reform. A bad bill is pending at Albany. In order to beat it, a party
of men whose characters are trusted, get on a train, and the whole
State watches them proceed to Albany. This is often enough to defeat
a measure. The good their pilgrimage does, is done then and there
instantly, by example, by suggestion. If, when they get to Albany,
they sell out their cause, the harm they do is done then and there
by example, by suggestion. They make some concession which lessens
friction but suggests Tammany Hall. This is the only part of the
transaction that reaches the great public. Ask the laboring man
and he will give you a digest of the whole episode in a shrug. If a
reform candidate is running on the platform “Thou shalt not steal,”
and the boss desires to corrupt him, the boss asks him to drop in for
a chat. If he goes, every one hears of it the next day, and every one
is a little corrupted himself. A thousand well-meaning men say he did
right. Had he resisted, these same men would have cried “Bravo!” and
thereafter taken a higher view of human nature. It is by a succession
of such minute shocks of good or bad example that communities are
affected. The truth seems to be that our lives are ruled by laws of
influence which are in themselves exceedingly direct. But the operation
of them is concealed from us by our preoccupation over details.
It is impossible to regard these matters in too simple a light. Nothing
is ever involved except the contagious impulse that makes one man yawn
when he sees another man yawn. Both the good and the evil in the world
run upon the winds. Moses’ habit of falling upon his face before the
congregation, and calling God to witness that he could lead them no
longer, was not a political trick done to frighten the people into
submission by the threat of abandoning them. It was a sincere act of
devotion; but it was also the most powerful form of appeal. He did
the act; they followed in it, and thus made him absolute. Lincoln’s
anecdotes and fables consisted of nothing but suggestion. They were
one source of his power. The first thing a tyrant does is to suppress
cartoons. Here we have something that is often sheer pantomime, and yet
it is one of the most effective vehicles in the world. It was the only
thing Platt could not stand. Within two years he has tried to stop it
by legislation.
If you are to reach masses of people in this world, you must do it
by a sign language. Whether your vehicle be commerce, literature, or
politics, you can do nothing but raise signals, and make motions to
the people. In literature this is obvious. The more far-reaching any
truth is, the shorter grow its hieroglyphics. The great truths can
only be given in hints, phrases, and parables. They lie in universal
experience, and any comment belittles them. They are like the magnetic
poles that can only be pointed out with a needle. Take any profound
saying about life, and see if it does not imply short-hand, a sort of
telegraphy as the ordinary means of communication between men. “He
that loseth his life shall save it.” Here we have a poem, a system of
ethics and a psychology. Or take any bit of worldly wisdom, “Money
talks.” Here we have the whole philosophy of materialism. Does any one
imagine that political bargains are reduced to writing? It would be
injurious to the conscience. They are made by the merest hints on all
sides. Every one is left free.
The extreme case of the power of suggestion is seen in the
stock-market, where a rumor that Banker A has dined with Railroad
President B drives values up or down. Cleveland’s Venezuela message
makes a panic. The different parts of the financial world live, from
day to day, in instantaneous and throbbing communication. This is one
side of the popular life. Its thermometer is sensitive, and records one
thousandth of a degree as readily as the political thermometer records
a single degree. But the principle is the same. All the people run the
stock-market, and all the people run politics. There has never been any
difficulty in reaching the whole people with ideas. Even a private man
can do it. But he must act them out.
VI
PRINCIPLES (_continued_).
Suppose a small child steals jam in the pantry. So long as he pretends
that he did not do it, or did not know it was wrong, he suffers a
certain oppression.
You can explain to an intelligent child that if he tells the whole
truth about the thing, the telling will cost him pain and leave him
happy. But you cannot save him the pain. So long as he persists in
lying, some of his faculties lie under an inhibition; the vital
energies flow past them instead of through them. The first shock of a
through passage gives a spasm of pain, and then the child is happy. It
is one of the facts of the world that moral awakening is accompanied by
pain.
The quarrel that the world has with its agitators is that they do
really agitate. People express this by saying that the men are
dangerous or have bad taste. The epithets vary with the age. They are
intended to excite public contempt, and they embody the aversions of
society. In a martial age the reformer is called a molly-coddle; in a
commercial age an incompetent, a disturber of values; in a fanatical
age, a heretic. If an agitator is not reviled, he is a quack.
These epithets are mere figures of speech. What they really express
is suffering caused by the workings of conscience. And so in any
educational movement that runs across the country, there is always a
track of pain turning to happiness. When we get in the path of one of
these things, we find that the division between contending ideas passes
through the individual man. It does not fall between men. The struggle
is always the struggle of forces within an individual. A is trying to
convince B. The struggle in A’s mind is to make the matter clear, in
B’s mind to make the opposite clear. In the course of time one view
prevails; but the struggle continues, for B occupies A’s position and
is now struggling to convince C. It is in this way that a movement
runs through a community. The firing line passes through a series of
individuals, and as they succumb, through them to the next.
