In such cases, the degree in which such a purpose controls all others is the measure of a man's moral character in the estimate of society.
The history of mankind shows a great diversity of moral character dependent on such generic choices. Some men possess firm and reliable moral principles in certain directions, while they are very destitute of them in others.
Thus it will be seen that some have formed a very decided purpose in regard to honesty in business affairs, who yet are miserable victims to intemperance. Others have cultivated a principle called honor, that restrains them from certain actions regarded as mean, [pg 080] and yet they may be frequenters of gambling saloons and other haunts of vice.
In the religions world, too, it is the case that some who are very firm and decided on all points of religious observances and in the cultivation of devotional emotions, are guilty of very mean actions, such as some worldly men of honor would not practice at the sacrifice of a right hand.
On a Ruling Purpose or Chief End.
The most important of all the voluntary phenomena is the fact that, while there can be a multitude of these quiet and hidden generic purposes in the mind, it is also possible to form one which shall be the dominant or controlling one, to which all the others, both generic and specific, shall become subordinate. In common parlance this would be called the ruling passion. It is also called the ruling purpose, or controlling principle. This consists in the permanent choice of some one mode of securing happiness as the chief end or grand object of life.
There is a great variety of sources of happiness and of suffering to the human mind. Now in the history of our race we find that each one of these modes of enjoyment has been selected by different individuals as the chief end of their existence—as the mode of seeking enjoyment to which they sacrifice every other. Some persons have chosen the pleasures of eating, drinking, and the other grosser enjoyments of sense. Others have chosen those more elevated and refined pleasures that come indirectly from the senses in the emotions of taste.
Others have devoted themselves to intellectual enjoyments [pg 081] as their chief resource for happiness. Others have selected the exercise of physical and moral power, as in the case of conquerors and physical heroes, or of those who have sought to control by moral power, as rulers and statesmen.
Others have made the attainment of the esteem, admiration, and love of their fellow-creatures, their chief end. Others, still, have devoted themselves to the promotion of happiness around them as their chief interest. Others have devoted themselves to the service of God, or what they conceived to be such, and sometimes by the most miserable life of asceticism and self-torture.
Others have made it their main object in life to obey the laws of rectitude and virtue.