As in many respects each family must be a unit, and as the conflict of rival powers is no less ruinous to a household than to a state, *the family must needs have one recognized head* or representative, and this place is fittingly held by the husband rather than by the wife; for by the laws and usages of all civilized nations he is held responsible—except in criminal matters—for his wife and his minor children. But in the well-ordered family, each party to the marriage-contract is supreme in his or her own department, and in that of the other prompt in counsel, sympathy, and aid, and slow in dissent, remonstrance, or reproof. These departments are defined with perfect distinctness by considerations of intrinsic fitness, and any attempt to interchange them can be only subversive of domestic peace and social order.

*The parent's duties to the child* are maintenance in his own condition in life, care for his education and his moral and religious culture, advice, restraint when needed, punishment when both deserved and needed, pure example and wholesome influence, aid in the formation of habits and aptitudes suited to his probable calling or estate in his adult years, and provision for his favorable entrance on his future career. Some of these duties are obviously contingent on the parent's ability; others are absolute and imperative. The judicious parent will, on the one hand, retain his parental authority as long as he is legally responsible for his child; but, on the other hand, will train him gradually to self-help and self-dependence, and will concede to him, as he approaches years of maturity, such freedom of choice and action as is consistent with his permanent well-being.

*The child's duty* is unqualified submission to the parent's authority, obedience to his commands, and compliance with his wishes, in all things not morally wrong, and this, not only for the years of minority, but so long as he remains a member of his parent's family, or dependent on him for subsistence. Subsequently, it is undoubtedly his duty to consult the reasonable wishes of his parent, to hold him in respect and reverence, to minister assiduously to his comfort and happiness, and, if need be, to sustain him in his years of decline and infirmity.



Section III.

Veracity.

*The duty of veracity* is not contingent on the rights of any second person, but is derived from considerations of intrinsic fitness. If representations of facts, truths, or opinions are to be made, it is obviously fitting and right that they should be conformed to one's knowledge or belief; and no one can make representations which he knows to be false without the consciousness of unfitness and wrong.

*The most important interests of society depend on the confidence which men repose in one another's veracity.* But for this, history would be worth no more than fiction, and its lessons would be unheeded. But for this, judicial proceedings would be a senseless mockery of justice, and the administration of law and equity, the merest haphazard. But for this, the common intercourse of life would be invaded by incessant doubt and suspicion, and its daily transactions, aimless and tentative. Against this condition of things man is defended by his own nature. It is more natural to tell the truth than to utter falsehood. The very persons who are the least scrupulous in this matter utter the truth when they have no motive to do otherwise. Spontaneous falsehood betokens insanity.

*The essence of falsehood lies in the intention to deceive*, not in the words uttered. The words may bear a double sense; and while one of the meanings may be true, the circumstances or the manner of utterance may be such as inevitably to impose the false meaning upon the hearer. A part of the truth may be told in such a way as to convey an altogether false impression. A fact may be stated with the express purpose of misleading the hearer with regard to another fact. Looks or gestures may be framed with the intent to communicate or confirm a falsehood. Silent acquiescence in a known falsehood may be no less criminal than its direct utterance.

*But has not one a right to conceal facts which another has no right to know?* In such a case, concealment is undoubtedly a right; but falsehood, or equivocation, or truth which will convey a false impression, is not a right. This question has not unfrequently arisen with regard to anonymous publications. It might be a fair subject of inquiry, whether anonymous writing is not in all cases objectionable, on the ground that a sense of personal responsibility for statements given to the public would insure a more uniform regard to truth and justice, as well as greater care in the ascertainment of facts, and more mature deliberation in the formation of judgments and opinions. But if anonymous writing be justified, the writer is authorized to guard his secret by employing a copyist, or by covert modes of transmission to the press, or by avoiding such peculiarities of style as might betray him. But if, notwithstanding these precautions, the authorship be suspected and charged upon him, we cannot admit his right to denial, whether expressly, or by implication, or even by the utterance of a misleading fact. He undertook the authorship with the risk of discovery; he had no right to give publicity to what he has need to be ashamed of; and if there be secondary, though grave reasons why he would prefer to remain unknown, they cannot be sufficient to justify him in falsehood.

