Practical Ethics Part 5

What a tangled web we weave When 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 pa.s.sing 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 developed moral sensibility.

The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest that infests the average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain of circ.u.mstantial 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."

CHAPTER VIII.

Time.

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 pa.s.sing 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; each must 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 appet.i.te or pa.s.sion springs up within us, and demands instant obedience to its demands. The weak man yields at once and lets the appet.i.te or pa.s.sion or inclination lead him whithersoever it listeth.

Not so the strong, the prudent man. He says to the hot, impetuous pa.s.sion: "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 appet.i.te or pa.s.sion 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 time comes." 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, dest.i.tute 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.

CHAPTER IX.

s.p.a.ce.

As all thoughts and actions take place in time, so all material things exist in s.p.a.ce. Everything we have must be in some place. To give things their right relations in s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.s of facts where he can turn to it instantly.

This keeping things of a kind together, each kind in a place by itself, is system. 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.