If we consider carefully any such faithful lives as I have just
exemplified, we see that, however simple-minded and unreflective some
of the people may be who learn to live in this way, the motives that
guide them are such as will bear a great deal of thoughtful
reflection.
The people whom I have in mind, and of whom such instances teach us
something, are, in the first place, individuals of considerable wealth
and strength of personal character. They certainly are resolute. They
have a will of their own. They make choices. And so the contribution
of their individual experience to their moral purpose is large. It
would be wrong to say, as some do, that they are characterised by mere
"altruism," by utter "self-forgetfulness," by "living solely for
others." If you were on a wreck in a storm, and the lighthouse keeper
were coming out to save you, you would take little comfort in the
belief, if you had such a belief, that, since he was a man who had
always "lived for others," he had never allowed himself the selfish
delight of being fond of handling a boat with skill or of swimming for
the mere love of the water. No, on the contrary, you would rejoice to
believe, if you {198} could, that he had always delighted in boating
and in swimming, and was justly vain of his prowess on the water. The
more of a self he had delightedly or with a just pride trained on the
water, the more of a self he might have to save you with. When we are
in desperate need, we never wish beings who, as some say, "have no
thought of self" to help us in our plight. We want robust helpers who
have been trained through their personal fondness for the skill and
the prowess that they can now show in helping us. So individual
self-development belongs of necessity to the people whose faithfulness
we are to prize in an emergency. And if people resolve to become
effectively faithful in some practical service, their principle of
action includes individual self-development.
In the second place, people of the type whom I here have in mind have
strong social motives. Their faithfulness is a recognition of the
significance, in their eyes, of some socially important call. And
this, of course, is too obvious a fact to need further mention.
But in the third place, these people are guided by a motive which
distinguishes their type of social consciousness from the chance and
fickle interests in this or that form of personal and social success
which I exemplified a short time since. A peculiar grace has been
indeed granted to them--a free gift, but one which they can only
accept by being ready to earn it--a precious treasure that they cannot
{199} possess without loving and serving the life that has thus
endowed them--a talent which they cannot hide, but must employ to earn
new usury--a talent which seems to them not to belong to themselves,
but to their master, who will require it of them, increased. This
grace, this gift, is what may be called their Cause. Sometimes it
appears to them in winning guise, seen in the depths of the eyes of a
beloved one, or symbolised by a flag, or expressed through a song.
Sometimes they think of it more austerely, and name it "science," or
"the service," or "the truth." Sometimes they conceive it expressly as
a religious object, and call it, not unwisely, "God's will." But
however they conceive it, or whatever name they give to it, it has
certain features by which you may easily know it.
The Cause, for people of this spirit, is never one individual person
alone, even if, as in the lover's case, the devoted person centres it
about the self of one beloved. For even the lovers know that they
transfigure the beloved being, and speak of their love in terms that
could not be true, unless that which they really serve were much more
than any one individual. The Cause for any such devoted servant of a
cause as we have been describing _is some conceived, and yet also
real, spiritual unity which links many individual lives in one, and
which is therefore essentially superhuman, in exactly the sense in
which we found the realities of the world of the reason to be
superhuman._ Yet the cause is not, on that {200} account, any mere
abstraction. It is a live something: "My home," "my family," "my
country," "my service," "mankind," "the church," "my art," "my
Science," "the cause of humanity," or, once more, "God's will,"--such
are names for the cause. One thinks of all these objects as living
expressions of what perfectly concrete and needy people want and
require. But one also thinks of the cause as unifying many individuals
in its service, and as graciously furnishing to them what they need,
namely, the opportunity to be one in spirit. The cause, then, is
something based upon human needs, and inclusive of human efforts, and
alive with all the warmth of human consciousness and of human love and
desire and effort. One also thinks of the cause as _superhuman in the
scope, the wealth, the unity, and the reasonableness of its purposes
and of its accomplishments._
Such is the cause. That the individual loves it is, in any one case,
due to the chances of his temperament and of his development. That it
can be conceived and served is a matter of social experience. That it
is more worthy to be served than are any passing whims, individual or
social, is the insight which the individual gets whenever he surveys
his life in its wider unities. That to serve it requires creative
effort; that it cannot be served except by positive deeds is the
result of all one's knowledge of it. That in such service one finds
self-expression even in and through self-surrender, and is more of a
self even because one gives one's {201} self, is the daily experience
of all who have found such a cause. That such service enables one to
face fortune with a new courage, because, whatever happens to the
servant of the cause, he is seeking not his own fortune, but that of
the cause, and has therefore discounted his own personal defeats, is
the result of the whole spirit here in question.
