A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of
right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They
exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship
with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they
become strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home,
friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected--but the business,
never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the
home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and
delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying,
their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good
father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street.
They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and
avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the
timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says,
"That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it
for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his
finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate
nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in
the great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man for
the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he
selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the
structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his
flocks--so much wool to be sheared.
Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and
spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward
yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light
broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday
since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not
conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for
to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old
experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years
ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring,
or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's
loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good
that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose
conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements.
With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These
are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The
good deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of
election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to
sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight,
saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat
things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed
on the dry bones of logic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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