Thoughts of a fool
something which you hold back is your ideal.
You have heard your dearest friend say that she would give anything
to be rid of her bad temper. She thinks amiability is her ideal.
But you will discover that she has not selected her strongest ideal
with discrimination, for she is not ready to give everything for her
ideal of a good temper. She is willing to give everything except her
bad temper. She is not willing to pay the price. Then why should she
be favored? Why should a law be violated in her especial behalf by
giving her something she don’t want? Her bad temper is her ideal. You
are convinced that you must obey the laws of symmetry, gravity, and
proportion in construction. You get tools and instruments to make sure
that you may not go astray; even in making mud pies you observe the mud
law. Then why should you think that you can get a free pass to success?
The price of success is all, even life! To give one’s life for one’s
ideal is a privilege which only the earnest seeker of the ideal may
enjoy.
Life means death anyway. Then why should you waste it on anything
except in the payment for success? Whosoever makes his life serve his
ideal, saves it in giving. To give your life for your ideal means that
you have not lived in vain; that your life has been sold in the best
market and the highest price has been realized. To die for one’s ideal
means to be born again.
Examine the successful, and note how true they have been to their god.
Observe W-rr-n Spr-ng-r, he is in nowise distressed because ramshackle
old buildings and decrepit second-hand elevators contribute to his
ideal. Nor do the McC-rm-cks permit any twinges because labor troubles
lead to the killing of a few men and the hanging of anarchists. The
occasional burning of an oil well are not episodes of a disturbance to
the R-ck-f-ll-r ideal.
Consult not the heart when you are on the success path. (Except when
your ideal is happiness, you will find no happiness outside of your
heart.)
“Mine and Thine” is an intellectual philosophy. The heart has nothing
to do with it. The heart says Give and the mind says Get. Get success,
is an intellectual proposition. This probably explains the reasons of
the different degrees of success. It appears that W-rr-n Spr-ng-r’s
mental equipment is inferior to the R-ck-f-ll-rs and the McC-rm-ck
thought magazine.
Know also, that you must have an earnest conviction that the thing
you lust for is a primary object. My fool formula will not work in a
confusion of secondaries. See to it that you have not given the highest
seat in the synagogue to a mere adjunct. Be sure that the thing you
want is desired for itself, and not as a means of securing some other
end, else there will be the disappointment of getting the thing you
thought in your mind you wanted, rather than the real thing for which
the heart lusted.
One estimable old friend assured me that he wanted a million or two.
“Not for myself,” he insisted, “but that I may give it to the suffering
poor.”
“Then,” said I, “it will be quite the same if I were to get the million
and distribute it in accordance with your schedule.” But it wasn’t the
same at all. He wanted to be a benefactor. Not a blameworthy ideal, but
quite different from what he thought until the test was applied.
No matter what your desires may be, the satisfaction of them depends on
other people. Hence you must be circumspect in the selection of those
you use; you must see that none of them have any survival of heart.
If you have not sufficient intellect of your own to guide you, do not
despair. Let that be the least of your troubles. There are many who
are eager to render the sort of service you require. But see that the
intellect you enlist is simon-pure, and then let the substitute be your
guide. Obey orders without straying from the path. If you play your
part well your intellectual bankruptcy will not be detected. Woe to you
if you are not true to the intellectual manager! Society will condone
anything if intellect stands guard to set you right, but intellectual
insolvency is never forgiven.
Remember, it is sometimes wise to appear foolish; do not indulge in
asking questions--for often there are no answers. And sometimes it is
necessary to back up to get a better start.
It is essential to have public approval while we are on the success
path. It is indispensable! It is so easy to secure the approbation of
the public that one is not justified in attempts to defy public opinion
unless your ideal be love of justice. In such case public opinion be
hanged! Public opinion for revenge will hang you, but your ideals will
survive the gallows and the cross. Public opinion can be molded by
the press. Arson will be condoned if there is a spice of adventure in
burning down a distillery, or blowing up an oil well, to say nothing
of wrecking banks and corporations. Robbery by rebates and other
discriminations presents no difficulties; and murder, if we can procure
it by the militia or the hangman, is respectable. These diversions are
incidents of success, and comport with the ideal in whose service they
are enlisted.
You will have to join the Combine of Modern Saints. A gift now and then
to a hospital, church, or libraries and social settlements when in
season, also have their appointed time; and occasionally art is quite
the vogue.
The people will give you anything you want if you’ll but ask in the
right way. They care not if you kill some of them, or rob them all, but
do it beautifully. They will prove loyal if your rapacities are cloaked
with “Law and Order” and your misdemeanors tagged “virtue.” They will
let you denude them if you accomplish it in the name of civilization.
