SUCCESS AND MORALITY
DO THE WICKED PROSPER?—THE GENERAL ANSWER—APPARENT SUCCESS OF
UNRIGHTEOUSNESS—LACK OF GROUP STANDARDS—DIVERGENT STANDARDS—EFFECT
OF A NON-CONFORMING RIGHTEOUSNESS—MIGHT VERSUS RIGHT—MUTUAL
DEPENDENCE OF MIGHT AND RIGHT
Apparently the minds of men have always been troubled by the question
whether it really does pay to be righteous. One gets the impression from
certain of the Psalms and other passages in the Old Testament that the
Jews were constantly asking themselves and one another this question,
and that the psalmists and prophets strove to reassure them by declaring
that, though the wicked might seem to prosper, they would certainly be
come up with in the long run. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for
him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because
of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”[18] “I have seen the
wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree, yet
he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea I sought him but he could not
be found.”[19] “I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen
the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.”[20] The question is
also mooted by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, while Shakespeare,
in his 66th Sonnet, mentions “captive good attending captain ill” among
the things which make him cry for restful death. Even the Preacher says:
“Be not righteous overmuch, why shouldst thou destroy thyself?” _Is_
honesty the best policy, and, if so, in just what sense?
I would answer that there is never a conflict between a real or inner
righteousness and a real or inner success; they are much the same thing;
but there may easily be a conflict between either of them and an
apparent or conventional success. Conscious wrong-doing must always be
detrimental to a success measured by self-development and social
service. Its effect upon the wrong-doer himself is to impair
self-respect and force of character. He divides and disintegrates
himself, setting up a rebellion in his own camp, whereas success calls
for unity and discipline. A man who is bad, in this inner sense, is in
so far a weak and distracted man. As Emerson remarks, one who “stands
united with his thought” has a large opinion of himself, no matter what
the world may think.
It is also true that the sense of righteousness and integrity gives him
the maximum influence over others of which he is capable, and so the
greatest power to serve society. If we are weak and false to our own
conscience, this cannot be hidden, and causes us to lose the trust and
co-operation of others. It is not at all necessary to this that we
should be found out in any specific misdeed; our face and bearing
sufficiently reveal what we are, and induce a certain moral isolation,
or at least impair our significance and force. Character is judged by
little things, of which we ourselves are unaware, and rightly, because
it is in these that our habitual tendency is revealed. They register our
true spirit and mode of thinking, which cannot be concealed though we
are the best actors in the world. If there is anything disingenuous
about us, anything which will not bear the light, those who consider us
will feel its presence, even though they do not know what it is.
In so far as a man consciously does wrong he tears himself from that
social whole in which alone he can live and thrive. In this way it is
true that “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil.”[21]
I suppose that so long as it is kept on this high ground few would deny
the truth of the principle. Men generally admit that spiritual
significance is enhanced by moral integrity. Some, however, would
question whether it has much application to success in a more ordinary
and perhaps superficial sense of the word, to the attainment of wealth,
position, and the like.
But even here it is in great part sound. If we take the ordinary man,
whose moral conceptions do not differ much from those of his associates,
and place him in an ordinary environment, where there is a fairly
well-developed moral sense according to the standards of the group, it
will be true that righteousness tends, on the whole, to prosperity. The
lack of it puts one at odds with himself and his group in the manner
already noted. The unrighteous man is swimming against the current, and
though he may make headway for a while it is pretty sure to overcome him
in time. Men of experience almost always assert, sincerely and
truthfully, I believe, that honesty and morality are favorable to
success.
The sceptic, however, is apt to say that though the principle may be
plausible in itself and edifying for the graduating class of the high
school, common experience shows that it does not work in real life; and
he has no difficulty in pointing to cases where success seems to be
gained in defiance of morality. It may be worth while, therefore, to
discuss some of these. I think they may be brought under three classes:
those in which success is only apparent or temporary; those in which a
wrong-doer succeeds by uncommon ability, in spite of his wrong-doing;
and those which involve a lack or divergence of group standards.
