Practical Ethics Part 2

+Cynicism regarding appearance.+--Vanity may take just the opposite form. We may be just as proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks.

This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason why almost every town has its old codger who seems to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as much pride in their mode of life as the devotee of fashion does in hers. One of these Cynics went to the baths with Alcibiades, the gayest of Athenian youths. When they came out Alcibiades put on the Cynic's rags, leaving his own gay and costly apparel for the Cynic. The Cynic was in a great rage, and protested that he would not be seen wearing such gaudy things as those. "Ah!" said Alcibiades; "so you care more what kind of clothes you wear than I do after all; for I can wear your clothes, but you cannot wear mine."

Another of the Cynics, as he entered the elegant apartments of Plato, spat upon the rug, exclaiming: "Thus I pour contempt on the pride of Plato." "Yes," was Plato's reply, "with a greater pride of your own."

Since pride and vanity have these two forms, we need to be on our guard against them both. For one or the other is pretty sure to a.s.sail us. An eye single to the attractiveness of our personal appearance is the only thing that will save us from one or the other of these lines of temptation.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Too little attention to dress and surroundings is slovenliness.+--The sloven is known by his dirty hands and face, his disheveled hair, and tattered garments. His house is in confusion; his grounds are littered with rubbish; he eats his meals at an untidy table; and sleeps in an unmade bed. Slovenliness is a vice; for it is an open confession that a man is too weak to make his surroundings the expression of his tastes and wishes, and has allowed his surroundings to run over him and drag him down to their own level. And this subjection of man to the tyranny of things, when he ought to exercise a strong dominion over them, is the universal mark of vice.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Too much attention to dress and appearance is fastidiousness.+--These things are important; but it is a very petty and empty mind that can find enough in them to occupy any considerable portion of its total attention and energy. The fastidious person must have everything "just so," or the whole happiness of his precious self is utterly ruined. He spends hours upon toilet and wardrobe where sensible people spend minutes. Hence he becomes the slave rather than the master of his dress.

+The sloven and the dude are both slaves; but in different ways.+--Slovenliness is slavery to the hideous and repulsive.

Fastidiousness is slavery to this or that particular style or fashion.

The freedom and mastery of neatness consists in the ability to make as attractive as possible just such material as one's means place at his disposal with the amount of time and effort he can reasonably devote to them.

THE PENALTY.

+Fastidiousness belittles: slovenliness degrades. Both are contemptible.+--The man who does not care enough for himself to keep the dirt off his hands and clothes, when not actually engaged in work that soils them, cannot complain if other people place no higher estimate upon him than he by this slovenliness puts upon himself. The woman whose soul rises and falls the whole distance between ecstasy and despair with the fit of a glove or the shade of a ribbon must not wonder if people rate her as of about equal consequence with gloves and ribbons.

These vices make their victims low and petty; and the contempt with which they are regarded is simply the recognition of the pettiness and degradation which the vices have begotten.

CHAPTER III.

Exercise.

When the body is well fed and clothed, the next demand is for exercise.

Our powers are given us to be used; and unless they are used they waste away. Nothing destroys power so surely and completely as disuse. The only way to keep our powers is to keep them in exercise. We acquire the power to lift by lifting; to run, by running; to write, by writing; to talk, by talking; to build houses, by building; to trade, by trading. In mature life our exercise comes to us chiefly along the lines of our business, domestic, and social relations. In childhood and youth, before the pressure of earning a living comes upon us, we must provide for needed exercise in artificial ways. The play-impulse is nature's provision for this need. It is by hearty, vigorous play that we first gain command of those powers on which our future ability to do good work depends.

THE DUTY.

+The best exercise that of which we are least conscious.+--It is the duty of every grown person as well as of every child to take time for recreation. Exercise taken in a systematic way for its own sake is a great deal better than nothing; and in crowded schools and in sedentary occupations such gymnastic exercises are the best thing that can be had.

