The Nature of Goodness

by George Herbert Palmer

V

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

I

Conceivably a being such, as has been described might advance no farther. Conscious he might be, observant of everything going on within him and without; occupied too with inducing the very changes he observes, and yet with no aim to enlarge himself or improve the world through any of the changes so induced. Complete within himself at the beginning, he might be equally so at the close, his activity being undertaken for the mere sake of action, and not for any beneficial results following in its train. Still, even such a being would be better off while acting than if quiet, and by his readiness to act would show that he felt the need of at least temporary betterment. In actual cases the need goes deeper.

A being capable of self-direction ordinarily has capacities imperfectly realized. Changing other things, he also changes himself; and it becomes a part of his aim in action to make these changes advantageous, and each act helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at self-development regularly attends self-direction. I could not, therefore, properly discuss my last topic without in some measure anticipating this. Every ideal of action, I was obliged to say, includes within it an aim at some sort of betterment of the actor. Our business, then, in the present chapter is not to announce a new theme, but simply to render explicit what before was implied. We must detach from action the influence which it throws back upon us, the actors. We must make this influence plain, exhibit its method, and show wherein it differs from other processes in some respects similar.

II

The most obvious fact about self-development is that it is a species of change, and that change is associated with sadness. Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher of the Greeks, discovered this fact five hundred years before Christ. "Nothing abides," he said, "all is fleeting." We stand in a moving tide, unable to bathe twice in the same stream; before we can stoop a second time the flood is gone. In every age this is the common theme of lamentation for poet, moralist, common man and woman. All other causes of sadness are secondary to it. As soon as we have comprehended anything, have fitted it to our lives and learned to love it, it is gone.

Such is the aspect which change ordinarily presents. It is tied up with grief. We regard what is precious as stable; and yet we are obliged to confess that nothing on earth is stable—nothing among physical things, and just as little among mental and spiritual things. But there are many kinds of change. We are apt to confuse them with one another, and in so doing to carry over to the nobler sorts thoughts applicable only to the lower. In beginning, then, the discussion of self-development, I think it will conduce to clearness if I offer a conspectus of all imaginable changes. I will set them in groups and show their different kinds, exhibiting first those which are most elementary, then those more complex, and finally those so dark and important that they pass over into a region of mystery and paradox.

III

Probably all will agree that the simplest possible change is the accidental sort, that where only relations of space are altered. My watch, now lying in the middle of the desk, is shifted to the right side, is laid in its case, or is lost in the street. I call these changes accidental, because they in no way affect the nature of the watch. They are not really changes in it, but in its surroundings. The watch still remains what it was before. To the same group we might refer a large number of other changes where no inner alteration is wrought. The watch is now in a brilliant light; I lay my hand on it, and it is in darkness. Its place has not been changed, but that of the light has been. Many of the commonest changes in life are of this sort. They are accidental or extraneous changes. In them, through all its change, the thing abides. There is no necessary alteration of its nature.