It is always possible to gain an immediate advantage by disregarding the
rules that limit other people, but in so doing one defies the deeper
forces of life and sets the mills of the gods at work grinding out his
downfall. He may cheat in fulfilling a contract or in a college
examination, but he does this at the expense of his own character and
standing. “Look at things as they are,” we read in the Republic of
Plato, “and you will see that the clever unjust are in the case of
runners, who run well from the starting-place to the goal, but not back
again from the goal; they go off at a great pace, but in the end only
look foolish, slinking away with their ears down on their shoulders, and
without a crown; but the true runner comes to the finish and receives
the prize and is crowned.” Montaigne held with Plato, and said: “I have
seen in my time a thousand men of supple and ambiguous natures, and that
no one doubted but they were more worldly-wise than I, ruined where I
have saved myself: _Risi successu carere dolos_.”[22] I recall being
told by a man of business experience that “sharpness” in a young man was
not a trait that promised substantial success, because he was apt to
rely upon it and fail to cultivate more substantial qualities.
Saint Louis, who was the exemplar of all the virtues of his age,
enlarged his dominions, withstood aggression and built up his
administration all the more successfully for his saintly character. “He
was as good a king as he was a man,” and his unique position as the
first prince in Europe “was due not so much to his authority and
resources as to the ascendancy won by his personal character and
virtues.”[23]
Apparently the world is full of injustice; men often get and keep places
to which they have no moral right, as judged by the way they function;
but the unconscious forces inevitably set to work to correct the wrong,
and as a rule, and in due time, the apparent success is revealed as
failure. It is a wound against which the moral organism gradually
asserts its recuperative energy.
Again, wrong-doing is often associated with uncommon ability, which is
the real cause of a success that would probably be greater, certainly of
a higher kind, if the man were righteous. We cannot expect that a merely
passive morality—not to cheat, swear, steal, or the like—should suffice
for an active success. That requires positive qualities, like energy,
enterprise and tenacity, which are indeed moral forces of the highest
order, but may be associated with dishonesty or licentiousness. We might
easily offset Saint Louis with a list of great men, more in the style of
Napoleon, whose personal behavior was not at all edifying. Since life is
a process, and the great thing is to help it along, it is only just that
active qualities should succeed.
Those cases of successful wrong-doing where a lack of group standards is
involved can be understood if we take account of the network of
relations in which the man lives. The view that success and morality go
together supposes that he is surrounded by fairly definite and uniform
standards of right kept alive by the interplay of minds in a well-knit
group. This is the only guarantee that the individual will have a
conscience or a self-respect which will be hurt if he transgresses these
standards, or that the group will in any way punish him.
But the state of things may be so anarchical that there is no well-knit,
standard-making group, either to form the individual’s conscience or to
punish his transgressions. This will be more or less the case in any
condition of social transition and confusion, and is widely applicable
to our own time. If the economic system is disintegrated by rapid
changes, there will be a lack of clear sense of right and wrong relating
to it, and a lack of mechanism for enforcing what sense there is: so
that we need not be surprised if piratical methods in business go
unpunished, and are practised by men otherwise of decent character.
Beyond this an enormous amount of immorality of all kinds, in our time,
may be ascribed to the unsettled condition in which people live. They
become moral stragglers, not kept in line by the discipline of any
intimate group. This applies not only to those whose economic life
shifts from place to place, but also to those who have a stable economic
function, but, like many “travelling men,” lead a shifting,
irresponsible social life.
It is often much the same with men of genius. The very fact that they
have original impulses which they must assert against the indifference
or hostility of the world about them, compels them to a certain moral
isolation, and in hardening themselves against conformity they lose also
the wholesome sense of customary right and wrong. So they live in a kind
of anarchy which may be inseparable from their genius, but is
detrimental to their character, and more or less impairs their work.
You may, if you please, pursue the same principle into international
relations and the political philosophy of Machiavelli. Among nations bad
faith and other conduct regarded as immoral for individuals has
flourished because international public opinion has been faint and
without hands. This is more true of some epochs than others, and was
particularly the case among the small, despotic and transitory states of
Italy in the time of the Renaissance. Machiavelli, I suppose, desiring
above all things the rise of a Prince who, by gaining supreme power,
should unite and pacify the country, laid down for his guidance such
rules of success—immoral if applied to personal relations—as he believed
were likely to work in the midst of the moral anarchy which prevailed.