The best exercise, however, is not that which we get when we aim at it directly; but that which comes incidentally in connection with sport and recreation. A plunge into the river; a climb over the hills; a hunt through the woods; a skate on the pond; a wade in the trout brook; a ride on horseback; a sail on the lake; camping out in the forest;--these are the best ways to take exercise. For in these ways we have such a good time that we do not think about the exercise at all; and we put forth ten times the amount of exertion that we should if we were to stop and think how much exercise we proposed to take.

Next in value to these natural outdoor sports come the artificial games; baseball, football, hare and hounds, lawn tennis, croquet, and hockey.

When neither natural nor artificial sports can be had, then the dumb-bells, the Indian clubs, and the foils become a necessity.

Everyone should become proficient in as many of these sports as possible. These are the resources from which the stores of vitality and energy must be supplied in youth, and replenished in later life.

THE VIRTUE.

+The value of superfluous energy.+--The person whose own life-forces are at their best cannot help flowing over in exuberant gladness to gladden all he meets. Herbert Spencer has set this forth so strongly in his Data of Ethics that I quote his words: "Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming down with beaming face ready to laugh at the slightest provocation, the healthy man of high powers enters on the day's business not with repugnance but with gladness; and from hour to hour experiencing satisfaction from work effectually done, comes home with an abundant surplus of energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Full of vivacity, he is ever welcome.

For his wife he has smiles and jocose speeches; for his children stories of fun and play; for his friends pleasant talk interspersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoyancy."

THE REWARD.

"Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance."

The reward of exertion is the power to make more exertion the next time.

And the reward of habits of regular exercise and habitual cheerfulness is the ability to meet the world at every turn in the consciousness of power to master it, and to meet men with that good cheer which disarms hostility and wins friends.

THE TEMPTATION.

+Excitement not to be made an end in itself.+--The exhilaration of sport may be carried to the point of excitement; and then this excitement may be made an end in itself. This is the temptation which besets all forms of recreation and amus.e.m.e.nt. It is the fear of this danger that has led many good people to distrust and disparage certain of the more intense forms of recreation. Their mistake is in supposing that temptation is peculiar to these forms of amus.e.m.e.nt. As we shall see before we complete our study of ethics, everything brings temptation with it; and the best things bring the severest and subtlest temptations; and if we would withdraw from temptation, we should have to withdraw from the world.

We must all recognize that this temptation to seek excitement for its own sake is a serious one. It is least in the natural outdoor sports like swimming and sailing and hunting and fishing and climbing and riding. Hence we should give to these forms of recreation as large a place as possible in our plans for exercise and amus.e.m.e.nt. We should see clearly that the artificial indoor amus.e.m.e.nts, such as dancing, card-playing, theater-going, billiard-playing, are especially liable to give rise to that craving for excitement for excitement's sake which perverts recreation from its true function as a renewer of our powers into a ruinous drain upon them. The moment any form of recreation becomes indispensable to us, the moment we find that it diminishes instead of heightening our interest and delight in the regular duties of our daily lives, that instant we should check its encroachment upon our time and, if need be, cut it off altogether. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules, telling precisely what forms of amus.e.m.e.nt are good and what are bad. So much depends on the att.i.tude of the individual toward them, and the a.s.sociations which they carry with them in different localities, that what is right and beneficial for one person in one set of surroundings would be wrong and disastrous to another person or to the same person in other circ.u.mstances. To enable us to see clearly the important part recreation must play in every healthy life, and to see with equal clearness the danger of giving way to a craving for constant and unnatural excitement, is the most that ethics can do for us. The application of these principles to concrete cases each parent must make for his own children, and each individual for himself.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Neglect of exercise and recreation leads to moroseness.+--Like milk which is allowed to stand, the spirit of man or woman, if left unoccupied, turns sour. One secret of sourness and moroseness is the sense that some side of our nature has been repressed; and this inward indignation at our own wrongs we vent on others in bitterness and complainings. Moroseness is first a sign that we ourselves are miserable; and secondly it is the occasion of making others miserable too. Having had Spencer's account of the benefits of the cheerfulness that comes from adequate recreation, let us now see his description of its opposite. "Far otherwise is it with one who is enfeebled by great neglect of self. Already deficient, his energies are made more deficient by constant endeavors to execute tasks that prove beyond his strength, and by the resulting discouragement. Hours of leisure, which, rightly pa.s.sed, bring pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the powers of work, cannot be utilized: there is not vigor enough for enjoyments involving action, and lack of spirits prevents pa.s.sive enjoyments from being entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes a burden. The irritability resulting now from ailments, now from failures caused from feebleness, his family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid interest in the amus.e.m.e.nts of his children; and he is called a wet blanket by his friends."

