CHAPTER VII
THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE: ACT SO AS TO ELICIT THE BEST IN OTHERS AND THEREBY IN THYSELF[62]
It is difficult to see the potentially divine nature in men when masked by the forbidding traits which human beings so often exhibit.
A number of vital considerations will now have to be emphasized as pertinent to the subject we are dealing with.
The first point is that the character of every person contains contrary elements.[63] Let the two kinds of qualities be called the fair and foul, or more simply still the plus and minus traits. The bright qualities, the plus traits, are undoubtedly more predominant in some, the dark or minus traits in others. But potential plus qualities exist in the worst characters, and potential minus traits may be surmised, and on scrutiny will be found, in those whom the world most admires.
A second point is mentioned as an hypothesis not indeed as yet verified, but I believe verifiable, namely, that certain defined minus traits will be found to go with certain plus traits. Wherever bright qualities stand out we are likely to meet with corresponding dark qualities or dispositions, and conversely. There are, I am persuaded, uniformities of correspondence between the plus and minus traits, and it would be of greatest practical help in judging others and ourselves if these uniformities could be worked out. A kind of chart might then be made, a description of the principal types of human character, with the salient defects and qualities that belong to each. Extensive statistical treatment of a multitude of biographies would lay the foundation for such an undertaking; also sketches of the prominent characteristics of nations, like those furnished by Fouillée, would be utilized. Also the study of the character traits of primitive races as partially carried out by Waitz in his Anthropology and the character types of animals, so far as accessible to observation, might be used for comparison. Instructed in this manner, we should, on coming into contact with others, either on their attractive or repellent side, be prepared to expect and to allow for the opposite traits. And we should learn to see ourselves in the same manner; we should see our empirical character as it really is, the dark traits side by side with the bright. The courage to wish to know the truth about one’s self is rare, and when the revelation comes or is forced upon us, it often breeds a kind of sick self-disgust and despair. The saint at such times in moral agony declares himself to be the worst of sinners. He has striven to attain a higher than the average moral level, and behold he has slipped into only deeper depths. The minister of religion, the revered teacher, the political and social leader, when abruptly shocked into self-examination by some evidence of grossness or deviousness in themselves, no longer to be glossed over or explained away, are fated to go through the same ordeal. A profound despondency is the consequence. It is not only the badness now exposed, but the previous state of hypocrisy that seems in the retrospect intolerable. Some persons live what is called a double life in the face of the world. But who is quite free from living a double life in his own estimate? Achilles said of himself ἄχθος ἀροῦρας (“cumberer of the ground”). Many a man has echoed that cry with a bitterness of soul more poignant than that which Achilles felt when he uttered the words.
Now the principle of the duality[64] of character traits, or as we may also designate it, the principle of the polarity of character, applies to our natural or empirical character, and our empirical character is not our moral character. The distinction between the two will serve, as we shall presently see, to rescue us from the state of moral dejection just described. But first it is indispensable to fix attention on the natural character, to recognize that we are composite, each and every one of us, and that the all-important thing to know is which of our plus qualities go with which of the minus. Here the psychologist can help us. Here a great field is open for a practical science of ethology. This would give us a more adequate knowledge of the empirical character, the substratum in which ethical character is to be worked out.
Point three opens up a great enlightenment in regard to the whole subject. It is that the distinction must be drawn, and ever be kept in mind, between the bright and dark qualities and the virtues and vices. The bright qualities are not of themselves virtues. The dark qualities are not of themselves vices. To suppose that they are, to confuse the bright with virtue and the dark with viciousness, is the most prevalent of moral fallacies.[65]
A person is found to be kind, sympathetic, gentle, and on this score is said to be virtuous or good. But gentleness, kindness, a sympathetic disposition, while they lend themselves to the process of being transformed into virtues, are not of themselves moral qualities at all, but gifts of nature, happy endowments for which the possessor can claim no merit. And sullenness, irascibility, the hot, fierce cravings and passions with which some men are cursed, are not vices, though it is obvious how readily they turn into vices as soon as the will consents to them.
