 
 
 Here is a man, for instance, whose horse performs the 
 work by which he earns money to live. One would 
 think that gratitude, if not self-interest, would make him 
 kind. How often the horse is half-fed. Perhaps the 
 poor owner cannot always help this. But he can help 
 beating him, and overloading him, and making him 
 travel when he is so lame that he cannot step without 
 suffering. 
 
 Those who do not mean to be unkind are often cruel 
 by thoughtlessness. They leave the horse uncovered in 
 the cold. They use too short a check-rein. They use 
 a check-rein on a long journey, or with a heavy load, or 
 when going up hill. In none of these cases should any 
 check-rein be used. 
 
 Think how a dog loves its master, often in spite of 
 cruelty ; and yet how often is the master cruel ! 
 
 The chief reason for kindness to animals is, however, 
 that which I named first: the fact that they really suffer. 
 What sort of man or boy could that be who can 
 think it fun to cause suffering? One who can do this 
 should himself be made to suffer. 
 
 One good way to gain sympathy for animals is to 
 study about them and to observe them. One who does 
 this can hardly fail to get interested in them. He will 
 
Kindnrss to Animals, 151 
 
 find so much intelligence, so many curious ways of 
 living, so much devotion and kindliness, that he will 
 sympathize with them in spite of himself Even the 
 fiercest beasts, for instance, have a devotion for their 
 young, and will sometimes die in their defence. 
 
 One should not only be kind to animals one's self; 
 one should so far as possible prevent cruelty towards 
 them. If boys are persecuting some unhappy creature, 
 if a man is unmerciful to his horse, it is a noble thing to 
 interfere, if one can, in behalf of the oppressed. Many 
 a boy or girl has thus done something to check the 
 cruelty that is shown to some dumb beast, and thus to 
 lessen, by so much, the suffering of the world. 
 
152 Ethics for Yowig People, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 COMPANIONS. 
 
 We have considered certain things which it is well to 
 do, and others which it is well not to do. We have now 
 in a few chapters to consider certain helps and hin- 
 drances to right doing. 
 
 Nothing is more important in this respect than the 
 kind of companions that one has. If a young man 
 *'*' goes," as we say, " to the bad," it is almost always on 
 account of the kind of companions that he has had. 
 On the other hand, companions may be as helpful as 
 they may be misleading. 
 
 The reason for this influence of others is that man is 
 an imitative being; that is, he tends to do what he sees 
 people around him doing. 
 
 This imitativeness has been one of the greatest helps 
 in the development of the world. If a young child 
 learned only what it was directly taught, it would learn 
 comparatively little. Its chief education consists in 
 seeing what those about it do, and in trying to do the 
 same ; and this kind of education goes on, more or less, 
 as long as we live. 
 
 So the lower and more barbarous peoples have been 
 raised by imitating the manner of life of more civilized 
 peoples. 
 
 When we think of it, we see that this tendency to imi- 
 
Companions. 153 
 
 tate is extremely natural. I will state two or three 
 things that will illustrate this. 
 
 A man has a tendency to perform any action or to 
 speak any word of which he thinks. If a boy really 
 thinks of striking another, he has a certain tendency to 
 strike him. The reason he does not always do it is, 
 because he thinks of other things at the same time. He 
 thinks of possible punishment from parent or teacher; 
 or he thinks that the boy will possibly strike back ; or 
 some regard for the boy may come into his mind ; or he 
 may think that it would be a low and mean thing to do. 
 
 If he does strike the other boy, it is because all these 
 other thoughts for the moment disappear; and the 
 thought of the blow, and of the offence which caused 
 this thought, alone remain. 
 
 Now, in any occasion that may arise where we have to 
 speak or act, something that we have heard others say or 
 do under similar circumstances naturally comes into the 
 mind, and with it comes a tendency to say or do the 
 same. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, a boy has for his companions 
 those who, when they are angry or anything goes wrong 
 with them, use profane speech. When he is angry, or 
 when anything goes wrong with him, the expressions 
 that they use are the first that come to his thought, 
 and with them comes a tendency to use the same. 
 When he first went with them, he was perhaps offended 
 or shocked by this kind of speech ; but familiarity has 
 taken away much or all of that feeling, so that, when 
 these words come to his thought, the feeling which 
 
1 54 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 would keep them back has been very much lessened, 
 if it has not been wholly destroyed. 
 
 What is true of profanity is true of any other kind of 
 speech or act. It is difficult for a young person who 
 lives much among those whose speech is faulty to con- 
 tinue to talk good grammar. This shows how we tend 
 to imitate our companions. 
 
 Much is said in these days about "hypnotism." We 
 understand by hypnotism the fact that one person may 
 be brought so under the influence of another, as to 
 say and do, and even to see and think, only what the 
 other suggests. If, for instance, the other suggests that 
 there is a cow in the room, the hypnotized person will 
 see a cow in the room, and will perhaps make great 
 efforts to drive it away. It is doubtful if some grave 
 crimes have not been committed in this manner. 
 