If you take any particular case of conflict, you will find that the
man is divided between two courses, one of which is disagreeable
because it involves effort and sacrifice and offence. The other is
agreeable because it involves personal ease or personal advancement.
The two motives in man result from the structure of his brain, whose
operations we are obliged to accept: we cannot amend them; they are the
facts of psychology.
It would seem as if the brain of man were so constituted that at
the moment of its full operation the man himself disappears. His
consciousness becomes wholly occupied with impersonal interests.
Thus, in the process of thought, a man begins to see his own personal
interests threatened. If he continues to think, they must vanish.
This is the struggle between right and wrong. It is really a struggle
between two attitudes of mind. It is the experience we suffer when
the mind is passing from the self-regardant to the non-self-regardant
attitude.
Perhaps the discomfort of doing one’s duty is an inseparable incident
of the storage of energy, and the pleasure of neglecting one’s duty,
an incident of the leakage of energy. When I get up and poke the
fire, because I see it will go out if I don’t, I return to my chair
a more energetic being than I was the moment before. At any rate, our
oscillation between two states of consciousness has preoccupied mankind
from the earliest times, and has given rise to all the dualistic
philosophies. The great fact as to the reality of the struggle is
proved to us, not merely by our own consciousness, but because we can
see the logical results of it everywhere in society.
A community is a collection of palpitating animals. Each of us is one
of them, and each of us receives and transmits millions of impressions
hourly. We get heard. We have our exact weight and force. There is no
difficulty about our power of intercourse. Indeed it is the thing we
cannot get away from. No man walks by himself. Between his feet and
the ground are invisible pedals that play upon, and are played upon by
other men. You cannot live or move except by transmitting influence.
The whole of practical life is made up of contact with the passions of
others. A lawyer or a broker is like an engineer who sits behind his
machine, managing its levers and its stopcocks. A trader, a writer, or
a philanthropist, a laborer or a clergyman, does nothing but open and
shut valves in other people. There is no other way of serving your
fellows; there is no other way of earning your living or of wasting
your substance.
We saw that in politics it was impossible to draw a dividing line
anywhere in that series of men whose joint activity and inactivity held
up what we call the evils of politics. Money interest shaded off into
prejudice, and that into mistaken loyalty, and that into indifference.
The striking truth about the whole series was that it showed different
shades of selfishness, lack of energy, and inability to use the mind
accurately. So also any unselfish or accurate use of his mind by the
laborer or by the journalist was, as we saw, apt to throw him out of
employment.
In politics and in morals, all that we condemn, turns out on inspection
to be mere selfishness. But anything in the world that we dislike,
turns out, on inspection, to be self-regardant effort or avoidance
of effort. Bad art may show the gross selfishness of the pot-boiler,
or the refined laziness of prejudice, or the mere weakness that was
unable to see the world for itself, and has been forced to see it
with some one else’s eyes. It is a makeshift. So of bad carpentry or
bad cooking. There is no such special province in life as morality.
Each man regards that thing as immoral which he sees to be selfish. A
proofreader will show the same indignation over a careless job, that a
musician shows over a weak phrasing.
The unimaginable subtlety of our comprehension enables us to detect
selfishness in arts of whose methods we know nothing; we read it like
large print. To speak accurately, all we get from any communication
is a transcript, an image, a picture of the author’s thought, the jar
of intellect and character. Is it supposed that communication between
men goes forward by ratiocination, or that education is a thing taken
in by linear measurement? Thought cannot creep, but only fly. It
proceeds by the magic of stimulation. A good judge can read a good
brief almost as fast as he can turn the pages. If a thing is well put,
it is almost our own before it is said. Ideas pass into us so quickly
that Plato thought we knew them in a former existence. This is due to
the subtlety of our apprehension. We are not satisfied except by an
appeal so refined that our only sensation is one of being made more
alive. “Rien ne me choque” was Chopin’s highest praise. What wonder,
then, that we resent the self-sufficiency of any inferior mind? The
whole of life is no more than a series of pulsations, and all the books
and Bibles, sign-boards, music-boxes, and telegraph wires are the
machinery by which in one way or another the mind of man touches the
mind of man. The world has been going on for so long that we have many
such devices, and out of the millions that have been made, all but the
very best get discarded as old lumber. These things are the language of
the unselfish force upon the globe. It is much nearer truth to think
of them as a single influence than as multifarious. Their origin and
tendency, their practical utility, the veneration in which they are
held, bind them together and make them one. For the world values the
seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men
in proportion as they partake of the character of seers. The Elgin
Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason.
