The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and ServiceHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and Service
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Conduct of life
The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the
traitor's final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that
filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He
plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general,
planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre,
and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to
the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops
and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and
pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of
avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped
distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed
treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and,
dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his
body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary
degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of
harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's
career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall
he also reap is the law of nature and of God.
The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is
unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all
of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial
exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was
shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a
"hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat
and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old,
Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he
dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice
led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used
the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and,
simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those
tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to
his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed
swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns
to crafty Jacob.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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