 In all this we see an exaggerated form of the kind of 
 influence of which we have been speaking. The sug- 
 gestion has such power, in this case, because it occupies 
 the mind alone. The suggestions made by our ordinary 
 companions, simply perhaps by their way of speaking 
 and acting, tend to have a like influence. They control 
 us less, because other influences are working in other 
 directions; but almost every young person who falls 
 into bad habits shows that these suggestions may some- 
 times get as complete control of a person as is the case 
 in hypnotism. 
 
 Besides what are called " bad habits," there are other 
 habits hardly less bad, that are caught from one's com- 
 panions. Such are habits of frivolity, of unkind gossip, 
 
Companions. 155 
 
 and whatever may tend to lower the standard of our- 
 selves. 
 
 Good habits of life, of thought, and of feeling are 
 helped as truly by good companionship as they are 
 hindered by bad. 
 
 If the nature of the companions among whom we live 
 has such an incalculable influence over us, we see what 
 power we have to shape our lives by the right choice of 
 our companions. 
 
 We should remember, too, that we may as truly have 
 influence over our companions as they over us. We 
 should dread, more than almost anything else, the 
 thought that another has been made worse by associat- 
 ing with us. To injure the nature of another is to do 
 about as much harm as it is possible for us to do in this 
 world. 
 
1 56 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 READING. 
 
 There is a companionship that may be more helpful 
 than any other ; that is, the companionship of books. 
 It is not always easy to meet the persons that we should 
 most gladly choose as companions. In these days, how- 
 ever, it is possible for almost every one to obtain good 
 books. 
 
 As books may be the most helpful of companions, so 
 they may be the most harmful. As some books are 
 better than our ordinary associates, so other books are 
 worse than our companions, and have a power to cor- 
 rupt that is all the greater because the books may fol- 
 low us into our most lonely and quiet hours. 
 
 Do not be afraid to read books that require a little 
 thought. How the muscles of the body grow soft and 
 flabby when no strain is put upon them ! So the men- 
 tal fibres become relaxed and weak, when no strain is 
 put upon them. 
 
 The mind is weakened also, rather than strengthened, 
 by reading toa many books. One goes to the library to 
 get a book that he has never read. If it is a book that 
 is just published, he is all the rnore pleased. He hurries 
 through it, and then goes to the library again to get 
 another book that is new to him. 
 
 In this way he gets very little good out of any of the 
 
Reading. 157 
 
 books he reads. What he reads passes through the 
 mind so rapidly, and is so soon replaced by something 
 else, that it makes very little definite impression. The 
 mind gets so used to looking out for something fresh, 
 that it loses the interest, and thus the power, to grasp 
 any thought or any information so as to hold it fast and 
 make it its own. 
 
 We should laugh at a little girl who should say that 
 she knew how to sew, when all she did was to draw the 
 thread through the cloth, so that nothing remained of 
 all that she was doing. Should we say that anyone who 
 forgets as fast as he reads, knows how to read, any bet- 
 ter than that little girl knew how to sew? 
 
 There is a proverb that says, *' Beware of the man of 
 one book." It means that a man who has taken a good 
 book and read it, and re-read it, so as to get the mastery 
 of it, will have vastly more power than another, who 
 skims over one book eager to get hold of the next. 
 Plutarch's Lives, for instance, thus studied, have formed 
 a great many heroes. 
 
 Reading affects the moral fiature and one's habit of 
 feeling, for good or for evil, as much as it does the 
 mind. 
 
 Many a boy has been utterly ruined by reading low 
 novels ; and many who have not been absolutely ruined 
 have received a taint which has corrupted to some ex- 
 tent their lives. 
 
 On the other hand, many a man dates the beginning 
 of his really manly life from the reading of some book 
 that stimulated his best nature. 
 
158 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 The improvement or the lowering of one^s taste is of 
 less importance, but still of real importance. It is a 
 great thing in the world to be able to enjoy the best. 
 Would it not be a pity to go to a picture gallery that 
 contains some of the noblest pictures in the world, and 
 find one's self unable to enjoy any except those that 
 were low, or coarse, or worthless? So in a world that 
 contains so many noble books, it is very hard if one has 
 trained his taste in such a way as to be able to enjoy 
 only the poorest. 
 
 It is this corruption of the taste which is one of the 
 ways in which the reading of poor books harms the 
 most. One thinks that he will, for a while, read 
 wretched novels, and after that he will take something 
 better. He finds, however, often that it is too late. He 
 has spoiled his taste for what is good. 
 
 There are so many public libraries in these days, and 
 books are so cheap, that every one of us has the best 
 books at his command, as well as the worst. It is pleas- 
 ant to think how many are making their lives better and 
 stronger and nobler by such means. It is sad to think 
 how many are ruining their minds and corrupting their 
 hearts out of this abundance. 
 
 Try then to get hold of books that are worth reading. 
 If you read a novel, take one that is strong and pure. 
 One might as well go to the dram-shop or the opium 
 den, as to devote himself to reading a kind of novel that 
 is only too common. 
 
 Then there are the works on popular science that will 
 tell you about this wonderful world ; and there are the 
 
Reading. \ 59 
 
 stories of great men that will show you how to make 
 your life noble ; there is the history of the past which, 
 if it is well told, is, to an unspoiled mind, more inter- 
 esting than many a novel. In a word, there is no limit 
 to the healthful and helpful books that are at your com- 
 mand. In the midst of these, what a pity it would be 
 if you should take only those that should do you harm. 
 
i6o Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 The mind is always busy. 
 