What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the
author’s control, and to ideas imposed upon him by his vision. So with
Beethoven’s Symphonies, with Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,”--with
any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love
them because you say, “These things were not made, they were seen.”
Thus the forces of an unselfish sort upon the globe are cumulative.
The dead heroes fight on forever, and the dead mathematicians expound
forever. It is true that the organization of the selfish forces is
overwhelmingly visible, and that of the unselfish ones invisible.
Napoleon is seen by his contemporaries; Spinoza is not seen. The reason
is simple. The man who wants something must have an office address.
But the man who wants nothing for himself, but spends his whole time
in so using his mind that he himself disappears, lives only as an
influence in the minds of others. He is a song, a theory, a proposition
in algebra. These two conflicting forms of force are then flashed up
and down, forward and back ceaselessly, through and across every social
meeting, through and across society. The novelists and playwrights
deal with this instantaneous interplay of motive; and the time-honored
analysis of self for self on the villain’s side, and sacrifice for
principle on the hero’s side is a true thing. It is a fair abstract of
the world.
You can illustrate in an instant the immediacy of these two hierarchies
of power under which we live and from which we cannot escape. The
selfish ones need not be named; they oppress us. But the unselfish
ones are equally near. If you take any bit of poetry or speech or
writing that you consider great, and examine it, you will find that it
illustrates the logical coherence of all the ideas and feelings that
make you happy; it is a digest of a law of influence. Or conversely,
if you set about to illustrate some experience, and if you can get it
profoundly and accurately stated as what you believe to be the bottom
truth, it will turn under your hands into something familiar. If you
are successful, it will be a kind of poetry.
VII
CONCLUSION
There is force enough in ordinary sunshine to turn all the mills in the
world; and there is beneficent energy enough in any community to make
the people perfectly happy. But it is cramped and deflected, poisoned
by misuse, and turned to hateful ends. The question is how to liberate
energy.
People are fond of thinking the millennium is impossible; but so long
as happiness is dependent on a right use of the faculties, there is
no reason why the millennium should not be reached, and that soon or
unexpectedly. We all know individuals so harmoniously framed that we
say, “If theirs were the common temper of mankind, we should be happy.”
None of the externals of life, about which there is so much buffeting,
control the question. Happiness is in a nutshell. Anybody can have it.
You are happy if you get out of bed on the right side. I can never stop
wondering at the awful simplicity of the principle on which mankind
is constructed. Little Alice in the Looking-Glass could not reach the
porch till she turned her back on it and walked straight into the door.
Renounce the search for happiness and you find the substance. There is
nothing else in the law and the prophets.
We see most men like tee-totums spinning to the left and leading a
dismal life. How shall we get their motive power to spin them to the
right, and make them happy? The practical question is: how to use the
power of sunlight to turn our mills. How can we hold up a prism to
the times that shall disintegrate these rays of complex force, and
then adjust a lens that shall focus the powers of good and make them
turn the wheels of society? The elements are before us, ceaselessly in
motion. πάντα ῥεῖ. The most adamantine institutions are cloud palaces.
There is no stability anywhere; and if you have a steady eye you will
see that the whole fabric is in a flux. Nor are the changes arbitrary.
The formations and re-formations are governed by laws as certain as
those of astronomy. Study the changes and you will find the laws.
Subserve the laws and you can affect the formations. Julius Cæsar did
no more.
The strands of prejudice and passion that bind people together pulsate
with life. All these fellow-citizens are human beings, and there is no
one of them whom we cannot understand, reach, influence. The ordinary
modes of intercourse are at hand. Chief among them you find the great
machinery of government. It dwarfs every other agency, whether for good
or ill. In America this machinery was designed to be at the service of
anybody. It is an advertising agency for ideas, and it is very much
more than this; since the fact that a man is to vote forces him to
think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its
thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw
your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge. You can get
assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do
anything about it. And on the other hand, no amount of verbal proof
will justify a new thought until it has been put in practice.
Alas for ink and paper! There is in all speech and writing a
conventional presumption that human beings shall be logical, or fixed
quantities, or at least coherent creatures. For the purposes of an
essay or a speech, you prove your case, and carry weight accordingly.
If you are very cogent and conclusive, why, you win. Hurrah! the world
is saved. But in real life there are no fixed quantities; all the terms
are variables.
For example, everybody understands what is meant by the “Moral Law.”
People differ only as to the application of that law. Not long ago I
heard a sermon on this law, in which great stress was laid on the fact
that it was a discovered law whereby the truth prevailed. Any truce
with evil meant defeat for the cause of righteousness. This was the law
of God, tested by experience, and in constant operation like the law
of gravity, a thing you could not escape. The preacher pictured the
solitary struggle of the great man seeking truth, his proclamation of
the truth, the refusal of the world to receive it, and the prophet’s
isolation and apparent failure. Nevertheless what the prophet said had
always the same content. It was an appeal to the instincts of man upon
the question of right and wrong, and in the end it was accepted.
