Part 2

The moral ideal in its simplicity is all-sufficient. Its native charm can derive no added splendour from the drapery of creeds. Its severe beauty needs no factitious embellishment of myth and legend. The conviction that this is so has long been cherished by solitary thinkers. We should endeavour to spread it among the people. The hope of a perfect society is entertained vaguely. We should seek to lift it into the clear light of consciousness as the one commanding end of human endeavour, the supreme object of reverence and devotion.

Day by day there are triumphs to be won over the passion that stirs in our breasts; over the rising anger that sears our lips; over the turpitudes that defile our hearts; over the spirit of impatience and mutiny that threatens the authority of our reason. By such triumphs we are raised above our baser selves, and the fire which consumes our grosser natures, like the flaming chariot of Elijah, bears us living into a higher world.

To those who take part with all their heart and all their might in the struggle, there comes, at last, a great peace, a purified gladness. Gladness, in some instances, springs from a natural buoyancy of temperament, and is quite consistent with shallowness and superficiality of character. In other cases it is coincident with the swift flow of the currents of the blood, and ceases when the stream flows more slowly and begins to stagnate. Or it is due to gifts which an exceptional good fortune showers into the laps of favoured mortals. Gladness of this sort comes with happiness and departs with it.

But the purified gladness of which I speak is not dependent on these accidents. It is the mark of the ripest wisdom, and is based on the conviction, gained through experience, that life is worth living, that the victory is assured, and that the ends we pursue are of such excellence as to be incapable of ultimate defeat.

The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns.

The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.

We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast--and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.

The legend of St. Christopher, who undertook to carry the Christ-child on his shoulders across a stream, is applicable in a wider sense to us all. The deeper he entered into the water the heavier became the burden which he had assumed so lightly in the beginning, until it pressed upon him like a mountain, and he threatened to succumb beneath its weight. Such likewise is the case of him who, in the sanguine days of youth, has assumed the moral task of reforming himself, or others. The deeper he enters into the stream of life the heavier becomes the burden, and there is no salvation for him unless his strength increases in proportion as the load increases.

Do not court temptation. You cannot know whether you will be strong enough to resist it. But prepare yourself to deal valiantly with those temptations that are sure to come to you unsought, especially if you are a “live” man.

The marks of evil upon the soul are like the lines left by the glaciers of the ice-age on the ancient rocks. The glaciers have retreated, the ice-age has past, a warmer climate has succeeded, but the marks remain.

Morality does not mope in corners, is not sour or gloomy. It loves to convert our meanest wants into golden occasions for fellowship and happy communion.

The moral ideal seeks to influence and interpenetrate the most ordinary affairs of private life.

The moral view of politics teaches us to hold the idea of country superior to the utilities of party, to exact worthiness of public servants, and to place the common good above the interests of particular classes.

The moral view of commerce bids the merchant put conscience into his wares and dealings and keep steadily in sight the larger purposes of human welfare.

The moral view of the professions leads their representatives to subordinate the claims of ambition and of material gain to the enduring interests of science, of justice, and to all the permanent social interests that are confided to their keeping.

The purpose of man’s life is not happiness, but worthiness. Happiness may come as an accessory; we dare never make it the end.

We shall find men who are in the best sense successful in the miserable tenements of the poor.

An exalted type of morality is achieved by him who renounces in spirit the opportunities which he lacks, who accepts his limitations, and who, under the most trying circumstances, does not remit his efforts, no matter how insignificant may be their result, to promote the good.

An exalted type of morality is displayed by aged men who, with weakened frames and energies impaired, are yet resolved to die in harness.

An exalted type of morality is displayed by those who, cut off from the opportunities of culture, and from most of the pleasures and comforts of existence, yet nourish, under the ashes of disappointed hopes, the feeblest remaining spark of the spiritual life, because they believe it to be a spark from an imperishable fire, even from that undying flame which burns at the heart of things, and which is destined to grow brighter and brighter as time rolls on.

There was once a teacher who had many pupils. Some of these he placed in a garden and bade them cultivate flowers, and said to them: “Fail not to bring your fairest flowers to me.” But they became so much absorbed in the delights of the garden, as to forget entirely the master who had placed them there.