 You see a boy sitting on the door-step or lying under 
 a tree. You say, perhaps, that he is doing nothing. 
 He is doing something. In one way, he is pretty busy. 
 He is thinking. 
 
 I do not mean that he is thinking seriously about 
 something that interests him. I mean simply that 
 there is passing through his mind a stream of thoughts 
 more or less clear, and of fancies more or less distinct. 
 
 Perhaps, he is lazily recalling what he did yesterday, 
 or planning what he will do to-morrow. Perhaps he is 
 idly watching something that is going on about him. 
 Perhaps, if you should interrupt him, and ask what he 
 was thinking about, he might really not know what to 
 say, because all had been so vague. His wits, as we 
 say, had been '' wool gathering." But his mind had 
 been busy, even if he has forgotten what it was busy 
 about. 
 
 So if people are working, the man with his saw or 
 hoe, the woman with her broom or her needle, their 
 thoughts are busy all the time. Sometimes they are 
 thinking about their work, sometimes about something 
 very different but; their minds are never perfectly at 
 rest. 
 
The Imasnnation. l6l 
 
 It is strange to think of all these minds in the world 
 always active, of our own minds always active, at least 
 when we are awake ; possibly when we are asleep. 
 
 Surely it is very important for us to consider what 
 these busy minds are busied about, for nothing can af- 
 fect our lives so much as this constant activity of our 
 thought. 
 
 A person sometimes " talks to himself" It is a fool- 
 ish habit, for he sometimes lets out secrets, and is over- 
 heard saying unpleasant things about the people who 
 are present. But all this thinking that never stops is 
 really a conversation with ourselves. 
 
 There is, then, a companionship with ourselves that is 
 closer and more important than that with persons or 
 books. 
 
 How important it is that the self with which we con- 
 verse so constantly should be wise, pure, and well mean- 
 ing. 
 
 If any bad company does harm, the self, when it is 
 not thus wise and pure and well-meaning, does more 
 harm than any other. 
 
 In all this intercourse with ourselves, nothing is more 
 important than what comes to us through the imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 As was said above, there is a succession of pictures 
 passing through the mind with other thoughts ; perhaps 
 there are more pictures than any other kind of thoughts. 
 These pictures are, for the most part, drawn very par- 
 tially and imperfectly ; but they are distinct enough to 
 let us know what they stand for, and to interest our minds. 
 
1 62 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 These pictures are of what we have seen, of what we 
 have read, of what we have fancied, of what we hope 
 to see or to do, and of what we would like to do, when 
 there is perhaps no hope of our doing it. 
 
 There is one very singular thing about these pictures. 
 The more interested we are in them, or the oftener 
 we turn to them, the more distinct do they become. It 
 is as if, in a picture gallery, the paintings which the 
 owner loved and which he visited every day should 
 stand out bright and clear; while those for which he 
 cared little should fade away. 
 
 In going through such a gallery we should learn 
 exactly what the tastes of the owner are. So if we 
 could just glance into one of these mental picture gal- 
 leries, we could tell, better than in almost any other way, 
 what sort of a person it is whose mind we are looking 
 into. 
 
 We could tell not only what the person is : we could 
 tell something of what he is going to be ; for in this 
 picture gallery the future is often represented before it 
 becomes a fact. Indeed it is the picture that tends to 
 give its shape to the life. 
 
 Temptation gains more power through these pictures 
 of the imagination than in almost any other way. 
 
 A man sometimes does wrong by a sudden impulse, 
 as when he strikes another in a moment of unreasoning 
 rage; but for the most part the imagination prepares 
 the way with its picturing. 
 
 A young man, for instance, is tempted to take money 
 that does not belong to him. At first it is not a tempta- 
 
The Imagination. 163 
 
 tion ; it is merely a fancy. He thinks what a nice thing 
 it would be to have the money, and pictures the life he 
 would lead with it. After this sort of imagery has 
 pleased him for a while till it has grown so distinct as to 
 haunt him, comes the vision of taking the money, the 
 representation of one way or another in which it might 
 be done without discovery, until these pictures also 
 haunt him. We have already seen, in a former chapter, 
 the way that suggestions affect the life. These sugges- 
 tions of the imagination gain more and more power, 
 until at last they fill the mind, and the man is almost 
 forced to perform the act which he has gone over so 
 often in his imagination. Through this repetition it has 
 lost its repulsiveness and has come to seem quite a mat- 
 ter of course. 
 
 What is true of this crime is true of other crimes and 
 faults. The mind plays with the picture of them, until 
 suddenly the picture has become a fact. 
 
 When evil imaginations do not become embodied in 
 outward act, they yet of necessity corrupt and degrade 
 the mind. Discontent, envy, anger, impurity, all nour- 
 ish themselves by these pictures of the imagination, 
 until the mind has become controlled and debased by 
 them. 
 
 If evil imaginations have such power, when the im- 
 agination works purely and nobly it may become 
 equally a power of good. The picturing of kindly and 
 magnanimous acts may shape the life to their like- 
 ness. 
 