The question becomes urgent: What then is a virtue? The fair qualities are the basis, the natural substratum of the virtues, the material susceptible of transformation into virtues. In what does the transformation consist? When does it take place? The answer is, when the plus quality has been raised to the Nth degree, and in consequence the minus qualities are expelled. This result, of course, is never actually achieved. The concept here presented is a concept of limits. But in the direction defined lies growth and continuous development not of but toward ethical personality. In public addresses I have often said: Look to your virtues, and your vices will take care of themselves. I can put this thought more exactly by saying: Change your so-called virtues into real virtues: raise your plus qualities to the Nth degree. And the degree to which you succeed in so doing you can judge of by the extent to which the minus qualities are in process of disappearing.
One or two examples will illustrate the pivotal thought thus reached in the exposition of our ethical system with respect to its practical consequences. To raise to the Nth degree is to infinitize a finite quality, or to enhance it in the direction of infinity. I shall take two examples, one self-sacrifice, the other justice, both viewed in their finite aspect as plus traits requiring to be subjected to the process of transformation.
The empirical motive of self-sacrifice may be egocentric or altruistic. In egocentric self-sacrifice, doing for others is a means of exalting the idea of self to the mind of the doer. He uses others, not as sacred personalities, worth while on their own account, but subtly exploits them by benefiting them. He uses them as objects by means of which to achieve a finer self-aggrandizement. He may indeed go to the utmost lengths of devotion for his friends. He may perform for them the most repulsive offices. He may give freely of his means, denying himself meanwhile comforts and even necessaries in order perhaps to extricate them from pecuniary difficulties. He may contribute in refined ways to their pleasure. As a physician he may watch night after night at the bedside of the sick, foregoing sleep though fatigued to the point of exhaustion in order to be at hand to mitigate the pains of the sufferer, jeopardizing his own health in order to assist others in recovering theirs. Yes, he may even give of his own blood to renew their ebbing life. In all this he will look for no material compensation. Gratitude, especially gratitude expressed in words, is repugnant to him. The lofty image of self which he strives to create would be marred if any such coarsely selfish motive were allowed to intrude. All that he requires, but this he does inexorably require, is that his beneficiaries shall silently confess their dependence on him, that he shall see the exalted image of himself mirrored in their attitude, and that they shall move in their orbits as satellites around his sun. The egocentrism is veiled and easily confounded with the purest moral disposition. But it is there all the same, and the proof of it is that the very same person who is thus friendly to his friends, and an unstinting benefactor to those who pay him the kind of homage he exacts, is capable of behaving with almost inconceivable hardness and even cruelty toward others who will not stand in this subordinate relation to him, or who in any way wound his self-esteem. Sister Dora, serving enthusiastically in a small-pox hospital, while neglecting the nearer duties at home, intent on dramatic, histrionic self-representation, is likewise a palpable instance of egocentric self-sacrifice.
The self is precious on its own account. The non-self, the other, equally so. A virtuous act is one in which the ends of self and of the other are respected and promoted jointly. It is an act which has for its result the more vivid consciousness of this very jointness. Egocentric self-sacrifice errs on the one side, the personality of another being made tributary to the empirical self, despite the actual benefits conferred. Altruistic self-sacrifice errs in the opposite way. In it the personality of the self is effaced or made servile to the interests or supposed interests of another. Not, let me add, to the real interests, for the spiritual interests are never achievable at the expense of other spiritual natures. The wife or mother is an instance, who slaves for husband or children, obliterating herself, never requiring the services due to her in return and the respect for her which such services imply, degrading herself and thereby injuring the moral character of those whom she pampers. An historic instance of the altruistic error on a larger scale is afforded by the Platonic scheme of scientific breeding under state supervision, a suggestion revived in modern times, in which freedom of choice between the sexes, and the integrity of the personality of those concerned, is sacrificed to the supposed interests of the community. Nietzsche’s doctrine may possibly be regarded as a compound of the two errors described, the Superman representing the egocentrism, while altruistic self-sacrifice, entire annulment of their personalities is expected of the multitude.
It is easy to distinguish the plus and minus qualities in the characters of the egocentrist and the altruist: in the one case, beneficence combined with hardness; in the other, service of others combined with absence of self-respect.