Be true to the _esprit de corps_ of success. No man can be successful
enough to stand alone. Only the success of failure can indulge that
luxury. And above all, avoid any tendency to being natural. You will
fail if you allow love any play. Nevertheless, at times you are
expected to manifest symptoms of love. This entails the necessity of
becoming an imitator. A good article of make-believe will be effective
as the genuine in the atmosphere in which your lot is cast. The moment
you yield to love you have failed; success will tolerate but one God.
Let me repeat: If you be an earnest seeker for success, your heart
must be dead and the whole campaign shifted to the intellect. That,
too, is dead, but the intellect being wise is too wise to know of the
deadness of its death. It continues in galvanic imitation of life. One
Chicago millionaire has been dead for forty years, but so excellently
galvanized is he, that the administration on his estate is postponed
from day to day. When seen in his automobile only last week he had a
very natural, life-like look in his eyes, but the death grip on his
wallet emitted the odors of the tomb.
This essay is not written for the benefit of the wise in order to
convince them of the efficacy of changing their ideal. They will not
accept my foolishness any more than I will bow down before their
wisdom. It is the ideal of the wise to establish ideals for others.
Let them air their wisdom. They, too, have a province in this world of
many mansions. I do not begrudge them the space they cumber, nor do I
commiserate the victims of their wisdom. Not that it is my ideal to
decry the wondrous wise! That is a bit of _en passant_ by-play with
which I amuse myself while resting for intervals in the pursuit of my
central ideal.
SHOES, PIGS, AND PROBLEMS
While trying on shoes at a shop one morning I was meditating on the
nature of problems, and why it was that I had none to solve, and was
not even sure that I would recognize one should I encounter it in my
rambles. Presently I heard myself asking, “What is a problem?” and the
clerk, probably thinking that the question had been addressed to him,
replied:
“A problem, miss, is to get a number six foot in a number three shoe.
The way I’ve seen it solved seems satisfactory. The last place I
worked we used to mark down shoes on bargain Fridays. I was new at the
place when I learned about problems. I asked the manager one Thursday
night how much to mark down our neat six-dollar gaiters. The manager
instructed me to put up a sign, ‘Shoes marked down one-half.’ Then he
directed me to mark down the size accordingly, and not bother about the
price at all.”
“We don’t do such things in this house,” he went on to state, seeing
that I was more interested in problems at the moment than in footgear,
“but at that place we used to tell our customer we were not sure
that we had anything in stock quite small enough to fit her, unless
perhaps a couple of pairs we happen to have in stock that were ordered
especially for Cinderella (but proved a trifle snug) might serve. We
rarely failed to solve the problem that way.”
While I was down at the farm, I heard a great commotion in the
direction of the sty one morning. Investigation showed that two fat
pigs were lying in the trough, and the remainder of the drove were
exclaiming against that bit of pre-emption with more vehemence than
euphony.
I asked the assembled disputants the cause of the uproar, and was given
to understand that they were discussing the problems of life. I asked
them what were the problems of life, and they said that the pigs on the
outside wanted to get on the inside. I asked why they did not let them
in, and a great big fat hog said:
“We have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness”; and all pigdom squealed:
“We have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“And the object of life is not swill,” said the hog on the inside.
“And the object of life is not swill,” responded the pigs on the
outside.
“We have a right to free assembly and free grunts,” said the hog on the
inside.
“We have a right to free assembly and free grunts,” they all grunted.
“We must restrain our piggish nature,” he said.
“We must restrain our piggish nature,” the echo replied.
And the pigs on the outside were on the outside, and the pigs on the
inside were on the inside.
My intention was to write a chapter on the Philosophy of Pigville. You
see we have books on almost everything except the pig. Our younger
brother is being awfully neglected, though there is much to say and
write on pigs. Carlyle says they are so human. Yet there are some
points of difference between the swine and the human species. I have
seen “gentlemen” who were said to be “as drunk as a hog,” but I have
never seen a pig as “drunk as a gentleman.”
On the surface it appears that all you can say about pigs is swill,
but swill is only a small part. There is the religion of the pigs; the
political economy of the hog; there is the educated pig--he must not
be neglected; then there is a pig morality--why should not our dear
little brother have a morality? I studied them closely and discovered
that they have no monogamistic marriages, and I asked them why they
practiced polygamy. The reply was that to do elsewise would interfere
with the stock market, and anything that interferes with the stock
market is a crime. The same old sow suggested that I should solve their
economic problems. So I called them together and said to them:
“You are pigs, and have pig natures; it is a mistake for you to
restrain your pig nature. You really never do it, but only make a
piggish bluff at repression, which reduces the volume of your lard and
the delicacy of flavor of your hams. Being pigs you should be candid in
your lives. Your natures demand that you root, feed, love, serve and
reproduce your kind, and that you offer your bodies a smoked, salt, or
sugar-cured sacrifice to man, which is your reasonable service and in