 A healthy imagination is also a source of true pleas- 
 
164 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 ure. By reading carefully, by keeping one's eyes open 
 in the world, one may store the mind with pictures that 
 will later bring satisfaction. 
 
 We should train the imagination to reproduce what 
 we see. Most of us, when we see a beautiful landscape 
 or picture, go away with the vaguest possible remem- 
 brance of it. It is a great help to re-picturing in the 
 imagination to be able to draw or paint. One who can 
 do this has learned both to see and to re-produce. It is 
 a good plan to look at an object, and then try to draw 
 it from memory. If one cannot do this, it is well to 
 close the eyes and try to recall a beautiful object that 
 we have seen, and then to look at it again, and observe 
 how far our mental picture corresponds with the fact. 
 In this way we can train the imagination to remember, 
 and make fine additions to our mental picture gallery. 
 
 In educating children, it is very important that they 
 should have opportunities to enrich their minds with 
 pictures of something fair and pleasant. 
 
 There remains to be spoken of, a possible evil that 
 may spring from the imagination unawares. The life 
 may be harmed by living too much in the world of the 
 imagination. The dreaming, even of good acts, may 
 take the place of their performance, while the habit of 
 revery, if unrestrained, too often assumes a form that is 
 harmful to the strength and purity of the life. 
 
Industry. 165 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 INDUSTRY. 
 
 Industry might well be urged as a duty. I wish, 
 however, now to speak of it chiefly as an aid in accom- 
 plishing other duties. Few things are more helpful 
 towards right living than industry, and few more con- 
 ducive to wrong living than idleness. 
 
 When we speak of idleness, we must remember that 
 no one is perfectly idle, excepting when asleep, and 
 possibly not even then. We are always busy about 
 something or other. If the hands and the feet are idle, 
 the mind is always active. If it is not busy with study, 
 or with some other useful occupation, it is busy with 
 dreams and fancies. Even the Neapolitan beggars, lying 
 stretched in the sun or the shadow, are talking or think- 
 ing or dreaming about something. 
 
 By industry we mean activity that is regular and de- 
 voted to the carrying out of some purpose. More 
 definitely, it is activity that is designed to be useful to 
 ourselves or to others. It is thus a regulated activity 
 by which our own welfare, or that of others, may be 
 furthered. 
 
 We are apt to think, or at least to feel, that the neces- 
 sity of working regularly is a hardship. Because as we 
 get tired with our work we look forward with eagerness 
 to the time of rest, we are apt to think that the pleas- 
 antest life would be one in which it should be all rest. 
 
l66 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 A little thought, however, will show us that the neces- 
 sity of regular occupation which is laid upon most of us, 
 is one of the great blessings of our lives. 
 
 Regular industry is helpful to the habit of self-com- 
 mand. This, as we have already seen, is of fundamental 
 importance in our lives. Industry is helpful towards 
 this in various ways. 
 
 In the first place industry is helpful to self-command 
 because the life is made regular by it. Body and mind 
 are by this regularity disciplined into a certain degree 
 of orderliness. It is as much easier controlling body 
 and mind when they are in such training, as it is for an 
 officer to control a body of trained troops instead of an 
 undisciplined mob. 
 
 Again a certain amount of activity is more easily con- 
 trolled than inertia. You know that a ship must be 
 going one or two knots an hour or she will not mind her 
 helm. She must be making this way in her own course 
 moved by the wind or steam or some other motive force. 
 A ship that is merely drifting cannot be steered. Now 
 in idleness we are simply drifting. The mind is lazily 
 busy, but it moves according to any whim or impulse. 
 Thus self-control becomes difficult if not impossible. 
 
 In idleness one is thus left to be more easily the prey 
 of any temptation. When we are busy about something 
 that interests us, this interest tends to keep out of the 
 mind tempting thoughts ; or if they enter, the mind, 
 through this interest, being like a ship under good head- 
 way, keeps its course undisturbed by them. In idleness, 
 however, the mind is more at the mercy of whatever 
 
Industry, 1 67 
 
 may occur. Thus idleness is the great foe to upright- 
 ness, purity and earnestness of life. 
 
 It may seem more strange to be told that industry is 
 07ie of the best helps towards contentment. In fact, how- 
 ever, it is the idle who are apt to be not only the most 
 vicious, but the most unhappy. There being no regu- 
 lar vent for the activity of the life, the energies them- 
 selves tend to wear upon the life itself The mind, not 
 regularly occupied, is open to all sorts of discontents and 
 envyings. Thus it dreams of what might be and com- 
 pares it with what is, and makes itself wretched. 
 
 Indeed, activity is one of the greatest sources of hap- 
 piness. In industry part of our energies, at least, are 
 regularly employed. However sweet rest may be in its 
 place idleness soon becomes a burden. 
 
 The man indeed' is happy who, when he has leisure, 
 knows how to give himself regular occupation. Most 
 of us however do not know how to employ ourselves, and 
 it is well that we should be employed. 
 
 It requires more genius to use leisure than to use 
 wealth. It is very important that the young should 
 provide interests for themselves, in studies or in philan- 
 thropic activity, so that, if later in life they have leisure, 
 it may not lie too heavily on their hands. 
 
