What Is Man? and Other Essays
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
interesting!—in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine
it, I cannot help myself.
O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
Y.M. No—at least, not yet. But take the case of servant—tipping in
Europe. You pay the _hotel_ for service; you owe the servants
_nothing_, yet you pay them besides. Doesn’t that defeat it?
O.M. In what way?
Y.M. You are not _obliged_ to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and—
O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
Y.M. Well, yes.
O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Why of course?
Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to—everybody recognizes it as a _duty_.
O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for _duty’s_ sake?
Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not _all_
compassion, charity, benevolence?
Y.M. Well—perhaps not.
O.M. Is _any_ of it?
Y.M. I—perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?
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.