There is, however, no sound reason for erecting this opportunism into a
general principle and holding that international relations are outside
the moral sphere. They come within that sphere so fast as single nations
develop continuity and depth of life, and nations as a group become more
intimate. Then moral sentiment becomes a force which no nation can
safely disregard.
In many cases of what we judge to be bad conduct the man belongs to a
group whose standards are not the same as those of our own group by
which we judge him. If his own group is with him his conscience and
self-respect will not suffer, nor will he, so far as this group is
concerned, undergo any blame or moral isolation. Practically all
historical judgments are subject to this principle. I may believe that
slaveholding was wrong; but it would be very naïve of me to suppose that
slaveholders suffered from a bad conscience, or found this practice any
bar to their success. On the contrary, as it is conventional morality
that makes for conventional success, it would be the abolitionist who
would suffer in a slaveholding society. It is simply a question of the
_mores_, which, as Sumner so clearly showed, may make anything right or
anything wrong, so far as a particular group is concerned.
The conflict of group standards within a larger society is also a common
example. The political grafter, the unscrupulous man of business, the
burglar, or the bad boy, seldom stands alone in his delinquency, but is
usually associated with a group whose degenerate standards more or less
uphold him, and in which he may be so completely immersed as not to feel
the more general standards at all. If so, we cannot expect his
conscience will trouble or his group restrain him. That must be done by
the larger society, inflicting blame or punishment, and especially, if
possible, breaking up the degenerate group. In many, perhaps most, of
such cases the mind of the individual is divided; he is conscious of the
degenerate standards and also of those of the larger group; they contend
for his allegiance.
There is no question of this kind more interesting than that of the
effect upon success of a higher or non-conforming morality. What may one
expect when he breaks convention and strives to do better than the group
that surrounds him? Evidently his situation will in many respects be
like that of the wrong-doer; in fact he will usually be a wrong-doer in
the eyes of those about him, who have no means of distinguishing a
higher transgression from a lower.
In general this higher righteousness will contribute to an intrinsic
success, measured by character, self-respect, and influence, but may be
expected to involve some sacrifice of conventional objects like wealth
and position. These generally imply conformity to the group that has the
power to grant them.
The rewards of the first sort, if only a man has the resolution to put
his idea through, are beyond estimate—a worthy kind of pride, a high
sense of the reality and significance of his life, the respect and
appreciation of congenial spirits, the conviction that he is serving man
and God. The bold and constant innovators—whatever their external
fortunes may be—are surely as happy a set of men as there is, and we
need waste no pity upon them because they are now and then burned at the
stake.
The ability to put his idea through, however, depends on his maintaining
his faith and self-reliance in spite of the immediate environment, which
pours upon him a constant stream of undermining suggestions, tending to
make him doubt the reality of his ideas or the practicability of
carrying them out. The danger is not so much from assault, which often
arouses a wholesome counteraction, as from the indifference that is apt
to benumb him. Against these influences he may make head by forming a
more sympathetic environment through the aid of friends, of books, of
imaginary companions, of anything which may help him to cherish the
right kind of thoughts. From the mass of people he may expect only
disfavor.
The trouble with many of us is that, though we reject the customary, we
have not the resolution and the clearness of mind to carry out our own
ideals and accept the consequences. We try to serve two masters.
Conscious that we have deserved well of the world in striving for the
higher right, we are not quite content with the higher sort of success
appropriate to such a striving, but vaguely feel that we ought to have
external rewards too—which is quite unreasonable. This falling between
two stools is a much more common cause of failure than excessive
boldness. To gain wealth or popularity is success for some, and for them
it is a proper aim; but the man of a finer strain must be true to his
finer ideal. For him to “decline upon” these things is ruin.
