Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE;
outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading, seeing plays,
playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his
mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and IT
AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still
compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and
bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect
would have had no OUTSIDE MATERIAL to work with, and could have invented
none; and NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES, teachings, moldings, persuasions,
inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so
Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced
something--something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences,
associations, and training. In France he would have produced something
better--something up to the highest limit of the French influences and
training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the
OUTSIDE HELPS AFFORDED BY THAT LAND'S IDEALS, INFLUENCES, AND TRAINING.
You and I are but sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must
do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us
for not turning out Gobelins.
Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel
proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause
and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
O.M. It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
being a coward?
O.M. PERSONAL merit? No. A brave man does not CREATE his bravery. He
is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him.
A baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that?
A baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? The one
is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected
and despised--where is the sense in it?
Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. What do you say to that?
O.M. That it shows the value of TRAINING IN RIGHT DIRECTIONS OVER
TRAINING IN WRONG ONES. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
education, in right directions--TRAINING ONE'S SELF-APPROBATION TO
ELEVATE ITS IDEALS.
Y.M. But as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's
project and achievement?
O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man than he
was before, but HE didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his.
Y.M. Whose, then?
O.M. His MAKE, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
outside.
Y.M. His make?
O.M. To start with, he was NOT utterly and completely a coward, or the
influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a
cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a
man. There was something to build upon. There was a SEED. No seed, no
plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no
merit of HIS that the seed was there.
Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of CULTIVATING it, the resolution to
cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence ALL impulses, good or
bad, come--from OUTSIDE. If that timid man had lived all his life in a
community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy
of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of
bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility
have occurred to him to RESOLVE to become brave. He COULD NOT ORIGINATE
THE IDEA--it had to come to him from the OUTSIDE. And so, when he heard
bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed.
Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you
are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf--she did it
for him. HE must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his.
Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
O.M. No. OUTSIDE INFLUENCES reared it. At the command--and
trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the
daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE, he
drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to
run, but he did not dare; he was AFRAID to run, with all those soldiers
looking on. He was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had
risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of the campaign
experience will have taught him that not ALL who go into battle get
hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also
have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at
with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the
worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. After that
he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will
not be a shade nor suggestion of PERSONAL MERIT in it anywhere; it will
all have come from the OUTSIDE. The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes
than--
Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
no credit for it?
O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an
important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon.
Y.M. What detail is that?
O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse
that ever moves a person to do a thing.
Y.M. The ONLY one! Is there but one?
O.M. That is all. There is only one.
Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole
impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
O.M. The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT--the NECESSITY of contenting
his own spirit and WINNING ITS APPROVAL.
Y.M. Oh, come, that won't do!
O.M. Why won't it?
Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to
himself.
O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do HIM good, FIRST; otherwise he
will not do it. He may THINK he is doing it solely for the other
person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
first--the other's person's benefit has to always take SECOND place.
Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self-sacrifice? Please
answer me that.
O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
benefit to one's self can result from it.
II
Man's Sole Impulse--the Securing of His Own Approval
Old Man. There have been instances of it--you think?
Young Man. INSTANCES? Millions of them!
O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined
them--critically?
Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
back of them.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his
pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
through the storm. There--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some
other way of looking at it?
O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt
and what he thought?
Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
of it.
O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His
heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
O.M. He felt well?
Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the REAL why of his
making the investment. In the first place HE couldn't bear the pain
which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of HIS
pain--this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
the old woman HIS conscience would torture him all the way home.
Thinking of HIS pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't
relieve the old woman HE would not get any sleep. He must buy some
sleep--still thinking of HIMSELF, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought
himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the
tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all
for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On
his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit!
The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--FIRST--to
CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT; secondly to relieve HER sufferings. Is it your
opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and
inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?
Y.M. From a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others
not. What is your opinion?
O.M. Then there is but ONE law, one source.
Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one
source?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. FROM HIS CRADLE TO
HIS GRAVE A MAN NEVER DOES A SINGLE THING WHICH HAS ANY FIRST AND
FOREMOST OBJECT BUT ONE--TO SECURE PEACE OF MIND, SPIRITUAL COMFORT, FOR
HIMSELF.
Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual
or physical?
O.M. No. EXCEPT ON THOSE DISTINCT TERMS--that it shall FIRST secure HIS
OWN spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves MORE than he loves
peace--THE APPROVAL OF HIS NEIGHBORS AND THE PUBLIC. And perhaps there
is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the DISAPPROVAL of
his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go to
the field--not because his spirit will be ENTIRELY comfortable there, but
because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained
at home. He will always do the thing which will bring him the MOST
mental comfort--for that is THE SOLE LAW OF HIS LIFE. He leaves the
weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not
sorry enough to sacrifice his OWN comfort to secure theirs.
Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
and peaceful man to--
O.M. Go to war? Yes--public opinion can force some men to do ANYTHING.
Y.M. ANYTHING?
O.M. Yes--anything.
Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a
wrong thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He
regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
religion--but in deference to PUBLIC OPINION he fought a duel. He deeply
loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted
them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong
sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. In the
then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been
comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight. The
teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart,
his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of
his spiritual comfort. A man will do ANYTHING, no matter what it is, TO
SECURE HIS SPIRITUAL COMFORT; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded
to any act which has not that goal for its object. Hamilton's act was
compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this
it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all
men's lives. Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man
cannot be comfortable without HIS OWN approval. He will secure the
largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices.
Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get PUBLIC
approval.
O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in
the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the MOST comfort
of mind, the most SELF-approval; so he sacrificed all other values to get
it.
Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
braved the public contempt.
O.M. They acted ACCORDING TO THEIR MAKE. They valued their principles
and the approval of their families ABOVE the public approval. They took
the thing they valued MOST and let the rest go. They took what would
give them the LARGEST share of PERSONAL CONTENTMENT AND APPROVAL--a man
ALWAYS does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the
wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other spirit-contenting
reasons.
Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
O.M. There are no others.
Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
burning building, what do you call that?
O.M. When he does it, it is the law of HIS make. HE can't bear to see
the child in that peril (a man of a different make COULD), and so he
tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he was
after--HIS OWN APPROVAL.
Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
Magnanimity, Forgiveness?
O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
securing one's self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject
to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
SAME PERSON all the time. To change the figure, the COMPULSION that
moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the
contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.
Y.M. That is foolishness. Love--
O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not
PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN. When its object is
happy IT is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after.
Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
mother-love?
O.M. No, IT is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go naked
to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer
torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living
PLEASURE in making these sacrifices. SHE DOES IT FOR THAT REWARD--that
self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. SHE WOULD DO
IT FOR YOUR CHILD IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
O.M. It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact.
Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which--
O.M. No. There is NO act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting
one's own spirit.
Y.M. The world's philanthropists--
O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them--from habit and training;
and THEY could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did
not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes THEM happy to see others
happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
after--HAPPINESS, SELF-APPROVAL. Why don't miners do the same thing?
Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by NOT doing it.
There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.
Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty's sake?
O.M. That IS DOES NOT EXIST. Duties are not performed for duty's SAKE,
but because their NEGLECT would make the man UNCOMFORTABLE. A man
performs but ONE duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of
making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly perform
this sole and only duty by HELPING his neighbor, he will do it; if he can
most satisfyingly perform it by SWINDLING his neighbor, he will do it.
But he always looks out for Number One--FIRST; the effects upon others
are a SECONDARY matter. Men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a
thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS
NOT EXISTED. A man often honestly THINKS he is sacrificing himself
merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom
impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus
acquire peace for his soul.
Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
lives to contenting their consciences.
