[Illustration: _Theodore Roosevelt_]
REALIZABLE
IDEALS
Earl Lectures of Pacific Theological Seminary
delivered at Berkeley, California,
in 1911.
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[Illustration]
SAN FRANCISCO
WHITAKER & RAY-WIGGIN CO.
1912
COPYRIGHT
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1911
INTRODUCTION
The addresses printed in this volume were delivered under the auspices
of Pacific Theological Seminary by the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, as
Earl Lecturer, in the Spring of 1911. The Seminary is fortunate
in possessing a Lectureship founded by Mr. Edwin T. Earl in 1901,
whose purpose, as stated in the articles of foundation, is “to aid
in securing at the University of California the presentation of
Christian truth by bringing to Berkeley year by year eminent Christian
scholars and thinkers to speak upon themes calculated to illustrate
and disseminate Christian thought and minister to Christian life.” The
uncommon public interest which this series of lectures aroused, and
the attendance of many thousands who daily crowded the Greek Theatre
to hear them, emphasized to the Lectureship Committee the desirability
of yielding to a wide-spread demand for their publication. Since Mr.
Roosevelt did not have a manuscript, arrangements were made for an
accurate stenographic report, which was afterwards submitted to him for
revision. So much should be said in explanation of the forensic form of
these lectures. Their fine ethical purpose justifies the hope that they
may continue to stimulate good citizenship in wider circles than those
which came within reach of the speaker’s voice.
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADÈ.
September, 1911.
Pacific Theological Seminary,
Berkeley, California.
CONTENTS
[Illustration]
PAGE
Realizable Ideals 1
The Home and the Child 34
The Bible and the Life of the People 67
The Public Servant and the Eighth
Commandment 91
The Shaping of Public Opinion and the
Ninth Commandment 124
REALIZABLE IDEALS
When I was first asked to deliver this course of lectures I refused
just because what I wanted to preach was action. I did not feel sure
that I could preach action in five lectures. I finally accepted,
because it seemed to me so admirable a thing for the Seminary to have
started this kind of a lecture course and so admirable a thing for the
founder of the course to have provided for it that I did not feel quite
at liberty to refuse.
All our extraordinary material development, our wonderful industrial
growth will go for nothing unless with that growth goes hand in hand
the moral, the spiritual growth that will enable us to use aright
the other as an instrument. I hesitated some time as to exactly what
title to give to the lectures I was to deliver because I wanted to
use the two titles of Applied Ethics and Realizable Ideals. I chose
these titles because they seemed to me to put into words the only
spirit which I think counts for anything in preaching, whether by a
professional or by an amateur; the spirit which regards preaching as
worthless unless transmuted into action. If we treat the study of
ethics as a mere intellectual diversion then we probably do ourselves
little harm and certainly do ourselves no good. If we consciously or
carelessly preach ideals which cannot be realized and which we do
not intend to have realized, then so far from accomplishing a worthy
purpose we actually tend to weaken the morality we ostensibly preach.
Now, anything I have to say to you during these lectures will derive
its whole value from the spirit in me as I say it and the spirit in
you as you listen to it. If I preach to you anything which I do not
strive, with whatever haltings and shortcomings, myself to realize then
I am unworthy for you to listen to; and if, on the other hand, you
come to listen to me from mere curiosity, or to get a little temporary
enjoyment, then you would better have stayed at home.
I chose as the opening lecture this address on realizable ideals,
because the longer I have lived the more strongly I have felt the harm
done by the practice among so many men of keeping their consciences
in separate compartments; sometimes a Sunday conscience and a weekday
conscience; sometimes a conscience as to what they say or what they
like other people to say, and another conscience as to what they
do and like other people to do; sometimes a conscience for their
private affairs and a totally different conscience for their business
relations. Or again, there may be one compartment in which the man
keeps his conscience not only for his domestic affairs but for his
business affairs and a totally different compartment in which he keeps
his conscience when he deals with public men and public measures.
It has always irritated me when, in whatever capacity, I have attended
Sunday School celebrations, to listen to some of the speeches made,
and especially when I knew some of the men making them. I have always
felt most strongly that it was mischievous and wrong for a man to get
up before a number of boys and girls and preach to them to “take no
thought of things of the body,” not “to regard their own interests in
any way,” to think of “nothing whatever but others,” when they knew
that he did not follow any such course of action himself, and when they
knew that they themselves could not act and were not expected to act,
literally on his words. That kind of a speech does harm, because harm
is always done by preaching an ideal which the preacher and the hearer
know cannot be followed, which they know it is not intended to have
followed; for then the hearer confounds all ideals with the false ideal
to which he is listening; and because he finds that he is not expected
to live up to the doctrine to which he has listened he concludes that
it is needless to live up to any doctrine at all.