The second example to be briefly considered is the finite trait commonly mistaken for justice. A typical illustration of this is presented by the merchant who ascribes to himself a just character on the ground that he is punctual in the payment of his debts, that his word is as good as his bond; or by the manufacturer who entertains the same opinion of himself because he pays scrupulously the wages on which he has agreed with his employees.[66] One wonders that so great and profound a notion as that of justice should be understood so superficially, restricted to such narrow limits, and that rational human beings should claim to possess so lofty a virtue on the score of credentials so inadequate. The reason is that the empirical substratum of justice is mistaken for the ethical virtue itself. This substratum may be described as an inborn propensity toward order in things and in relations, a natural impatience of loose fringes, a certain mental neatness. Hence insistence on explicitly defined arrangements and on simple, over-simple formulas. These are favored because they keep out of sight the complex elements which if considered might introduce uncertainty and possibly disorder into the situation. Thus a manufacturer, impatient of looseness, over-rating explicitness, will be led to grasp at a formula of justice which reduces it to the bare literal performance of a fixed agreement, no matter with what unfreedom, owing to the pressure of want, it was entered into by the wage-earners, and no matter how deteriorating the effect of the insufficient wage may prove to be on their standard of living.
But it is a far cry from this empirical predisposition to the sublime ethical idea itself. The idea of “the just” as exemplified in any act performed by me includes the totality of all those conditions which make for the development of the ethical personality of others in so far as it can be affected by my action. To do a just act is to act with the totality of these conditions in view, in order to promote the end in view, which is the liberation of personality or at least the idea of personality in others and in myself.
It is thus evident that a just act—an ideally, perfectly just act,—can be performed by no man. First because the right conditions of human development are but very imperfectly known, and are only brought to light by slow degrees. Secondly because even as to the known conditions of justice, for instance the abolition of the evils of the present industrial wage system, a single employer, or even a group of well-intentioned employers can bring about the desired changes only to a very limited extent.
Raising the finite quality underlying justice to the Nth degree therefore means opening an illimitable prospect. The ethical effort in this, as in all other instances, is destined to be thwarted. It is an effort in the direction of the finitely unattainable; the effort itself, with the conviction it fosters as to the reality of that which is finitely unattainable, being the ethically valuable outcome. The just man, therefore, in any proper sense of the word, is one who is convinced of the fact that he is essentially not a just man, and a deep humility as to both his actual and possible achievements will distinguish him from the “just man” so-called, who arrogates to himself that sublime attribute on the ground of the scrupulous payment of debts, or the fulfilment of contracts. Humility in fact will be found to be the characteristic mark of those who have attained ethical enlightenment in any direction. It is the outward sign from which we may infer that the finite quality in them is in process of being raised to the Nth degree.
I have given these few specific illustrations of my meaning, but what has been said applies equally to any of the plus qualities. The plus qualities are the ones which are favorable for transformation into the infinitized ethical quality. The ethical principle itself is one and indivisible. Any one of the plus qualities, when ethicized, will conduce to the same result. From whatever point of the periphery of the ethical sphere we advance toward the center we shall meet with the same experience. Thus self-affirmation or egoism when in idea raised to the Nth degree will reveal that the highest selfhood can be achieved only when the unique power of a spiritual being is deployed in such a way as to challenge the unique, distinctive power that is lodged in each of the infinite multitude of spiritual beings that are partners with us in the eternal life.
And altruism, or care for others, at its spiritual climax, will conversely involve the recognition that true service to others can only be perfectly performed when the power that is resident in ourselves is exercised in its most vigorous, most spontaneous, and most self-affirming mode. And as the diverse empirical qualities which we observe in one another all appear to be modes of or cognate with these two principal tendencies—the self-affirming and the altruistic—the method of transfiguring empirical qualities which has been set forth may be found to apply in every instance.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE (Continued)
Whatever the steps that have thus far been taken, they are preliminary to the final step. And the method of “salvation,” the distinctive feature wherein this ethical system differs from others, may now be briefly stated. So act as to elicit the unique personality in others, and thereby in thyself. Salvation is found in the effort to save others! The difference in method consists in the joint pursuit of the two ends, that of the other and that of the self. The controlling idea is that the numen in the self is raised out of potentiality into actuality by the energy put forth to raise the numen in the other,—the two divinities greeting each other as simultaneously they rise into the light.
