One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,One lesson which in every wind is blown;One lesson of two duties kept at oneThough the loud world proclaim their enmity—Of toil unsevered from tranquillity;Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrowsFar noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,One lesson which in every wind is blown;One lesson of two duties kept at oneThough the loud world proclaim their enmity—
Of toil unsevered from tranquillity;Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrowsFar noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
THE PENALTY.
Laziness leads to poverty.—The lazy man does nothing to produce wealth. The only way in which he can get it is by inheritance, or by gift, or by theft. Money received by inheritance does not last long. The man who is too lazy to earn money, is generally too weak to use it wisely; and it soon slips through his fingers. When a man's laziness is once found out people refuse to give to him. And the thief cannot steal many times without being caught. Industry is the only sure and permanent title to wealth; and where industry is wanting, there, soon or late, poverty must come.
The products of labor, saved up and appropriated to our use, constitute property. Without property life cannot rise above the hand-to-mouth existence of the savage. It is as important to save and care for property after we have earned it, as it is to earn it in the first place. Property does not stay with us unless we watch it sharply. Left to itself it takes wings and flies away. Unused land is overgrown by weeds; unoccupied houses crumble and decay; food left exposed sours and molds; unused tools rust; and machinery left to stand idle gets out of order. Everything goes to rack and ruin, unless we take constant care. Hence the preservation of property is one of the fundamental concerns of life and conduct.
THE DUTY.
Provision for family and for old age.—Childhood and old age ought to be free from the necessity of earning a living. Childhood should be devoted to growth and education; old age to enjoyment and repose. In order to secure this provision for old age, for the proper training of children and against sickness and accident, it is a duty to save a portionof one's earnings during the early years of active life. The man who at this period is not doing more than to support himself and family, is not providing for their permanent support at all. They are feasting to-day with the risk of starvation to-morrow.
In primitive conditions of society this provision for the future consisted in the common ownership by family or clan of flocks and herds or lands, whereby the necessities of life were insured to each member of the clan or family from birth to death.
THE VIRTUE.
The importance of systematic saving.—In the more complex civilization of to-day, property assumes ten thousand different forms; is held mostly by individuals; and has for its universal symbol, money. Hence the practical duty is to lay aside a certain sum of money out of our regular earnings each month or week during the entire period of our working life, or from sixteen to sixty. Persons who acquire a liberal education, or learn a difficult trade or profession, will not be able to begin to save until they are twenty or twenty-five. Whenever earning begins, saving should begin. If earnings are small, savings must be small too. He who postpones saving until earnings are large and saving is easy, will postpone saving altogether. The habit of saving like all habits must be formed early and by conscious and painful effort, or it will not be formed at all. Saving is as much a duty as earning; and the two should begin together.Earning provides for the wants of the individual and the hour. It requires both earning and saving to provide for the needs of a life-time and the welfare of a family. Savings-banks and building and loan associations afford the best opportunities for small savings at regular intervals; and no man has any right to marry until he has a savings-bank account, or shares in a building and loan association, or an equally regular and secure method of systematic saving. In early life, before savings have become sufficient to provide for his family in case of death, it is also a duty to combine saving with life-insurance. Both in investment of savings and in life-insurance, one should make sure that the institution or organization to which he intrusts his money is on a sound business basis. All speculative schemes should be strictly avoided. Any company or form of investment that offers to give back more than you put into it, plus a fair rate of interest on the money, is not a fit place for a man to trust the savings on which the future of himself and his family depends. Security, absolute security, not profits and dividends, is what one should demand of the institution to which he trusts his savings.
Economy eats the apple to the core; wears clothes until they are threadbare; makes things over; gets the entire utility out of a thing; throws nothing away that can be used again; gets its money's worth for every cent expended; buys nothing for which it cannot pay cash down andleave something besides for saving. It is a manly quality, or virtue, because it masters things, keeps them under our control, compels them to render all the service there is in them, and insures our lasting independence.
