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Title: What Is Worth While? Author: Adeline Champney Date: 1911 Language: en Topics: anti-work, authority, ideology, morality, religion Source: Retrieved on 2 July 2011 from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_Is_Worth_While%3F Notes: (Read before the Cleveland Free Thought Society. Feb. 20, 1910) Mother Earth Publishing Association 55 West 28th Street, New York
When we were little we were taught to mind. It used to be the fashion to
teach children to mind. Obedience was the sine qua non of childhood. A
child with a will of its own was marked for special discipline at the
hands — often, literally at the hands — of the alarmed parent. A will of
its own was a dangerous possession and must be broken at all costs. So
the little will was broken; the costs were too often handed down, even
unto the third and fourth generation.
On the whole we learned to mind; learned it so well that most of us have
minded ever since, becoming devout Christians and exemplary citizens;
following the beaten path, thinking the time worn thoughts, moulding our
lives after the antique pattern esteemed by our ancestors. To be “good”
was to do as we were told — “ours not to make reply, ours not to reason
why” — ours to conform to the adult life around us, and to cause as
little inconvenience as possible. This was the ideal of juvenile
“goodness,” and to be “good” was the most important thing in life. If it
did not so appear to our childish minds, it was made so, very much so.
Not only were we inflicted with punishments and enticed with rewards,
but to offset the human tendency to concealment which naturally followed
such treatment, we were assured that God was watching us, and that not
merely every act but indeed every thought was “under the law” and
subject to the everlasting wrath of the Almighty, “who slumbers not nor
sleeps.” With the sacred ten commandments, the laws of the land,
personified by the brass-buttoned policeman, and the arbitrary say-so of
parents and teachers and other adults too numerous to mention, our
little lives were bounded on the north, south, east and west by
Authority, and in the sky above lowered the Awful Presence.
This it was to be a child. I am afraid it has not altogether changed
to-day. The home, intrenched in its ancient fastnesses, is slow to feel
the influences of progressive tendencies. Fortunately, persons feel and
respond to these tendencies before their institutions, individuals in
advance of groups. Fortunately, too, we are not all “good” children, or
we should all remain on our knees at the feet of Authority, murmuring
with submissive lip, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
As the child grows, he gradually becomes aware of certain principles to
which all are expected to conform. If he has been “well trained,” by the
time he enters upon his teens he has the habit of obedience, fixed as a
trait of character. The persistent “Why?” of his normal mental activity
has been silenced. He has become beautifully “teachable” and very
satisfactorily tractable. The period of youth is one of the inculcation
of principles, social ideals, which have come to be held inviolable, and
by which the future conduct of his life is to be gauged when he shall
assume direction of his own affairs. Life now grows more complex.
Obedience was simple; so very simple, so very easy, that many prefer to
abrogate all private judgment, to avoid all perplexities, and to remain
always good and obedient children. Hence religion survives — religion,
which fosters irresponsibility and automatic morality.
These social ideals — remember I am setting aside peculiarities of time
and place, and dealing with averages, the great civilized human averages
— these social ideals may be broadly stated as: Honesty, Respectability,
Prosperity. On these hang all the essentials of conduct. Failing in
these, the individual becomes, more or less according to the measure of
his deviation, an undesirable.
These standards of conduct, accepted by religious and irreligious alike,
are presented to the youth as things sacred in themselves, not to be
questioned. One who should ask: “Why should I be honest?” would be
suspected of moral degeneracy. It is true they tell us that honesty is
the best policy, but that is given us rather as an assuaging
circumstance than as a motive. Of course one must be honest. One must be
honest for honesty’s own sake. Money-honest, that is. In a society where
Science and Religion walk hand-in-hand one will hardly look for
scrupulousness as to intellectual honesty; nor will one expect to find
insistence on emotional and social honesty in a society which worships
Respectability. For the greatest of these is Respectability, and
respectable one must be though the heavens fall.
