flag of distress. “We are caught in a system,” they say. “We cannot
help ourselves. We must play the game in the same ruthless way our
competitors are playing it.” All the more honor to those men who
are ready to face defeat if need be, that they may stand clearly
for unflinching integrity, for genuine consideration for the higher
interests involved in industry, and for all those sacred ideals which
ought to shine in the secular sky every day in the week as well as
through the stained glass windows on the first day.
In the face of the insistent demand for moral leadership it would be a
downright shame if the university men should be found skulking in the
rear, choosing the lower because it is the easier and in their weak
attempts at moral advance following the line of least resistance. The
persistent refusal of the call to high and responsible service becomes
in these exacting days the act of a scoundrel. It is for every college
man to stand ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest
in sight and to share in the honor of the ultimate victory.
VII
THE LAW OF RETURNS
It was a well-seasoned parson who once remarked that he made it a point
never to speak in public without taking a text. It mattered not whether
it was an after-dinner speech, a Fourth of July oration or a sermon,
he always took a text, that he might be sure, as he said, to “give the
people something worth remembering.”
In imitation of his pious example I will take a text. You will find my
text in the book of Numbers, the first chapter and the second verse.
It reads like this--“Two and two make four.” That particular statement
does not happen to be in the Bible, but it is as true as anything which
is found there, and it will serve as a basis for what I wish to say
regarding the law of returns.
Two and two make four. Never by any sort of bad luck or ill chance
only three and a half; never by any amount of pulling or stretching
or coaxing four and a half, but always and everywhere just four and no
more! It is a definite, absolute statement of fact. It always has been
so and it always will be so. No one can imagine a world where two and
two will not make four.
If a man deposits two dollars in the bank today and two tomorrow, he
can draw out four the third day. In forty years from that time he
can still draw out exactly four dollars and whatever interest upon
his original deposit the bank may allow. Life is like that. With
what measure we mete, it is measured back to us again. We get out of
life what we put in, by a law as definite and as unyielding as the
statement about two and two. There are no Santa Clauses lurking in the
shadow--each individual takes out of the big stocking what has been
previously put in, not by magic, but by solid and verifiable effort.
Once for all dismiss the idea that success in life is the result
of luck or pull or any such artificial thing. There was a man in
San Francisco who once picked up a five dollar gold piece in the
street-car. He was a poor man and it was a great find for him. He
thenceforth spent a large part of his time studying the floor of the
street-car, peering in and out among the feet of the passengers, to
find another gold piece. He never found another one, but the time
wasted, if it had been given to thought and effort touching his own
trade, would have earned for him many an extra gold piece. Now and
then something may occur which men call “luck,” but it offers nothing
reliable by which one may safely shape his course.
Young men and maidens look for four-leaf clovers on the lawn. They are
commonly intent upon something else besides the clover as they creep
about on their hands and knees--something sweeter and more satisfying
than clover, and they find this too. Occasionally they do find a
four-leaf clover, but the clover which makes the lawn green, feeds the
cows, supplies the bees with honey and fills the haymow, is three-leaf
clover--the ordinary, every-day sort of clover. The farmer, the
dairyman, and the bee all know that the reliable and satisfying returns
in life come not by some happy chance, but in those common and usual
events which are according to law.
When the blood is warm, the heart beating high and fast, the nerves
eager to yield their thrills, young people see visions and dream
dreams. It ought to be so. The girl who does not have her day-dreams is
no girl at all. The boy who does not see ahead of him shapes and forms
of activity, achievement, advance, higher and more commanding than
the Sierra, if not quite so solid, does not deserve to be young. The
loftier, the richer, the rosier these day-dreams, the better!
But those visions will have to be worked out and realized, in so far
as they come to have a definite, ascertainable value, in a world of
plain, hard fact. The girl will marry a man with feet and hands like
the rest of us; and the home she has, the place she makes for herself
in society, the record of useful service she writes opposite her name,
will be determined according to law. And the place in the world’s life
which the boy carves out for himself as he climbs toward maturity,
the size of it, the location of it, the comfort of it, will be the
inevitable reaction from wise and useful effort. The law of returns is
as sure as the statement about two and two making four.