*Is truth to be told to an insane person*, when it might be dangerous to him or to others? May not he be deceived for his benefit, decoyed into a place of safe detention, or deterred by falsehood from some intended act of violence? Those who have the guardianship of the insane are unanimous in the opinion that falsehood, when discovered by them, is always attended with injurious consequences, and that it should be resorted to only when imperatively required for their immediate safety or for that of others. But in such cases the severest moralist could not deny the necessity, and therefore the right, of falsehood. But it would be falsehood in form, and not in fact. Truth-telling implies two conscious parties. The statement from which an insane person will draw false inferences, and which will drive him to an act or paroxysm of madness, is not truth to him. The statement which is indispensable to his safety, repose, or reasonable conduct, is virtually true to him, inasmuch as it conveys impressions as nearly conformed to the truth as he is capable of receiving.

*Is falsehood justifiable for the safety of one's own life or that of others?* This is a broad question, and comprehends a very wide diversity of cases. It includes the cases, in which the alternative is to deny one's political or religious convictions, or to suffer death for the profession of them. Here, however, there can be no difference of opinion. Political freedom and religious truth have been, in past ages, propagated more effectively by martyrdoms, than by any other instrumentality; and no men have so fully merited the gratitude and reverence of their race as those who have held the truth dearer than life.

But the form which the question ordinarily assumes is this: *If by false information I can prevent the commission of an atrocious crime, am I justified in the falsehood?* It ought first to be said, that this is hardly a practical question. Probably it has never presented itself practically to any person under whose eye these pages will fall, or in any instance within his knowledge. Nor can the familiar discussion of such extreme cases be of any possible benefit. On the other hand, he who familiarizes himself with the idea that under such a stress of circumstances what else were wrong becomes right, will be prone to apply similar reasoning to an exigency somewhat less urgent, and thence to any case in which great apparent good might result from a departure from strict veracity. Far better is it to make literal truth the unvarying law of life, and then to rest in the assurance that, should an extreme case present itself, the exigency of the moment will suggest the course to be pursued. Yet, in ethical strictness, falsehood from one self-conscious person to another cannot be justified; but we can conceive of circumstances in which it might be extenuated. There are no degrees of right; but of wrong there may be an infinite number of degrees. One straight line cannot be straighter than another; but we can conceive of a curve or a waving line that shall have but an infinitesimal divergence from a straight line. So in morals, there may be an infinitesimal wrong,—an act which cannot be pronounced right, yet shall diverge so little from the right that conscience would contract from it no appreciable stain, that man could not condemn it, and that we cannot conceive of its being registered against the soul in the chancery of heaven. Such may be the judgment which would properly attach itself to a falsehood by which an atrocious crime was prevented.

* * * * *

*Promises* belong under the head of veracity for a double reason, inasmuch as they demand in their making the truthful declaration of a sincere purpose, and in their execution an equal loyalty to the truth, even though it involve inconvenience, cost, or loss. The words of a promise may often bear more than one interpretation; but it is obviously required by veracity that the promiser should fulfil his promise in the sense in which he supposed it to be understood by him to whom it was made.

There are *cases in which a promise should not be kept.* The promise to perform an immoral act is void from the beginning. It is wrong to make it, and a double wrong to keep it. The promise to perform an act, not intrinsically immoral, but unlawful, should be regarded in the same light. If both parties were aware, when the promise was made, of the unlawfulness of the act, then neither party has the right to deem himself injured by the other. If, however, the promiser was aware of the unlawfulness of his promise, while the promisee supposed it lawful, the promiser, though not bound by his promise, is under obligation to remunerate the promisee for his disappointment or loss. If the act promised becomes unlawful between the making and the execution of the promise, the promise is made void, and the promisee has no ground of complaint against the promiser. Thus, if a man promised to send to a correspondent goods of a certain description at a certain time, and before that time the exportation of such goods were prohibited by law, he would be free both from his promise and from responsibility for its non-fulfilment.

A promise neither immoral nor unlawful, but made under a mistake common to both parties, and such as—had it been known—would have prevented the promise, is void. An extorted promise to perform an immoral or unlawful act cannot be binding. One has, indeed, no moral right to make such a promise, though if the case be one of extreme urgency and peril, extenuating circumstances may reduce the wrong to an infinitesimal deviation from the right; but, when the duress is over, no considerations can justify the performance of what it was wrong to promise. But a promise, not in itself immoral or unlawful, is binding, though made under duress. Thus, if a man attacked by bandits has had his life spared on condition of a pecuniary ransom, he is bound to pay the ransom; for at the moment of peril he thought his life worth all he promised to give for it, and it is neither immoral nor unlawful to give money, even to a robber. In a case like this, regard for the safety of others should, also, have weight; for in a country liable to such perils, the breach of a promise by one man might cost the community the lives of many.