Close upon Respectability follows Prosperity. He who fails to get on in
the world arouses suspicion, but he who prospers glows with
justification. However, the element of opportunity being recognized as a
factor in business success, and moreover the good Lord having peculiar
ways of chastening his children, some measure of social forgiveness may
be meted out to him of small means, but the pillars of the Church and
the bulwarks of society are honest, well-thought-of, and well-to-do.
The worship of this blessed trinity is called Duty. By the
unpremeditated and involuntary act of being born we are supposed to have
incurred a three-fold obligation: our duty to God, our duty to man, and
our duty to ourselves — named in the order of their importance.
Preacher, teacher, poet and sage alike speak to us of Duty. The world’s
literature is full of beautiful tributes to Duty, and stirring
exhortations of Conscience — a spiritual faculty the function of which
is to admonish us of Duty. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul,
say the religious. The nonreligious who have dethroned God and set Right
in his place will tell us that conscience is man’s innate sense of right
and wrong — a newer edition, revised, of the God-explanation. Of course
that settles it, settles it about as well, or ill, as the
God-explanation usually settles problems. It is not essential that such
an explanation be logical, that it be scientific, that it be consistent;
it is not essential even that it should explain. So long as repeating it
gives one that superior sanctified air, it will stand through the ages,
to be fought for and lived for and died for.
As is the history of the individual, so has been the history of the
human race. Human knowledge passes through three stages of development:
the Supernatural, the Metaphysical, the Scientific, and the science of
human conduct follows it. We find primitive man ruled by fear;
worshipping power and mystery; easily coming under the authority of a
priesthood which claims to interpret for him the unknown. This is the
childish age of Bugaboos and Authority, which is succeeded by the
Metaphysical period; the worship of entities, ideals, principles; things
to be valued in and for themselves. To this age belongs the reign of
Conscience, which especially characterizes our own day. And as our
knowledge and understanding of the material universe passes from the
realms of mystery into the region of exact knowledge, so must the
conduct of life take on the scientific method, and, leaving the darkness
of tradition and the fogs of metaphysics, become truly rationalized. As
yet it lingers on the borderline between the Supernatural and the
Metaphysical. The Scientific Era has not dawned.
In the life of each man and woman sooner or later there comes an
awakening. I am inclined to think it comes to all, but very many go to
sleep again. The stupor of years of acquiescence, the apathy bred of the
habit of conformity, overcomes them. And there are many who count the
cost and shut their eyes again. It takes a certain sturdy strength to
cross the current, to steer for unknown seas.
But some there are who do not shrink when they come face to face with
life, and unto these comes experience and knowledge and insight; and
through these comes all the progress of the world. Awakened by some
crisis, public or private; or cramped into wakefulness by the pressure
of antique traditions or institutions; shocked awake, it may be, by
contradictions between scientific and conventional standards; or perhaps
stirred by some echo from the unanswered “Why?” of their childhood; they
boldly challenge the world. “Why are you here?” they demand of every
institution. “What have you to offer me?” they ask of Life itself. And
to such there is no rest and no peace until they are answered. The Man
Awake recognizes nothing which he may not analyze, nothing which he may
not weigh in the balance. Though one by one his cherished idols fall and
crumble, he must apply the tests of truth.
With the downfall of the God-idol I shall not here concern myself. It is
the simplest, the easiest liberation. When one bears the torch of Reason
and uses the compass of Science, all roads lead to Freedom. Many have
made this journey, but many have stopped here and lain down again and
slept. I concern myself with the Man Awake who sees his liberation but
begun; for the God-influence does not perish with the belief in God. God
is dead, but worship survives, and it is not God but worship which
stultifies man’s growth. The Supernatural passes into the Metaphysical —
and the Man Awake still questions. The conduct of life, no longer a
matter of the relation of man to occult powers, becomes a relation of
man to exalted imaginings and deified principles. While our knowledge
and use of our material environment is far advanced into the scientific
stage of development, our understanding of and our attitude toward our
social environment is still in the Metaphysical stage. We have a science
of things, but not as yet a science of men. There are many cobwebs to be
swept away before the conduct of life takes on the scientific form. Any
ideal which becomes an object of worship, which in and for itself
compels observance; any principle, obedience to which is forced upon
men, either by violence, by legal enactment, or by the coercion of
public opinion, becomes a fetish. The air is full of such. This is an
age of mental and emotional fetishism. Chief among these and including
most of them — all, indeed, which approach universality-stands Duty.