Sir Thomas Browne remarks that “It is a most unjust ambition to desire
to engross the mercies of the Almighty” by demanding the goods of body
and fortune when we already have those of mind, and goes on to say that
God often deals with us like those parents who give most of their
material support to their weak or defective children, and leave those
that are strong to look out for themselves.[24] Ordinary success—wealth,
power, or standing coming as the prompt reward of endeavor—is, after
all, for second-rate men, those who do a little better than others the
jobs offered by the ruling institutions. The notably wise, good, or
original are in some measure protestants against these institutions, and
must expect their antagonism. The higher success always has been and
always must be attained at more or less sacrifice of the lower. The
blood of the martyrs is still the seed of the church.
We ought to be prepared for sacrifice; and yet in these more tolerant
times there may be less need for it than we anticipate, and many a young
man who has set out prepared to renounce the world for an ideal has
found that he was not so much ahead of his time as he thought. Sometimes
he has gained more honor and salary than was good for him, and has ended
in a moral relaxation and decline. I think that even if one were
advising a young man with a view to worldly success alone, and it were a
question between conformity and a bold pursuit of ideals, the latter
would usually be the course to recommend, since the gain in character
and intrinsic power in following it would more than offset, in most
cases, the advantage of conventional approval. Ministers who offend
churches by modern views, politicians who refuse to propitiate the
corrupt element, business men who will not make the usual compromises
with honesty, are as likely as not to profit by their course, though
they should be prepared for the opposite. That which appeals to the
individual as a higher right seldom appeals to him alone, but is likely
to be obscurely working in others also, and on the line of growth for
the group as a whole, which may therefore respond to his initiative and
make him a leader.
Perhaps this same principle may illuminate the general question of Might
_versus_ Right in the social process. We mean by might, I suppose, some
established and tangible form of power, like military force, wealth,
office, or the like; while right is that which is approved by
conscience, perhaps in defiance of all these things. It would seem at
first as if these two ought to coincide, that the good should also be
the strong.
But if we accept the idea that life is progress, it is easy to see that
no such coincidence is to be expected. If we are moving onward and
upward by the formation of higher ideals and the struggle to attain
them, then our conscience will always be going out from and discrediting
the actual forms of power. Whatever is will be wrong, at least to the
aspiring moral sense. We have, then, between might and right, a relation
like that between the mature man and the child, one strong in present
force and achievement, the other in promise. Right appeals to our
conscience somewhat as the child does, precisely because it is not
might, but needs our championship and protection in order that it may
live and grow. As time goes on it acquires might and gradually becomes
established and institutional, by which time it has ceased to be right
in the most vital sense, and something else has taken its place. In this
way right is might in the making, while might is right in its old age.
Unless we felt the established as wrong, we could not improve it. The
tendency of every form of settled power—ruling classes, the creeds of
the church, the formulas of the law, the dogmas of the lecture-room,
business customs—is bound to be at variance with our ideal. The conflict
between might and right is permanent, and is the very process by which
we get on.
This way of stating the case would seem to indicate that it is right
that precedes and makes might, that a thing comes to power because it
appeals to conscience. But it is equally true that might makes right,
because ruling conditions help to form our conscience. As our moral
ideals develop and we strive to carry them out, we are driven to
compromise and to accept as right, principles which will work; and what
will work depends in great part on the existing organization, that is,
on might. If an idea proves wholly and hopelessly impracticable, it will
presently cease to be looked upon as right. The belief in Christian
principles of conduct as right would never have persisted if they were
as impracticable as is often alleged; they are, on the contrary, widely
practised in simple relations, and so appeal to most of us as pointing
the way to reasonable improvement in life at large.
Might and right, then, are stages in the social process, the former
having more maturity of organization. They both spring from the general
organism of life, and interact upon each other. That which proves
hopelessly weak can hardly hold its place as right, but no more can
anything remain strong if it is irreconcilably opposed to conscience. A
heresy in religion is at first assailed by the powers that be as wrong,
but if it proves in the conflict to have an intrinsic might, based on
its fitness to meet the mental situation, it comes to be acknowledged as
right. On the other hand, a system, like militarism, may seem to be the
very incarnation of might, and yet if it is essentially at variance with
the trend of human life, it will prove to be weak. Behind both might and
right is something greater than either, to which both are responsible,
namely, the organic whole of onward life.