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[s] 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 form 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.