From the cradle to the grave one is admonished of Duty. From the lips of
parents and teachers, from preachers and judges and kings, from friend
and foe alike, comes the magic word. Come joy or come sorrow, in life or
unto death, one must follow Duty; and no man knows whence it comes nor
why, and few can follow it, but each man says to every other, “Do thy
Duty.” Duty, not to be denied, not to be questioned, but potent to guide
and to govern a world of men I Of this fetish, then, the Man Awake
demands credentials. He has outgrown the theological traditions of his
fathers, he has gained a new viewpoint whence everything must be judged
anew. He sets about revising his standards. It may be months, it may be
years, before he makes the full readjustment, but what matters it? He is
free, and growing, and that is very nearly the whole of life — to be
free and to grow.
When God vanishes from the skies he takes a great many things with him,
some of which are not commonly recognized as pertaining to the God-idea.
Not only does his departure into the limbo of past superstition remove
the authority of bibles and churches and temples, and the divine
authorities of priests and rulers, but it also removes all ultimate
authorities whatever, and takes the sanctity from all principles of
conduct. The departure of God places man face to face with the material
universe, and men face to face with each other. With the abolition of
the law-giver all laws disappear. The term “laws of nature” shows how
our very language is so tinctured with the teleological conception that
we have difficulty in choosing exact terms for our knowledge.
The so-called “laws of nature” are merely the undeviating principles in
accordance with which the universe of substance in motion continues its
unceasing and eternal change. Forms appear and disappear, phenomena come
and go, but in all the universe is found neither beginning nor end,
neither first nor last; neither good nor evil, right nor wrong, virtue
nor sin, justice nor injustice. To none of these terms is there any
absolute meaning whatever. All are man-made distinctions, varying with
time and place, differing among races and among individuals. To the
history of the human race, then, the Man Awake must go in his search for
the meaning of Duty. For development proceeds ever from the simple to
the complex, and the basis of sane thinking is found in the study of
development. To gain an adequate comprehension of anything one must
understand its development. And nothing will so aid in clearing away
superstition and traditional prejudice in matters social and ethical as
a survey of human history; not merely recorded history but that great
story of the prehistoric man which science resurrects for us. What does
this history say to us of Duty? Just this: bereft of all theological and
metaphysicial sanctities all the human institutions which have demanded
obedience from men are seen to rest ultimately on the power to impose
themselves on individuals. Religion, government, all property privilege,
the marriage institution — all originated in force, and are maintained
by force. Back of every “duty” stands a club. Does one “owe” anything to
compulsion? Can a “duty” be imposed on one, without one’s own consent?
Brought into this world by no act of one’s own, does one inherit the
obligations assumed by one’s ancestors, much less those forced upon
them? The sole justification of every authority is its power to enforce
obedience; and therein lies the justification of every rebellion.
Whatever obedience may be exacted, whatever allegiance may be
voluntarily rendered, there is no obligation whatsoever. Duty is but a
metaphysical cobweb. It has no foundation in fact. “But conscience?
Surely I cannot deny the admonition of conscience!” Have you studied the
conscience of a savage? Have you made a comparative analysis of
conscience among varying peoples and at various periods of history? Have
you ever observed the conscience of a very little child? The dictates of
conscience are purely and simply a matter of education. Conscience
itself is neither more nor less than one’s satisfaction in himself. A
clear conscience is the pleasurable sense of self-approval; guilty
conscience, the disquieting sense of self-censure. This is the reality
of conscience; the grounds for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction lie
in our beliefs and principles, and are, largely, a product of our social
heredity. They may be well or ill founded. One has only to review the
many deeds that have been done “for conscience sake” to perceive how
utterly unreliable it is as a “moral” guide. Of the fetish, Duty, with
Conscience as its private watchman, investigation leaves not one shred.