*Contracts* are mutual promises, in which each party puts himself under specific obligations to the other. They are to be interpreted on the same principles, and to be regarded as void or voidable on the same grounds, with promises.

*An oath* is an invocation of the protection and blessing of God, or of his indignation and curse, upon the person swearing, according as his assertion is true or false, or as his promise shall be observed or violated. "So help you God," the form in common use in this country, expresses the idea that underlies an oath,—so being, of course, the emphatic word. Oaths are exacted of witnesses in courts of justice in confirmation of their testimony, and of incumbents of public offices in pledge of their fidelity. They are required, too, in attestation of invoices, inventories of estates, returns of taxable property, and various financial and statistical statements made under public authority. There are, also, not a few persons of whom, and occasions on which an oath of allegiance to the government of the state or nation is demanded.

*An oath does not enhance one's obligation* to tell the truth, or to fulfil his promise. This obligation is entire and perfect in all cases, on the ground of intrinsic fitness, and of the known will and command of God. But the tendency of oaths is to establish in the minds of men two classes of assertions and promises, one more sacred than the other. He who is required under the solemn sanction of an oath merely to tell the truth or to make a promise in good faith, arrives naturally at the conclusion that he is bound to a less rigid accuracy or fidelity in ordinary statements or promises. The law of the land, as we have seen, bears an important part in the ethical education of the young; and by means of the legal distinction created between assertions or promises under oath and those made without that sanction, children and youth are trained to regard simple truth-telling and promise-keeping as of secondary obligation. This effect of legal oaths is attested by the prevalence of profane swearing, and by the frequent use of oath-like forms of asseveration, not regarded as profane, by persons of a more serious character. Except in the religious sects that abjure the use of oaths, nine persons out of ten swear more or less, and spontaneously confirm statements which are in the least degree strange or difficult of belief, or promises to which they wish to give an air of sincerity and earnestness, by the strongest oaths they dare to use. This comes of a felt necessity, which will exist as long as preeminent sanctity is attached to legal oaths.

*Oaths are notoriously ineffective in insuring* truth and fidelity. So far as their educational influence is concerned, they tend, as we have seen, to undermine the reverence for truth in itself considered, which is the surest safeguard of individual veracity. Then too, so far as reliance is placed upon an oath, the attention of those concerned is directed with the less careful scrutiny to the character for veracity borne by him to whom it is administered. In point of fact, men swear falsely whenever and wherever they would be willing to utter falsehood without an oath. In courts of justice, the pains and penalties of perjury undoubtedly prevent a great deal of false swearing; but precisely the same penalties are attached to the affirmation of persons who, on the ground of religious scruples, are excused from swearing, and they certainly are none too severe for false testimony, in whatever way it may be given. Notwithstanding this check, however, it is well known that before a corrupt or incompetent tribunal, an unprincipled advocate never finds any difficulty in buying false testimony; and even where justice is uprightly and skilfully administered, it is not rare to encounter between equally credible witnesses such flagrant and irreconcilable contradictions as to leave no room for any hypothesis other than perjury on one side or both. Perjury in transactions with the national revenue and with municipal assessors is by no means unprecedented among persons of high general reputation. False oaths of this description are, indeed, not infrequently preceded by some fictitious formalism, such as an unreal and temporary transfer of property; but this is done, not in order to evade the guilt of perjury, but, in case of detection, to open a technical escape from its legal penalty. Promissory oaths are of equally little worth. There is not a public functionary from the President of the United States to the village constable, who does not take what is meant to be a solemn oath (though often administered with indecent levity) to be loyal to the constitution of the country or state, and faithful in the discharge of his official duties. Yet what effect has this vast amount of swearing, if it be not to make perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer deemed disgraceful? Not a bribe is taken by a member of Congress, not a contract surreptitiously obtained by a municipal official, not an appointment made to the known detriment of the public on personal or party grounds, without the commission of a crime, in theory transcendentally heinous, in practice constantly condoned and ignored. Nor can we be mistaken in regarding the sacrilege and virtual blasphemy resulting from the institution of judicial, assertory, and promissory oaths, as holding no secondary place among the causes of the moral decline and corruption of which we witness so manifest tokens.