For such a practical attitude toward such a cause I know no better
name than the good old word Loyalty. And hereupon we are ready for a
statement of the principle which dominates loyal lives. All the
foregoing cases were cases of loyalty. In each some one had found a
cause, a live spiritual unity, above his own individual level. This
cause is no mere heap or collection of other human beings; it is a
life of many brethren in unity. The simplest statement of the
principle of the loyal person was the maxim: _"Be loyal to your
cause."_ Somewhat more fully stated this principle would read:
_"Devote your whole self to your cause."_ Such a principle does not
mean "Lose yourself," or "Abolish yourself," or even simply "Sacrifice
yourself." It means: "Be as rich and full and strong a self as you
can, and then, with all your heart and your soul and your mind and
your strength, devote yourself to this your cause, to this spiritual
unity in which individuals may be, and (when they are loyal) actually
are, united in a life whose meaning is above the separate meanings of
any or of all natural human beings."
{202}
Yet even thus the principle which actually inspires every thoroughly
loyal action has not been fully stated. For, as we have seen, the
warriors, despite the fact that their duty requires them to compass if
they can the defeat of their foes, best show their loyal spirit if
they prize the loyalty of their foes and honour loyalty wherever they
find it. We call such a spirit that honours loyalty in the foe a
spirit of chivalry. You and I may remember that Lee was the foe of
that Union in whose triumph we now rejoice. Yet we may and should look
upon him as, in his own personal intent, a model of the spirit of true
loyalty; for he gave all that he had and was to what he found to be
his cause. Such an insight into the meaning of the loyalty of the foe,
chivalry requires. Therefore, the true spirit of loyalty, including,
as is reasonable, this spirit of chivalry, also requires us to state
the principle of loyalty in a still deeper and more universal form.
The true principle of loyalty is, in fact, an union of two principles.
The first is: _Be loyal._ The second is: _So be loyal, that is, so
seek, so accept, so serve your cause that thereby the loyalty of all
your brethren throughout all the world, through your example, through
your influence, through your own love of loyalty wherever you find it,
as well as through the sort of loyalty which you exemplify in your
deeds, shall be aided, furthered, increased so far as in you lies._
Can this principle be acted out? Can it direct life? Is it a barren
abstraction? Let the life and {203} the deed of the lonely lighthouse
keeper give the reply. Who, amongst us, whatever his own cause, is not
instructed and aided in his loyalty by the faithful deed of such a
devoted soul? Such people are then, in truth, not loyal _merely_ to
their own private cause. _They are loyal to the cause of all loyal
people._ For, to any enlightened survey of life, all the loyal, even
when chance and human blindness force them at any moment to war with
one another, are, in fact, spiritual brethren. They have a common
cause--the cause of furthering universal loyalty through their own
choice and their own service. The spirit of chivalry simply brings
this fact to mind. The loyal are inspired by the loyal, are sustained
by them. Every one of them finds in the loyal his kindred, his
fellow-servants. Whoever is concretely loyal, that is, whoever wholly
gives himself to some cause that binds many human souls in one
superhuman unity, is just in so far serving the cause not only of all
mankind, but of all the rational spiritual world. I repeat then: The
true principle of all the loyal is: _So be loyal to your own cause as
thereby to serve the advancement of the cause of universal loyalty._
Now of the principle thus formulated I assert that it is a principle
fit to be made the basis of an universal moral code. There is no duty,
there is no virtue whose warrant and whose value you cannot deduce
from this one principle. Charity, justice, fidelity, decisiveness,
strenuousness, truthfulness, {204} efficiency, wise self-assertion,
watchful self-restraint, patience, defiance of fortune, resignation in
defeat, your daily social duties, your individual self-development,
your personal rights and dignity, your obedience to the calls of duty,
your justified self-sacrifices, your rational pride in the unique
moral office to which you have individually been called--all these, I
assert, can be rightly defined, defended, estimated, and put into
practice through an accurate understanding and development of the
principle of loyalty just laid down.
