II
A powerful auxiliary to the preaching of the sanctity of custom is the extolling of individual “success.” At the very time when socio-industrial processes are settling to a fixed routine and socio-industrial forms to a fixed status,—when day by day there is found less room at the top and more room at the bottom,—the chorus of exhortation to the men of the land to bestir themselves reaches its highest pitch. Meddle not with custom and the law, is the injunction; leave those to abler and wiser heads—meaning, of course, the present formulators and manipulators thereof. Meddle not with things as they are, but while your companions sleep, “toil upward in the night,” and carve out a career for yourself among the stars. Put no faith in general social changes, except such as result from the combined effect of each unit concerning himself solely with his own material salvation. There is no social betterment without precedent individual betterment, it is urged. “You cannot make a bad man good by legislation,” is the admonitory adage, and “You cannot make a poor man rich by legislation” is its twin. If certain persons hold to the theory that corrective laws have a definite reaction upon character, and that in every civilization worthy the name there are social institutions, founded in law, which are immeasurably in advance of the general average of sanity, sobriety, and honesty of the citizenship, such persons are but dreamers, and are not to be taken too seriously. So, too, with the dictum regarding the statutory enhancement of riches. There are those who insinuate that it is heard most often from the lips of the industrial magnates, the majority of whom are living examples of the fact that riches may be garnered by means of tariffs and other privilege-giving laws; and from the laissez-faire tariff reformers, whose reiterated argument against protective duties is that they are law-given privileges by which the few gain wealth at the expense of the many. But persons who question this profound adage are unsophisticated. They fail to discriminate properly. The adage is one which, like a simile or metaphor, should not be stretched too far. It has its true and legitimate bearing only when it is applied to the very poor.
Personal endeavor toward the goal of “success” is the urgent exhortation. Scarcely one of the magnates who have recently entered literature, or who, avoiding that province, have on occasion unbosomed themselves to the interviewer, but takes pains to declare how numerous and how mighty are the possibilities in the path of the energetic. All that is needed, according to most of the seigniorial recipes, are brains and health; honesty, it is true, is often included as an ingredient in the compound, but its mention is possibly ironical, and need not concern us. Brains and health are thus the two things needful; and though pursuing Satan may gather in, with his drag-net, a vast army of the hindmost, the fortunate possessors of these two boons will inevitably forge to the front in the headlong race.
It is by no accident that this particular counsel from the magnates is heard now more frequently than any other. It is one that of course has been given in all times; but it has never been given with such frequency and unction as now. Consciously or subconsciously, it is an expression of class feeling—a revelation of the community of interests and purposes of a particular division of our society. In whatever cases its utterance is prompted by a general social motive, that motive is the defence of class control. It is counsel that makes for the acquiescence of the lower orders and the increased security of the upper. “The heaving and straining of the wretches pent up in the hold of the slaver is less,” writes Professor Ross again, “if now and then a few of the most redoubtable are let up on deck. Likewise the admitting of a few brave, talented, or successful commoners into the charmed circle above has a wonderful effect in calming the rage and envy of the exploited, and thereby prolonging the life of the parasitic system.” This counsel of endeavor, promulgated by the few who have striven and “succeeded,” is thus a social sedative of great efficacy.
The professional moulders of opinion take their cue from these exhortations of the magnates, improve, elaborate, and redistribute them. The professors, the editors, and the orators lead, and the hortatory pronouncements of the pulpit follow closely. The Carpenter of Nazareth, it is true, held other views of “success”; but his precepts would seem to have gone out of fashion in the fanes and tabernacles ostensibly devoted to his worship. With all ranks and conditions Success becomes the great god; and as though there were not already priests and votaries enough for his proper worship, a special class of publications has recently arisen, which serve as his vowed and consecrated ministers. These teach to the devout but unsophisticated followers of the great god the particular means best adapted to win his grace; how his frown may be averted; or, if his anger be kindled, by what penances and other rites he is to be propitiated. They chant the praises and recite the life-incidents of those who have been most conspicuously blessed, and to all the rest of mankind they shout, “Follow our counsel, and some day you shall be even like unto these.” It is a glittering lure, and it is eagerly pursued. Sometimes, indeed, not without doubts and misgivings; for a recognition that “all the gates are thronged with suitors,” that “all the markets overflow,” and that the settling and hardening of socio-industrial processes has already begun, becomes more general, and leads many to essay the trial of fortune’s pathway only as a desperate and forlorn adventure. But these are the exceptions; the majority are still to be caught by limed twigs. The gods denied mankind many gifts, and attached hard conditions to most of those which they granted. But for all their withholding of certain gifts and their tainting of others, they sought to compensate by giving an extra allowance of credulity.