THE REWARD.
The savings of early and middle life support old age in honorable rest, and give to children a fair start in life.—All men are liable to misfortune and accident. The improvident man is crushed by them; for they find him without reserved force to meet them.
The economical man has in his savings a balance wheel whose momentum carries him by hard places. His position is independent and his prosperity is permanent. For it depends not on the fortunes of the day, which are uncertain and variable; but on the fixed habits and principles of a life-time, which are changeless and reliable.
THE TEMPTATION.
Living beyond one's income: running in debt.—Income is limited; while the things we would like to have are infinite. We must draw the line somewhere. Duty says, draw it well inside of income. Temptation says, draw it at income, or a trifle outside of income. Yield to this temptation, and our earnings are gone before we know it, and debt stares us in the face. Debts are easy to contract, but hard to pay. The debt must be paidsometime with accumulated interest. And when the day of reckoning comes it invariably costs more inconvenience and trouble to pay it than it would have cost to have gone without the thing for the sake of which we ran in debt.
Never, on any account, get in debt. Never spend your whole income. These are rules we are constantly tempted to break. But the man who yields to this temptation is on the high road to financial ruin.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Wastefulness.—The wasteful man buys things he does not need; spends his money as fast as he can get it; lives beyond his means; throws things away which are capable of further service; runs in debt; and is forever behindhand. He lives from hand to mouth; is dependent upon his neighbors for things which with a little economy he might own himself; makes no provision for the future, and when sickness or old age comes upon him, he is without resources.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Miserliness.—Economy saves for the sake of future expenditure. Miserliness saves for the sake of saving. The spendthrift sacrifices the future to present enjoyment. The miser sacrifices present enjoyment to an imaginary future which never comes; and so misses enjoyment altogether. The prudent man harmonizes present with future enjoyment, and so lives a life of constant enjoyment.The spendthrift spends recklessly, regardless of consequences. The miser hoards anxiously, despising the present. The man of prudence and economy spends liberally for present needs, and saves only as a means to more judicious and lasting expenditure. The miser is as much the slave of his money as is the spendthrift the slave of his indulgences. Economy escapes both forms of slavery and maintains its freedom by making both spending and saving tributary to the true interests of the self.
THE PENALTY.
The thing we waste to-day, we want to-morrow.—The money we spend foolishly to-day we have to borrow to-morrow, and pay with interest the day after. Wastefulness destroys the seeds of which prosperity is the fruit. Wastefulness throws away the pennies, and so must go without the dollars which the pennies make. Years of health and strength spent in hand-to-mouth indulgence inevitably bear fruit in a comfortless old age.
The jack-of-all-trades is a bungler in every one of them. The man who will do anything well must confine himself to doing a very few things. Yet while the things a man can produce to advantage are few, the things he wants to consume are many. Exchange makes possible at the same time concentration in production and diversity of enjoyment. Exchange enables the shoemaker to produce shoes, the tailor to make coats, the carpenter to build houses, the farmer to raise grain, the weaver to make cloth, the doctor to heal disease; and at the same time brings to each one of them a pair of shoes, a coat, a house, a barrel of flour, a cut of cloth, and such medical attendance as he needs. Civilization rests on exchange.
THE DUTY.
It is the duty of each party in a trade to give a fair and genuine equivalent for what he expects to receive.—Articles exchanged always represent work. And it is our duty to make sure that the article we offer represents thorough work. Good honest work is the foundation of all righteousness. Whatever we offer for sale, whether it be ourlabor for wages, or goods for a price, ought to be as good and thorough as we can make it. To sell a day's work for wages, and then to loaf a part of that day, is giving a man idleness when he pays for work. To sell a man a shoddy coat when he thinks he is buying good wool, is giving him cold when he pays for warmth. To give a man defective plumbing in his house when he hires you for a good workman, is to sell him disease and death, and take pay for it. Selling adulterated drugs and groceries is giving a man a stone when he asks for and pays for bread. If, after we have done our best to make or secure good articles, we are unable to avoid defects and imperfections, then it is our duty to tell squarely just what the imperfection is, and sell it for a reduced price. On no other basis than this of making genuine goods, and representing them just as they are, can exchange fulfill its function of mutual advantage to all concerned.