 Industry is essential for that usefulness by which each 
 man may fill his place in the world. The lazy, like the 
 wicked, may be made useful. The Spartans used to send 
 a drunken slave through the city that the sight of his 
 folly and degradation might disgust young men with in- 
 temperance. He was made useful; he did not make 
 
1 68 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 himself useful. Every one should try to make himself 
 useful. 
 
 From all this it will be seen that the necessity of labor 
 is something at which we should rather rejoice than 
 complain, and that habits of industry are the great help- 
 ers to virtue, happiness and usefulness. 
 
Habit. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 HABIT. 
 
 In speaking of the influence of companions, I said 
 that a man tends to imitate the persons by whom he is 
 surrounded ; and we saw that while this tendency may 
 work harm, it may also work much good : and that in 
 fact the development of civilization has been largely 
 dependent upon this tendency. 
 
 Most of all, a man tends to imitate himself. The fact 
 that he has done a thing once, in a certain way, makes 
 it easier for him to do it again in the same way. The 
 oftener this is repeated, the more fixed does the habit 
 become. At last he cannot do the thing in a different 
 way without great effort. Finally it may become almost 
 impossible for him to do it in a different way. 
 
 It is interesting to see the force of habit in little 
 things. In this way one can most easily get an idea of 
 its real power. 
 
 Notice its power in such a little matter as putting 
 on one's clothes, one's coat, for instance. Almost 
 every one in doing this always puts jthe same arm first 
 into the sleeve. With some it is the right arm and with 
 some it is the left. Probably very few, if they were 
 asked, could tell which arm they put in first; but as 
 soon as they undertake to do the thing, the arm which 
 commonly goes first makes its movement ; and it is only 
 
1 7b Ethics for Young People. 
 
 by a strong act of will that it can be made to give way 
 to the other. 
 
 Consider again the handwriting. This depends in 
 part upon the structure of the hand, and perhaps also 
 upon one's mental tendencies ; but habit has a great deal 
 to do with it ; and we all know how difficult it is to dis- 
 guise one's hand. Then, too, consider how easily we 
 write with the right hand, and how hard it is to write 
 with the left. When the right hand, however, has be- 
 come disabled, a man, after long effort, can make his 
 left hand write as easily as the right ever did. 
 
 Observe, farther, how skill is acquired in any handi- 
 work, so that at last the work goes on better when we 
 are not thinking of it, than when we attend to what we are 
 doing. The fingers of the skillful pianist take care of 
 themselves, and the old ladies can read as they knit. 
 So strong does habit, as the result of training, be- 
 come, that it is said to be impossible for a good swim- 
 mer to drown himself, unless he be tied hand and foot. 
 By habit that has become an instinct, the body practises 
 the lesson that it has learned ; and the man who has 
 thrown himself into the water swims in spite of himself. 
 
 Notice now the good results of this tendency of habits 
 to become fixed. In some cases, like those to which I 
 have referred, the life of the person is^ in a sense^ doubled. 
 As was just said, the old ladies knit and read or talk at 
 the same time. So in very many things, the body that 
 has been trained does the work while the mind is left 
 free to busy itself as it will. 
 
 Another great advantage that springs from the fixity 
 
Habit 171 
 
 of habits is foi;nd in the fact that, by means of this, our 
 lives may muke real progress. What we have gained is 
 secured to us. 
 
 Think how hard it would be if we had continually to 
 start again from the beginning. How the soldier shrinks 
 when he first goes into a battle ; how gladly he would 
 flee. It is said that green soldiers are sometimes placed 
 alternately with those that have been seasoned in many 
 a fight, that the stability of the veterans may keep the 
 raw recruits in their place. The old soldiers have got 
 so in the habit of marching and standing as they are 
 told, that it has become with them a matter of course. 
 
 Consider, too, how a man who is in the habit of 
 handhng money lets it pass through his hands with 
 hardly a thought of the possibility of keeping any of it. 
 In such cases habit may sometimes be a better safeguard 
 tiian principle that has not hardened into habit. Prin- 
 ciple untrained may sometimes give way to a temptation 
 which habit would withstand. 
 
 This fact applies to everything that we do, and to 
 every relation of our lives. We can make a habit of 
 honesty, of industry, of kindliness, of attention, of cour- 
 tesy, and of whatever we will. Indeed, Aristotle, one of 
 the wisest men of antiquity, defined virtue as a habit of 
 rightdoing. 
 
 Consider what power we have thus over our lives. 
 We shape them to a large extent as we choose, and then, 
 through habit, they tend to harden into the shape that 
 we have given them, as the plaster hardens into the 
 shape which the artist has chosen. 
 
1/2 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 The matter has, very obviously, ^^nother side. 
 Bad habits form as readily as good ones. I am not 
 sure that they do not form more readily than ^ood ones, 
 because virtues require more effort than faults. We 
 drift into faults; but to make the best life we have to 
 take control of it and guide it. 
 
 Think, now, how many bad habits are formed, — 
 habits of inattention, of carelessness, fretfulness, of evil 
 speaking, of selfishness, and others that are even worse. 
 I have in another place spoken of the habit of drunk- 
 enness, which comes on so quietly that one does not 
 suspect it until it may be too late. 
 