Now I do not mean for a moment that the ideal preached should be a low
one; I do not mean for a moment that it is ever possible entirely to
realize even for the very best man or woman the loftiest ideal; but I
do mean that the ideal should not be preached except with sincerity,
and that it should be preached in such a fashion as to make it possible
measurably to approach it.
Take the Sunday School address of the type to which I object and of
which I have just spoken: If you tell a number of boys who are about
to become men and go out to earn their own living--if you tell them to
despise the things of the body, to care nothing for material success,
you are telling them what you would not want your own boys actually to
do; you are telling them what they cannot do unless they are willing to
become public charges, and what it is not desirable that they should
try to do. To tell them such things in the name of morality is to
invite them to despise morality. What is necessary is to tell them that
their first duty is to earn their own livelihood, to support themselves
and those dependent upon them; but that when that first duty has been
performed there yet remains a very large additional duty, in the way of
service to their neighbor, of service to the rest of mankind.
Again, I have heard men, whose lives have been passed chiefly in
amassing money, preach to boys that money was of no real consequence,
that they ought to disregard it, that it was really entirely
unimportant. Well, those men did not in practice believe what they
preached. Curiously enough some of them had for so many years schooled
themselves to utter that kind of a sentence when they got on a
platform, and to act in such diametrically opposite fashion when
they were in their business offices, that they had ceased to become
conscious of any incongruity; when they got up to speak they naturally
fell into the very vice that represented the negation of the other vice
into which they equally naturally fell as soon as they sat down before
their counting-desk. Now, it is a false statement, and therefore it
is a disservice to the cause of morality, to tell any man that money
does not count. If he has not got it he will find that it does count
tremendously. If he is worth his salt and is desirous of caring for
mother and sisters, wife and children, he will not only find that it
counts but he will realize that he has acted with infamy and with
baseness if he has not appreciated the fact that it does count. And of
course, when I speak of money I mean what money stands for. It counts
tremendously. No man has any right to the respect of his fellows if
through any fault of his own he has failed to keep those dependent upon
him in reasonable comfort. It is his duty not to despise money. It is
his duty to regard money, up to the point where his wife and children
and any other people dependent upon him have food, clothing, shelter,
decent surroundings, the chance for the children to get a decent
education, the chance for the children to train themselves to do their
life work aright, a chance for wife and children to get reasonable
relaxation. Now practically, as regards his or her own family, I doubt
if there is anyone here who would deny that proposition. It is so
obvious that it seems needless to put it before you; and yet how often
do we listen to a man on a platform like this, saying, because it is
the conventional thing to say, “pay no heed to money.” Now, of course,
when such a preacher says “pay no heed to money” his hearers at once
accept what he is about to say further as insincere; and, whether they
pay heed to money or not, they pay no further heed to what he says
about it.
It is not a realizable ideal, to “pay no heed to money.” You must pay
heed up to the point I have indicated. But it is a realizable ideal,
after you have once reached that point, to understand that money is
merely a means to an end, and that if you make it the end instead of a
means you do little good to yourself and are a curse to everybody else.
It is a realizable ideal, to make people understand that while it is
their first duty to pull their own weight in the world, yet that after
they have achieved a certain amount of prosperity both their capacity
for usefulness toward others and their capacity for enjoyment depends
infinitely more on other things than upon possessing additional money.
Now, the very fact that I grant in the fullest degree the need of
having enough money, which means the need of sufficient material
achievement to enable you and those dependent upon you to lead your
lives healthily and under decent conditions--the very fact that I grant
this as the essential first need to meet, entitles me to have you
accept what I say at its face value when I add that this represents
only the beginning, and that after you have reached this point your
worth as a unit in the commonwealth, your worth to others and your
worth to yourself, depends infinitely less upon having additional money
than it depends upon your possessing certain other things, things of
the soul and the spirit.
I could not overstate the grinding misery, the heart-breaking misery,
I have seen come to a family where the man is unable quite to do
what he ought to for those dependent upon him. But after the man and
the woman have reached the point where they have a home in which the
elemental needs are met and where in addition they have accumulated a
comparatively small amount of money necessary to meet the primal needs
of the spirit and of the intellect--after this point is reached it is
my deliberate judgment that money, instead of being the prime factor,
is one of the minor factors, both in usefulness and in happiness.
Always keep in mind my first proviso--I am not going to repeat it to
you--as to the necessity of having enough money. But go beyond that;
for beyond that, the difference between the multi-millionaire and the
man of very moderate fortune is in the vast majority of cases really a
difference of appearance and not of reality as regards both usefulness
and happiness. The chief harm that the multi-millionaire does in my
mind comes not in his joining with others to make a trust--although
when he does that I will try to regulate him--and it is not in the fact
that in him as in other men there is, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “a
deal of human nature,” so that he is sometimes very good and sometimes
not good at all; it is that he is apt to give to the rest of us a
thoroughly false ideal. The worst ill that can befall us is to have
our own souls corrupted, and it is a debasing thing for a nation to
choose as its heroes the men of mere wealth.