THE VIRTUE.
Honesty looks people straight in the eye, tells the plain truth about its goods, stands on its merits, asks no favors, has nothing to conceal, fears no investigation.—This bold, open, self-reliant quality of honesty is what makes it a manly thing, or a virtue. To do thorough work; to speak the plain truth; to do exactly as you would be done by; to put another man's interest on a level with your own; to take under no pretext or excuse a cent's worth more than you give in any trade youmake, calls out all the strength and forbearance and self-control there is in a man, and that is why it ranks so high among the virtues.
THE REWARD.
The honest man is the only man who can respect himself.—He carries his head erect, and no man can put him down. Everything about him is sound and every act will bear examination. This sense of one's own genuineness and worth is honesty's chief reward.
THE TEMPTATION.
Every one-sided transaction dishonest.—In fair exchange both parties are benefited. In unfair exchange one party profits by the other's loss. Any transaction in which either party fails to receive an equivalent for what he gives is a fraud; and the man who knowingly and willfully makes such a trade is a thief in disguise. For taking something which belongs to another, without giving him a return, and without his full, free, and intelligent consent, is stealing.
The temptation to take advantage of another's ignorance; to palm off a poor article for a good one; to get more than we give, is very great in all forms of business. Cheating is very common, and one is tempted to do a little cheating himself in order to keep even with the rest. The only way to resist it is to see clearly that cheating is lying and stealing put together; that it is an injury to our fellow-menand to society; that it is playing the part of a knave and a rascal instead of an honest and honorable man.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The meanest and most contemptible kind of cheating is quackery.—The quack is liar, thief, and murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do things for which he has no adequate training and skill, he pretends to be what he is not. He takes money for which he is unable to render a genuine equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their lives in his incompetent and unskilled hands he turns them aside from securing competent treatment, and so confirms disease and hastens death.
The dishonest man a public nuisance and a common enemy.—He gets his living out of other people. Whatever wealth he gets, some honest man who has earned it is compelled to go without. Dishonesty is the perversion of exchange from its noble function as a civilizing agent and a public benefit, into the ignoble service of making one man rich at the expense of the many. It is because the dishonest man is living at other people's expense, profiting by their losses, and fattening himself on the earnings of those whom he has wronged, that dishonesty is deservedly ranked as one of the most despicable and abominable of vices.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
It is as important to protect our own interest, as to regard the interests of others.—No manhas any more right to cheat me than I have to cheat him; and if he tries to take advantage of me it is my duty to resist him, and to say a decided "no" to his schemes for enriching himself at my expense.
One rule in particular is very important. Never sign a note for another in order to give him a credit which he could not command without your name. That is a favor which no man has a right to ask, and which no man who regards his duty to himself and to his family will grant. If a man is in a tight place and asks you to lend him money, or to give him money, that is a proposition to be considered on its merits. But to assume an indefinite responsibility by signing another man's note, is accepting the risk of ruining ourselves for his accommodation. We owe it to ourselves and our families to keep our finances absolutely under our own control, free from all complication with the risks and uncertainties of another's enterprises and fortunes.
Our own rights are as sacred as those of another. There are two sides to every bargain; and one side is as important as the other. The sacrifice of a right may be as great an evil as the perpetration of a wrong.
THE PENALTY.
Dishonesty eats the heart out of a man.—The habit of looking solely to one's own interest deadens the social sympathies, dwarfs the generous affections, weakens self-respect, until at length the dishonest men can rob the widow of her livelihood; take an exorbitant commission on the labor of theorphan; charge an extortionate rent to a family of helpless invalids; sell worthless stocks to an aged couple in exchange for the hard earnings of a life-time, and still endure to live. Dishonesty makes men inhuman. The love of gain is a species of moral and spiritual decay. When it attacks the heart the finer and better feelings wither and die; and on this decay of sympathy and kindness and generosity and justice there thrive and flourish meanness and heartlessness and cruelty and inhumanity.
