A combination of diverse and multi-form contributions assimilated from a complex human life, your being looks to many sources for its development; from the lowest phase of experience to the highest. These influences you must acknowledge as emanating from a social system--influences which you are totally powerless, alone, to exert upon yourself. For instance, a man can not be his own educator in all that the term implies--he can not make his own books, print his own newspapers; if he could he would have to look outside of himself for the data necessary for his use. In other words, no man lives to himself alone. He can no more be separated from the social order of things and retain character value, than any one of a hundred square inches of canvas in an oil painting, separated from the rest, would constitute a picture. A single note in a musical composition, however exquisite the piece may be, has comparatively little value taken by itself; only when it assumes relationship with other notes and becomes governed by the law of harmony, does it fulfill its mission and become a valuable factor.
Then, as units of a social whole, we have obligations other than those affecting "individual" problems. Society has a rightful claim upon every one of its members. "You are not your own, you are bought with a price," is true in a larger sense than a merely Scriptural one. For what one becomes is really, as already stated, but the effect of combined influences brought to bear upon one's life by the forces of human society. Therefore, society expects us to reciprocate, and is just in its claim; just as parents are entitled to the high esteem and reciprocation of their offspring. It demands of each one of us all that we are capable of producing, exacting the highest order of service as well. The paying of taxes does not placate the demands which society makes upon you. It demands yourself--body, mind, and soul--not in a passive sense, but in active relationship to your environment. And every man is morally bound to respect the claims thus made upon him.
The highest socialistic conception is not that which contemplates an equitable distribution of property and labor. But assuming a more rational ground, it believes in equal rights to all; is based upon a right proportion of motives rather than upon the equalization of property considerations. It is both humanitarian and utilitarian. It seeks its own principally, yet is generous in the ulterior aim. This is the ideal relation between the individual and the social order. The greatest duty confronting each one in the world, and the one which all should earnestly embrace, is the duty of making the most of one's self with the ulterior view of contributing the largest measure of usefulness to his fellow-men.
On the other hand, to employ an extreme example--and yet it is shown by statistics that there are one hundred thousand tramps and vagrants in this country--the man who folds his arms and defiantly proclaimes that the world owes him a living, mutinies against the sacred order of things--"fouls his own nest," as it were. To that man society replies: "If any man is not willing to work, neither let him eat." And this is the dominant note of the twentieth century as truly as it was in the first when spoken by the Roman philosopher. To harbor the doctrine that the world owes every man a living, not only discounts the character value of the individual, but has a reflex action on the entire social organism. Just as one wheel out of play in the mechanism of a watch throws the entire works out of order, or one team in a procession halting the whole train behind it, the individual failing to do his part affects the equilibrium of the whole. Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo and died in exile, a prisoner at St. Helena, because one of his marshals, failing to comply with orders, arrived too late with re-enforcements. Remember that you have an important part to perform, that, as in mathematics, you are a quantity so connected with another quantity that if any alteration be made in the former there will be a consequent alteration in the latter.
In the busy hive of twentieth-century civilization scant space has been provided for drones. The drone is a minus quantity in the problem of life; instead of adding to the common weal, he is ever subtracting from it. Like an owl he sits in the gloom of indolence hooting at the caravan of events. The eye of the world is quick to observe the man who is resting on his oars. A more graphic picture of the man who is ever magnifying the world's duty to him, and minimizing his duty to the world, could not be painted than that one which James Russell Lowell has penned:
"The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set."
The world has but one duty to this man, namely, to dispel the cloud from his vision and arouse him to worthy action.
To contend that the world owes every man a living would be as preposterous as to assert that the government owes every citizen under the flag a pension. The world owes no man anything except that for which he pays a just equivalent. Every man is indebted to the world; he owes it all his best possessions--his talent, time, and effort. And the individual who attempts to throw off this yoke of duty is violating one of nature's great laws. Even the lower forms of life afford example of this supreme law. Solomon startles the sluggard with his sharp admonition to betake himself to the ant. And Sir John Lubbock points men to the insect world to learn real diligence and thrift.
Individual stagnation means public pollution. The man who arms himself with a "rake," ever reaching out after something without giving an equivalent, instead of championing the "hoe," determined to exercise his faculties in the interests of humanity, becomes hostile to the noblest sentiment and the highest aims of society; as in the case of the tramps mentioned above who are a national menace, Idleness breeds vice. Industry enhances the virtues. When a man ceases to work he retrogrades; he becomes a stranger to lofty ideals and wholesome activities. The man with an ambition ever finds himself in the ascendency; while he who deplores the exercise of his powers, avoiding work as he would a powder magazine or a pest, is in the descendency toward a state of groveling and low ideals. And the difference between these two men marks the difference between success and failure.
We are ever obligated to a great duty, namely, to reach the maximum of our possibilities. Our greatest prerogative in the economy of life is the wise husbanding of resources, and the skillful marshaling of our forces on the field of common duty. The great duty of leading a useful life confronts us always. We can by no stratagem, whatsoever, escape its presence. We ever hear its voice calling after us, and can no more flee from it than we can flee from the voice of conscience. Like Poe's raven, it sets up a never ceasing appeal at the door of our lives. Prudence forbids that we turn our back on this duty of self-devotion. For as Michael Angelo saw in the block of marble the hidden angel, a wise man sees in duty an infinite opportunity.