I remember a number of years ago seeing a pleasant and very
happy little community very nearly ruined--and as regards many
of the families completely ruined--because an entirely amiable
multi-millionaire moved into the neighborhood. I really think that
his amiability and his perfectly sincere desire to be pleasant with
everyone was one of the causes of the mischief. I know, for instance,
a very nice woman there, with a charming little house, who, having
been asked to dinner at the very gorgeous mansion of this worthy soul
of many millions, naturally wished to entertain him and his wife in
return. But, alas, she was perfectly wretched when it actually came to
entertaining them in her house; she was not willing to have the hired
girl wait on the table; she had to have a butler, and then she had to
live up to the butler. And the funny thing was instead of giving the
multi-millionaire a perfectly pleasant time in her own fashion, which
she could have done, she merely gave him a dreary tenth-rate imitation
of his own feasts. Instead of putting herself in a totally different
class, so that there could be no competition between them at all, she
insisted on competing in a class where she was certain to get the worst
of it. After two or three years of the millionaire’s residence in the
neighborhood there were not a few families who had suffered either some
permanent damage or grave temporary discomfort, not from any fault of
the millionaire, but because they themselves had been foolish. Now, I
don’t want to preach against the millionaire; but I do want to preach
against us if we let him make us spoil ourselves--that’s all.
I wish us to understand better than we now do what are the real things
and what are the artificial things of life. I wish us to get a better
perspective. Take even the average educational institution; if a very
wealthy man visits it altogether too many of the boys look at him with
eager interest, as a man that has had just the career that they intend
to emulate; and altogether too many of the girls think that they would
like to marry into his class! Now, in that case, I don’t blame him at
all; I think it merely adds to our sin, to our iniquity, if we blame
him instead of ourselves for the feelings, not that he has about us,
but that we have about him. But I do blame ourselves; I blame us if we
do not have a proper sense of perspective, if we fail to pay honor to
the people who are entitled to it. I do not wonder that a great many
men make of money-getting their one ideal when so many of their fellow
countrymen treat success in making money as the chief kind of success.
When America’s history is written, when the history of the last
century in America is written a hundred years hence, the name of no
multi-millionaire, who is nothing but a multi-millionaire, will appear
in that history, unless it appears in some foot-note to illustrate
some queer vagary or extravagance. The men who will loom large in our
history are the men of real achievement of the kind that counts. You
can go over them--statesmen, soldiers, wise philanthropists--I wish to
underscore the word “wise,” for the philanthropist who is really worth
calling such is the man who tries to make such use of his philanthropy
as to provide against the need of philanthropy in the future, just
as the real worker in charity is the worker who does his best to
bring about conditions in which charity shall not be necessary. The
statesman, the writer, the man of science, of letters, of art, these
are the men who will leave their mark on history.
When you look back and think of the Civil War, what lives of those who
then lived would you, if you had a chance, like yourselves to have
lived? Not the lives of the sordid souls who stayed at home and made
money out of the Civil War; not even the lives of those men who were
not sordid, who acted honorably in their private business at home, but
who did not have the opportunity and privilege of going to the front.
The lives that you respect, the lives that you wish your fathers or
forefathers to have led, are those of the men who in the time of the
Nation’s trial each endeavored to render all the service that could
possibly be rendered to the nation. Those are the men of the past to
whose memory we look up, of whose fame we as Americans are jealous,
whose good deeds we would like to emulate. Now, that is our attitude
toward the past; I ask that we make it also our attitude in the present.
I wish it distinctly to be understood that I have not the smallest
prejudice against multi-millionaires. I like them. But I always feel
this way when I meet one of them: You have made millions--good; that
shows you must have something in you, I wish you would show it.
I do regard it as a realizable ideal for our people as a whole to
demand, not of the millionaire--not at all--but of their own children
and of themselves, that they shall get the millionaire in his proper
perspective, and when they once do that ninety-five per cent of what
is undesirable in the power of the millionaire will disappear. I shall
speak of the other five per cent in a minute or two; but I am speaking
now of much the larger part of what makes him undesirable; and much
of that larger part is not in him at all, it is in us; it is in the
emotions we permit the sight of him to produce in us.