Hereditary effects of dishonesty.—So deeply does the vice of dishonesty eat into the moral nature that mental and moral deterioration is handed down to offspring. The scientific study of heredity shows that the deterioration resulting from this cause is more sure and fatal than that following many forms of insanity. The son or daughter of a mean, dishonest man is handicapped with tendencies toward moral turpitude and anti-social conduct for which no amount of his ill-gotten gains, received by inheritance, can be an adequate compensation. Says Maudsley, "I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing the whole energies of a life, predisposes to mental degeneracy in the offspring, either to moral defect, or to intellectual deficiency, or to outbursts of positive insanity." And the same author says elsewhere: "The anti-social, egoistic development of the individual predisposes to, if it does not predetermine, the mental degeneracy of his progeny; he, alienfrom his kind by excessive egoisms, determines an alienation of mind in them. If I may trust in that matter my observations, I know no one who is more likely to breed insanity in his offspring than the intensely narrow, self-sensitive, suspicious, distrustful, deceitful, and self-deceiving individual, who never comes into sincere and sound relations with men and things, who is incapable by nature and habit of genuinely healthy communion with himself or with his kind. A moral development of that sort, I believe, is more likely to predetermine insanity in the next generation than are many forms of actual derangement in parents: for the whole moral nature is essentially infected, and that goes deeper down, and is more dangerous,quâheredity, than a particular derangement. A mental alienation is a natural pathological evolution of it."
What food is to the body, that knowledge is to the mind. It is the bread of intellectual life. Without knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic arts we should be unable to provide ourselves with food and clothing and houses and ships and roads and bridges. Without knowledge of natural science we should be strangers in the world in which we live, the victims of the grossest superstitions. Without knowledge of history and political science we could have no permanent tranquility and peace, but should pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and violence, rapine and revolution. Knowledge unlocks for us the mysteries of nature; unfolds for us the treasured wisdom of the world's great men; interprets to us the longings and aspirations of our hearts.
Books, we know,Are a substantial world, both pure and good:Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
Books, we know,Are a substantial world, both pure and good:Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
THE DUTY.
The severity of truth.—Things exist in precise and definite relations. Events take place accordingto fixed and immutable laws. Truth is the perception of things just as they are. Between truth and falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact is so, or it is not. "Truth," says Ruskin, "is the one virtue of which there are no degrees. There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimation of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain." Truth does not always lie upon the surface of things. It requires hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the superficial crust of appearance to the solid rock of fact on which truth rests. To discover and declare truth as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of the scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what other people will be pleased to hear, not what will be popular or profitable; but what as the result of careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged reflection he has learned to be the fact;—this, nothing less and nothing more, the scholar must proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact; it plants itself upon reality; and hence it speaks with authority. The truthful man is one whom we can depend upon. His word is as good as his bond. "He sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." The truthful man brings truth and man together.
THE VIRTUE.
Veracity has two foundations: one reverence for truth; the other regard for one's fellow-men.—Ordinarily these two motives coincide and re-enforce each other. The right of truth to be spoken, andthe benefit to men from hearing it, are two sides of the same obligation. Only in the most rare and exceptional cases can these two motives conflict. To a healthy, right-minded man the knowledge of the truth is always a good.