It follows the gods, the heavens and the hells, and all the spooks that
infest intellectual darkness. Not so with conscience as a profound sense
of self-judgment. That is an attribute of the mind which is of
inestimable value. To the Man Awake it becomes a veritable court of last
appeal. There is no greater honor to win than the approval of our own
souls. There is no greater faith to keep than faith with ourselves.
There is an idea prevalent among the religious that if once the
religious and moral restraints were removed, men would fly off at a
tangent, fling open all the hitherto forbidden doors, and plunge into a
carnival of crime. If they should do so, what would be to blame, their
new-found freedom or their former training? Have all the ages of
religion and morality produced no moral sense? The alarmists indict
their own institutions! Occasionally one hears of preachers’ sons who
“go wrong” — sometimes it is the preacher himself! Sometimes there are
children who have been brought up in the sternest and strictest of
homes, who, on coming of age, plunge into dissipation, perhaps ruining
health and even life. But does any thinking person blame their coming of
age? Is it not plain that their religious training has not given them
moral stamina, or a rational view of life? That it has weakened their
resistage by the constant suggestion of weakness and dependence, and
given them only an arbitrary rule of conduct and not a vital purpose in
life? Believing themselves “vile worms of the dust,” they act the part!
No. The Man Awake is not going off at a tangent. The conduct of life,
now that he no longer gets it ready-made, has become of vastly greater
importance to him. It is his own concern, now; he will ask himself as
never before — “What is really worth while?” And the answer must be a
personal one. Not that out of his inner consciousness he will dig up a
set of rules and precepts unrelated to the thought and feeling of the
world about him. Not every man is called to blaze a new trail. But he
will make sure, when he takes the road, that it leads in his direction,
and that he is not merely following in the footsteps of his grandsires.
Nor is it needful that he travel alone. He may go hand-in-hand with a
comrade, he may join himself to a company, he may even follow a leader;
but the comrades must be of his own choosing, related in thought and
purpose, and not mere accidents of the wayside; and he will see to it
that he is driven by no compulsion save the impulse of his own nature.
Let it not be thought that I disparage ideals. It is not the Ideal but
the deification of it that stultifies growth. The leaders of men are
always idealists; all the periods of great moral and social uplift have
been periods of idealism. If there be any exclusively human
characteristic, essentially distinguishing the man from his
fellow-animals, it is this power to frame ideal conceptions, to picture
better things and to strive toward them. Many of the finest types of
manhood which society has produced have been men of vision as well as of
insight, ardent dreamers of dreams, with the daring to follow their
dreams. These have been strong men, men of striking personality, of
resolute self-determination, these idealists. When a man loses himself,
when he becomes subservient to an ideal; when he no longer possesses it,
but deifies it so that it takes possession of him, then he is no longer
a man but a shadow; and his ideal, a spook.
Out of the past have come down to us many maxims and precepts, most of
which are so permeated with theology or so befogged with metaphysics as
to render them utterly worthless in a modern world. The Man Awake does
not despise the Wisdom of the Ages, but there is also a Folly of the
Ages, and he reserves the right to make his own selection. He accepts no
maxims on say-so, even though the say-so be a repetition of twice ten
thousand years. These shreds of old wisdom make an interesting study,
revealing, as they do, the stuff of which human conduct has been woven,
the woof of the fabric of social custom and usage. But to-day they are
mostly rags, rags.
Among them there is one which seems to have an immortal life. It is
found in many lands and many tongues, varying but slightly in form; and
so general and unquestioned is its acceptance as an efficient guide to
social conduct that even an iconoclast hesitates to lay violent hands on
the Golden Rule. But we recognize no exemptions; nothing escapes the
test. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to
them” might be good sense in a world where all men were alike, possessed
of identical needs, desires and tastes. If anyone thinks it applicable
in a world of individualities, let him try it out in his daily living.