Now, a word to my fellow reformers. If they permit themselves to adopt
an attitude of hate and envy toward the millionaire they are just
about as badly off as if they adopt an attitude of mean subservience
to him. It is just as much a confession of inferiority to feel mean
hatred and defiance of a man as it is to feel a mean desire to please
him overmuch. In each case it means that the man having the emotion is
not confident in himself, that he lacks self-confidence, self-reliance,
that he does not stand on his own feet; and, therefore, in each case it
is an admission that the man is not as good as the man whom he hates
and envies, or before whom he truckles.
So that I shall preach as an ideal neither to truckle to nor to hate
the man of mere wealth, because if you do either you admit your
inferiority in reference to him; and if you admit that you are inferior
as compared to him you are no good American, you have no place in
this Republic. So that from our standpoint toward the millionaire
ninety-five per cent of the damage he can do us is subjective and not
objective; that is to say, it rests with us and not with him.
There remains the five per cent of harm that he can do us for which
we are not responsible. Up to this point I have been preaching to
us about him. Now I want to say a word or two to him, to the man of
great wealth. The mere acquisition of wealth in and by itself, beyond
a certain point, speaks very little indeed for the man compared with
success in most other lines of endeavor. I want you to weigh the words
that I have used--the mere acquisition of wealth in itself. I know that
there are many men who have made great fortunes where the making of
the great fortune has been an incident to the doing of a great task,
where the man has really been at least as much interested in the task
as in the fortune. It is a great epic feat to drive a railroad across
a continent; it is a great epic feat to build up a business worth
building. For the man who performs that feat I have a genuine regard.
For the man who makes a great fortune as an incident to rendering a
great service I have nothing but admiration--although unfortunately
the men who are entitled to our regard, and a little more--to our
admiration--for the feats that they have thus done, have too often
forfeited all right to that regard and admiration and more than
forfeited it by the course that they have afterwards, or coincidently,
pursued in regard to money making or in other matters. Furthermore
the wealthy men who make money which does not represent service are
public enemies; we are bound to make war against every form of special
privilege.
We have now definitely accepted as axiomatic the fact that in this
country we have to control the use of enormous aggregations of wealth
in business. But no great industrial chief should be content to do only
so much as is necessary to keep within the law. He may be “law honest,”
and yet be a sinister enemy of the commonwealth.
One great realizable ideal for our people is to discourage mere law
honesty. It is necessary to have good laws and to have them well
enforced. But the best laws and the most rigid enforcement will not by
themselves produce a really healthy type of morals in the community.
In addition to the law and its enforcement we must have the public
opinion which frowns on the man who violates the spirit of the law
even although he keeps just within the letter. I cannot tell you any
one way in which that feeling can be made to carry weight. I think
it must find expression in a dozen different ways. Later in one of
these lectures I shall discuss the organs of public opinion and public
expression--the press and the magazines. When they more measurably
reach the ideal they ought to, we shall be able to grapple more
effectually with the man of wealth who fails in his duty than we do at
present. But without waiting for that day, we should strive to create
in the community the sense of proportion which will make us respect the
decent man who does well, and condemn the man who does not act decently
and who does wrong.
The other day a sentence was uttered in the Senate by a certain Senator
which I thought was fraught--quite unconsciously fraught--with a
lesson for all of us. The Senator in question had been engaged in an
impassioned speech on behalf of Mr. Lorimer, and in speaking of some of
the unsavory creatures who had testified in the case he said in answer
to a question, “Yes, they were fools as well as knaves,” and that in
his experience all knaves were fools.
That is not so. This Senator was giving expression to a very unhealthy
attitude of the public mind, the tendency to treat as a knave only the
foolish knave, and to pardon the wise knave who managed to succeed in
his villainy. We shall never come near realizing the very realizable
ideal of honesty in business and public life until we make it evident
that the scoundrel whom we hate most is not the scoundrel who fails
but the scoundrel who succeeds. The scoundrel who fails is condemned by
everyone and is laughed at by his fellow-knaves. It is the scoundrel
who wins out that is the menace to this Republic, the menace to this
great commonwealth of ours. Let us so shape our laws as to make it
difficult for the scoundrel to succeed, and to give us at least a
reasonable chance of punishing him after he succeeds. In addition to
this, let us also, each of us individually and all of us collectively,
strive to create the kind of public opinion which will make the success
of such a scoundrel hardly worth having. The dullest man, the man with
the thickest skin, does not enjoy very much a success which brings on
him the scorn of his fellows. The old Greek proverb was that “contempt
would pierce the shell of a tortoise,” and whatever our people really
scorn, really despise, really condemn, is something that the knaves
among us rarely care to have. When we can create the public opinion
which will mean that the average honest man turns away from the
successful knave one of the prime incentives for being a successful
knave will have vanished.