Others of his pupils he admitted to his library, and gave them access to many volumes rich in learning, and bade them ponder these stores of wisdom and bring the fruit of their reflections to him. But they also became wholly engrossed in their occupations.

And, again, there was a third company of pupils, whom he selected to be the dispensers of the hospitalities of his household. He bade them preside over his feasts, and entertain the guests as they arrive--“Only forget not,” he said, “to bring the guests at last to me.” But these, too, became wholly interested in their pleasures, and forgot the master and his charge.

But there were other pupils, whom, for an inscrutable reason, the master appointed to the hardest sort of service. He made them door-keepers to admit others into the festive halls, while they themselves were compelled to remain without in the cold. He commanded them to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and to carry heavy burdens all day long. But, behold! these poor drudges constantly thought of him. The very repulsiveness of their tasks made them think of him. Loyalty to their master alone kept them faithful to their tasks. And so those who seemed at the greatest distance from him were really nearest to him in their thoughts. They could bring him, it is true, neither flower nor book, they could only tell him of the heavy loads they had borne, of the hard labour they had performed in the service of his entire household, and of their implicit obedience to his will.

In the great Academies of the Middle Ages there were four faculties, from at least one of which a student must graduate before he could claim the title of Doctor, or “Learned One.” So likewise in the great university of life there are four faculties, each having at its head a great professor. The name of one professor is Poverty; of another, Sickness; of another, Sorrow; of the last, Sin. In one of these faculties we must be inscribed; the searching examination of one of these teachers we must pass before we can obtain our degree as Learned in the Art of Life.

Of most persons it may, perhaps, be said, without exaggeration, that they have a feeling of duty rather than a knowledge of it. When a certain situation presents itself they tend to act in a certain way, but they cannot clearly state the principle or rule which determines their action. The business of the moral teacher is to clarify, to classify, and to enrich the content of the conscience.

We cannot demonstrate the existence of disinterested motives. The sole fact that we demand unselfishness in action assures us that the standard of enlightened self-interest is false. And, indeed, if we consult the opinions of men where they are least likely to be warped by sophistry, we shall find that disinterestedness is the universal criterion by which moral worth is measured. If we suspect the motive we condemn the act.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other, each is enriched by the other.

Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships.

In the companionship of marriage our worth is tested. In that close and intimate relationship faults are inexorably laid bare, and virtues become doubly resplendent.

The fairest tribute that can be paid to a wife by a husband is that the love she inspires becomes stronger and deeper in the lapse of time; that nearness serves to heighten respect, and familiarity to enhance affection; and that each year, as it passes, but adds another gem to her crown as a wife and mother.

The spiritual quality of love transfigures the passions, transforms the fleeting fancy into a constant and growing attachment, the passing romance into a story without end the interest of which never flags. Unity of life is the keynote of love; the continuous blending of two into one lends to love its noble beauty, its divine significance.

Marriage is fundamentally holy because it is the foundation of homes. All the humanities have their origin in the home. All the virtues draw from it their nourishment. The human race is distinguished from the rest of the creation by the possession of homes.

The home is not built of brick and stone. It is a “temple not raised with hands.” A man may live in a palace, furnished with all that wealth can afford or luxury invent. He may have at his command books, servants, troops of friends, and yet there may be a void in his life which tells him that he is homeless.

And what is the home feeling--if we consider the partners of the wedded life for a moment, apart from their offspring? It is the blessed sense of safety that comes to him who feels that he is rooted in another’s affection, the sense of mutual protection, of mutual care and kindness, in sickness and in health, in good and in evil fortune, in life and close to the gates of death. Where the wife is, there is the home; and where the husband is, on land or sea. Oh, what a glad feeling it is to have one’s own hearth! As the hearth gives warmth to the house, so marriage supplies an undiminishing inner warmth to those who partake of its blessings in the right spirit.

Marriage is the fountain upon which the tree of humanity depends for its life. If the fountain be pure, the tree will flourish and bear wholesome fruit. If the fountain be poisoned the tree must perish.

The god of Love is a jealous god. This does not mean that love should be wholly concentrated upon one person, but rather that the god of Love is jealous of anything in the heart that is not akin to love--jealous of hate, jealous of meanness, jealous of low and sordid aims.