 Indeed, a bad habit is the last thing that most of us 
 are afraid of. We think that we are acting always from 
 our own choice, that it is no matter what we do now, 
 because another time, whenever we wish, we can do dif- 
 ferently. But all the while a certain habit is forming 
 and hardening, until at last we find ourselves almost 
 helpless. Thus, even our tastes, our amusements, our 
 selection of books, the tendency even of our most 
 secret thoughts, are becoming fixed, and we are becom- 
 ing permanently the persons we meant to be only for 
 the moment. 
 
 If the artist takes such pains with the plaster that he 
 is forming, so that it may harden into a shape of beauty, 
 what care should we take of the habits which are to 
 effect so strongly and permanently our bodies, our 
 minds, and our hearts. 
 
Temptations, 1 73 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 TEMPTATIONS. 
 
 I THINK that there is nothing which we tend to picture 
 in our minds so falsely as temptations. I should be in- 
 terested to know what ideas of temptation are held by 
 all who read this little book. 
 
 We are apt to think of temptation as something 
 black and terrible. Perhaps we think of it as something 
 bat-like, hovering, about with wings and horns as Apol- 
 lyon is pictured in the Pilgrim's Progress. Perhaps the 
 preachers and moralists have had something to do with 
 forming the tendency to think of temptation in this way. 
 They rightly paint it as something terrible, and so we 
 come to think of it as being repulsive in its form as it is 
 dangerous to our lives. 
 
 In this way we get such notions of temptation that we 
 fail to recognize it when it actually comes. We say, *' O 
 you pleasant and harmless-looking thing, there cannot 
 be anything wrong about you." Thus we give our- 
 selves up to it and follow it wherever it would lead. 
 
 First of all you need to fix in your minds that temp- 
 tation always presents itself as something extremely 
 pleasant^ or at least desirable. This will be clear if you 
 ask yourself what is meant by a temptation. A tempta- 
 tion is, very obviously, something that tempts. It must, 
 therefore, be something that attracts; that is, that ap- 
 
174 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 pears to be a very pleasant thing to do. If it did not 
 look pleasant to us it would not be a temptation. No- 
 body is ever tempted to do anything that seems un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 In the next place, you need to fix it in your mind 
 that the temptation always seems reasonable. What 
 you are tempted to do seems not merely to be some- 
 thing pleasant ; it seems something that is to a greater 
 or less extent reasonable. 
 
 The pleasantness is indeed sometimes stronger than 
 the reasonableness ; that is, a man is so attracted by the 
 thing, that he does it even when his reason tells him it 
 is neither right nor wise. This is, however, in rather 
 extreme cases. Ordinarily, temptation is as plausible as 
 it is attractive. 
 
 We see this from the fact that every mood and every 
 passion tends to justify itself 
 
 When you are angry without a reasonable cause, you 
 do not say to yourself, " This anger is wrong and unrea- 
 sonable; I am making a fool of myself, besides giving 
 pain to another." This is not the way in which you 
 reason with yourself when you are in a passion. What 
 you do say to yourself is something like this : ^* There 
 was never anybody in the world that was treated so 
 badly as I am. That fellow is the meanest, most selfish, 
 and most disagreeable person in the world. There is 
 nobody that would not, if so treated, be as angry as I 
 am. In fact, I am not angry at all. I was never cooler 
 in my life. I see things precisely as they are. I don*t 
 care because the thing was done to me ; I only look at 
 
Temptations. 175 
 
 the principle of the thing." This you say, when, per- 
 haps, you are bursting with rage, and when in half an 
 hour you will feel heartily ashamed of yourself. 
 
 The boy that is tempted to disobey his parents is apt 
 to put the thing very plausibly to himself. He thinks 
 perhaps that his parents would not really care, or he 
 thinks that it is so little a matter that there can be no 
 harm in it, or he thinks that he knows very much more 
 about the thing than they do ; that they forbade him to 
 go on the ice because they thought it was not strong 
 enough, whereas he knows that it is as strong as need 
 be. Or he thinks that there was never a boy kept so 
 close and so bothered by rules as he is ; and that the 
 manly thing is to assert his independence. 
 
 In all this you see there are many things that he 
 does not think of. He does not think of what he owes 
 to his parents, of their love and care. He does not 
 think how much more knowledge and experience they 
 have than he ; and that, though they may now and then 
 make a mistake, yet this is nothing to the blunders that 
 he would make and the trouble he would bring upon 
 himself, if he were left to look out for himself. He 
 does not think of the duty of obedience. 
 
 A young man in business is tempted to take some 
 money that belongs to his employer. We saw in a 
 former chapter how the imagination leads him on to 
 commit the theft. We now have to see how plausible 
 the temptation may appear. 
 