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Perpetual amus.e.m.e.nt-seeking: brings ennui, satiety, and disgust.+--"All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy," is as true as that "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The constant pursuit of amus.e.m.e.nt makes life empty and frivolous. Rightly used recreation increases one's powers for serious pursuits. Pursued wrongly, pursued as the main concern of life, amus.e.m.e.nt makes all serious work seem stale and dull; and finally makes amus.e.m.e.nt itself dull and stale too. Ennui, loathing, disgust, and emptiness are the marks of the amus.e.m.e.nt-seeker the world over. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. All things are full of weariness. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing"--this is the experience of the man who "withheld not his heart from any joy." It is the experience of everyone who exalts amus.e.m.e.nt from the position of an occasional servant to that of abiding master of his life.

THE PENALTY.

+The penalty of neglected exercise is confirmed debility.+--"Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath."

Enfeebled from lack of exercise a man finds himself unequal to the demands of his work; and soured by his consequent dissatisfaction with himself, he becomes alienated from his fellows. The tide of life becomes low and feeble; and he can neither overcome obstacles in his own strength nor attract to himself the help of others.

CHAPTER IV.

Work.

Food, clothes, shelter, and all the necessities of life are the products of labor. Even the simplest food, such as fruit and berries, must be picked before it can be eaten: the coa.r.s.est garment of skins must be stripped from the animal before it can be worn: the rudest shelter of rock or cave must be seized and defended against intruders before it can become one's own. And as civilization advances, the element of labor involved in the production of goods steadily increases. The universal necessity of human labor to convert the raw materials given us by nature into articles serviceable to life and enjoyment renders work a fundamental branch of human conduct. Regular meals, comfortable homes, knowledge, civilization, all are the fruits of work. And unless we contribute our part to the production of these goods, we have no moral right to be partakers of the fruits. "If any will not work, neither let him eat." "All work," says Thomas Carlyle, "is n.o.ble: work alone is n.o.ble. Blessed is he that has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn craftsman who with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. A second man I honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. These two in all their degrees I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. We must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse."

THE DUTY.

+Every man lives either upon the fruit of his own work, or upon the fruit of the work of others.+--In childhood it is right for us to live upon the fruits of the toil of our parents and friends. But to continue this life of dependence on the work of others after one has become an able-bodied man or woman is to live the life of a perpetual baby. No life so little justifies itself as that of the idle rich. The idle poor man suffers the penalty of idleness in his own person. He gives little to the world; and he gets little in return. The idle rich man gives nothing, and gets much in return. And while he lives, someone has to work the harder for his being in the world; and when he dies the world is left poorer than it would have been had he never been born. He has simply consumed a portion of the savings of his ancestors, and balanced the energy and honor of their lives by his own life of worthlessness and shame. Inherited wealth should bring with it a life of greater responsibility and harder toil; for the rich man is morally bound to use his wealth for the common good. And that is a much harder task than merely to earn one's own living. An able-bodied man who does not contribute to the world at least as much as he takes out of it is a beggar and a thief; whether he shirks the duty of work under the pretext of poverty or riches.

+Every boy and girl should be taught some trade, business, art, or profession.+--To neglect this duty is to run the risk of enforced dependence upon others, than which nothing can be more destructive of integrity and self-respect. The increasing avenues open to women, and the fact that a woman is liable at any time to have herself and her children to support, make it as important for women as for men to have the ability to earn an honest living.