To that end, friends, I again wish to say that we must hold up an
ideal that can be realized. If we use language which would go to
show that we regard success and failure in the business world as of
indifference, then we shall merely convince every man in that world
that we are speaking insincerely. You do not regard success and failure
with indifference. You do not regard the man who fails and the man
who succeeds as standing on the same plane; and as long as you do not
so regard it, tell the truth about it. No man ever permanently helped
a reform by lying on behalf of the reform. Tell the truth about it;
and then you can expect to be believed when you tell further truths;
the truth that business success, though an admirable thing, up to a
certain point an absolutely necessary thing, is beyond that point not
as admirable as some other things; and the truth that business success
obtained, not by serving your fellows but by swindling your fellows, is
an infamy and is to be so regarded by all honest men.
Realizable ideals; we must have them in private and in public life
both. I have already told you of one type of sermon to which I strongly
object. There is another type to which I object almost as strongly,
and that is the sermon which in its condemnation of innocent pleasure
tends to make men confound vice and pleasure. I heartily abhor the man
who practices vice because he regards it as the only kind of enjoyment.
I do not abhor quite as much, but I at least as much despise, the
clergyman who makes ready the path for such a man by condemning
indiscriminately innocent enjoyment and vice. It is not only harmless,
but it is eminently desirable, that young people should have a good
time.
What we wish for ourselves, and have a right to wish for ourselves I
want to see us preach towards others. If you persuade the average boy
that it is wicked to have a good time, it may have either one of two
results: if he is a very sensitive boy it may prevent him from ever
having a good time, in which case I will guarantee that he makes all
those intimately associated with him have a very bad time; or else, you
may persuade him that inasmuch as he thoroughly intends to have a good
time, and as a good time is wicked--why, in for a lamb, in for a sheep,
and he will be wicked to some purpose. I ask here again that not only
every clergyman but every teacher of morals--and that ought to include
every father who is worth being called father--endeavor to help the boy
in getting a good time; and then hold him to a rigid accountability if
he turns that good time into a bad time.
This illustrates just what I mean by a realizable ideal. Don’t preach
the impossible. Don’t preach what makes your hearers think you are
insincere. But have ideals and insist on their realization. If this
nation has not the right kind of ideal in every walk of life, if we
have not in our souls the capacity for idealism, the power to strive
after ideals, then we are gone. No nation ever amounted to anything if
it did not have within its soul the power of fealty to a lofty ideal.
For that very reason it is our duty to avoid preaching false ideals,
and with almost equal scrupulousness to avoid preaching, as desirable,
ideals which cannot be measurably attained.
I am to deliver four more lectures, and I wish in these lectures to
speak of applied ethics, of realizable ideals; in the first place in
the family, because that is the foundation of everything; in the next
place in public life--which means in the collective life of all of us,
in the life lived on behalf of all of us; and finally as regards the
expression of public opinion, as regards the instruments that should
do most to shape public opinion--the press, the magazines. In each
of those four lectures I shall endeavor to show you why I believe we
should change certain of the ideals we now have, and why I believe we
should in every way, and, above all, by the force of public opinion,
insist that the realizable ideal be actually realized in practice.
THE HOME AND THE CHILD
If this were the first of these lectures I would feel like apologizing
for having brought you here under false pretenses; but you came here
with your eyes open now and I haven’t any sympathy for you!
I spoke yesterday of applied ethics, of realizable ideals. Before
I begin my regular theme of today I want to say a word as to my
utterances yesterday. I intend to try to avoid the position in which a
former fellow-townsman of mine, a Mr. Richard Grant White, who was a
great Shakespearean scholar got himself. It was once announced that he
was to deliver twelve lectures on Shakespeare; in his first lecture he
outlined what he intended to say in the other eleven; and then he spent
the other eleven in answering the attacks on the first. I intend to
try to avoid getting into a similar predicament, but I must make one
explanation.
Two or three remarks that were made to me after the close of the
lecture yesterday suggested to me that I ought perhaps to have
laid emphasis on a point which seemed to me so obvious that I did
not emphasize it. Two or three gentlemen spoke to me in a way that
indicated that they thought that in advocating realizable ideals I had
somehow seemed to advocate low ideals. I do not believe that to most
of you I conveyed any such impression, but if I did I of course wish
to correct it. I should be ashamed of myself unless I believed in high
ideals. I do not think that an ideal is really a high ideal unless
it is one that is at least partially realizable. My preaching is not
against high ideals but against wrong ideals. I remember in a little
story by Miss Mary E. Wilkins when she makes one of her characters say
anent the leading village worthy who claimed to be much better than
anyone else, “I think there are some people who aren’t so far ahead
of us as they are to one side of us; sometimes it is latitude and
sometimes it is longitude that separates reformers.” I would be sorry
indeed to have any word of mine understood as implying any willingness
to lower our ideals. All I want is to have the people that preach them
sure that they are really high ideals. No ideal can be right for this
world if it is not fitted to be used in this world. It cannot be right
to preach to men and women a standard of conduct up to which you do
not expect them to live. My plea is only that those who preach shall
strive to preach a doctrine up to which it is possible to live, and
that those who listen shall not listen merely to gratify their esthetic
sensibilities, but shall listen with the serious purpose of applying
and of acting upon the principles laid down to them. Perhaps in what
I had to say yesterday I ought to have guarded myself against the
possibility of anyone’s misconstruing my language. I hope I have so
guarded myself in what I have said today.