 The young man thus tempted thinks that his em- 
 ployer will not miss the money; that he will be just as 
 
176 Ethics for Yoimg People. 
 
 well off without it as with it, while to himself it will be 
 everything. Then the amount is so small that it really 
 is no great sin if he takes it. Above all, he thinks that 
 it is only a loan. He only needs it for a little time, and 
 then he will restore it ; there can certainly be no great 
 harm in that. He perhaps takes the money ; and after 
 a while he is tempted to make a similar ^' loan." He goes 
 through the same reasoning as before, except that now 
 he is deeper in debt, and he thinks that if he does not 
 take a little more now he will never be able to pay back 
 that which he took before. — Finally he takes still more 
 as a matter of self-defence. He will be ruined if he 
 does not. It is no longer a matter for argument. It 
 can hardly be called a temptation. It is a necessity. 
 Then, perhaps, when he persuades himself that it is too 
 late to turn back, he admits, for the first time, that he is, 
 what he has been all along ; namely, a thief. 
 
 Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, for 
 all temptation is attractive, and nearly all temptation is 
 plausible. 
 
 This is one of the most important things to be borne 
 in mind. Knowing under what disguise temptation 
 conceals its ugliness and its sin, we may be on our 
 guard that we are not imposed upon by it, and do not 
 take it for granted that because a thing seems so attrac- 
 tive and reasonable it must therefore be right. 
 
 Temptation may be a help as truly as a hindrance. 
 If it comes to us without our seeking, resistance to it 
 may strengthen our moral fibre, just as meeting and 
 conquering any physical or mental obstacle may 
 
Temptations, I JJ 
 
 strengthen our bodily or mental fibre. It must be re- 
 membered, however, that when one throws himself will- 
 ingly in the way of temptation, he shows that he is already 
 half prepared to yield to it. 
 
1/8 Ethics f 07' Young People. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The conscience is that within a man which, if he is 
 tempted to do wrong, often warns him and strives to 
 hold him back. If he persists in the act, conscience often 
 makes him very uncomfortable while it is being done, 
 and when the deed has been accomplished reproaches 
 him for his fault. 
 
 Conscience is thus placed to be the guide of our life. 
 We may compare it to the private oracle of Socrates, of 
 which I have already spoken. Or we may compare it 
 to the compass, which is placed in a ship in order that 
 by it the sailors may control their course. 
 
 Nothing in our lives can be more important than that 
 we should attend to, and obey, the voice of conscience ; 
 disobedience to it means the ruin of our lives. 
 
 Yet there is scarcely anything of which men are 
 more heedless, so far as care for it is concerned, even if 
 they pay more or less attention to its warnings. 
 
 Consider how careful the sailors are of the compass 
 by which they are to steer the ship. The compass, 
 you know, does not point exactly north and south ; it 
 varies a little according to the part of the world where 
 it is. It is more or less affected by what is about it. 
 The iron that is in the ship affects it, and makes its irreg- 
 ularity greater. If all this were not known and thought 
 
The Conscience, 179 
 
 of, the compass might lead the ship to its destruction. But 
 it is all thought of. The variation of the needle is taken 
 into the account. An extra compass is sometimes 
 placed at the mast head, far above any disturbance from 
 the iron that enters into the construction of the ship, in 
 order that there it may follow its own laws. 
 
 The conscience, like the compass, has its variations. 
 It does not always point straight to the right. Some- 
 times, in critical moments, it fails to give any indication 
 whatever. 
 
 Surely these irregularities are worthy of the most 
 careful study. Let us consider some of them. 
 
 The conscience is sometimes wholly silent when we have 
 most need of its guidance. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest number of our faults are those 
 of omission and carelessness. In moments of pure 
 thoughtlessness the conscience is inactive ; and yet it is 
 in these moments that we often need it most. 
 
 Suppose that a man has some important duty to per- 
 form. He is perhaps the captain of an ocean steamer. 
 His vessel' is in critical circumstances, and needs his 
 care. He goes down to his dinner, gets interested in 
 talking with his passengers, and forgets his ship, until 
 it is too late. 
 
 It is through such neglect that many bad habits ob- 
 tain the mastery over men. They come from pure 
 thoughtlessness ; and conscience gives no warning. 
 
 It is so also with many acts of cruelty. The person 
 speaks or acts without thought, and the conscience has 
 no opportunity to protest. 
 
1 80 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 How much damage is done by pure heedlessness. 
 The boy does not mean to do any harm, but the harm 
 is done. If it were anything wrong that he was making 
 up his mind to dOy conscience would speak ; but at what 
 moment could it interfere in this time of utter careless- 
 ness ? 
 
 It is worth while to remember, then, that during so 
 large portions of our life conscience sleeps at its post. 
 It is at times, too, in which we most need its guidance, 
 for they are full of peril and temptation. 
 
 Knowing this failure of conscience, we should take it 
 into our calculation^ as the sailor takes into his calculation 
 the irregularity of his compass. We should provide 
 against this danger by taking measures in advance for 
 our protection. 
 
 It is one of the most remarkable things in our 
 natures, that we can govern ourselves eve^i in these 
 moments of carelessness. A boy, for instance, starts 
 to go to school. He starts early so as to give himself 
 time to play by the way. Having this time he stops to 
 play. In all this there is nothing wrong. But in his 
 play he forgets his school, and so arrives tardy, or 
 not at all. How can this and all similar results of 
 heedlessness be prevented? 
 