To one who does not carry foregone conclusions of his own to the interpretation of the New Testament, it can hardly appear otherwise than certain that the Founder of Christianity intended to prohibit all oaths. His precept, "Swear not at all," occurs in a series of specifications of maxims drawn from the standard morality of his day, under each of which he sets aside the existing ethical rule, and substitutes for it one covering precisely the same ground, and conformed to the intrinsic right as represented in his own spirit and life. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil." "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies." The analogy of these and other declarations of the same series compels us to believe that when Jesus said, "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths," the precept which followed, "I say unto you, Swear not at all," must have applied to the same subject-matter with the maxim which precedes it,—that Jesus must have intended to disallow something that had been previously permitted. If so, not trivial or profane oaths alone, but oaths made in good faith and with due solemnity must have been included in the precept, "Swear not at all."(13) It is historically certain that the primitive Christians thus understood the evangelic precept. They not only refused the usual idolatrous forms of adjuration, but maintained that all oaths had been forbidden by their Divine Lawgiver; nor have we any proof of their having receded from this position, until that strange fusion of church and state under Constantine, in which it is hard to say whether Christianity mounted the throne of the Caesars or succumbed to their rule.



Section IV.

Honesty.

*Honesty* relates to transactions in which money or other property is concerned. In its broadest sense, it forbids not only the violation of the rights of individuals, but, equally, acts and practices designed to gain unfair emolument at the expense of the community, or of any class or portion of its members. It enjoins not merely the paying of debts and the performance of contracts, but rigid fidelity in every trust, whether private or public. Its ground is intrinsic fitness; and a sense of fitness will suggest its general rules, and will always enable one to determine his duty in individual cases. Its whole field may be covered by two precepts, level with the humblest understanding, and infallible in their application. The first relates to transactions between man and man,—Do that, and only that, which you would regard as just and right, if it were done to you. The second embraces concerns that affect numbers or classes of persons,—Do that, and only that, which, were you the responsible trustee and guardian of the public good, you would prescribe or sanction as just and right.

*Notwithstanding the undoubted increase of dishonesty* in recent times and its disastrous frequency, there can be no doubt that *the majority of men are honest*, and that the transactions in which there is no deception or wrong, largely outnumber those which are fraudulent. Were this not so, there could be neither confidence nor credit, enterprise would be paralyzed, business would be reduced to the lowest demands of absolute necessity, and every man would be the sole custodian of what he might make, produce, or in any way acquire. There can, therefore, be no element more directly hostile to the permanence, not to say the progress, of material civilization and of the higher interests which depend upon it, than fraud, peculation, and the violation of trust, in pecuniary and mercantile affairs, and with reference to public funds and measures. Yet there are methods, for which to a large degree honest men are responsible, in which dishonesty is created, nourished, and rewarded. In political life, if few office-holders are inaccessible to bribes, it is not because men of impregnable integrity might not, as in earlier times, be found in ample numbers for all places of trust; but because the compromises, humiliations, and concessions through which alone, in many of our constituencies, one can become the candidate of a party, are such as an honest man either would spurn at the outset, or could endure only by parting with his honesty. So long as men will persist in electing to municipal trusts those whose sole qualification is blind loyalty and unscrupulous service to a party, they can expect only robbery under the form of taxation; and, in fact, the financial revelations that have been made in the commercial metropolis of our country are typical of what is taking place, so far as opportunity serves, in cities, towns, and villages all over the land. As regards embezzlements, forgeries, and frauds in the management of pecuniary trusts, there can be no doubt that the number is greatly multiplied by the morbid sympathy of the public with the criminals, by their frequent evasion of punishment or prompt pardon after conviction, and by the ease with which they have often recovered their social position and the means of maintaining it.

In addition to this complicity with fraud and wrong on the part of the public, there are many ways in which *dishonesty engenders*, almost necessitates *dishonesty*. A branch of business, in itself honest, may be virtually closed against an honest man. The adulterations of food, so appallingly prevalent, will suggest an illustration of this point. There are commodities in which the mixture of cheaper ingredients cannot be detected by the purchaser, and which in their debased form can be offered at so low a price as to drive the genuine commodities which they replace out of the market; and thus the alternative is presented to the hitherto honest dealer to participate in the fraud, or to quit the business. The former course is, no doubt, taken by many who sincerely regret the seeming necessity.