If he attempts to apply it literally, he will speedily discover the
arrogance of the assumption that other men are like himself, that what
pleases him will be acceptable to them. If he endeavors to disregard the
letter but carry out the spirit of it, he will soon be engulfed in the
fathomless task of determining what others, actuated by the Golden Rule,
would do unto him with a view of having him do so even unto them! And at
the best it is not so practical as the familiar “Put yourself in his
place.” Good suggestions, both of them, but as adequate rules of
conduct, such as the Golden Rule is on every hand assumed to be —
childish, utterly childish! In the negative form attributed to Confucius
it becomes less fraught with danger and discord. “Do not unto others as
you would not that they should do unto you.” Where others are involved,
to refrain from action has this advantage: at the worst one becomes
guilty of neglect, but never of aggression. But the moment one begins to
“do things” unto others, he is on dangerous ground. The Golden Rule,
lauded as a social panacea, makes a really pretty plaything for babies,
but is more innocuous when written in Chinese!
Another idol must be shattered in the course of this inquiry, the ideal
of self-sacrifice. Grim and grisly rise the phantoms of its antecedents:
living animals torn asunder, human blood poured out, on the altars of
the gods; self-tortures, flagellations, loathsome mortifications of the
flesh in the cells and hovels of monks and saints — a gruesome crew!
Life and love and treasure offered up to please and placate Deity; and
the crowning sacrifice of Deity himself in the person of his son to
satisfy his own wrath and save a sinning but well-beloved and eternally
damned people! It is doubtless this sacrificial atonement of the ancient
churches which has passed into the metaphysical concept of
self-sacrifice as a laudable and beautiful thing, a holy and righteous
thing, a kind of sublimated duty. Self-mutilations, mortifications of
the flesh, are not all in the past. The religious frenzy of the old-time
saint is rare, and we call it by its right name now. But in its more
subtle form sacrifice unto sanctification is not uncommon among
high-strung nervous temperaments. No one can estimate the injury to
health, the distortions of mind and character, and that among the finer,
more highly developed types of men and women, particularly women. No one
can know the loss to society of strong sane womanhood and motherhood,
from this sacrifice. Moreover, the strong give place to the weak, the
efficient spend their strength in ministering to the inefficient, youth
sterilizes itself in the service of age, the fit waste themselves to
preserve the unfit, until, viewing the social misery of it, one could
almost welcome the restraining hand of a stern but wholesome paganism.
For, mark you, for all this sacrifice the world is scarcely the kinder.
Indeed, as Oscar Wilde so keenly says, “It takes a thoroughly selfish
age like our own to deify self-sacrifice.” “Living for others,” we say,
but deliver us from the arrogance, the insufferable despotism of many of
those who insist on living for us. I have seen whole families tyrannized
over, kept uncomfortable for years, even disrupted, by one member whose
whole purpose in life was to “live for” that family. “Living for
others,” we say, and we thrill with admiration; but when one really
lives for others, what happens? A spoiled life on the one hand, and
spoiled character on the other. Who does not know the unselfish,
self-forgetful, overworked mother and the utterly selfish, inefficient
children? Self-sacrifice is an abnormality, a demoralizing thing. It is
not only an injury to self, it is an insult to its object. Who of us has
not felt this? Have you never been made the object of a sacrifice? Have
you felt “properly” grateful for it? In spite of your appreciation of
the kindness of intent, have you not found yourself half-conscious of a
sort of sneaking resentment? Have you not forced yourself to be
demonstrative and thankful, when you were secretly inclined to go away
and sulk? Yet you did not wish to be ungrateful. Ungrateful!
“Ingratitude is the independence of the soul.” The object of a
sacrifice, like the object of charity, is placed in a position of
weakness, of inefficiency and dependence, and every sturdy soul resents
this to the core.
On the other hand, have you not been thrilled into grateful
responsiveness upon being made the object of some spontaneous act of
affection and thoughtfulness of some expression of the real self of that
other? It may have cost nothing, it may have been a real pleasure to the
other — and that is precisely why you valued it. It was a genuine
tribute to some excellence in you which attracted it. It is ever the
spontaneous things that count. It does not always seem fair that the
utmost endeavor of one person should count for less than the
spontaneous, uncalculated action of another; but it does. We appreciate
the effort, but it is spontaneity which attracts us and gives us joy.