 The trouble with the boy was that he did not fix it 
 with sufficient force in his mind that he must be at 
 school at the proper hour. If he had done this, issuing 
 to himself a peremptory command, the force of this 
 command would have been felt even in his thoughtless- 
 ness and play ; and the impulse which he gave to him- 
 
The Conscience, l8l 
 
 self at starting would have brought him safe to school 
 at its opening. 
 
 Knowing, then, that we are thus exposed, through 
 thoughtlessness, to do what we shall afterwards wish had 
 not been done, or to neglect what we shall wish had 
 been done, we should, in advance, issue oitr commands to 
 ourselves ; and if these commands are given earnestly, the 
 self will be pretty sure to obey, even in our forgetful- 
 ness. 
 
 Conscience often fails to warn us when we are doing 
 wrong, because we persuade ourselves that what we are 
 doing is not wrong. In the chapter on temptation we 
 have seen that every mood and every passion tends to 
 justify itself This plausibility of temptation does much 
 to silence the voice of conscience. 
 
 In one way the conscience comes to our help in these 
 matters. After the fact, it often reproaches us with our 
 wrong-doing or our neglect. We feel that our careless- 
 ness was wrong, perhaps even a crime or a sin. This is 
 one of the most important of the ways in which con- 
 science trains us. We had not dreamed the thing was 
 wrong till we feel the reproach. Being impressed in 
 this way by conscience that we have done wrong, it will 
 be easier for us at another time to remember and to 
 avoid the offence. 
 
 Thus one speaks a word that gives pain to another. 
 Seeing the pain that he has caused, he reproaches him- 
 self with his carelessness or his ill temper. This re- 
 proach is the voice of conscience. The person has 
 learned a lesson ; namely, that such cruelty, whether de- 
 
1 82 Ethics for Young People. 
 
 signed or not, is wrong. Another time, he may re- 
 member this lesson, and keep back the sharp and poi- 
 soned speech. 
 
 All this suggests another way in which conscience 
 may come to fail us in our hour of need. If we do not 
 heed its voice, it will tend to become silent and leave us 
 to ourselves. In this it may be compared to some del- 
 icate tool. A boy has a nice jackknife given to him. 
 He is pleased with the gift and begins to use it on 
 everything. He tries to cut pieces of wood that have 
 knots in them ; or even brings its edge against nails. 
 The knife, being forced thus against what will not yield, 
 becomes dull and jagged, and finally refuses to cut any- 
 thing. When we do not heed our conscience, we our- 
 selves are the hard bodies by which it is dulled and 
 made useless. — Or we may compare it to a magnet, 
 which, if it is not used, tends to lose its power, and to 
 become like any other bit of steel. 
 
 Another way in which the conscience loses its power 
 is through the influence of bad companions. We have 
 seen, in another chapter, how much we are influenced 
 by those with whom we associate. We tend to 
 forget that what we become accustomed to see and 
 hear is wrong. We come to think that we can do 
 without harm what others do. Thus we quiet our con- 
 science, and it ceases for a time, at least, to trouble us. 
 
 Some may think, perhaps, that it is a great thing if 
 they can thus get rid of so troublesome a companion. 
 Two things are, however, to be remembered. 
 
 One is, that though the conscience may be put to sleep 
 
The Conscience, 1 83 
 
 for a time, it may sometime awake. Though we may 
 avoid its guidance, perhaps we may not always avoid its 
 reproaches. The second is, that one who has lost his 
 conscience has lost the best part of his manhood, 
 
 I am sure, however, that most will feel that the con- 
 science is a thing to be watched and guarded and obeyed, 
 as the sailors watch and guard and obey the compass 
 which is their guide, that thus the voyage of life may be, 
 in the truest sense, a. successful one. 
 
184 Ethics for Young People, 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 This little book is simply an introduction to the study 
 of Ethics. At its close it may be well to glance for a 
 moment at some of the elements that enter into this 
 study when it is pursued more fully. 
 
 One part of Ethics consists in considering the relation 
 between morality and religion, how far morality is helped 
 by religion, and to what extent religion affects it general- 
 ly. This is a very important matter for consideration. 
 
 There is also to be studied the philosophy of morality, 
 what are its fundamental principles, and what is the basis 
 upon which it finally rests; and what is its relation to 
 our thought of the world in general. 
 
 There is also the history of Ethics. This consists of 
 two parts. One is the history of the various theories 
 about morality, and the other is the history of morality 
 itself, showing the stages through which different peoples 
 have passed in their moral life, and the historical origin 
 and development of the different virtues. 
 
 There is also what is called applied Ethics, This, al- 
 so, may have two parts. In one it may consider, as we 
 have been doing, only much more fully, what is the true 
 life for individuals. In the other part, it considers the 
 application of Ethical principles to the world at large, 
 and seeks to discover what are the best methods of 
 charity and reform. 
 
Conclusion, 185 
 
 This last is a very important aspect of Ethical 
 study. There is much suffering in the world from pov- 
 erty and crime ; and one of the most pressing needs of 
 the world to-day is that those who have the good of 
 others at heart should find out the best way of lighten- 
 ing or removing these evils. I hope all who read this 
 little book will take an interest in this branch of Ethical 
 study, and will do something to make the world better 
 and happier. 
 
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