*Dishonesty* not only injures the immediate sufferer by the fraud or wrong, but when it becomes frequent, *is a public injury* and calamity. In one way or another it alienates from the use of every honest man a very large proportion of his earnings or income. In this country, at the present time, we probably fall short of the truth in saying that at least a third part of every citizen's income is paid in the form of either direct or indirect taxation, and of this amount a percentage much larger than would be readily believed is pillaged on its way into the treasury or in its disbursement. Then, as regards bad debts (so-called), most of them fraudulently contracted or evaded, they are not, in general, the loss of the immediate creditor, nor ought they to be; he is obliged to charge for his goods a price which will cover these debts, and honest purchasers must thus pay the dues of the insolvent purchaser. Nor is this a solitary instance in which innocent persons are obliged to suffer for wrongs with which they seem to have no necessary connection. There are very few exceptions to the rule, under which, however, we have room but one more example. It is a well known fact that many American railways have not only cost very much more money than was ever laid out upon them, but are made, by keeping the construction-account long and generously open, to represent on the books of the respective corporations much larger sums than they cost,—especially in cases where the enterprise is lucrative and the dividends are limited by statute.

Now in some sections of our country a transaction of this kind—essentially fraudulent, under however respectable auspices—is a disastrous check on productive industry by the heavy freight-tariff which it imposes,—so heavy sometimes as to keep bulky commodities, as wheat and corn, out of the markets where, at a fair cost for transportation, they might find remunerative sale. Thus the very means devised for opening the resources of a region of country may be abused to their obstruction and hindrance. In fine, dishonesty in all its forms has a diffusive power of injury, and, on the mere ground of self-defence, demands the remonstrance and antagonism of the entire community.

While in most departments of conduct there is a wide neutral *ground between the right and the condemnably wrong*, there are matters of business in which there seems to be no such intermediate territory, but in which what is fair, honorable, and even necessary, is closely contiguous to dishonesty. Thus, except in the simplest retail business, all modern commerce is speculation, and the line between legitimate and dishonest speculation is to some minds difficult of discernment. Yet the discrimination may be made. A man has a right to all that he earns by services to the community, and these earnings may in individual instances reach an immense sum. We can easily understand how this may be, nay, must needs be the case with the very high salaries paid to master manufacturers. Such salaries would not be paid, did not the intelligence, skill, and organizing capacity of these men cheapen by a still larger amount the commodities made under their direction. The case is precisely similar with the merchant engaged in legitimate commerce. By his knowledge of the right times and best modes of purchasing, by his enterprise and sagacity in maintaining intercourse with and between distant markets, and by his outlay of capital and skill as a carrier of commodities from the place of their production to the place where they are needed for use, he cheapens the goods that pass through his hands by a greater amount than the toll he levies upon them, which—however large—is his rightful due.

Thus also, when, in anticipation of a scarcity of some one commodity, a merchant so raises the price as essentially to diminish the sale, *he earns his increased profits*; for an enhanced price is the only practicable check on consumption. For instance, if at the actual rate of consumption the bread-stuff on hand would be consumed a month before the new harvest could be made availing, no statistical statement could prevent the month of famine; but experienced grain-merchants can adjust the price of the stock in hand so as to induce precisely the amount of economy which will make that stock last till it can be replaced. They will, indeed, obtain a large profit on their sales, and will be accused by ignorant persons of speculating on scarcity and popular apprehension; but it will be due wholly to their prescience that the scarcity did not become famine, and the apprehension suffering; and they will have merited for this service more than the largest profits that can accrue to them.

The same principles will apply to *speculation in stocks*, which is in many minds identified with dishonest gain. Stocks are marketable commodities, equally with sugar and salt. They are liable to legitimate fluctuations in value, their actual value being affected, often by facts that transpire, often by opinions that rest on assignable grounds. Now if a man possess skill and foresight enough to buy stocks at their lowest rates and to sell them when they will bring him a profit, he makes a perfectly legitimate investment of his intelligence and sagacity, and in facilitating sales for those who need to sell, and purchases for those who wish to buy, and thus preventing capital from lying unused, or remaining inconvertible at need, he earns all that his business yields him by the substantial services which he renders.

