However, it is far more safe to assume that, whatever we have to do, should be started early in life, for, if we are to carve out our own destinies, we shall need all the time which we have at our disposal. While fully realizing the limiting conditions of heredity and environment, it is difficult to disprove the statement of Cassius, when he says:
“Men, at some time, are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves; that we are underlings.”
Perhaps Bulwer-Lytton has, in other words, more forcibly expressed a similar idea when he says:
“We are our own fates. Our own deeds
Are our own doomsmen.”
Let us not shift the responsibility of our being other than we desire upon the shoulders of either our progenitors or circumstances, but, taking what is, as a fact, we should try to so regulate our conduct that what we wish may come to pass. It is not he who mourns the power which he has not—who becomes either the master of himself or of others, as the parable of the talents tells us, but it is he who, with a strong heart, dares and does, that achieves the great things on this earth. Perhaps as close an analogy as we can get to the real life-condition, is to represent the individual’s power over himself and his destiny, by one line, and the power of heredity and forced environment by one of equal length; then his power of accomplishment will be the vector sum of these two lines. The line representing the uncontrollable condition will necessarily be longer (as the influence is more powerful) in youth, while, during the life period, it gradually shortens up until it reaches its minimum at the physical and mental culmination of life, or when the individual is at his best, and lengthens again as old age comes on, and the physical and mental forces decline, and habit and environment become the prevailing factors. With our responsibility clearly before us, then, let us investigate what is worth having.
At this particular time, when all of the Occidental world is hopelessly insane with its Machiavelian money greed, it would seem that one of Horace’s sentiments, uttered satirically, had become the slogan of the battle:
“Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace;
If not, by any means, get wealth and place.”
Everything is thrown away by the average individual to-day, in his haste to satisfy his desire for inordinate wealth;—friendship, liberty, decency, humanity, honor, and even life itself, is hurled into the maw of this Mammon, which is not satisfied with such sacrifices, and gives only hard, cold gold as a return for the priceless jewels of the human soul, and even this usually at a time in life when the little value which the mental ever possessed has gone, since there are no longer desires to gratify by it, with the one exception of that calling constantly for more of the counters which have lost their purchasing power. Our forefathers thought of wealth as worth having only because with it came leisure, and with leisure came culture through application. Sir John Lubbock has well said, “If wealth is to be valued because it gives leisure, clearly it would be a mistake to sacrifice leisure in the struggle for wealth.”
Unfortunately, our country is going through that period which all other nations that have risen to “world power” have had to pass through, only, in our case, we have reached this period much earlier in point of time, owing to our vast natural resources, the activity of scientific research, and the multitude of inventions resulting therefrom within the last century. But, with the enormous increase in our national wealth, the legislative branch of our Government neglected to pass such restraining measures as would insure that no gigantic individual fortunes were amassed, or, in case that they were to have such wealth, bear its proportion of the tax; and, consequently, we are confronting a condition of both anarchy and socialism, inasmuch as, to-day, our law-making and higher judiciary branches of Government both have a decided leaning toward whatever is favorable to capital, as against the interests of the laboring people. Our lower judicial and executive officials, however, are in this country and in England, owing to rank partisan political influence, almost hopelessly under the domination of organized labor, whose leaders (necessarily demagogues) use all the means within their power to corrupt our system of jurisprudence to further their own ends. It remains to be seen whether our Government, owing to its democratic form, will be able to right these evils and withstand the stress and strain which such a changed social system must necessarily involve. Remembering our experience at the time of the Civil War, which was brought about by very similar causes, we have every reason to be hopeful of the outcome. Our vast alien population is the only factor which would be decidedly against us at a time such as this, since these foreigners have not had the privileges of citizenship where they were born, and into them has been instilled the blind hatred of all who possess wealth, owing to the monarchical feudal oppression of the poorer laboring classes, by the titled and plutocratic nobility of Europe. The most crying need of our time is a law equitable for poor and rich alike, and a judicial and executive system which will see that this law is enforced and its penalties are imposed impartially.
Perhaps the worst feature about the possession of wealth, is that it tends to dwarf and belittle the finer sensibilities of man. Its acquisition becomes a passion of such violence that, in the majority of cases, its possessor no longer cares for anything but the few paltry pleasures which it will buy. And as few as these apparently are, they are even less upon closer examination, since only the counterfeits of anything of real moral value can be purchased for money. Purity, sincerity, culture, or love, owing to their nature, never could be bought for gold. Yet many an individual has acquired the opposite of the four “pearls of great price” just mentioned, by having too much money at his disposal; and most truly has it been said that “poverty is one of the greatest teachers of virtue.” In fact, if it were not for the truth of our American aphorism, that “three generations cover the time it takes one of our wealthy families to go from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves,” our wealthy aristocracy would be much more profligate. There can be no heritage of equal value to children, so long as their poverty does not interfere with their fundamental education, comparable to their being born in straitened, rather than in opulent, circumstances. Consequently, we must accept the fact that beyond a small competence set aside against age, money has no value of moment, nor is it worthy of greater than a reasonable effort being spent to acquire it.