It is thus that both egoism and altruism are transcended. To be egoistic is to assert one’s empirical self at the expense of other empirical selves. To be altruistic is to prefer the empirical selves of others to one’s own. It is not true that self-realization, keeping to the empirical signification of self, leads insensibly to altruistic conduct. The life of the great “self-realizer,” Goethe, may be cited in evidence of this. Nor is it true that preference for the empirical self of another necessarily involves maintaining the integrity of one’s own empirical self. In the empirical field egoism and altruism are conflicting and mutually contradictory. It is in the spiritual field that they cease to be so, because both disappear in an object of the will which includes them both and transcends them both. If this be so, it may be asked why does the formula we have adopted read: So act as to elicit the unique personality in others, and thereby in thyself? Why not conversely:—So act as to realize the unique personality in thyself, and thereby in others?—since in any case the ends in view are to be achieved conjointly. The answer is that in the pure spiritual field, in the world of ideal ethical units, it would make no difference from which point of view the relation were regarded. But when the spiritual formula is applied as a regulative rule to the mutual relations of empirical beings there is a difference. Thus applied, it must necessarily be couched in such terms as will make the spiritual birth of the other the prime object, and the spiritual birth of the self its incidental though inseparable concomitant. This is so because ethics is a science of energetics, which has to do with the potencies of our nature in their most affirmative efferent expression. All our higher faculties are active, and touch for good or ill the lives of those who surround us. Even the secret thoughts which seem only to affect our own individuality, inevitably project their influence upon our associates.
Now ethics is a science of right energizing. And since as a matter of fact we do inevitably energize in such a manner as to affect others, the fundamental question in ethics is: how are we to regulate the incidences of our natures that fall upon other lives so that they shall be right? Since we cannot help acting upon them and influencing them, how can we act rightly toward them and rightly influence them? And the rule supplied by the ethical principle is: Act upon their empirical selves in such a manner as to draw from their empirical natures the hidden personality, or at least the consciousness of it. And the repercussion of the rule is: in the attempt to do so you will convert your own empirical self into a spiritual personality, or at least evoke in yourself the idea of yourself as a spiritual personality.
Incontestably, in the attempt to change others we are compelled to try to change ourselves. The transformation undergone by a parent in the attempt to educate his child is an obvious instance. No parent is a true parent at the outset. As his perception deepens of the real needs of the child, which is so entirely dependent on his self-control, on his wisdom as well as his love, he will realize more and more his own deficiencies, and seek to remedy them. The same is true of the professor in relation to his students, of a leader and his followers, of a religious teacher and those who look to him for advice and help. In all such relations when rightly understood there is simultaneous growth on both sides. In the ethical sphere there is a law of levitation, the contrary of the law of gravitation that obtains in the realm of matter. We actually tend to rise from a lower to a higher level in proportion as we bend downward to lift those still lower than ourselves.
CHAPTER IX
HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS
We now have to consider how to acquire the faculty of seeing the light that in our fellowmen is often so deeply hidden. We can love only that which is lovable. If we could see holiness, beauty concealed within our fellow-beings, we should be drawn towards them by the most powerful attraction, willingly living in their life, and permitting them to live in ours. We should then love all men, for we should see in all what is unspeakably lovable. But the empirical man stands between us and the spiritual man, and the empirical woman between us and the spiritual woman; and very often the former are most repulsive, even when their ugly traits do not affect us personally, even when as spectators merely we observe how they behave.
Much more is it well-nigh insuperably difficult to worship, in the sense of holding worthy, those whose characteristic traits directly offend us, or are perpetual thorns in our side. We must somehow learn to regard the empirical traits, odious, harmful or merely commonplace and vulgar as they may be, as the mask, the screen interposed between our eyes and the real self of others. We must acquire the faculty of second sight, of seeing the lovable self as the true self. And how without self deception we can possibly succeed in doing so is the question.