The love of husband and wife is an epitome of every other kind of love. There is included in it something of the same feeling that brothers and sisters entertain for each other. There is a maternal element in the wife’s feeling for the husband, and something of the fatherly spirit in the attitude of the husband toward the wife. And there is besides something more which is inexplicable and ineffable.

There are fundamental differences which distinguish the sexes in their mental and moral make-up, and marriage is designed to bring about the correlation of these differences, the mutual adaptation and reconciliation of them in a higher unity.

The present tendency to accentuate the qualities in which the sexes are alike is a temporary reaction against unjust discrimination in the past in favour of men. The differences are more important than the similarities, and ere long they will again receive the preponderant attention which is due to them.

One of the finest results of the further development of the human race will be the increasing differentiation of the sexes, leading to ever new, ever more complex, ever more exquisite reciprocal adjustments in the organisation of the wedded life.

The modern advocates of the elevation of women seem to be fundamentally mistaken in so far as they rely on the use of force--political or economic--for the attainment of their ends. Woman has secured her elevation in the past, and has immensely contributed toward moralising the human race, by precisely the opposite method; namely, by teaching men that there are certain rights which they must respect, though these rights cannot be enforced; that there are certain rights which men must respect on penalty of losing their self-respect.

It is the voice of tradition, the voice of humanity, the conscience of mankind pregnant with implicit truths which it may be impossible ever to make wholly explicit, that speaks from the lips of wives and mothers.

This I take to be the service which the wife can render the husband--she teaches him to submit to a law which is not sanctioned by force; and, in matters of the intellect, as well as of the character, she is his critic and his guide--not by a formulated code, but by the things she approves of or disapproves of.

The wife is just the one woman in the world who best performs for her husband these high offices. She helps him to decipher his soul, to gain self-knowledge--the most difficult kind of knowledge, to discover what qualities are latent in him; she reads his defects in the light of his possible excellence; she spurs him on to his best performance; sustains him by her faith when he fails; and when he succeeds and gains the world’s applause helps him to rate it at its proper worth, and to aspire toward aims that rise beyond the common approbation. And the husband, in turn, renders a corresponding service to the wife.

Only those who are linked together in the lifelong companionship of monogamic marriage can thus serve one another. Apart from the interests of offspring, the spiritual interests of the wedded pair themselves demand that the union shall be a permanent one.

We are not married on our wedding-day; on that day we do but begin to be married. The true marriage is an endless process, the perpetual interlinking of two souls while life lasts.

A woman should be a home-keeper, but she should also go out from her home. She should take part in the struggle of society to create new and better conditions in politics, in social life, in religion. The real home-keeper should be in touch with the larger life of the world, in order that she may bring the breath of larger interests into her life, in order that she may open the windows of her house and let in the fresh breezes of the intellectual world around her. The finest, highest conception of a modern mother is that of one who trains the growing generation to take their places in the new world which is at present in the making, and how can she do this unless she herself carries the new world in her heart, is receptive to the great ideas that are struggling to be, and comprehends them?

Marriage is an estate in which we seek to help each other to solve the total problem of our lives. The attraction of the sexes, seen in the light of this conception, is glorified and transfigured. Marriage is an estate in which we charge ourselves, not only with the comfort and the happiness of another, but with the problem of the total spiritual destiny of another. And because we live in our influence, because our life is strongest and purest where our influence is most penetrating, therefore in the estate of marriage it is possible for us to attain a depth of spiritual development such as can be achieved in no other human relationship whatsoever.

HIGHER LIFE

Let us earnestly strive to ascertain in what direction our strength lies, in order that we may become still stronger, and at what points we are weak, in order that we may fortify them, to the end that we may obey, however partially, the greatest of the commandments, “Be ye therefore perfect.”

In general, the higher life may be characterised as the life which postpones the private to the public good, which is swayed by principles rather than impulses, and which bears testimony to the reality of the supreme ideals.

Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.

It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.

The higher life includes not only such virtues as personal purity, truthfulness, and a forgiving spirit toward enemies, but also embraces our obligations toward the State. No one can be, in the full sense, a good man who is not a good citizen.