We find this made plain in several directions--first of all in the
gaining and maintenance of sound health. Genuine achievement in many
lines becomes in the last analysis largely a question of nerves,
digestion, physical stamina. In the busy, hurried city life the
question is, “Can this man stand up to it as long and as effectively
as any other man--and then just that much longer which gives him
preeminence?” The lawyer must be able to go into court day after day
clear-headed, so that he will have all the law he knows at his command,
patient and smooth with blundering witnesses, wise and self-controlled
in the face of the nagging of the opposing counsel; he must be able to
do this all day long for weeks together, looking up his authorities at
night oftentimes, and not break down. The physician must do something
more than ride around in an automobile and look wise; he must be able
to carry upon his mind and heart the anxieties of a hundred households
at once, work all day, frequently half the night, eating and sleeping
as he can, and do all this without resorting to stimulants or drugs
to keep himself up to the mark. The teacher bent not on imparting
information or on merely keeping the wheels of a pedagogical machine
turning, but upon the high task of forming, developing, enriching
personality in fifty or sixty restless lives there in plain view, needs
a sound physique. The minister of religion if he is to stand up before
the same congregation for a score of years or more and put faith, hope,
courage, heart, and resolution into them and not become fagged out and
stale, must be a man who can sleep nights, digest his meals, maintain
his poise, rise early, and go all day without losing his head or his
health--and for all this he needs a prime body. The same is true in the
life of the merchant or the mechanic, in the work of the manufacturer
or the farmer.
Henry Ward Beecher used to say that there were three kinds of people in
the world--the sick people who must be taken care of with sympathetic
tenderness; the people who are not sick, able to be up and to take
their nourishment; and the people who are positively, radiantly,
and joyously well. If the young man has not been handicapped by some
accident or by an unfortunate heredity, it lies easily within his power
to be enrolled in this third class. He ought to hold himself resolutely
unwilling to accept anything less.
It is much more than a matter of personal prudence or of self-interest.
Up to the limit of his powers each man owes it to his family, to
his friends, and to the world about him to furnish it one more
healthy, vigorous life. The world is defrauded if by his foolishness,
dissipation, or laziness it is put off with a whining, grumbling,
irritable caricature of what the man might have been. He owes it to
the members of his family not to burden them with unnecessary doctor’s
bills, nursing, and anxiety. He owes it to them not to break down and
die before his time, leaving them to struggle on alone. Good, sound
health, clear up to the limit of what intelligence, conscience, and
that resolution which will not take “no” for an answer may achieve,
becomes a moral obligation! The man who shirks this physical duty
becomes to that extent a scamp.
Such physical efficiency comes not as a piece of good luck; nor
is disease to be regarded always as a misfortune or “a mysterious
dispensation of providence.” The man careless about the drainage or
thoughtlessly allowing decaying vegetables to lie in the cellar of his
home need not prate about “providence” if fever attacks some member
of his household. The man who eats hot biscuits three times a day and
drinks coffee by the quart until he is as yellow as a Chinaman has no
right to shake his head over “the mysterious ways of God,” when he
becomes ill. The young fellow who inhales whole fog-banks of cigarette
smoke until his lungs are weak and his heart action defective, who
tampers with his nerves by the use of stimulants or narcotics, need
not be surprised that in the hard contests of life sounder men walk on
ahead, leaving him in the rear. In each case the man forgot that two
and two make four, that we must settle by the books, that according to
the law of returns we take out what we put in.
Physical efficiency cannot be hastily bought in the drug store at a
dollar a bottle any more than women can buy good complexions there
for fifty cents a box. Beauty is more than skin deep; it roots all
the way down into those vital processes which give the fair woman the
appearance and the reality of joyous, engaging health. And the physical
efficiency which stands the strain of modern life cannot be rapidly
gained by the use of drugs; it comes according to the law of definite
returns. It comes only as men eat good food, enough and not too much,
drink that which slakes rather than creates thirst, sleep a sufficient
number of hours, some of them before midnight, breathe their full share
of the outdoor air where there is plenty for everybody, and exercise
themselves sanely in some wholesome industry. It all comes according to
method and not by magic.
The newspapers on the morning after the presidential election of
nineteen hundred brought us an interesting picture. One of the
candidates for vice-president that year had been traveling for weeks
together, speaking ten or fifteen times a day to great audiences
eager to drain him of his last drop of vitality. He had been meeting
influential citizens by the hundreds, shaking hands with them
until his right arm might have felt like the handle of some outworn
town pump. He had been doing all this under the constant strain of
tremendous excitement and personal interest. A man who had wasted his
strength in vicious indulgences would have lasted about as long in
such a situation as an old lady would last in a football game. This
man went through it without breaking down, without losing his head
or making foolish, damaging statements. And when the reporters went
to call on him the night of the election they found him in evening
dress, rejoicing in the companionship of his family, from whom he had
been separated for those weeks, calmly awaiting the returns. Theodore
Roosevelt--whether we agree with all his policies or not, we admire
a vigorous, intelligent, public-spirited American citizen wherever
found! He entered college a delicate lad. He gained and maintained that
splendid efficiency by remembering that two and two make four. He was
willing to pay the full price for virility by his steady attention to
the law of returns.
The same rule holds in the mental field. There are men who fall
into the way of relying upon what they are pleased to call “genius.”
A bad case of “genius” in a young man is almost as fatal to his
highest success as smallpox. There are a few men in each generation
exceptionally endowed, just as there are a few four-leaf clovers in
every field, but the work of the world is done mainly by men of average
build.