The first place where I desire to see any man or woman realize his or
her ideals is in connection with those most intimately thrown with
him or her. The very first place in which it is necessary that ideals
should be realized is in the man’s own home. It is so elementary
that it seems hardly necessary to say that everything else in our
civilization rests upon the home; that all public achievement rests
upon private character; that the state cannot go on onward and upward,
that the nation cannot make progress, unless the average individual
is of the right type, unless the average American is a pretty decent
fellow and unless his wife is a still better fellow. It will not be
possible otherwise for the nation permanently to rise.
The first essential toward the achievement of good citizenship is,
of course, the building up the kind of character which will make the
man a good husband, a good father, a good son; which will make the
woman a good daughter when she is young, a good wife and mother as she
grows older. Absolutely nothing is gained by filling a man with vague
aspirations for the betterment of his kind if you have not filled
him first of all with the desire to do decently by those members of
mankind with whom he passes most of his life.
We all of us know the type of man, frequently found at cross-road
groceries, who in his abundant leisure is able to explain precisely how
humanity should be benefited and the nation run, meanwhile he himself
exists at all only because his wife takes in washing. We also know the
man who in public life is filled with the loftiest aspirations; but
whose family unite in breathing a sigh of relief whenever he is absent
from the house.
Of course there is now and then a man who in some given crisis plays
the hero although on other occasions he plays the brute--there are such
cases; but it is a mighty unsafe thing to proceed upon the assumption
that because a man is ordinarily a brute he will therefore be a hero
in a crisis. Disregarding the exceptions, and speaking normally, no man
can be of any service to the state, no man can amount to anything from
the standpoint of usefulness to the community at large, unless first
and foremost he is a decent man in the close relations of life. No
community can afford to think for one moment that great public service,
that great material achievement, that ability shown in no matter how
many different directions, will atone for the lack of a sound family
life.
Multiplication of divorces means that there is something rotten in the
community, that there is some principle of evil at work which must
be counteracted and overcome or widespread disaster will follow. In
the same way, if the man preaches and practices a different code of
morality for himself than that which he demands that his wife shall
practice, then no profession on his part of devotion to civic ideals
will in the least avail to alter the fact that he is fundamentally a
bad citizen. I do not believe in weakness; I believe in a man’s being
a man; and for that very reason I abhor the creature who uses the
expression that “a man must be a man” in order to excuse his being a
vile and vicious man.
I recollect saying to a young friend who was about to enter college,
“My friend, I know that you feel that you ought to be a good man; now,
be willing to fight for your principles whenever it is necessary; if
you’re willing enough to fight nobody will complain about your being
too virtuous.”
If you accept only the weak man who cannot hold his own as the type of
virtuous man, you will inevitably create an atmosphere among ordinary,
vigorous young men in which they will translate their contempt of
weakness into contempt of virtue. My plea is that the virtuous man, the
decent man, shall be a strong man, able to hold his own in any way,
just because I wish him to be an agent in eradicating the misconception
that being decent somehow means being weak; I want this to apply to
every form of decency, public as well as private.
The worst development that we could see in civic life in this country
would be a division of citizens into two camps, one camp containing
nice, well-behaved, well-meaning little men, with receding chins
and small feet, men who mean well and who if they are insulted feel
shocked and want to go home; and the other camp containing robust and
efficient creatures who do not mean well at all. I wish to see our
side--the side of decency--include men who have not the slightest fear
of the people on the other side. I wish to see the decent man in any
relation of life, including politics, when hustled by the man who is
not decent, able so to hold his own that the other gentleman shall feel
no desire to hustle him again. My plea is for the virtue that shall be
strong and that shall also have a good time. You recollect that Wesley
said he wasn’t going to leave all the good times to the Devil. In the
same way we must not leave strength and efficiency to the Devil’s
agents. The decent man must realize that it is his duty to be strong
just as much as to be decent. There are a good many types of men for
whom I do not care; and among those types I would put in prominent
place the timid good man--the good man who means well but is afraid.
I wish to see it inculcated from the pulpit by every ethical teacher,
and in the home, that just to be decent is not enough; that in addition
to being a decent man it is the duty of the man to be a strong man.
And also this; to let the fact that he is a decent man dawn on his
neighbors by itself, and without his announcing it or emphasizing it.