There is a difficulty in the way of teaching the higher life, due to the fact that only those who have begun to lead it can understand the meaning of it. Nevertheless, all men can be induced to begin to lead it. Though they seem blind, their eyes can be opened so as to see. Deep down in every human heart is the seed of a diviner life, which only needs the quickening influence of right conditions to germinate.

It may be impossible for a man by merely willing it to add wings to his body, but it is possible for any man, by merely willing it, to add wings to his soul. This perennial miracle of the moral nature is capable of happening at any time.

An ideal is a port toward which we resolve to steer. We may not reach it. The mere fact that our goal is definitely located does not suffice to conduct us thither. But surely we shall thus stand a better chance of making port in the end than if we drift about aimlessly, the sport of winds and tides, without having decided in our own minds in what direction we ought to bend our course.

The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being.

The authority of conscience is founded on human nature itself. The imperative, which we cannot disown, comes from within. The distinction between right and wrong is as aboriginal as that between the true and the false. But whence shall we derive the strength to do the right and shun the wrong? What feelings are there which, in default of the hope of happiness and the fear of punishment in another world, and apart from the penalties of human legislation, shall sustain us in the struggle against evil? I believe that the fear of self-condemnation and the desire for self-respect can, by appropriate training, be so strengthened as to serve our purpose. For what man is there among all our friends and acquaintances whose opinion we have reason so greatly to dread as the opinion of the man within the man--our own self, namely, sitting in judgment upon us?

Among those who acknowledge the obligation of the moral law there are two classes--the class of moral bondmen and the class of moral freemen. Among the former belong those who recognise the particular moral commandments, but fail to recognise the unifying principle from which they flow; who see the satisfactions of which morality deprives them and the pains which it imposes, but fail to see the superior satisfactions to which obedience opens the way, and the ineffable peace that comes after the pain. Duty is a burden and a bondage to those who fix their attention only upon the negative aspect of it. It is a source of exaltation, despite the sufferings with which it is complicated, to those who firmly keep in view the positive aspect of it.

The “great occasions,” morally speaking, are those that add to our strength by the very magnitude of the calls they make upon us, and that flatter our self-esteem by the dramatic incidents which are apt, at such critical moments, to attend the struggle against evil; but it cannot be too forcibly stated that the higher life, as a rule, must be led on the level of everyday existence, where the temptations to be resisted are commonplace and the petty details of duty seem to deprive the effort we put forth of all dignity and grandeur. Whether, under such circumstances, we shall be able to save our souls alive depends entirely on our point of view, on our bearing in mind that no detail of conduct is petty if it serves to exemplify a great principle.

In seeking for the highest good I cannot separate my quest so far as it concerns myself from the same quest so far as it concerns others. On the way to the highest goal I must take my fellow-beings with me. For the higher life--the germ of which exists in every man--is adequately represented by no man. The one represents more adequately some particular aspect of it, another a different aspect of it. It follows, therefore, that no one can love the higher life unless he seeks to promote it in others as well as in himself. All the so-called duties flow from the principle of the unity and interdependence of humanity in their effort toward the attainment of their goal.

The supreme ethical rule may be stated as follows: So act as to elicit the latent spiritual possibilities in others, and thereby in thyself. The aim definitely in view should be to influence others. Not one’s own interests, not even one’s own spiritual interests, should be in the foreground of consciousness. Yet we can in no wise draw out what is best in others without constantly renewing ourselves, making ourselves better fitted to exercise regenerative influence, and thus attaining the highest mental and moral growth of which we are capable. This, it seems to me, is the true harmonising of opposites, this the point of view that reconciles the ever-conflicting claims of individualism and altruism. Not the good of self as a thing apart is the aim, nor the good of others as a thing apart, but a higher, overarching good, to promote which is alike the highest good of self and others.

As light is light when it strikes on objects, so life is life when it smites on other life. We live truly in our radiations. We grow and develop in proportion as we help others to grow and develop.

The question of paramount importance, therefore, to be kept ever before the mind, is this: How, as a matter of fact, am I influencing the persons with whom I am in contact? How, as an employer, am I influencing my employés? How, as a citizen, am I influencing my fellow-citizens? How does the effect of my personality tell on wife and children and friends? Am I supremely interested in getting the best results out of the people with whom I am in touch? Am I helping them to make the most of themselves?