In the first place, it is my own craving for resurrection out of that death in life to which I seem doomed that must impel me to penetrate to the essential life in others. My own spiritual nature is in fetters, and to burst the fetters, to escape from the prison, there is but one way. The unique personality, which is the real life in me, I cannot gain, nor even approximate to, unless I search and go on searching for the spiritual numen in others.[67] The force which incites me to penetrate beyond the empirical traits of others, to surmount the walls which surround the shrine in them, is the consciousness that unless I do so I am myself spiritually lost, I remain myself spiritually dead. For it is only face to face with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other that the god hidden in me will consent to appear.
The expression “death in life” means living, even living passionately and in a way efficiently, with a sense, nevertheless, underneath of the hollowness, the futility of the objects of pursuit. The death in life is the state of discontent that slowly gathers and augments in a man’s mind as he pursues his customary ends, as he reviews his intellectual achievement, the books he has written, the pictures he has painted, the meager outcome of his schemes of social reform, the uncertain result of his efforts at moral self-development. It is the ensuing distaste for what he has actually accomplished, the disallowance of it as in any way ultimately satisfying. And yet this death in life is itself the well-spring of resurrection, out of which is engendered an irrepressible yearning of the mind to attach itself to something greater than all ephemeral interests, to something that has eternal worth, and is of such a kind as to communicate of its eternal nature to him who touches it. The god in the other, the eternal personality in the inner sanctuary of the other, is that object which must be sought and touched. The cry of my own soul for salvation is the impulse that leads me on to search for that object. Without the previous discontent, I shall not seek; without the appraisement of the temporal ends and interests of man as in the last analysis unsatisfying, I shall not set out on my quest. Enmeshed in the jungle of the empirical world, I shall find no exit. I shall remain the victim of the illusion that the peace I need can be found in the realm of temporal desire. I shall commit what the theologians called Original Sin, that is, the preferring of “the works of the Creator to the Creator himself.”
But there is a second force that must act in conjunction with this keen desire for personal liberation or highest personal self-affirmation. It is the sense of the dependence of others upon what I can do for them. Notoriously it is the dependence of the child that evokes in the parent the noblest qualities of which he is capable, the self-denial, the incessant willingness to labor for the good of the offspring. It is the dependence of the student on the teacher, of the disciple on the master that elicits the latter’s best thought. It is the dependence of the multitude on the religious teacher that puts him on his mettle. But if the dependence of others upon oneself is to produce its appropriate results, that dependence will have to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. We shall have to think of others as dependent on us not only for the necessary empirical services we are bound to render them, but those empirical services themselves will have to be regarded as instruments by means of which we may render them the highest spiritual service.
This leads to a more rigorous scrutiny of the notion of service than has hitherto been customary.
The question we must answer, and it is one that has never been adequately met, is: What is it in the other that we are to serve, what is the true object of our service? Man is worth while on his own account. Now no one can pretend that the welfare of the animal part of man is an object worth while on its own account. To satisfy the hunger or the thirst of another, or to promote his health is to serve his body. But the body is the servant of a master. And I am not bound to serve a servant. If I am to serve the servant at all it must be for the sake of the master. Who then is the master?
The same argument applies also to the intellect. Human science is after all but a narrow littoral along the illimitable continent of nescience. No one who compares the intellectual achievements of mankind with the problems that remain unsolved will pretend that the accomplishments of the intellect are worth while on their own account. The mental no less than the physical part of us has a master. There is an object higher than the acquisition of knowledge to be attained in the course of the mind’s endeavors to acquire knowledge, namely the growth of the scientist towards unique personality, as will be shown in the chapter on the Vocations in the last Book. Analogous considerations apply to art and its achievements.
And if someone should say that neither the satisfaction of the body alone, nor of the intellect, nor of the æsthetic sense, nor of the affections, but of all of them taken together, is to be the object of our service, the answer is that this would be merely serving a whole household of servants, and still not serving the master. This quite aside from the fact that the ideal of happiness as consisting in the harmonious gratification of the various elements enumerated is chimerical. Since some of the most indispensable elements of happiness, such as freedom from disease and from bereavement, are beyond our control. While even the higher faculties are far from harmoniously coöperating, the one-sidedness of human nature being such that a marked development in one direction is actually incompatible with complete development in other directions.
