What Is Man? and Other Essays
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.