O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience--that
independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who
is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because there
are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a
philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still
another. As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line
of morals or conduct (leaving TRAINING out of the account), a man's
conscience is totally valueless. I know a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose
self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase
it with exactness--BECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MAN--a man
whom he had never seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a
fight, this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger
for it. He neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it
off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this
conduct. At last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted
up the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of
SELF-SACRIFICE (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do
it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented
spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we are so made that we
will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even another man's life.
Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences. You mean that we
are not BORN with consciences competent to guide us aright?
O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
not have to be taught it.
Y.M. But consciences can be TRAINED?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
O.M. Yes--they do their share; they do what they can.
Y.M. And the rest is done by--
O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences
which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from
cradle to grave.
Y.M. You have tabulated these?
O.M. Many of them--yes.
Y.M. Will you read me the result?
O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
O.M. It CAN'T be trained to do a thing for any OTHER reason. The thing
is impossible.
Y.M. There MUST be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded
in human history somewhere.
O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him--
O.M. Wait. Describe the MAN. Describe the FELLOW-BEING. State if there
is an AUDIENCE present; or if they are ALONE.
Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?
Y.M. If you choose.
O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter?
Y.M. Well, n-no--make it someone else.
O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it.
O.M. But there is here and there a man who WOULD. People, for instance,
like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire;
and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked
home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do
it. And why? Because they couldn't BEAR to see a fellow-being
struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would give THEM
pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account. THEY WOULDN'T
DO IT OTHERWISE. They strictly obey the law which I have been insisting
upon. You must remember and always distinguish the people who CAN'T BEAR
things from people who CAN. It will throw light upon a number of
apparently "self-sacrificing" cases.
Y.M. Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting.
O.M. Yes. And so true.
Y.M. Come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in
order to gratify his mother.
O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies HIM to gratify
his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy
would not do the act. He MUST obey the iron law. None can escape it.
Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who--
O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it.
Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's
conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be
taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy,
but I don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up--
A Little Story
O.M. I will tell you a little story:
Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched by
the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire
which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them
think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
moments, reproached him and said:
"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."
And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING? WE HAVE DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."
The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."
Then the mother said:
"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD,--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"
Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
Y.M. Ah--you see, HIS CONSCIENCE WAS AWAKENED!
O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It PAINED him to see the mother
suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought HIM pain. It did
not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy,
for he was absorbed in providing PLEASURE for himself, then. Providing
it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of AWAKENED CONSCIENCE.
That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of
trouble again. A cure like that is a PERMANENT cure.
O.M. Pardon--I had not finished the story. We are creatures of OUTSIDE
INFLUENCES--we originate NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of
thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is
ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel
that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him
come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake
and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it. From that
moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He became a
believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy
of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave him no
rest, no peace. He MUST have rest and peace--it is the law of nature.
There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving
imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan country
ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home and
nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken
hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here
was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other
boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish
faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in his
last moments reproached him and said:
"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."
And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING? WE HAD DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."
The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."
Then the mother said:
"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"
The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter
and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former
case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know
right from wrong.
O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's
conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing
which I ask you to notice.
Y.M. What is that?
O.M. That in both cases the man's ACT gave him no spiritual discomfort,
and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. But
afterward when it resulted in PAIN to HIM, he was sorry. Sorry it had
inflicted pain upon the others, BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT
THAT THEIR PAIN GAVE HIM PAIN. Our consciences take NO notice of pain
inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US.
In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another
person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel
would not have been troubled by that Christian mother's distress. Don't
you believe that?
Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the AVERAGE infidel, I think.
O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--Jesuit
missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
episodes quoted by Parkman.
Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number
of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate,
Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach
misleading MEANINGS to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment,
self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our
attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the
dictionary which ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice. It
describes a thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and
never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every
act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every
emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our
breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad,
our only impelling power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere
inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no
progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently
uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered.
Y.M. I am not convinced.
O.M. You will be when you think.
III
Instances in Point
Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self-Approval since we
talked?
Young Man. I have.