Unless, then, there be some master end in everyone’s life, one paramount to all others, to which all others are subordinate (the subordination and the renunciation involved being themselves means of spiritualizing one’s nature) there is no point to the notion of service. That master end I have defined as the attainment of the conviction of one’s infinite interrelatedness, the consciousness of oneself as a member of the spiritual universe, a ἄπαξ λεγόμενον[68] in the eternal life, a source of energy induplicable in its kind, which radiates out and touches at the center each one of the infinite multitude of spiritual associates, and receives from them the effect of their aboriginally diverse modes of energizing in return.
I have mentioned two motives that impel me to search for the numen in others. The one, the craving for my own liberation from the death in life, my own desperate outreaching toward salvation; the other, the sense of the dependence of others upon me. Yes, but this dependence of theirs I must now interpret as spiritual dependence. I must look for them also beyond the death in life to life itself. I must have the courage and the truthfulness to look upon neighbor, friend, wife, husband, son, daughter sub specie æternitatis, that is, as primarily spiritual beings, and estimate any physical, intellectual or emotional help I can give them by the consideration whether it does or does not advance them toward the master end of their being.
Courage of this sort is rare, because precisely the physical, mental and emotional wants of those who depend on us are the most obvious and clamorous. I do not of course mean that we should not attend effectually to their immediate wants. How could we avoid doing so? How could we neglect the health, the education, etc., of our children? What I say is that we should acquire the habit of looking upon the immediate ends as instrumental, and keep in view the supreme end which they in turn are to serve, and that we should beware of what I have called the fallacy of provisionalism—that of supposing that we are at liberty to provide for the lower immediate necessities first, leaving the higher and the highest needs to be attended to later on.
The manner in which parents commonly plan for the future of their sons and daughters is perhaps the fittest illustration of the idea I am here seeking to exclude. During the period of infancy they pilot the child through the dangers that beset its physical existence. Later on, what is called education, the preliminary mental training required to fit the young for the business of life, is felt to be imperative. Then comes the selection of a vocation with a view of assuring the material basis of subsistence. Still later, the advancement of the sons or daughters in their chosen vocations, or their social success occupies perhaps the parent’s mind. Thoughts of a happy marriage flatter the parent’s imagination. If the moral side receives attention, the utmost that as a rule is demanded is that the young person shall not fall below the average moral standard that happens to prevail in the community. And it is in such ways as these that we are apt to respond to the claims of those spiritual beings for whose essential future welfare we are to so large an extent responsible.
To widen this all too narrow conception of our responsibilities, the following reflections may be found useful. A father in the last decade of his life realizes acutely the brevity of his own past existence. The curve of his life is now rapidly descending. Supposing him to be nearing seventy, his adult sons and daughters may by this time have reached the age of thirty or forty. Looking back on the thirty or more years that separate him from them, and remembering how like a dream the intervening years have glided by, it may come home to him with sudden force how soon these, his sons and daughters too, though now in their prime, will reach the point at which he has arrived. The error of parents is to think of their grown sons and daughters only as moving on the upward curve of life. They stop short in imagination there. They look forward to marriage, vocational success and the like, as finalities for those who are still young. We ought to remember that the upward curve in the lives of our children will presently descend just as ours has descended, that the few decades which separate them from old age will pass as quickly for them as they have passed for us,—almost in the twinkling of an eye,—and we ought to ask on their behalf as we must on ours,—What is to be the result of it all? What does it all profit? And it is this thought that will turn our attention for them as for ourselves to the spiritual end which should be dominant at all times,—in the morning, at noon, and in the evening twilight of a human existence.