Being is more beautiful than acting; play is more beautiful than work.
It is only when work is play that it is beautiful, when the worker
enjoys it and puts himself into it. Nothing is beautiful which does not
give joy, and all effort that does not tend toward joy is wasted.
We often seem to forget that man is an emotional creature as well as a
reasoning being. But in truth our feelings are the important things in
life, not our ideas. It is our feelings which impel us to action; our
thoughts merely restrain. Even our judgments ultimately rest on feeling.
Prof. James puts it in this way: “Our judgments concerning the worth of
things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us.
Where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we
frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already
with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the
only things which our minds could entertain, we should close all our
likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one
situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any
other.”
In this alleged reign of reason we are apt to overlook this fact. It is
frequently remarked how thin is the veneer which civilization has laid
upon the primal savage. When a serious crisis arrives, the veneer cracks
and the savage appears. And the whole effort of civilization seems to
be, not to develop and improve the savage, but to thicken the veneer.
Surely society would be more secure if the savage were not veneered at
all.
The whole structure of society must rest either on conflict or on
confidence, and confidence is not born of veneer. Any system of
education which relies upon the imposition of ideas rather than the
development of individualities must result in a hypocrisy which is none
the less demoralizing for being well-intentioned; a hypocrisy which
destroys confidence, understanding, comradeship and social stability.
For the foundation of social stability is the co-operation of
spontaneously acting individuals. Restraint is the essence of our
governments, and largely the aim of our education, but restraint is not
power but the denial of power. Expression is the vital thing, expression
of feeling; and the function of restraint is intellectual, the
preservation of balance. Reason is normally the handmaid of feeling,
developed by the endeavor to fulfill our desires. To discount our
emotional life and attempt to live by intellect alone is to dehumanize
ourselves just as surely as to abdicate reason and live from impulse
alone is to brutalize ourselves. The well-developed individual is he
whose impulses and desires are so well-balanced and harmonized that he
secures the greatest amount of spontaneous self-satisfaction with the
least friction; and the road to this is self-discipline, that
self-discipline the true function of which is the freeing of our
impulses, and their co-ordination into efficiency and power.
The conduct of life is a matter of valuations, and since our valuations
are dependent upon our feelings rather than upon our reason, there must
always be a wide variation between the valuations of individuals. Hence
it is impossible to be dogmatic, and to limit the activities and the
affiliations of the Man Awake. Living is not a matter of conformity but
of personality. There are many Men Awake, and while they may travel
together for a time, they must part company somewhere, for each man must
live his own life. Even the closest are separated by an impassable gulf,
and “in the hour of our bitterest need, we are ever alone.” This
isolation of individuals in the human race, a species in which each
member is more utterly dependent upon his fellows than in any other, is
one of the most remarkable of paradoxes. Indeed, self-reliance is an
eminent social virtue, but self-limitation is a pitiful individual
weakness. This distinction can hardly be too strongly emphasized. The
finest type of human development is strongly self-centered, but the
self-limited individual is deficient in essential humanity, for man is a
social being, not merely a gregarious animal. He does not merely hunt in
packs like the wolves, nor herd together for protection like weaker
animals; but before man was possible a species of social creatures had
appeared, who, living together, sharing in weal and woe, and especially
through close association in play, developed a community of feeling
which taught them speech and thought and made them the ancestors of the
civilizations. One never understands what it is to be human, one never
realizes his own individuality until he has gone back across the ages to
study his origin, and followed the long, long journey upward. From that
hour with the primitive human-like folk, he comes closer in touch with
the heart of humanity, feels the great genetic forces which inhere in
the race, thrills to the urge and the uplift of human progress. The
glory of human joy and the bitterness of human misery press upon him,
enter his soul and become one with him. He has thought of himself as
belonging to the human race; now he suddenly feels that the human race
belongs to him; he has found himself in humanity and humanity in
himself. There is no need to talk to him of human brotherhood; he has
come closer than brotherhood. The “greatest good of the greatest number
sounds like empty words to the sound of his own heart throbs.