With both men and women the prime necessity to remember is that the
simple duties are the most important. I believe that they also mark the
way by which, and by which alone, it is possible to realize the truest
and highest happiness. I have known a good many miserable people in my
life, and infinitely the most miserable among them have been those
who have deliberately and with set purpose devoted their lives to the
pursuit of what they call pleasure. A young girl, a young man, can be
happy for a few years and to a certain degree, in following a life
from which every vestige of serious effort and of attempt to fulfill
duty has been removed; but they can thus be happy only at the cost of
laying up for themselves an infinite store of misery in the future. In
this audience there are many who fought in the great Civil War. The
memories that those men prize are not the memories of the days of ease,
of the days when life was pleasant for them; the memories that they
prize, and that they wish to hand down as heritages of honor to their
children, are the memories of the days of toil and effort, of the days
of the march and the battle, the weary months in camp, the time when
in the full flush of their vigorous young manhood they gladly risked
everything--life itself--for the great prize of death in battle for the
right.
It is not given to every generation--fortunately it is given to only
an occasional generation--to spend itself for so great a goal; but we
can all render, not as distinguished, but as essential, a service in
ordinary life, if only we will face the ordinary humdrum every-day
duties in the spirit in which the soldiers of the Civil War faced their
great and exceptional task. But this we can only do if we put duty
before pleasure, and make of it our highest happiness.
As I said to you yesterday, I do not intend to preach anything that I
do not think can be practiced. I call your attention to the fact that
I have not said that you shall put duty in the place of pleasure;
I have merely asked you to put it before pleasure. Pleasure has its
place. I wish you to have a good time, I wish you to enjoy yourselves.
But I wish you to remember that merely having a good time will turn
to bitter dust in your mouth, to Dead Sea fruit in your mouth, if
you devote your whole attention only to the pursuit of pleasure, and
especially to the pursuit of vapid pleasure. Pleasure interspersed as
an occasional needed relief in doing your life work as duty demands
that you do it--such pleasure is worth having. But pleasure pursued as
a serious business represents about as melancholy an occupation as any
that I know of anywhere. Of course, if you have the pure Bridge Club
type of mind I can’t expect to appeal to you. If unlimited Bridge,
continued through that section of eternity that you enjoy on this
earth, represents your ideal, then nothing that I can say will in any
way shake or alter it--which will be, not my fault, but yours. If,
however, you have in you the desire for higher things, then I believe
that it is possible to make you realize that in the long run your
greatest enjoyment will come from the performance of duty. It is very
important that we should consider our rights; but it is all-important
that we should consider our duties.
A little while ago I was handed a letter from the Equal Suffrage
Association asking me to speak on behalf of Woman Suffrage. I have
always told my friends that it seemed to me that no man was worth his
salt who did not think very deeply of woman’s rights; and that no
woman was worth her salt who did not think more of her duties than of
her rights. Now, personally I am rather tepidly in favor of woman’s
suffrage. When the opportunity came I have always supported it. But I
have studied the condition of women in those states where they have the
suffrage and in the adjacent states where they do not have it; and,
after such study I have never been able to take as great interest in
the question as in many other questions because it has always seemed to
me so infinitely less important than so many other questions affecting
women. I do not think that the harm that its opponents fear will come
from it, but I do not think that more than a fraction of the good that
its advocates anticipate will come from it. In consequence, while I
favor it yet, as I said, I favor it tepidly, because I am infinitely
more interested in other things. I do not believe that the question
of woman’s voting is a thousandth or a millionth part as important as
the question of keeping, and where necessary reviving, among the women
of this country, the realization that their great work must be done
in the home, that the ideal woman of the future, just like the ideal
woman of the past, must be the good wife, the good mother, the mother
who is able to bear, and to rear, a number of healthy children. Now, I
notice that a good many men applauded that statement. I wish to say to
those men in their turn that there is no human being with whom I have
less sympathy than the man who is always loudly in favor of woman doing
her duty while he falls short in the performance of his own. He in his
turn is not fit to exercise the suffrage if he is not a good man in
his own home. If he does not make it the first duty of his life to be
an efficient home-maker, a good and loving husband, a wise and loving
father, he is a mighty poor citizen. And let him be exceedingly careful
that he occupies the proper relation towards his family, and does his
duty to the state; before he tries to talk to the woman about keeping
her proper position. Let him do his duty first before troubling himself
as to how she does hers.