And even men of undeniable genius attribute their success mainly to
persistent effort. Agassiz used to say, “I seem to have formed the
habit of observing more closely than many of my associates.” Darwin,
whose work was epoch making, made that famous trip for observation on
H. M. S. _Beagle_ in 1837. In 1844 he ventured to show a few of
his notes to some intimate friends. In 1859, twenty-two years after
he had collected the first data for the theory finally announced,
he published “The Origin of Species,” and the world of science, of
philosophy, of religion, underwent a radical change as a result of his
thorough work.
Ask ninety-nine men out of a hundred how they succeeded and the answer
will come back--“Hard work.” Inspiration is all very well, but for the
mass of us perspiration is a surer pathway to achievement. Wellington,
Newton, Lord Clive, Napoleon, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster were all
regarded as dull boys--in each case advancement came by persistent
effort. The capacity was there, but it was brought out not by magic nor
by some sudden burst of inspiration, but by hard work.
Knowledge is power, where the knowledge is not a mere mass of
information. The mere accumulation of facts has little worth, for all
this lies ready to our hand in the encyclopedia whenever it is needed.
The knowledge which brings power lies in the ability to read and to
know what it is all about and how it bears on other things we have
read; in the ability to think and when one thinks to produce something
with the look and taste of his own mind upon it; in the ability to see
three things, sharply distinguishing them, and then to see them in
their relations, and then to see another group of three and another,
organizing the whole nine into some sort of system. The knowledge which
is power means insight, grasp, discrimination, productiveness. It is
not the sole property of genius, but rather the natural return for a
long life of consistent, intellectual effort.
Each man owes it to society to make his utmost effort to furnish it
one more such well-equipped member. This purpose includes much more
than the desire for that individual success and preeminence which might
prompt the effort--it indicates a wish to be capable and serviceable to
those larger interests which lag for lack of competent service.
When Booker Washington addresses the students gathered at Tuskegee,
it is after this fashion. “You have not come here to receive training
in order that you may go back and compete more successfully with your
untrained associates, in earning higher wages to feather your own nests
quickly and warmly. You have not come here to become intelligent and
cultivated that you may go back and proudly establish better homes
and higher types of family life than the untutored negroes maintain.
You are here that being trained you may feel more heavily and capably
responsible for the welfare of your race in the several communities
where you are to live and work.” If this is the splendid ideal in the
green tree of a black man’s school, what shall we expect in the dry
tree of the white man’s school! The high office of all mental drill
should be to send men out “more heavily and capably responsible” for
the general good, and this high quality of competency comes only by
strict attention to the law of returns.
The same method holds in moral values although many people feel that
here we enter a region of hocus-pocus, a realm of magic and sleight of
hand where two and two may possibly, upon occasion, make five or even
fifty. There is an impression in some quarters that a young fellow
may sow an abundant crop of wild oats, that he may wallow in the mire
of vicious indulgence, that he may for years disregard his spiritual
interests with flat indifference, and then by some sudden spasm of
moral feeling begin anew, as fine and as sound a man as if he had never
been in the far country with the harlots and the swine.
The standard books on ethics give us no hint that such is the fact.
The Bible says nothing in support of such a notion. There is not a
land the sun shines on where two and two do not make four in morals as
well as in mathematics. There are no short cuts to spiritual soundness.
The Almighty is a careful bookkeeper and the teaching of reason,
experience, and conscience is to the effect that here, as everywhere,
we must accept those reactions which come inevitably by this great law
of returns.
There was a missionary to the Indians who, in seeking to induce habits
of Sabbath observance, told them that if they planted their corn on
Sunday it would not grow. In that spirit of human perversity which we
all understand and share, they immediately went out and planted an acre
of corn on Sunday! They hoed it and tended it always on Sunday. And
because they took especial pains with it, when autumn came it yielded
more corn than any other acre on the reservation. Then the Indians
laughed at the good missionary and would not go to church.
There is a penalty for planting and hoeing corn on Sunday, but it does
not show in the corn--it shows in the men. The corn may grow to its
full size, but the men will not grow to their full size, nor yield
the full return appropriate to the cultivation of human values. The
missionary was sound in his main purpose, but faulty in his method,
because in the moral world as elsewhere, we find the reign of law and
not the operation of magic. The neglect of the higher values for which
the Sabbath stands will not at once affect the cornfield, but it will
show in the spiritual deficiencies of the men who have no place in the
week for the cultivation of reverence, aspiration, and the sense of
fellowship with the Unseen.
There is no shuffling nor chance in the moral world. Impulses lead to
choices; choices readily become habits; habits harden speedily into
character, and character determines destiny. Two and two make four all
the way up, all the way down, and all the way in.