O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. Will you try to
keep that in mind and not forget it?
Y.M. Yes. Why?
O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
in his own head. THE UTTERER OF A THOUGHT ALWAYS UTTERS A SECOND-HAND
ONE.
Y.M. Oh, now--
O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been
considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
self-contenting impulse--(primarily). You have sought. What have you
found?
Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but--
O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared?
It naturally would.
Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical
laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of
a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is fired
with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down
and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this
sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He resigns
his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and
preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little
groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he
rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause
of Christ. You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was
constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all
this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and
for DUTY'S SAKE he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed.
O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing
himself--NOT for the glory of God, PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST
to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--DID HE
SACRIFICE ANYBODY ELSE?
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
place of it. Had he dependents?
Y.M. Well--yes.
O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect THEM?
Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young
sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so
that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was
furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school
and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
O.M. The old father's comforts were now curtailed?
Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
O.M. The sister's music-lessens had to stop?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. The young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell
upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old
father, or something like that?
Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
that he sacrificed everybody EXCEPT himself. Haven't I told you that no
man EVER sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record
anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing of its
slave for either its MOMENTARY or its PERMANENT contentment, that thing
must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may
stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man RUINED HIS FAMILY
to please and content his Interior Monarch--
Y.M. And help Christ's cause.
O.M. Yes--SECONDLY. Not firstly. HE thought it was firstly.
Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
that if he saved a hundred souls in New York--
O.M. The sacrifice of the FAMILY would be justified by that great profit
upon the--the--what shall we call it?
Y.M. Investment?
O.M. Hardly. How would SPECULATION do? How would GAMBLE do? Not a
solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was GAMBLING--with his family
for "chips." However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get
on the track of the secret original impulse, the REAL impulse, that moved
him to so nobly self-sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under the
superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a chapter or
so. . . . Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself sooner or
later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back to
his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "HURT TO THE HEART, HIS
PRIDE HUMBLED." Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for
Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is LOST SIGHT OF, is not
even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely
forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress quite innocently and
unconsciously gives the whole business away. The trouble was this: this
man merely PREACHED to the poor; that is not the University Settlement's
way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not
enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army eloquence. It was courteous to
Holme--but cool. It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom.
"PERISHED WERE ALL HIS DREAMS OF DISTINCTION, THE PRAISE AND GRATEFUL
APPROVAL--" Of whom? The Savior? No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of
whom, then? Of "His FELLOW-WORKERS." Why did he want that? Because the
Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it.
That emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been
seeking, the original impulse, the REAL impulse, which moved the obscure
and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
that crusade to the East Side--which said original impulse was this, to
wit: without knowing it HE WENT THERE TO SHOW A NEGLECTED WORLD THE LARGE
TALENT THAT WAS IN HIM, AND RISE TO DISTINCTION. As I have warned you
before, NO act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. But I
pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but diligently examine
for yourself. Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of
one, or of a duty done for DUTY'S SAKE, take it to pieces and look for
the REAL motive. It is always there.
Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it,
I cannot help myself.
O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
Y.M. No--at least, not yet. But take the case of servant-tipping in
Europe. You pay the HOTEL for service; you owe the servants NOTHING, yet
you pay them besides. Doesn't that defeat it?
O.M. In what way?
Y.M. You are not OBLIGED to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and--
O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
Y.M. Well, yes.
O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Why of course?
Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to--everybody recognizes it as a DUTY.
O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for DUTY'S sake?
Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not ALL
compassion, charity, benevolence?
Y.M. Well--perhaps not.
O.M. Is ANY of it?
Y.M. I--perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?
Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't
get any of all, to speak of.
O.M. Couldn't THAT work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?
Y.M. I am not denying it.
O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little
self-interest added?
Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS thing. I think it will be
difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
the HOTEL bill does it annoy you?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you
came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
maids had a fixed charge?
Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion
nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the AMOUNT of
the tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING annoys you. What is it?
Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.