I wish to speak especially about the relation of the home and
the child. There is a natural--and I cannot help thinking a
regrettable--tendency to treat with a certain levity what ought to be
the great fundamental truth underlying every system of morals taught in
this country. I do not wish to see this country a country of selfish
prosperity, where those who enjoy the material prosperity think only
of the selfish gratification of their own desires, and are content
to import from abroad not only their art, not only their literature,
but even their babies. Look at the census returns published in 1910,
and you will see that this country is beginning to travel the path
that France has long been traveling. Two-thirds of our increase now
comes from the immigrants and not from the babies born here, not from
young Americans who are to perpetuate the blood and traditions of the
old stock. It surely ought to be so obvious as to be unnecessary to
point out that all thought of the next generation, all thought of its
vocational, artistic or ethical training is wasted thought if there is
not to be a next generation to train. The first duty of any nation
that is worth considering at all is to perpetuate its own life, its
own blood. That duty will not be performed unless we have not merely a
high but a sober ideal of duty and devotion in family life, unless our
men and women realize what true happiness is, realize and act on the
belief that no other form of pleasure, no other form of enjoyment, in
any way takes the place of that highest of all pleasures which comes
only in the home, which comes from the love of the one man and the one
woman for each other, and for their children. Nothing else takes the
place or can take the place of family life, and family life cannot be
really happy unless it is based on duty, based on recognition of the
great underlying laws of religion and morality, of the great underlying
laws of civilization, the laws which if broken mean the dissolution
of civilization. Unless the average man and woman are married and have
healthy children then my coming before this audience is a waste of
time and it is a waste of time for you in your turn to come here and
listen to me. If you do not believe in your own stock enough to wish
to see the stock kept up then you are not good Americans, you are not
patriots; and if you do not believe in this, then I for one shall not
mourn your extinction, and in such event I shall welcome the advent of
a new race that will take your place, because you will have shown that
you are not fit to cumber the ground.
This is the most essential and the least pleasant truth that I have to
tell you. I can’t expect you to applaud it. But I want you to think
over it; and I don’t care a rap what you think of me for telling it
to you, if only you will think seriously of the truth itself. In the
long run no man or woman can really be happy unless he or she is doing
service. Happiness springing exclusively from some other cause crumbles
in your hands, amounts to nothing; and in no other way can service as
good be rendered as by the right type of mother and father--and I have
put them in their order of precedence, the mother first, the father
next.
Speaking here in a great educational institution I wish to extend my
profound sympathy to the teachers and instructors who are continually
brought into contact with what I may call the cuckoo style of
parent--the parent who believes that when he can once turn his child
into school he shifts all responsibility from his own shoulders for
the child’s education, the parent who believes that he can buy for a
certain sum--which he usually denounces as excessive--a deputy parent
to do his work for him. There is no profession in this country quite
as important as the profession of teacher, ranging from the College
President right down to the lowest paid teacher in any one of our
smallest country public schools. There is no other profession so
important. But not the best teacher can wholly supply the want of what
ought to be done in the home by the father and the mother. And you
men here, I wish you to remember that I put the father in with the
mother. I know perfectly well that he cannot fulfill quite as useful
a function in the home; but he has his place! He has no right to try
to shift the burden wholly upon the woman’s shoulders and then wonder
why the children are not better brought up. We continually speak--and
it is perfectly proper that we should--of the enormous importance of
the woman’s work in the home. It is more important than the man’s. She
does play a greater part. But the man is not to be excused if he fails
to recognize that his work in the home, in helping bring up, as well as
provide for, the children, is also one of his primary functions.
Just because she is more important in the home than the father I wish
to speak especially to the women on one point in connection with
bringing up children. One of the things that makes one sad in certain
families is to see the harm done by the loving parent who is foolish. I
trust that I need not say that I abhor and condemn the father and the
mother who do not give ample and manifest love to the children. It is
a dreadful thing to have a child brought up in a loveless home; it is
a dreadful thing to have the children who are brought into the world
deprived of the love and the devotion which is their due. But great
though the harm is that is done by the hard, narrow, unsympathetic
parent, it is hardly greater than the harm done by the well-meaning
parent--and I regret to say more often by the woman than the man--the
well-meaning parent who permits tenderness of heart to extend until it
becomes softness of head. Too often, among hard-working friends of mine
I have known a woman say, “I’ve had to work hard all my life and my
daughter shall be brought up as a lady”; meaning--poor soul--that the
daughter shall be brought up to be utterly worthless to herself and
to everyone else. I have often seen a good woman--at least a woman who
was good in purpose--allow her children to become utterly selfish, and
really elaborately trained for avoiding the performance of duty, under
the mistaken impression that she was being kind and loving to them. The
worst wrong that can be committed by you mothers and fathers to your
children is to train them in such fashion that they have no recognition
of duty to themselves or to others. Your children had better have been
taken away from you and adopted somewhere else than brought up by you
if you are guilty of the culpable weakness of gratifying your own
feeling of weak, ease-loving affection by failing to make them behave
from the beginning as they ought to behave.