Can anyone come close to the origin and history of his kind, and yet
feel satisfied? Is he not poor with the poverty of the poorest, and
lonely with the desolation of the outcast? So long as some must be cold
and hungry and wretched, are there not tears in all his joy, and thorns
in all his luxury? Does he not feel with Ernest Crosby —
Bitter to eat is the bread that was made by slaves.
In the fair white loaf I can taste their sweat and tears.
My clothes strangle and oppress me; they burn into my flesh, for I have
not justly earned them, and how are they clad that made them?
My tapestried walls and inlaid floors chill me and hem me in like the
damp stones of a prison house, for I ask why the builders and weavers of
them are not living there in my stead.
Alas! I am eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree, the tree of
others’ labor!”
Can anyone find humanity and find himself and not become a
revolutionist? I cannot. I declare that greater than custom and
convention, greater than the laws of the land, greater than schools and
philosophies, is the need of human joy. I declare that it is my business
to increase it. With Traubel I say —
Now I am at last relentless,
I declare that the social order is to be superseded by another social
order.
I know the quality of your folly when you go about the streets looking
in the dust of noisy oratory for the complete state.
I know very well that when the complete state appears it will be because
you bring it to others, not because others bring it to you.
And I know that you will bring it, not as a burden upon your back, but
as something unscrolled within.
For who is society but myself and yourself and all selves? And what is
human joy but my joy and your joy and the joy of each? And every joy of
mine and every joy of yours and every joy that you or I can bring to
any, all are so much added joy in the world. For how shall humanity
rejoice while you and I are sad?
They tell us much of the social nature of the individual, but they
forget to tell us of the individual nature of society. But I tell you
that society is myself and yourself and every other self. Shall I serve
society by spelling it with a capital? Shall I serve society by lying
prostrate before it? Shall I serve society by waiting for it to push me
forward? Society does nothing, it is I who do things. It is true that
without society I can do nothing, but it is as true that without me —
without every individual me — society can do nothing. Let us have done
with the worship of society, for at the last there are but men and
women, selves, separate and distinct but interdependent. And society
progresses only as these progress. And society is great and good and
prosperous and happy only with the greatness and goodness and prosperity
and happiness of these men and women.
The most and the least which society demands of us is that we be
ourselves. We speak of the race-ideals, but the race-ideals are of value
to me only as I make them mine, my very own; as I follow them, love them
and live them for myself. Then, only, does my living them become of
value to my greater self, the social whole. The man in whose being a
race-ideal becomes, as it were, focused, becomes from that moment a
veritable savior, a leader and maker of history and social destiny; and
he becomes this just in the measure of the independence of his thought
and action. It is often remarked that great men are the product of their
time, expressions of the mass of society; but the significance of this
may be easily misconstrued. These men represent the whole by emerging
from it; the measure of their greatness, aye, the measure of their
service, is the completeness with which they rise above the mass of
their fellows. The men who have spoken out the inarticulate desires of
the masses, who have become the voice of a great human cry, the right
arm of a great human purpose unto action, have been men whose
individuality was of the sturdiest and sternest; men who first and
foremost have thought their own thoughts and lived their own lives, even
unto condemnation and disinheritment at the hands of the very people
whose saviors they were. The will of the people is interpreted, is put
into action, is brought to fruition, by those individuals of the people
who come out from among the people with the fearless and invincible
determination — “My will be done!”
We cannot all be saviors, but the impulses which these men personify and
concentrate into action are the discontents, the yearnings, the purposes
of individuals, and no mystic emanation of the mass as a mass. And as
time passes there are more and more individuals and smaller and smaller
inarticulate “masses.” The day of the inert mass is passing; the day of
the individual is about to dawn, and you and I are either helping or
hindering.
I come to you to-day with the question, “What is Worth While?” and I
answer it boldly — “Myself!” My own life! And all I demand for myself I
accord to you, gladly and with a comrade-word of good cheer — Freedom to
live it to the full.