O.M. So you have to guess?
Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in
the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are
only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried
and miserable.
O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay
unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.
O.M. It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom
you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.
O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing
you HAD done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see,
by the signs, that you have it JUST RIGHT, and you go away mightily
satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you
have given him a good deal MORE than was necessary.
O.M. NECESSARY? Necessary for what?
Y.M. To content him.
O.M. How do you feel THEN?
Y.M. Repentant.
O.M. It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning yourself in
guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would CONTENT
him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
Y.M. What was it?
O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
get a look which would SHAME YOU BEFORE FOLK. That would give you PAIN.
YOU--for you are only working for yourself, not HIM. If you gave him too
much you would be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF for it, and that would give YOU
pain--another case of thinking of YOURSELF, protecting yourself, SAVING
YOURSELF FROM DISCOMFORT. You never think of the servant once--except to
guess out how to get HIS APPROVAL. If you get that, you get your OWN
approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master
inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was NO
OTHER thing at stake, as a matter of FIRST interest, anywhere in the
transaction.
Further Instances
Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing
in man, ruled out! non-existent!
O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
Y.M. Why, certainly.
O.M. I haven't said it.
Y.M. What did you say, then?
O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another ALONE. Men make daily
sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake FIRST. The act must
content their own spirit FIRST. The other beneficiaries come second.
Y.M. And the same with duty for duty's sake?
O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must
content his spirit FIRST. He must feel better for DOING the duty than he
would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. Take the case of the BERKELEY CASTLE.
O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and
examine it, if you like.
Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the
boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment
on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved."
There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and
children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers
took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on
dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went
down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other than
that?
O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you
have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
unflinching way?
Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
higher and higher around you.
Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't DO
it.
O.M. But it would be your DUTY to do it.
Y.M. Yes, I know--but I couldn't.
O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some
of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that
great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you? Don't you know that you could
go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them
on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of
them would stay in the ranks to the end?
Y.M. Yes, I know that.
O.M. But you TRAIN them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's
self-respect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to content a SOLDIER'S
spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. They could not content
that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they?
Y.M. I suppose not.
O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the DUTY'S sake, but for their
OWN sake--primarily. The DUTY was JUST THE SAME, and just as imperative,
when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform
it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another
spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They HAD to; it is the law.
TRAINING is potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher
ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence.
Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
rather than be recreant to it.
O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that
is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. He could not
perform that duty for duty's SAKE, for that would not content his spirit,
and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to FIRST. It takes
precedence of all other duties.
Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an
honest man on the other ticket.
O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. He will always
be true to his make and training.
IV
Training
Young Man. You keep using that word--training. By it do you
particularly mean--
Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of
it--but not a large part. I mean ALL the outside influences. There are
a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his
trainers stands ASSOCIATION. It is his human environment which
influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets
him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave that road he will find
himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose
approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he
takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about him create
his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his
religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He THINKS he
does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. You have
seen Presbyterians?
Y.M. Many.
O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists?
And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman
Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers,
and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the
Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists
Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics
Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians,
and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors,
and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian
Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormons--and so on?
Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
O.M. That list of sects is not a record of STUDIES, searchings, seekings
after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what ASSOCIATION can
do. If you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of
guessing the complexion of his religion: English--Protestant; American
--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American--Roman
Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic; Turk--Mohammedan; and so on. And when
you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious
books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he
avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. In America if
you know which party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations
are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he
reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed
of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge,
and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its
doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around
SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think
he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who
THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought
diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect
honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without
doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE
SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith
to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political
Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels
which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True
Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on
the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER;
but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his
bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors.
There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever
heard of a permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is
impossible. However, to drop back to the text--training: all training
is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the
largest part of it. A man is never anything but what his outside
influences have made him. They train him downward or they train him
upward--but they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time.
Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train
downward.