In a New York hotel the chambermaid one morning discovered the dead
body of a young man and at his side, scrawled on a piece of paper, she
found this last will and testament: “I leave to society a bad example.
I leave to my father and mother all the sorrow they can bear in their
old age. I leave to my brothers and sisters the memory of a misspent
life. I leave to my wife a broken heart and to my children the name of
a drunkard and a suicide. I leave to God a lost soul which has defied
and insulted his loving mercy.”
He wrote it all out, signed it, and then shot himself. His appetites
had gotten away with him, his habits were no longer under his control.
He began as many an enthusiastic, generous young fellow begins by
simply having a succession of “good times” and they grew on him until
the habits he had developed were no longer his--he was theirs. He
forgot that two and two make four, and the gruesome legacy he was
compelled to leave issued as inevitably from his course of life as the
sum total at the foot of a column of figures.
The sound health which serves as the physical basis of enlarging and
enduring efficiency; the trained intelligence which knows what to do
next and finds itself competent for the task; the type of character
which is reliable and profitable for the life that now is and for
that which is to come, all come to us as splendid reactions from that
stable, definite, methodical order, seen and unseen, which enfolds us
ever. What you receive as the natural rebound from your mode of life
will be like in quality and proportionate in amount to that which you
express in effort, for the law of returns, like the law of gravitation,
is always on duty.
VIII
THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD
The Scriptures show their good sense by frankly facing and accepting
the hope of reward as a legitimate source of motive. There are fine
people who almost go into spasms over the idea of working for a reward.
“Do right,” they say, “because it is right, not because you will gain
something by it.” “Live nobly, because it is the highest duty there
is, with no thought of what may come to you in consequence.” “Do your
work well for the sheer joy of it, not because you will be paid well
for good work.” All this is very pretty and does credit to the lovely
dispositions of those who utter these sentiments, but it is just a
little too good for this common earth.
It was just a little too good for the men who wrote the Bible. Jesus
himself did not hesitate to say, “Do this, and great shall be your
reward in heaven.” He said, “If any man shall give a cup of cold water
in my name,” that is to say, in the right spirit, “he shall in no wise
lose his reward.” He built squarely upon the foundation laid by that
singer of old, “The statutes of the Lord are right; the commandments
of the Lord are pure; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” The hope of
reward according to the Scriptures is a legitimate source of motive.
But what form should the reward take? What is the highest form of
reward? One finds all manner of answers to this question strung along
in an ascending series. We find those who always think of reward in
terms of material success. “It pays to be good,” these men say--to
be good, at any rate, up to a certain point. “Honesty is the best
policy”--in the long run as a method of business procedure it can show
more dividends than dishonesty can. “The way of the transgressor is
hard,” now in one way, now in another, but always hard at the end.
Transgression does not pay when the returns are all in. The main theme
of the book of Deuteronomy is that obedience to Jehovah will bring
blessings wrought out in terms of material prosperity. “If thou shalt
hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, blessed shalt thou be in
basket and in store; blessed shalt thou be in the city and in the
field; blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out and when thou comest
in.” Reckoned up in terms of visible success, righteousness would be
the best asset a nation could possess.
We have here a great truth; it is not the whole truth, but it is a
fragment of truth not to be despised. The young man in New York, whose
main interest is material success, setting out to achieve his ambition
by dishonesty is trying to make the Hudson River turn round and flow
back to Albany. It cannot be done. He will get wet and muddy and be
drowned, perhaps, for his pains and, when he is all through with his
experiment, the Hudson will be flowing right along just the same.
In like manner, the big, strong, moral order which enfolds us whether
we like it or not, whether we think about it or believe in it or not,
the big, strong, moral order cannot be defied nor ignored. Here and
there some young fellow thinks he has found a way of turning it round
in what he supposes to be his own interest. He, too, simply gets wet
and muddy, and drowned, perhaps, in his foolish efforts while the
great, eternal verities of right and wrong are still there as they were
before he pitted his puny strength against them. The fact stands that
righteousness exalts a nation or an individual as nothing else can.
But this fragment of truth is only a fragment. A man who is righteous
to a certain extent because it pays is not a high type. The one who
is honest because honesty is the best policy is not very honest--put
him in a situation where honesty involves personal sacrifice and one
could not bank on his honesty. The man who is intent upon furnishing
the world so much uprightness in exchange for a certain amount of
advancement which he hopes to gain can scarcely be said to be in the
moral field at all. He is merely doing a little business with the
Lord,--so much character for so much success. It may all be as purely
a commercial transaction, when analyzed down to its roots, as the
buying of a suit of clothes. His gifts to benevolence when scrutinized
are seen to be only shrewd “investments.” Increased material prosperity
is a form of reward, but it is not the highest form, and it does not
furnish a praiseworthy source of motive.