All that has been said has to do with the arousing in us of the desire to see in others the god, the numen, the master end. The wish to escape from our own death in life, the sense of the dependence of others on us as interpreted,—these two are the means of stirring us up to go forth upon the quest, and the seeking is already more than half the journey. Seek, and ye shall find. But what exactly is it that we are to seek? What are we to see in the other?—The spiritual nature. But what is the spiritual nature? I have frequently urged that the lack of a definite description of the spiritual nature is the chief defect in ethics up to the present time. This defect I endeavor to supply. The spiritual nature is the unique nature conceived as interrelated with an infinity of natures unique like itself. The spiritual nature in another is the fair quality distinctive of the other raised toward the Nth degree. We are to paint ideal portraits of our spiritual associates. We are to see them in the light of what is better in them as it would be if it were transfigured into the best. We are to go on as long as we live painting these ideal portraits of them. We are to retouch their portraits constantly. We are not indeed to obtrude or impose upon others these sketches, these mental creations of ours, but to propose them diffidently, reverently, to hold them up as glasses in which our associates may possibly see themselves mirrored. It is for them to accept in whole or in part our rendering of their inner selves or to reject it. But we are not to desist from our labor in creating the ideal portraits, for in this consists the spiritual artistry of human intercourse.
Our friends we are to see in the light of these glorified sketches,—our friends and our enemies too. For only thus can we win them, and be essentially their benefactors. There is no power so irresistible, it has been said, as love. I do not quite accept the word Love. It signifies the feeling that goes with the ideal appreciation of others; and mere feeling supplies no directive rule of conduct. But it is true that the power of ideally appreciating others, of seeing them in the light of their possible best, and the feeling of love consequent on this vision, is the mightiest lever for transforming evil into good, and for sweetening the embittered lives of men. No greater boon can anyone receive from another than to be helped to think well of himself. Flattery is the base counterfeit of appreciation. Spiritual appreciation, appreciation of the inner self despite the mask, is the greatest of gifts, to manifest it is the greatest of arts. In its supreme form it is the art of going down to the lowest of human beings—the man in the ditch, the woman on the street—and making them think well of themselves because of possibilities in their nature they themselves hardly surmise. It is also the art of making the most developed and advanced human beings realize in themselves something still higher and better than they have ever reached. It is this art by which the supreme human benefactors have worked their spiritual miracles, and it is an art which to the extent of our ability we must each acquire and practice, if human society is to be redeemed.
There are specially two points to be remembered: the one, that of seeing the unattained excellence in those who are already in the way of excellence; the other, where there is or seems to be a complete absence of fine qualities or of the promise of development, as in the case of backward children, that we should still not abate one jot of hope or effort, seeking to win even the smallest improvement, in the conviction that the best possible under the circumstances is incalculably worth while. For, compared with the infinite ideal even the achievements of the most advanced and most developed fall infinitely short, and what are they more than the best possible under the circumstances. The best possible under the circumstances represents for us the absolute best.
Now a word in regard to those who resist the better influence which we may seek to exercise over them, for instance, the so-called black sheep in families. Our chief concern should here be to prevent the resistance from infecting ourselves and provoking unethical reactions. Ethics is a system of relations. The ethical point of view consists in seeing the relation between the offending person and ourselves as it ought to be, in seeing with perfect objectivity the kind of conduct ideally required by the relation on both sides, seeing it and thereby assisting the other to see it. But we shall never succeed in doing this until we purge from our thoughts and speech every trace of private irritation. If we can point out to the one who has gone wrong how he has hurt another, and has spiritually hurt himself; if while we do this we see the fineness that is possible to him and make him realize that we see it, we shall not utterly fail. I am aware that other methods should accompany the spiritual appeal. In some cases, a temporary separation is indicated, in other cases, a prolonged change of environment, or the gradual formation of new habits of industry and application, the awakening of interest in some pursuit that leads the mind away from egocentric pre-occupation. Psychology and experience crystallized, into commonsense have valuable counsels to give. But, along with the technical aids, the spiritual influence should never be lost sight of or relegated to the second place.