Since I am, indeed, speaking of sources of insight, and am not
portraying at any length their results, you will not expect of me a
deduction of such a moral code here. But this assertion of mine is no
mere boast. I have repeatedly endeavoured, elsewhere, to portray
loyalty and to apply its principles to life. For the moment it
suffices to ask you to consider the lives of the loyal, in such
examples as I have suggested to you, and to try for yourselves to see
what they teach. To help you in such a consideration, I may here
simply remind you that when one is not only loyal but enlightened, one
cannot finally approve or accept any cause or any mode of living that,
while seeming in itself to be a cause or a mode of living such as
embodies the spirit of loyalty, still depends upon or involves
contempt for the loyalty of other men, or a disposition to prey upon
their loyalty and to deprive them of any cause to which they can be
loyal. No loyalty that lives by {205} destroying the loyalty of your
neighbour is just to its own true intent. And that is why charity and
justice are fruits of the loyal spirit. And that is why, if your cause
and your loyal action are rightly accepted and carried out, the common
interests of all rational beings are served by your loyalty precisely
in so far as your powers permit. Whatever your special cause (and your
special personal cause--your love, your home, or your calling--you
must have), _your true cause is the spiritual unity of all the world
of reasonable beings._ This cause you further, so far as in you lies,
by your every deed.
And that also is why the principle of loyalty, once rightly defined
and served by you--served with the whole energy and power of your
personal self--is a principle that, upon any enlightened survey of
your life you can never regret having served. This, then, is what we
were seeking--an absolute moral principle, a guide for all action.
But even this is not the whole meaning of what the spirit of loyalty
has to teach you. Your cause, thus concretely and yet universally
defined, is something of which you can always, and now truthfully and
without any pathetic fallacy, say, what Browning's lover said in the
lyric that I quoted in our second lecture:
"World, how it walled about
Life with disgrace,
Till God's own smile came out
That was thy face."
{206} For your cause can only be revealed to you through some presence
that first teaches you to love this unity of the spiritual life. This
presence will come to you in a beloved form, as something human, dear,
vitally fascinating. It may be a person--a face--or a living
community of human beings that first reveals it to you. You can,
indeed, choose it as your cause. Your will is needed. Loyalty is no
mere sentiment. It is the willing and practical and thorough-going
devotion of a self to a cause. But you can never choose your cause
until you have first found it. And you must find it in human shape.
And you must love it before you can choose its service.
_Therefore, however far you go in loyalty, you will never regard your
loyalty as a mere morality. It will also be in essence a religion._ It
will always be to you a finding of an object that comes to you from
without and above, as divine grace has always been said to come. Hence
loyalty is a source not only of moral but of religious insight. The
spirit of true loyalty is of its very essence a complete synthesis of
the moral and of the religious interests. The cause is a religious
object. It finds you in your need. It points out to you the way of
salvation. Its presence in your world is to you a free gift from the
realm of the spirit--a gift that you have not of yourself, but through
the willingness of the world to manifest to you the way of salvation.
This free gift first compels your love. Then you freely give yourself
in return.