Now the man who made this exposition, and it was admirable, is in
regard to politics a believer in compromise. I think I have never known
him support the idealist cause in a campaign; and upon most occasions
of crisis he is found heartily throwing stones at the crusaders.
What words in any language can make this man understand that his
law--which he really does profoundly understand as a law--applies
to reform movements? Why, no words will do it, only example. New
statements about morality, however eloquent, add nothing to our
knowledge. Everything is known about the moral law, except how you
yourself will act under given circumstances. You have nothing but
example to contribute.
People interrogate force. They are unconvinced, and are carried,
still protesting, through the air and deposited in a new place. And
then, thereafter, they agree with you about the whole matter. Mere
intellectual assent to your proposition is, even when you can get it,
worth nothing. Your object is not to confute, but to stimulate. What
you really want is that every man you meet shall drop his business
and devote his entire life and energy to your cause. You will accept
nothing less than this. Is it not clear that people are not moved by
logic? Your conduct must ultimately square with reason and be justified
by the laws of the universe and the constitution of other people’s
minds; but you must value only that approval which comes from the
deeper fibres in men. You need not be concerned about the bickerings of
contemporary misunderstanding. Leave these for the historical society.
Act first--explain afterwards. That is the way to get heard. Must you
show your passport and certificate of birth and legitimacy to every
editor and every lackey? They’ll find out who you are by and by. It
is easier to knock a man down than to say why you do it. The act is
sometimes needed, and wisdom then approves it after the event. People
who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this,--that reform
consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.
Such are the practical dictates of agitation. Their justification lies
always with events. It may be that you must wait seven centuries for an
audience, or it may be that in two years your voice will be heeded. If
you are really a forerunner of better times, the times will appear and
explain you. It will then turn out that your movement was the keynote
of the national life. You really differed from your neighbors only in
this,--that your mind had gone faster than theirs along the road all
were travelling.
We are all slaves of the age; we can only see such principles as
society reveals. The philosophy of other ages does us little good.
We repeat the old formulas and cry up the prophets; but we see
no connection between the truth we know so well in print and its
counterpart in real life. The moral commonplaces, as, for instance,
“Honesty is the best policy,” “A single just man can influence an
entire community,” “Never compromise a principle,” are social truths.
They are always true, but they are only obviously true in very virtuous
communities. In a vile community the influence of a just man is potent
but not visible. In a perfectly virtuous era it is clear that a cheat
could not drive a fraudulent trade.
A seer is a man with such sharp eyes for cause and effect that he sees
social truth, even under unfavorable conditions. And yet even the
seers generally had auspicious weather,--that is to say, storms of
moral passion. The whole race of Jews lived in fervent exaltation for
generations, and revealed to their sharp-sighted prophets deep glimpses
of social truth. Hence the Bible. “A prophet is not without honor save
in his own country.” What happy precision! What sound generalization!
But every township in Israel had its prophet, and the truth was a
commonplace.
All the world’s moral wisdom would turn into literal truth upon the
regeneration of society. It tends to become obvious in regenerative
eras. In dark ages it becomes paradox. Standards are multiplied, and
makeshift theories come in,--one rule for social conduct, another for
business, another for politics. Expedient supplants principle. Indeed
you may gauge the degradation of an age by the multiplicity of its
standards. It is the same with the fine arts. To the men that made
the statues and the pictures, these things were the shortest symbols
of truth, and required no explanation. In the dark ages that followed
they became a mystery and a paradox. But the traditions and objects
survived and had to be accounted for. An age that cannot produce them
requires a philosophy of æsthetics. Thus a thousand reasons are given
to explain their existence, and finally it is agreed that they are
something superfluous and fictitious,--conventional lies, like poetry,
like loving your neighbor.
Nothing but a general increase of interest in the aspect of common
things would explain to us the great masters. A revival of interest in
the way the world looks is the precursor of painting: the perceptions
of every one are quickening. And so we may be sure that we are upon the
edge of a better era when the old moral commonplaces begin to glow like
jewels and the stones to testify.
You cannot expect any one but a scientist to be startled at the
movement of a glacier. But if you distribute a few micrometric
instruments upon that gloomy ice-field, the American civic
consciousness, and if you take observations not oftener than once
in three years, you will be startled. The direction of the general
movement is absolutely right. But it all moves together. Special signs
of progress imply general progress, and hence comes the extraordinary
and scientific interest in the awakening of this community. It is like
a man lapsed into the deepest coma who is beginning to stir. Watch
him, take his pulse, surround him with every apparatus of experimental
physiology, and you will find the laws of health, the norm of progress.