The most harmful thing about handicaps, especially in the children of well-to-do parents, is often the injudicious commiseration and sheltering they are apt to induce. This may well go so far as to deprive such children of natural contact with reality and prevent their learning betimes just what they have to contend with and how to overcome it.

The natural test of a man’s ability is to give him a novel task and observe how he goes about it. If he is able he will commonly begin by getting all the information within reach, reflecting upon it and making a plan. It should be a bold plan, and yet not rash or impracticable, though it may seem so; based in fact upon a just view of the conditions, and especially of the personalities, with which he has to deal. It will be, emphatically, his own plan, and an able man will generally prefer to keep it to himself, because he knows that he may have to change it, and that discussion may raise obstacles.

In carrying it out he will show a mixture of resolution and adaptability; learning by experience, modifying his plan in details, but in the main sticking to it even when he does not clearly see his way, because he believes that courage and persistence find good luck. He “plays the game” to the end, and if he fails he has too strong a sense of the experimental character of life to be much discouraged.

CHAPTER X
SUCCESS AND MORALITY

DO THE WICKED PROSPER?—THE GENERAL ANSWER—APPARENT SUCCESS OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS—LACK OF GROUP STANDARDS—DIVERGENT STANDARDS—EFFECT OF A NON-CONFORMING RIGHTEOUSNESS—MIGHT VERSUS RIGHT—MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF MIGHT AND RIGHT

Apparently the minds of men have always been troubled by the question whether it really does pay to be righteous. One gets the impression from certain of the Psalms and other passages in the Old Testament that the Jews were constantly asking themselves and one another this question, and that the psalmists and prophets strove to reassure them by declaring that, though the wicked might seem to prosper, they would certainly be come up with in the long run. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”[[18]] “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree, yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea I sought him but he could not be found.”[[19]] “I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.”[[20]] The question is also mooted by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, while Shakespeare, in his 66th Sonnet, mentions “captive good attending captain ill” among the things which make him cry for restful death. Even the Preacher says: “Be not righteous overmuch, why shouldst thou destroy thyself?” Is honesty the best policy, and, if so, in just what sense?

I would answer that there is never a conflict between a real or inner righteousness and a real or inner success; they are much the same thing; but there may easily be a conflict between either of them and an apparent or conventional success. Conscious wrong-doing must always be detrimental to a success measured by self-development and social service. Its effect upon the wrong-doer himself is to impair self-respect and force of character. He divides and disintegrates himself, setting up a rebellion in his own camp, whereas success calls for unity and discipline. A man who is bad, in this inner sense, is in so far a weak and distracted man. As Emerson remarks, one who “stands united with his thought” has a large opinion of himself, no matter what the world may think.

It is also true that the sense of righteousness and integrity gives him the maximum influence over others of which he is capable, and so the greatest power to serve society. If we are weak and false to our own conscience, this cannot be hidden, and causes us to lose the trust and co-operation of others. It is not at all necessary to this that we should be found out in any specific misdeed; our face and bearing sufficiently reveal what we are, and induce a certain moral isolation, or at least impair our significance and force. Character is judged by little things, of which we ourselves are unaware, and rightly, because it is in these that our habitual tendency is revealed. They register our true spirit and mode of thinking, which cannot be concealed though we are the best actors in the world. If there is anything disingenuous about us, anything which will not bear the light, those who consider us will feel its presence, even though they do not know what it is.

In so far as a man consciously does wrong he tears himself from that social whole in which alone he can live and thrive. In this way it is true that “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil.”[[21]]

I suppose that so long as it is kept on this high ground few would deny the truth of the principle. Men generally admit that spiritual significance is enhanced by moral integrity. Some, however, would question whether it has much application to success in a more ordinary and perhaps superficial sense of the word, to the attainment of wealth, position, and the like.