Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Haven’t I put you first, and your neighbor and the community afterward?
Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the difference between frankness and shuffling.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. The others offer you a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first, and that you will do nothing at first hand but for his sake; then they turn square around and require you to do good for other’s sake chiefly; and to do your duty for duty’s sake, chiefly; and to do acts of self-sacrifice. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same ground—recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to man’s second-place powers and to powers which have no existence in him, thus advancing them to first place; whereas in my Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior Master’s requirements first, and keep them there.
Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the other schemes aim at and produce the same result—right living—has yours an advantage over the others?
O.M. One, yes—a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to the real chief motive which impels him to it—in those other cases he is.
Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the impression that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an advantage?
O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking himself a duke, and living a duke’s life and parading in ducal fuss and feathers, when he wasn’t a duke at all, and could find it out if he would only examine the herald’s records.