Apparent exceptions to the duty of truthfulness.—We owe truth to all normal people, and under all normal circumstances. We do not necessarily owe it to the abnormal. In sickness, when the patient cannot bear the shock of distressing news; in insanity, when the maniac cannot give to facts their right interpretation; in criminal perversity, when knowledge would be used in furtherance of crime, the abnormal condition of the person with whom we have to deal may justify us in withholding from him facts which he would use to the injury of himself or others. These are very rare and extreme cases, and are apparent rather than real exceptions to the universal rule of absolute truthfulness in human speech. For in these cases it is not from a desire to deceive or mislead the person, that wewithholdthe truth. We feel sure that the sick person, when he recovers; the insane person when he is restored to reason; the criminal, if he is ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. To the person of sound body, sound mind, and sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie anything but base, cowardly, and contemptible.
THE REWARD.
Society is founded on trust.—Without confidence in one another, we could not live in social relations a single day. We should relapse into barbarism, strife, and mutual destruction. Since society rests on confidence, and confidence rests on tried veracity, the rewards of veracity are all those mutual advantages which a civilized society confers upon its members.
THE TEMPTATION.
The costliness of strict truthfulness.—Truth is not only hard to discover, but frequently it is costly to speak. Truth is often opposed to sacred traditions, inherited prejudices, popular beliefs, and vested interests. To proclaim truth in the face of these opponents in early times has cost many a man his life; and to-day it often exposes one to calumny and abuse. Hence comes the temptation to conceal our real opinions; to cover up what we know to be true under some phrase which we believe will be popular; to sacrifice our convictions to what we suppose to be our interests.
Especially when we have done wrong the temptation to cover it up with a lie is very great. Deception seems so easy; it promises to smooth over our difficulties so neatly; that it is one of the hardest temptations to resist. Little do we dream,
What a tangled web we weaveWhen first we practice to deceive.
What a tangled web we weaveWhen first we practice to deceive.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The forms of falsehood are numberless.—We may lie by our faces; by our general bearing; by our silence, as well as by our lips. There is "the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian; the provident lie of the politician; the zealous lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; the careless lie of each man to himself." The mind of man was made for truth: truth is the only atmosphere in which the mind of man can breathe without contamination. No passing benefit which I can secure for myself or others can compensate for the injury which a falsehood inflicts on the mind of him who tells it and on the mind of him to whom it is told. For benefits and advantages, however great and important, are what we have, and they perish with the using. The mind is what we are; and an insult to our intelligence, a scar upon ourselves, a blow at that human confidence which binds us all together, is irremediable.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The mischievousness of gossip and scandal.—We are not called upon to know everything that is going on; nor to tell everything that we cannot help knowing. Idle curiosity and mischievous gossip result from the direction of our thirst for knowledge toward trifling and unworthy objects. There is great virtue in minding one's own business. The tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developedmoral sensibility. The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest thatinfeststhe average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a bushel of fancies, suspicions, surmises, and inuendoes, and then go from house to house peddling the product for undoubted fact. The scandalmonger is the murderer of reputations, the destroyer of domestic peace, the insuperable obstacle to the mutual friendliness of neighborhoods. This "rejoicing in iniquity" is the besetting sin of idle people. The man or woman who delights in this gratuitous and uncalled-for criticism of neighbors thereby puts himself below the moral level of the ones whose faults he criticises. Martineau, in his scale of the springs of action, rightly ranks censoriousness, with vindictiveness and suspiciousness, at the very bottom of the list. Unless there is some positive good to be gained by bringing wrong to light and offenders to justice we should know as little as possible of the failings of our fellow-men, and keep that little strictly to ourselves.
THE PENALTY.
Falsehood undermines the foundations of social order.—Universal falsehood would bring social chaos. The liar takes advantage of the opportunity which his position as a member of society gives him to strike a deadly blow at the heart of the social order on which he depends for his existence, and without whose aid his arm would be powerless to strike.
The liar likewise loses confidence in himself.—He cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, he has so frequently confounded them. He is caught in his own meshes. A good liar must have a long memory. Having no recognized standard to go by, he cannot remember whether he said one thing or another about a given fact; and so he hangs himself by the rope of his own contradictions. Worse than these outward consequences is the loss of confidence in his own integrity and manhood. In Kant's words, "A lie is the abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity of man."