And finally two ideas should be mentioned which are pertinent to broken relations, as for instance to the unhappy marriage relation and to interrupted friendships: One that the break is never complete. There remain certain threads unsundered, which should be most sedulously preserved intact. They may serve as points of attachment to weave the tie anew. Again, and this is still more important, thought that the break would never have occurred if the relation had been as finely conceived as it ought to have been on my side as well as on the others. Take friendship as an example. A friendship of many years’ standing is suddenly wrecked. Why? What were the terms on which the friendship had been based? What had friendship meant to me?—A certain personal attraction, mutual aid and comfort, taking counsel together, sympathy in joy and sorrow. These are valuable elements of friendship, but they do not even touch the essential point. They do not describe the principal function which a friend has to fulfil. The friend ideally is one who stands alongside another as the spectator of his spiritual development, as one who appraises his friend’s advance toward the master end of life disinterestedly, and yet with deepest personal concern. He is the mirror in which his friend may see the stages of his spiritual progress reflected. Now I have lost my friend. Why have I lost him? Because he was never a true friend to me, and, I must add, because I was never a real friend to him. I have not really lost him, because I never really possessed him. And on making this discovery I shall have a new light shed on what friendship might mean. I may never be so fortunate as to find the actual friend, but I shall know what he ought to be, and what it is in me to be to him. And when I say, “what it is in me to be to him,” I think of resources of my inner being which have never been called out; I think of the worth that belongs to me as a spiritual being capable of giving forth and receiving highest spiritual influence, and I am thereby immeasurably aggrandized in my own esteem, the self in me is lifted nearer as it were to its infinite counterpart in the eternal life. I walk henceforth on a higher level, I dwell amid serener presences. And this aggrandizement of the self, not on the ground of what I am but what I may be, and of others too, not on the ground of what they are, but what they may be, is the compensation derived from the bitter experience of broken relations. And what has been said of friendship by way of example is true of frustration in marriage as well, and of frustrations of every kind.
NOTE TO BOOK III
I may mention a certain test case for trying out the proposed rule, namely, to idealize the fair quality in others, and thereby achieve the concomitant transformation of the self. I mean the case of the victims of a cruel race prejudice, such as is entertained against the colored people of the South by the more brutal whites. I remember a long evening which I once spent in the company of a leader among the colored people, and one of the best men I have ever known. I looked that night deep into a suffering, sensitive human soul, and I tried to put myself in his place. I realized the hardships of his lot, the anguish that I myself should suffer if I were in his position. But would there be the spiritual equivalent? Would the way I had found in trials less poignant be the way of release? To make the situation clear, I selected two points in which the white man, my supposed oppressor, has the advantage, two fair qualities of which he can boast. His family life is purer on the average than that of a large number of the colored people. And he has also learned in the case of white men to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent. He will protect the latter, and give up the former to justice. Now my own people, putting myself in the place of the colored man, are backward in both these respects. In consequence of the long centuries of slavery their family relations are often unstable, while they are apt to shield the colored criminal from the arm of the law. In both respects I want to represent to myself the white man as he ought to act. He ought to help me lift up my race, first, by making their family life purer and more stable. But instead, many of the whites debauch the women of my race, while perhaps respecting those of their own race; moreover, by refusing decent accommodation on railroads they compel educated and refined colored women to travel in cars in which the coarsest men are herded together.
Again, how can I, as a leader among my people, teach them to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent of their race so long as mobs of white men indiscriminately lynch the innocent and the criminal of my race alike on the barest suspicion? Against their actual behavior I set up in my mind a picture of how the superior race, superior in point of civilization, but still morally backward, ought to act. I can but suggest this picture, keep it in view as a constant protest, or still better as an imperative model.
But I can do more. I can turn upon myself, and upon others of my own people who are in advance of the majority of them, and presently I shall be compelled to admit that amongst ourselves something of the same pride of superiority exists, something of the same prejudice against those who are lower in the scale. For there is also a stratification and a hierarchy of higher and lower among the oppressed. And the relatively higher are apt to behave toward the lower in the same fashion as their common oppressors behave toward them all. We find the same tendency among other oppressed races, as for instance in the attitude of certain of the Spanish and the German Jews toward the Polish and the Russian. Purge thyself, therefore, is the incisive monition; purify thine own nature of that pride which hurts so cruelly when it is directed upon thee from without. Let the sin committed against thee be the means of purifying thee from the like sin. This is the spiritual compensation, this the thought that leads to inward peace!