O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It
is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only
to change his habitat--his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must
come from the OUTSIDE--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose
in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the
initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The
chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water
a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a
surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. The history of man is full of
such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald
soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. From
that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking
thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two
hundred years--and will go on. The chance reading of a book or of a
paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him
renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are IN SYMPATHY WITH
HIS NEW IDEAL: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of
his way of life.
Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
O.M. Not a new one--an old one. Old as mankind.
Y.M. What is it?
O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with
INITIATORY IMPULSES TOWARD HIGH IDEALS. It is what the tract-distributor
does. It is what the missionary does. It is what governments ought to
do.
Y.M. Don't they?
O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the
smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they
put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is to say,
they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would be
well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so
ASSOCIATION makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into
captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively
innocent at times. They hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this
breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. They comfortably
jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to
starve.
Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?
O.M. Adam hadn't it.
Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets ALL his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
O.M. From the OUTSIDE. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a
thousand unknown sources. Mainly UNCONSCIOUSLY gathered.
Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest
man's the noblest work of God."
O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and
sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there. The man's ASSOCIATIONS
develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The result is
accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to--
O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? HE is not the
architect of his honesty.
Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing--to HIM. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them--and so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues. That is
the main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable
to the parties concerned; the NEGLECT of this training can make this life
a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.
Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
HIMSELF, for it makes him what he is.
O.M. I said training and ANOTHER thing. Let that other thing pass, for
the moment. What were you going to say?
Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty-two years.
Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful.
We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold
her for her remissnesses, but at times I do--I can't seem to control
myself. Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress,
this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I
lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and
immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful
and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the
very word I would use: "You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane." When
she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of
it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and
hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "You've forgotten
them again!" You say a man always does the thing which will best please
his Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation
to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the
Master, who is always primarily concerned about HIMSELF?
O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse.
SECONDARILY you made preparation to save the girl, but PRIMARILY its
object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper
and not fly out at the girl?
Y.M. Yes. My mother.
O.M. You love her?
Y.M. Oh, more than that!
O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
O.M. Why? YOU WOULD DO IT FOR PAY, SOLELY--for PROFIT. What profit
would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
Y.M. Personally? None. To please HER is enough.
O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, WASN'T to save the
girl a humiliation, but to PLEASE YOUR MOTHER. It also appears that to
please your mother gives YOU a strong pleasure. Is not that the profit
which you get out of the investment? Isn't that the REAL profits and
FIRST profit?
Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
O.M. In ALL transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that YOU GET
THE FIRST PROFIT. Otherwise there is no transaction.
Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
upon it, why did I threw it away by losing my temper?
O.M. In order to get ANOTHER profit which suddenly superseded it in
value.
Y.M. Where was it?
O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and FOR THE MOMENT
its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it. In
that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. You
did enjoy it, didn't you?
Y.M. For--for a quarter of a second. Yes--I did.
O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or FRACTION of a
moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's
LATEST whim, whatever it may be.
Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have
cut my hand off for what I had done.
O.M. Right. You had humiliated YOURSELF, you see, you had given
yourself PAIN. Nothing is of FIRST importance to a man except results
which damage HIM or profit him--all the rest is SECONDARY. Your Master
was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He required a
prompt REPENTANCE; you obeyed again; you HAD to--there is never any
escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he changes his
mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you
will obey, ALWAYS. If he requires repentance, you content him, you will
always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept
contented, let the terms be what they may.
Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't my
mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that
girl?
O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
Y.M. Oh, certainly--many times.
O.M. More times this year than last?
Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
O.M. More times last year than the year before?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there IS use in training.
Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
O.M. It will. UP to YOUR limit.
Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was EVERYTHING. I
corrected you, and said "training and ANOTHER thing." That other thing
is TEMPERAMENT--that is, the disposition you were born with. YOU CAN'T
ERADICATE YOUR DISPOSITION NOR ANY RAG OF IT--you can only put a pressure
on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm temper?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
down nearly all the time. ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will
never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then,
but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make
more. There IS use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach
a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will
proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing
your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight
your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon
you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You
will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the
roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it
also strengthens the impulse.
Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare
the girl for HER sake PRIMARILY, not mine?
O.M. Why--yes. In heaven.
Y.M. (AFTER A REFLECTIVE PAUSE) Temperament. Well, I see one must
allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her room;
she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the
water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that Jane had
forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to ring,
but she said, "No, don't do that; it would only distress her to be
confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve
that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." I
say--has my mother an Interior Master?--and where was he?
O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and
pleasure and contentment. The girl's distress would have pained YOUR
MOTHER. Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. I
know women who would have gotten a No. 1 PLEASURE out of ringing Jane
up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the
law of their make and training, which are the servants of their Interior
Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance
came from training. The GOOD kind of training--whose best and highest
function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon
its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others.
Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it?
Admonition
O.M. Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while
contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and
the community.
Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
O.M. No.
Y.M. It has been taught before?
O.M. For ten thousand years.
Y.M. By whom?
O.M. All the great religions--all the great gospels.
Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
been done before.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Haven't I put YOU FIRST, and your neighbor and the community
AFTERWARD?
Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
difference between frankness and shuffling.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. The others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
and that you will do nothing at FIRST HAND but for his sake; then they
turn square around and require you to do good for OTHER'S sake CHIEFLY;
and to do your duty for duty's SAKE, chiefly; and to do acts of
SELF-SACRIFICE. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same
ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in
man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others
dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and
illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to
man's SECOND-PLACE powers and to powers which have NO EXISTENCE in him,
thus advancing them to FIRST place; whereas in my Admonition I stick
logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior
Master's requirements FIRST, and keep them there.
Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result--RIGHT LIVING--has
yours an advantage over the others?
O.M. One, yes--a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions.
When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as
to the REAL chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he
is.
Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
advantage?
O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would
only examine the herald's records.
Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.
O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
Y.M. But would he?
O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving?
Y.M. Where?
O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty
low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?
Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS
he is doing good for others' sake?
O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.
Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
deed for his OWN sake first-off, instead of first for the GOOD DEED'S
sake, no man would ever do one.
O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
Y.M. Yes. This morning.
O.M. Give the particulars.
Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to
build another one.
O.M. You furnished it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. You were glad you had the money?
Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse.
O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my MOTHER would have captured the chance to set old Sally
up.
O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
Y.M. Oh, I just was!
O.M. Now, then--
Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them;
but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the
charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure,
and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give ME
another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and
out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness. I did the whole
thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking
out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have confessed. Go
on.
O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?
Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played
the limit!
O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a
man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two
dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly
do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all
the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the
impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment
he will get out of the act.
Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
sake of No. 1?
O.M. That is what I fully believe.
Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be
happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in the benefits
resulting.
Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
O.M. DILIGENTLY TRAIN YOUR IDEALS UPWARD AND STILL UPWARD TOWARD A
SUMMIT WHERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR CHIEFEST PLEASURE IN CONDUCT WHICH, WHILE
CONTENTING YOU, WILL BE SURE TO CONFER BENEFITS UPON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND
THE COMMUNITY.
Y.M. One's EVERY act proceeds from EXTERIOR INFLUENCES, you think?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea,
but it comes in from the OUTSIDE? I see him handling money--for
instance--and THAT moves me to the crime?
O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the LATEST
outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years. No SINGLE outside influence can make a man
do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to
start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of NEW
influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that thing. I will put
the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here
are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years
of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these
strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to
bear upon the ingots?
Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours. Will there be a result?
Y.M. None that I know of.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
O.M. Very well. The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is
ineffective because the gold TAKES NO INTEREST IN IT. The ingot remains
as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized
condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar
nature--say TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO. It stirs
up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE
application of the influence works no damage. Let us continue the
application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. By the end
of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden
with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. At
last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no
notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will apply that temptation in the
form of a pressure of my finger. You note the result?
Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the SINGLE outside influence that does the work, but only the LAST one of
a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how my
SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but
only the LAST one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate with a
parable.
A Parable
O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys--twins. They
were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal
appearance. They were the models of the Sunday-school. At fifteen
George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed
away for the Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen
George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the
advanced Bible class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the
European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of
a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At twenty-six
George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village
church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a man
passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic
smile, "Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me
reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him,
and goes by here every evening of his life." That OUTSIDE
INFLUENCE--that remark--was enough for George, but IT was not the one
that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the
eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act
for which their long gestation had made preparation. It had never
entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to
clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized
quicksilver.
V
More About the Machine
Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has
answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that she
has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's
privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt
her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The
human being always looks down when he is examining another person's
standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up.
The Man-Machine Again
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control--carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell
it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still
for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with
subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would
wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake
to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
another subject. Make the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot
keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
After an Interval of Days
O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking
on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside
in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
Y.M. Don't mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out
and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw
Kate, And she saw--"
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It
is master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that
it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get
it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me:
a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a
kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old
persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in
character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid
fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are
tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there
are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is
exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through--all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind
is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind--if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C
two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork
and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down,
helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it
all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault;
saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast
and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude
black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant,
and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing
and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely
dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on
and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting
panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind
without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name
the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen
minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.
Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap
out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the right word.
It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
The Thinking-Process
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved
the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine. [1]
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not
their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the
ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a
rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL
superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of
necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.
Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?
O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Very well?
O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
by such means.
Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
conversion--
O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Well?
O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make
it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.
Y.M. After so--
O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not
humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be
spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless
possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a
damaging fact approaches.
----- 1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a
century earlier.
VI
Instinct and Thought
Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
Old Man. He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
O.M. I don't--morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.
Y.M. Are you joking?
O.M. No, I am not.
Y.M. Then what do you mean?
O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.
Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on A level. What is it? The intellectual?
O.M. In form--not a degree.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the
African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.
Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
O.M. What is instinct?
Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.
O.M. What originated the habit?
Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out.
O.M. How do you know it didn't?
Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.
O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?
Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.
O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that
it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit;
thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks
in its sleep, so to speak.
Y.M. Illustrate it.
O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is
an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that
observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed
that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to
escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the
wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's
thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
front and rear.
Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin
in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.
Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.
Y.M. The cow illustration is not--
O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the
same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for
it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get
into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the
corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and
went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out
for himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him
sweat for it.
Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate. Enlarge.
O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept
on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a
journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its
friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months
later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him
home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory
and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.
Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.
O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird
flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering
cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young
bird in his mouth--unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush
and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came
for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers
persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a
little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog
was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to
give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the
stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she
knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her
mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and
that together--and that is all that thought IS--and out of them built her
logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't have done it any
better himself.
Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
O.M. Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could
you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go
through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to
put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I
do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I
am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is
well up toward man?
O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.
O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.
O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like
his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the
Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier.
Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
elevates the dumb beasts to--to--
O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast.
Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
O.M. On quite simple ones. "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech. We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases. We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather
yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" We understand the cat
when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we
understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be?
They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the
disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come
over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!"
We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few
of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the
hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate
to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that
she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of
others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity
and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull
perceptions. Now as to the ant--
Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to
think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.
O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects who
could approach the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them
are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for
convenience and adaptability.
Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
before we decide. The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.
Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
Y.M. Instinct again.
O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.
Y.M. Instinct.
O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
Y.M. Instinct, of course.
O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid
them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the
nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John
repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did
as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their
reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and
strangers overboard. Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and
intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their
experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
executed? Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't
it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
circumstances?
Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it. I believe it was thought.
O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or
drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At any rate, he
watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes--failures,
every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a
consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time
they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the
floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over
the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that
instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?
Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.