Every act we do, every thought we think, every feeling we cherish exists in time. Our life is a succession of flying moments. Once gone, they can never be recalled. As they are employed, so our character becomes. To use time wisely is a good part of the art of living well, for "time is the stuff life is made of."
THE DUTY.
The duty of making life a consistent whole.—Life is not merely a succession of separate moments. It is an organic whole. The way in which we spend one moment affects the next, and all that follow; just as the condition of one part of the body affects the well-being of all the rest. As we have seen, dissipation to-day means disease to-morrow. Work to-day means property to-morrow. Wastefulness to-day means want to-morrow. Hence it should be our aim so to co-ordinate one period of time with another that our action will promote not merely the immediate interests of the passing moment, but the interests of the permanent self throughout the whole of life. What we pursue on one day must not clash with what we pursue the next; eachmust contribute its part to our comprehensive and permanent well-being.
THE VIRTUE
Prudence is the habit of looking ahead, and seeing present conduct in its relation to future welfare.—Prudence is manly and virtuous because it controls present inclination, instead of being controlled by it. A burning appetite or passion springs up within us, and demands instant obedience to its demands. The weak man yields at once and lets the appetite or passion or inclination lead him whithersoever it listeth. Not so the strong, the prudent man. He says to the hot, impetuous passion: "Sit down, and be quiet. I will consider your request. If it seems best I will do as you wish. If it turns out that what you ask is not for my interest I shall not do it. You need not think that I am going to do everything you ask me to, whether it is for my interest to do it or not. You have fooled me a good many times, and hereafter I propose to look into the merits of your requests before I grant them." It takes strength and courage and determination to treat the impulses of our nature in this haughty and imperious manner. But the strength and resolution which it takes to do an act is the very essence of its manliness and virtue.
THE REWARD.
The life of the prudent man holds together, part plays into part, and the whole runs smoothly.—One period of life, one fraction of time,does not conflict with another. He looks on the past with satisfaction because he is enjoying the fruit of that past in present well-being. He looks to the future with confidence because the present contains the seeds of future well-being. Each step in life is adjusted to every other, and the result is a happy and harmonious whole.
THE TEMPTATION.
Time tempts us to break up our lives into separate parts.—"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." "After us the deluge." These are the maxims of fools. The reckless seizure of the pleasures of the present hour, regardless of the days and years to come, is the characteristic mark of folly.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
"Procrastination is the thief of time."—The particular impulse which most frequently leads us to put off the duty of the hour is indolence. But any appetite or passion which induces us to postpone a recognized duty for the sake of a present delight is an invitation to procrastination.
The fallacy of procrastination, the trick by which it deceives, is in making one believe that at a different time he will be a different person. The procrastinator admits, for instance, that a piece of work must be done. But he argues, "Just now I would rather play or loaf than do the work. By and by there will come a time when I shall rather do the work than play or loaf. Let's wait till that timecomes." That time never comes. Our likes and dislikes do not change from one day to another. To-morrow finds us as lazy as to-day, and with the habit of procrastination strengthened by the indulgence of yesterday. Putting a duty off once does not make it easier: it makes it harder to do the next time.
Play or rest when we ought to be at work is weakening and demoralizing. Rest and play after work is bracing and invigorating. The sooner we face and conquer a difficulty, the less of a difficulty it is. The longer we put it off the greater it seems, and the less becomes our strength with which to overcome it.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Anxiety defeats itself.—Anxiety sacrifices the present to the future. When this becomes a habit it defeats its own end. For the future is nothing but a succession of moments, which, when they are realized, are present moments. And the man who sacrifices all the present moments to his conception of a future, sacrifices the very substance out of which the real future is composed. For when he reaches the time to which he has been looking forward, and for the sake of which he has sacrificed all his early days, the habit of anxiety stays by him and compels him to sacrifice that future, now become present, to another future, still farther ahead; and so on forever. Thus life becomes an endless round of fret and worry, full of imaginary ills,destitute of all real and present satisfaction. It is a good rule never to cross a bridge until we come to it. Prudence demands that we make reasonable preparation for crossing it in advance. But when these preparations are made prudence has done its work, and waits calmly until the time comes to put its plans into operation. Anxiety fills all the intervening time with forebodings of all the possible obstacles that may arise when the time for action comes.
