Part 3

Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn’t get any at all, to speak of.

O.M. Couldn’t _that_ work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?

Y.M. I am not denying it.

O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty’s-sake with a little self-interest added?

Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and _more_ than the right thing, the _generous_ thing. I think it will be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.

O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in the _hotel_ bill does it annoy you?

Y.M. No.

O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?

Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.

O.M. The _expense_, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and maids had a fixed charge?

Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!

O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade _more_ than you had been in the habit of paying in the form of tips?

Y.M. Indeed, yes!

O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn’t really compassion nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn’t the _amount_ of the tax that annoys you. Yet _something_ annoys you. What is it?

Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know _what_ to pay, the tax varies so, all over Europe.

O.M. So you have to guess?

Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried and miserable.

O.M. And all about a debt which you don’t owe and don’t have to pay unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?

Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any of them.

O.M. It has quite a noble look—taking so much pains and using up so much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.

Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it it will be hard to find.

O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?

Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing you _had_ done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see, by the signs, that you have it _just right_, and you go away mightily satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you have given him a good deal _more_ than was necessary.

O.M. _Necessary_? Necessary for what?

Y.M. To content him.

O.M. How do you feel _then_?

Y.M. Repentant.

O.M. It is my belief that you have _not_ been concerning yourself in guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would _content_ him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.

Y.M. What was it?

O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would get a look which would _shame you before folk_. That would give you _pain_. _You_—for you are only working for yourself, not _him_. If you gave him too much you would be _ashamed of yourself_ for it, and that would give _you_ pain—another case of thinking of _yourself_, protecting yourself, _saving yourself from discomfort_. You never think of the servant once—except to guess out how to get _his approval_. If you get that, you get your _own _approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was _no other_ thing at stake, as a matter of _first_ interest, anywhere in the transaction.

_Further Instances_

Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing in man, ruled out! non-existent!

O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?

Y.M. Why, certainly.

O.M. I haven’t said it.

Y.M. What did you say, then?

O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of that phrase—which is, self-sacrifice for another _alone_. Men make daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake _first_. The act must content their own spirit _first_. The other beneficiaries come second.

Y.M. And the same with duty for duty’s sake?

O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty’s sake; the act must content his spirit _first_. He must feel better for _doing_ the duty than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.

Y.M. Take the case of the _Berkeley Castle_.

O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and examine it, if you like.

Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment on the deck and said “it is our duty to die, that they may be saved.” There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty’s sake. Can you view it as other than that?

O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that unflinching way?

Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.

O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping higher and higher around you.

Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.

O.M. Why?

Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn’t _do_ it.

O.M. But it would be your _duty_ to do it.

Y.M. Yes, I know—but I couldn’t.

O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that great duty for duty’s _sake_, why not you? Don’t you know that you could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty’s sake, and not two dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end?

Y.M. Yes, I know that.

O.M. But you _train_ them, and put them through a campaign or two; then they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier’s pride, a soldier’s self-respect, a soldier’s ideals. They would have to content a _soldier’s_ spirit then, not a clerk’s, not a mechanic’s. They could not content that spirit by shirking a soldier’s duty, could they?

Y.M. I suppose not.

O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the _duty’s_ sake, but for their _own _sake—primarily. The _duty_ was _just the same_, and just as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn’t perform it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They _had_ to; it is the law. _Training _is potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man’s thought and labor and diligence.

Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake rather than be recreant to it.

O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must content the spirit that is in him—he cannot help it. He could not perform that duty for duty’s _sake_, for that would not content his spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to _first_. It takes precedence of all other duties.

Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes for a thief for public office, on his own party’s ticket, and against an honest man on the other ticket.

O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no private ones, where his party’s prosperity is at stake. He will always be true to his make and training.

IV

Training

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.

Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to—

O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? _He _is not the architect of his honesty.

Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?

O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the main thing—to _him_. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a damage to them—and so _they _get an advantage out of his virtues. That is the main thing to _them_. It can make this life comparatively comfortable to the parties concerned; the _neglect _of this training can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.

Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man _himself_, for it makes him what he is.

O.M. I said training and _another _thing. Let that other thing pass, for the moment. What were you going to say?

Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty—two years. Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold her for her remissnesses, but at times I do—I can’t seem to control myself. Don’t I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the very word I would use: “You’ve forgotten the clean clothes, Jane.” When she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase—and out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and hadn’t time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, “You’ve forgotten them again!” You say a man always does the thing which will best please his Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the Master, who is always primarily concerned about _himself_?

O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse. _Secondarily _you made preparation to save the girl, but _primarily _its object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.

Y.M. How do you mean?

O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper and not fly out at the girl?

Y.M. Yes. My mother.

O.M. You love her?

Y.M. Oh, more than that!

O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?

Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!

O.M. Why? _You would do it for pay, solely _—for _profit_. What profit would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?

Y.M. Personally? None. To please _her _is enough.

O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, _wasn’t _to save the girl a humiliation, but to _please your mother. _It also appears that to please your mother gives _you _a strong pleasure. Is not that the profit which you get out of the investment? Isn’t that the _real _profits and _first _profit?

Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.

O.M. In _all _transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that _you get the first profit. _Otherwise there is no transaction.

Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent upon it, why did I throw it away by losing my temper?

O.M. In order to get _another _profit which suddenly superseded it in value.

Y.M. Where was it?

O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and _for the moment its influence _was more powerful than your mother’s, and abolished it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. You did enjoy it, didn’t you?

Y.M. For—for a quarter of a second. Yes—I did.

O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the _most _pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or _fraction _of a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master’s _latest _whim, whatever it may be.

Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant’s eyes I could have cut my hand off for what I had done.

O.M. Right. You had humiliated _yourself_, you see, you had given yourself _pain_. Nothing is of _first _importance to a man except results which damage _him _or profit him—all the rest is _secondary_. Your Master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He required a prompt _repentance_; you obeyed again; you_ had _to—there is never any escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you will obey, _always_. If he requires repentance, you content him, you will always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may.

Y.M. Training! Oh, what’s the use of it? Didn’t I, and didn’t my mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that girl?

O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?

Y.M. Oh, certainly—many times.

O.M. More times this year than last?

Y.M. Yes, a good many more.

O.M. More times last year than the year before?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?

Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.

O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there _is _use in training. Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.

Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?

O.M. It will. Up to _your _limit.

Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?

O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was _everything_. I corrected you, and said “training and _another _thing.” That other thing is _temperament _—that is, the disposition you were born with. _You can’t eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it _—you can only put a pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm temper?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. _Its presence is your limit. _Your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make more. There _is _use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.

Y.M. Explain.

O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please _yourself _by pleasing your _mother_; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your _mother _confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at _first hand, _not by the roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it also strengthens the impulse.

Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha’n’t ever reach the point where I will spare the girl for _her _sake _primarily_, not mine?

O.M. Why—yes. In heaven.