The Revolution Demands Action of All Men at All Times
The essential meaning of action being once understood we may proceed to inquire into its spirit and wherein it finds its highest expression. How is it that men for all the apparent unity of their existence sometimes live lives of such devotion to the good of mankind and the world that they earn the admiration of posterity, while others live degenerate lives governed by the lowest desires, to the detriment of themselves and their neighbors? Education and environment are factors that play their part in this, but more important is what the ancient called "material desire"—the tendency to seek possession rather than creation, to enjoy rather than contribute. In the words of Dr. Sun, "making one's aim acquisition and not service" leads to degraded and uncontrolled conduct which is an obstacle to human progress and what we as comrades in Revolution must strive our utmost to avoid and eradicate.
Revolutionary motives are motives of service, of self-sacrifice for the good of others. The task the Revolution sets itself is the "practice of goodwill" in the broadest sense of those words,—action inspired by love for men to the exclusion of all that tends to their harm. In our revolutionary zeal to promote positive action throughout our world we aim to create an all-pervading moral attitude to life such as is rationally conformable to man's true nature; and we moreover seek to bring into full play the deep funds of humanity and benevolence in our own people. We push aside considerations of individual ability, of past education and environment, and of how far bad habits acquired may have become ingrained. We appeal to all as they are to take fresh stock of their lives and realize how from the very fact of their being alive they possess the ability to act,—to act in no less a sense than the great deliverers of mankind in their saintly and heroic deeds. The difference between such deeds and the actions of normal daily life is one of degree, not of kind. We are everyone men born of woman and passing our days between heaven and earth; not for us to vex ourselves with fear of failure; the only failure is in failing to act.