Procrastination, anxiety, and prudence.—Procrastination sacrifices the future to the present. Anxiety sacrifices the present to the future. Prudence co-ordinates present and future in a consistent whole, in which both present and future have their proper place and due consideration.
THE PENALTY.
Imperfect co-ordination, whether by procrastination or by worry, brings discord. The parts of life are at variance with each other. The procrastinator looks on past indulgence with remorse and disgust; for that past indulgence is now loading him down with present disabilities and pains. He looks on the future with apprehension, for he knows that his present pleasures are purchased at the cost of misery and degradation in years to come.
The man in whom worry and anxiety have become habitual likewise lives a discordant life. He looks out of a joyless present, back on a past devoid of interest, and forward into a future full of fears.
As all thoughts and actions take place in time, so all material things exist in space. Everything we have must be in some place. To give things their right relations in space is one of the important aspects of conduct.
THE DUTY.
A place for everything, and everything in its place.—Things that belong together should be kept together. Dishes belong in the cupboard; clothes in the closet; boxes on the shelves; loose papers in the waste basket; tools in the tool-chest; wood in the wood-shed. And it is our duty to keep them in their proper place, when not in actual use. In business it is of the utmost importance to have a precise place for everything connected with it. The carpenter or machinist must have a place for each tool, and always put it there when he is through using it. The merchant must have a definite book and page or drawer or pigeon-hole for every item which he records. The scholar must have a set of cards or envelopes or drawers or pockets alphabetically arranged in which he keeps each class of facts where he can turn to it instantly. This keeping things of a kind together, each kind in a place by itself, issystem. Without system nothing can be managed well, and no great enterprise can be carried on at all.
THE VIRTUE.
Orderliness is manly and virtuous because it keeps things under our own control, and makes them the expression of our will.—The orderly and systematic man can manage a thousand details with more ease and power than a man without order and system can manage a dozen. It is not power to do more work than other men, but power to do the same amount of work in such an orderly and systematic way that it accomplishes a hundred times as much as other men's work, which marks the difference between the statesman who manages the affairs of a nation or the merchant prince who handles millions of dollars, and the man of merely ordinary administrative and business ability.
THE REWARD.
The orderly man has his resources at his disposal at a moment's notice.—He can go directly to the thing he wants and be sure of finding it in its place. When a business is thoroughly systematized it is as easy to find one thing out of ten thousand as it is to find one thing out of ten. Hence there is scarcely any limit to the expansion of business of which the systematic man is capable. A business thus reduced to system will almost run itself. Thus the heads of great concerns are able to accept public office, or to spend a year in Europe,in absolute confidence that the business will be well conducted in their absence, and that they can take it up when they return just as they left it. For they know that each man has his part of the work for which he is responsible; each process has its precise method by which it is to be performed; each account has its exact place where it is to be kept. Order and system are the keys to business success. Orderliness keeps things under our control, and the convenience and efficiency with which things serve us is the direct and necessary consequence of having them under control.
THE TEMPTATION.