{207}
Therefore, the spirit of loyalty completely reconciles those bitter
and tragic wrangles between the mere moralists and the partisans of
divine grace. It supplies in its unity also the way to define, in
harmonious fashion, the ideal of what your individual experience seeks
in its need, of what your social world, groaning and travailing in
pain together, longs for as our common salvation, of what the reason
conceives as the divine unity of the world's meaning, of what the
rational will requires you to serve as God's will. Through loyalty,
then, not only the absolute moral insight, but the absolute religious
insight, as you grow in grace and persist in service, may be and will
be gradually and truthfully revealed to you.
For loyalty, though justifying no "moral holidays," shows you the will
of the spiritual world, the divine will, and so gives you rest in
toil, peace in the midst of care. And loyalty also, though leaving you
in no mystic trance, displays to you the law that holds the whole
rational world together; though showing you the divine grace, calls
upon you for the strenuous giving of your whole self to action; though
requiring of you no philosophical training, tells you what the highest
reason can but justify; and, though concerned with no mere signs and
wonders, shows you the gracious and eternal miracle of a spiritual
realm where, whatever fortunes and miracles and divine beings there
may be, you, in so far as you are loyal, are and are to be always at
home.
{208}
And all this is true because the spirit of loyalty at once expresses
your own personal need and reason, and defines for you the only
purpose that could be justified from the point of view of one who
surveyed all voluntary and rational life. This is the purpose to
further the unity of whatever spiritual life you can influence, and to
do this by your every rational deed, precisely in so far as your
powers permit. This is a law for all rational beings. No angels could
do more than this.
There is a famous word that Chaucer put into the mouth of his Griselda
at the moment when her husband tried her patience with his last and
utmost cruelty. That word, uttered by a woman to a mere individual
human creature who happened to be her husband, seems helplessly
pathetic and slavish enough. Yet Chaucer himself warns us that the old
tale, truly interpreted, should be viewed as an allegory of the deeper
relations between the soul and God. Even so, to many of our leading
modern minds the allegory, when interpreted in this way, may seem
harsh enough. Mere moralists may make light of it, because it seems
opposed to the dignity of the moral spirit of individual self-respect.
Only the partisans of a divine grace, administered through inscrutable
divine decrees, would, you might suppose, still see any worth in so
cruel an allegory. Nevertheless, this judgment of the allegory is
false. Let a truly loyal being--our lighthouse keeper, for
instance--our patriot or martyr, let Lee or Newton, {209} let whoever
is filled with the right spirit of loyalty--whoever, through the
light that he trims, intends to lighten and to unify so much of the
spiritual world as he can ever reach by his deed--let _such_ a loyal
being utter Griselda's word. Let him utter it as in the presence of
the master of life, who offers to all the loyal the divine grace of
finding themselves through their devotion to their cause. Let him
address this word
"As unto one that hears
A cry above the conquered years."
Let him utter this word as the summary and confession of his whole
life of loyalty. And then Griselda's word is no longer slavish. It is
full of the resolute courage, of the splendid contempt for mere
fortune, of the unconquerable spiritual self-assertion, yes, it is
full of the deathless will, which are of the very essence of loyalty,
and which, indeed, must overcome and, in the eternal realm, do
overcome the world.
Griselda's word was this:
"But certes, Lord, for none adversitie,
To dien in this case it shall not be
That I in herte and minde should aye repente,
That I you gave my soul with whole intente."
Whoever thus addresses his word, not to a human individual, but as
unto the master of life, and then. {210} sincerely and persistently
and lovingly, lives that word out in his life, has solved the
religious paradox. From out the lonely and darkened depths of his
personal finitude, from out the chaos of his social promptings and of
his worldly ambitions, amid all the storms of fortune, "midst of
hell's laughter and noises appalling," he has heard the voice of the
Spirit. He has heard, and--however unlearned--he has understood. His
own lamp is burning, and through his deed the eternal light shines in
the darkness of this world.
{211}