statistics that there are one hundred thousand tramps and vagrants in this
country--the man who folds his arms and defiantly proclaimes that the
world owes him a living, mutinies against the sacred order of
things--"fouls his own nest," as it were. To that man society replies: "If
any man is not willing to work, neither let him eat." And this is the
dominant note of the twentieth century as truly as it was in the first
when spoken by the Roman philosopher. To harbor the doctrine that the
world owes every man a living, not only discounts the character value of
the individual, but has a reflex action on the entire social organism.
Just as one wheel out of play in the mechanism of a watch throws the
entire works out of order, or one team in a procession halting the whole
train behind it, the individual failing to do his part affects the
equilibrium of the whole. Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo and died in
exile, a prisoner at St. Helena, because one of his marshals, failing to
comply with orders, arrived too late with re-enforcements. Remember that
you have an important part to perform, that, as in mathematics, you are a
quantity so connected with another quantity that if any alteration be made
in the former there will be a consequent alteration in the latter.
In the busy hive of twentieth-century civilization scant space has been
provided for drones. The drone is a minus quantity in the problem of life;
instead of adding to the common weal, he is ever subtracting from it. Like
an owl he sits in the gloom of indolence hooting at the caravan of events.
The eye of the world is quick to observe the man who is resting on his
oars. A more graphic picture of the man who is ever magnifying the world's
duty to him, and minimizing his duty to the world, could not be painted
than that one which James Russell Lowell has penned:
"The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set."
The world has but one duty to this man, namely, to dispel the cloud from
his vision and arouse him to worthy action.
To contend that the world owes every man a living would be as
preposterous as to assert that the government owes every citizen under the
flag a pension. The world owes no man anything except that for which he
pays a just equivalent. Every man is indebted to the world; he owes it all
his best possessions--his talent, time, and effort. And the individual who
attempts to throw off this yoke of duty is violating one of nature's great
laws. Even the lower forms of life afford example of this supreme law.
Solomon startles the sluggard with his sharp admonition to betake himself
to the ant. And Sir John Lubbock points men to the insect world to learn
real diligence and thrift.
Individual stagnation means public pollution. The man who arms himself
with a "rake," ever reaching out after something without giving an
equivalent, instead of championing the "hoe," determined to exercise his
faculties in the interests of humanity, becomes hostile to the noblest
sentiment and the highest aims of society; as in the case of the tramps
mentioned above who are a national menace, Idleness breeds vice. Industry
enhances the virtues. When a man ceases to work he retrogrades; he becomes
a stranger to lofty ideals and wholesome activities. The man with an
ambition ever finds himself in the ascendency; while he who deplores the
exercise of his powers, avoiding work as he would a powder magazine or a
pest, is in the descendency toward a state of groveling and low ideals.
And the difference between these two men marks the difference between
success and failure.
We are ever obligated to a great duty, namely, to reach the maximum of our
possibilities. Our greatest prerogative in the economy of life is the wise
husbanding of resources, and the skillful marshaling of our forces on the
field of common duty. The great duty of leading a useful life confronts us
always. We can by no stratagem, whatsoever, escape its presence. We ever
hear its voice calling after us, and can no more flee from it than we can
flee from the voice of conscience. Like Poe's raven, it sets up a never
ceasing appeal at the door of our lives. Prudence forbids that we turn our
back on this duty of self-devotion. For as Michael Angelo saw in the block
of marble the hidden angel, a wise man sees in duty an infinite
opportunity.
Galileo was so absorbed in his pursuit that he forgot personal comfort and
even personal safety, and lost his eyesight in quest of the mountains in
the moon, the rings around Saturn and the "star-heaps" in the sky. And
when that distinguished man of science, Professor Agassiz, was invited to
lecture at a great price, his reply was, "I have no time to make money."
Likewise did the great Spurgeon, when offered almost fabulous prices to
cross the Atlantic and lecture, refuse because of a zealous devotion to
the purpose of his life. And every one should learn that the thorough and
faithful performance of duty is the first essential of a worthy life.
Every human soul was made with some design, invested with the possibility
of a useful life, a noble destiny. Whether it be the mercenary Greek
vending his wares on the street corner, or the roaming Italian with his
harp strapped over his shoulder, or the dissolute man behind prison bars
paying the penalty of misspent days--all are invested with latent power
and talent to fill a loftier place in the world. But, unfortunately, while
most men have the desire, not all have the determination to rise above the
ordinary and the common state in which they find themselves. This is a
deplorable condition, seriously detracting from the sum of human
greatness.
Every man has been called for dominion. Each, in the divine plan, is to be
a ruler in the universe, not a "mollusk with aimless revery;" he is to be
a man with vitality, not "dead matter known only as avoirdupois." By this
measure a man is not worth so much as a sheep which furnishes two
substantial commodities--food and clothing. Minus the attributes which
qualify him for a high rank, man is a being with a buried talent, only a
unit in the great world around him. Plus these attributes, no system of
mathematics can compute his worth.
"Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market place, or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,
'This is my work; my blessing not my doom;
Of all who live I am the one by whom
This work can best be done in the right way.'"
End of Project Gutenberg's A Fleece of Gold, by Charles Stewart Given