System takes more labor to begin with, but in the long run system is the greatest labor-saving device in the world.—It takes ten times as long to hunt up a thing which we have left lying around the next time we want it, as it does to put it where it belongs at first. Yet, well as we know this fact, present and temporary ease seems of more consequence at the time of action than future and permanent convenience. Until by repeated exercise and painful discipline we make orderliness and system habitual and almost instinctive, the temptation to make the quickest and handiest disposition of things for which we have no immediate use will continue to beset our minds and betray our wills.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The careless man lets things run over him.—They mock him, and make fun of him; gettingin his way and tripping him up at one time; hiding from him and making him hunt after them at another. Carelessness is a confession of a weak will that cannot keep things under control. And weakness is ever the mark of vice.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The end and aim of system is to expedite business. Red tape is the idolatry of system. It is system for the sake of system.—Every rule admits exceptions. To make exceptions before a habit is fully formed is dangerous; and while we are learning the habit of orderliness and system we should put ourselves to very great inconvenience rather than admit an exception to our systematic and orderly way of doing things. When, however, the habit has become fixed, it is wise and right to sacrifice order and system, when some "short cut" will attain our end more quickly and effectively than the regular and more round-about way of orderly procedure. The strong and successful business man is he who has his system so thoroughly under his control that he can use it or dispense with it on a given occasion; according as it will further or hinder the end he has in view.
THE PENALTY.
The careless man is always bothered by things he does not want getting in his way; and by things that he does want keeping out of his way.—Half his time is spent in clearing awayaccumulated obstructions and hunting after the things he needs. Where everything is in a heap it is necessary to haul over a dozen things in order to find the one you are after. Carelessness suffers things to get the mastery over us; and the consequence is that we and our business are ever at their mercy. And as things held in control are faithful and efficient servants, so things permitted to domineer over us and do as they please become cruel and arbitrary masters. They waste our time, try our patience, destroy our business, and scatter our fortunes.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as fortune, chance, or accident. All things are held together by invariable laws.Every event takes place in accordance with law. Uniformity of law is the condition and presupposition of all our thinking. The very idea of an event that has no cause is a contradiction in terms to which no reality can correspond, like the notion of two mountains without a valley between; or a yard stick with only one end.
Relatively to us, and in consequence of the limitation of our knowledge, an event is a result of chance or fortune when the cause which produced it lies beyond the range of our knowledge. What we cannot anticipate beforehand and what we cannot account for afterward, we group together into a class and ascribe to the fictitious goddess Fortune; as children attribute gifts at Christmas which come from unknown sources to Santa Claus. In reality these unexplained and unanticipated events come from heredity, environment, social institutions, the forces of nature, and ultimately from God.
These things which project themselves without warning into our lives, often have most momentousinfluence for good or evil over us; and the proper attitude to take toward this class of objects is worthy of consideration by itself.
THE DUTY.
The secret of superiority to fortune.—Some things are under our control; others are not. It is the part of wisdom to concentrate our thought and feeling on the former; working with utmost diligence to make the best use of those things which are committed to us in the regular line of daily duty, and treating with comparative indifference those things which affect us from without. What we are; what we do; what we strive for;—these are the really important matters; and these are always in our power. What money comes to us; what people say about us; what positions we are called to fill; to what parties we are invited; to what offices we are elected, are matters which concern to some extent our happiness. We should welcome these good things when they come. But they affect the accidents rather than the substance of our lives. We should not be too much bound up in them when they come; and we should not grieve too deeply when they go. We should never stake our well-being and our peace of mind on their presence or their absence. We should remember that "The aids to noble life are all within."
This lesson of superiority to fortune, by regarding the things she has to give as comparatively indifferent, is the great lesson of Stoicism. MarcusAurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca are the masters of this school. Their lesson is one we all need to learn thoroughly. It is the secret of strength to endure the ills of life with serenity and fortitude. And yet it is by no means a complete account of our duty toward these outward things. It is closely akin to pride and self-sufficiency. It gives strength but not sweetness to life. One must be able to do without the good things of fortune if need be. The really strong man, however, is he who can use and enjoy them without being made dependent on them or being enslaved by them. The real mastery of fortune consists not in doing without the things she brings for fear they will corrupt and enslave us; but in compelling her to give us all the things we can, and then refusing to bow down to her in hope of getting more. This just appreciation of fortune's gifts is doubtless hard to combine with perfect independence. The Stoic solution of the problem is easier. The really strong man, however, is he who