Here are some questions in social ethics for you to ask yourself: Have I a right to live in a fine house, to have expensive clothing, and to spend money on travel and other pleasures when there are so many people in the world suffering for the necessities of life? To my mind the answer is, I have a right to spend money on myself only so far as it will make me a person of greater value to the world. If I should give away everything I have to those whose need is greater than mine, and live in a hovel, only a few out of the vast number of the needy would be benefited and I should be unfitted to accomplish the work in life which I am in duty bound to accomplish. What shall we say, however, of those who all through life are consumers and not producers, who add nothing to the world, but continually take from it? What further shall we say, if, in addition to being a non-producer, one is wasteful of that which has been produced by others, using it for self-indulgence and selfish pleasure? I have a friend who was once criticized for her simple and inexpensive clothing. Her reply was, “How can I spend much money for clothes when there are so many young people in the world suffering for an education?”
It seems to me, then, that loyalty to self demands that we should regard self as nearly as possible in an impersonal way. We must not ask for more than our share, yet we should take our portion just as we should expect another to do, not for our own pleasure or selfish ambition, but in order that we may be able to render the largest possible service to our day and generation. By these questions test every benefit you seek for yourself and especially every luxury that tempts you: Have I a right to this benefit or this luxury? That is, can I take it and at the same time be just to others? If the answer is in the affirmative, a further question should be asked: Will it help me to become a more valuable person? If the answer is in the negative, then, even though you have a right to it, your larger privilege is to surrender that right.
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THE VALUE OF DISCIPLINE
One of the most frequent and least satisfactory answers given to students in reply to the question why a certain subject must be studied, or a given course of conduct pursued, is, “It is good discipline.” That statement is probably true, but it is sometimes difficult for the questioner to understand. He asks, What is discipline? And why has it the virtue claimed for it?
By discipline I suppose we mean the subordination of the self to something outside of the self, or, at least, the subordination of the self to law, even though that law be self-made. The psychologist could explain to you that the law of habit is the controlling factor in all discipline. The thing that has been done many times is finally done with ease, is perhaps done automatically. Ease, as some one has said, is the lovely result of forgotten toil. The laws that apply in learning to play the piano or to ride a bicycle are not different from those involved in the training of the intellect or the will.
It is not necessary to point out the very evident truth, that no school could command the respect of its students for a single day if it had no discipline. Whether the regulations are made by the students themselves or by a higher power, there must not only be subordination of the whims and caprices of each student to his own higher interests, but there must be subordination of the will of each individual to the common good. No school community could furnish the proper conditions for growth whose members did exactly as they pleased unless each pleased to consider the rights of others as sacred as his own. Whether from alien compulsion or from some inner law, each must make his contribution to the welfare of the whole. The result is system and order that enables each to go his way, free to put forth his best effort. Each member of the community must give up a portion of his own freedom for the common good, that common good being for him a much larger freedom. Students sometimes think too much about the freedom they surrender and not enough about the benefits that surrender secures.
Perhaps you have sometimes for the moment grown a little restive under discipline—who of us has not?—and have longed for the time when you could do just as you please. There are, doubtless, times when even the most faithful student longs to “play truant.” Yet holding one’s self to definite and stated tasks is the surest road to the largest freedom.
As there is no royal road to learning, so, also, there is none to mental insight and acumen. You must think, compare, reason, remember. You must learn accuracy and precision. When the facts more or less laboriously acquired in school and college have been for the most part forgotten, the mind, if it has been really disciplined, still retains the power of grappling with new problems and solving them. This power is worth all it costs. The value it adds to life can hardly be overestimated. It gives an independence and a mastery over things that can be gained in no other way. It is the means of providing resources that make life vastly more worth living. It increases one’s usefulness to the world many-fold. Such mental training may be had, too, by most of us if we are willing to pay the price. The majority of people, however, are not willing to do that, and therefore those who are generally find themselves in positions of leadership.
The training of the will is just as important as the training of the intellect; nay, more important, since thought is powerless until put into action. Essential as it is that the average citizen should be a trained thinker, even more so is it that he be a person of right action. Yet the two kinds of training need not be set over against each other as if one needed to choose between them. They should go hand in hand.
It is difficult to say which is the source of greater danger in a community, the weak and nerveless will, or the strong but perverse will. Our prisons, penitentiaries, and reform schools are recruited for the most part from the ranks of the weak of mind and will. In every community the many are easily led by the few. This is true in social life and perhaps doubly true in political life, as we in America know to our cost. That the perverse will may easily grow into the wicked will, bent only on selfish and base ends, there is constant proof in the world about us. Such men as those designated by a former President as “malefactors of great wealth” belong to this class. Tyrants and despots are made of men of strong but unregulated will. To this class belong the overbearing and autocratic everywhere, who always insist upon having their own way regardless of the rights or the feelings of others. Without fully realizing it, many a family has among its members one whose will rules the household, not because it is the wisest will, but because it is the most determined.