*The legitimate business of the merchant and the broker is contingent, as we have seen, on fluctuations in the market*, and he who has the sagacity to foresee these fluctuations and the enterprise to prepare for them, derives from them advantage to which he is fairly entitled. But it is precisely at this point that the stress of temptation rests, and the opportunity presents itself for dishonesty in ways of which the laws take no cognizance, and on which public opinion is by no means severe. The contingencies which sagacity can foresee, capital and credit can often create. Virtual scarcity may be produced by forestalling and monopoly. When there is no actual dearth, even famine-prices may be obtained for the necessaries of life by the skilful manipulation of the grain-market. So too, in the stock-market, bonds and shares, instead of being bought or sold for what they are worth, of actual owners and to real purchasers, may be merely gambled with,—bought in large amounts in order to create a demand that shall swell their price, or so thrown upon the market as to reduce their price below their real value, and all this with the sole purpose of mutual contravention and discomfiture. By operations of this kind, not only is no useful end subserved, but the financial interests and relations of the community are injuriously, often ruinously, deranged; while not a few private holders of stock have their credit essentially impaired by a sudden fall of price, or by the inflation of nominal value are led into rash speculations.

In the cases cited it may be seen how closely *the right abuts upon the wrong*, so that one may over-pass the line almost unconsciously. Yet it is believed that a man may determine for himself on which side of the line he belongs. The department of business, or the mode of transacting business, which cannot by any possibility be of benefit to the community, still more, that which in its general course is of positively injurious tendency, is essentially dishonest, even though there be no individual acts of fraud. He really defrauds the public who lives upon the public without rendering, or purposing to render any valuable return; and if there be any profession or department of business to which this description applies, it should be avoided or forsaken by every man who means to be honest.

Among the many mooted cases in which the question of honesty is involved, our proposed limits will permit us to consider only that of usury(14) (so-called). There can be no doubt that usury laws and the opinion that sustains them sprang from the false theory, according to which money was regarded, not as value, but merely as the measure of value. It is now understood that it owes its capacity to measure value solely to its own intrinsic value; that its paper representatives can equal it in purchasing power only when convertible at pleasure into coin; and that paper not immediately convertible can obtain the character of money only so far as there is promise or hope of its ultimate conversion into coin. It follows that money stands on the same footing with all other values,—that its use, therefore, is a marketable commodity, varying indefinitely in its fitting price, according as money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a short period, and the borrower of more or less certain solvency. For ordinary loans the relations of supply and demand are amply competent to regulate the rate of interest, while he who incurs an extra-hazardous risk fairly earns a correspondingly high rate of compensation. There is, therefore, no intrinsic wrong in one's obtaining for the use of his money all that it is worth; and while we cannot justify the violation of any laws not absolutely immoral, dishonesty forms no part of the offence of the man who takes more than legal interest.(15)



Section V.

Beneficence.

*We have a distinct consciousness of the needs of human beings.* If we have not suffered destitution in our own persons, we yet should deprecate it. What we should dread others feel. The things which we find or deem essential to our well-being, many lack. We, it may be, possess them or the means of procuring them, beyond our power of personal use. This larger share of material goods has come to us, indeed, honestly, by the operation of laws inherent in the structure of society, and thus, as we believe, by Divine appointment. At the same time we are conscious, in a greater or less degree, of the benevolent affections. We are moved to pity by the sight or knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fitness is painfully disturbed by the existence of needs unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved. We cannot but be aware of the adaptation of such superfluity of material goods as we may possess to beneficent uses; and it can hardly be that we shall not rest in the belief that, in the inevitable order of society, it is the predetermined design and purpose of abundance to supply deficiency,—of the capacity of service, to meet the ever pressing demands for service. Beneficence, then, is a duty based on considerations of intrinsic fitness.

But *beneficence must be actual*, not merely formal, *good-doing*. Some of the most easy and obvious modes of supply or relief are adapted to perpetuate the very evils to which they minister, either by destroying self-respect, by discouraging self-help, or by granting immunity to positively vicious habits. The tendency of instinctive kindness is to indiscriminate giving. But there can be very few cases in which this is not harmful. It sustains mendicants as a recognized class of society; and as such they are worse than useless. They necessarily lose all sense of personal dignity; they remain ignorant or become incapable of all modes of regular industry, and it is impossible for them to form associations that will be otherwise than degrading and corrupting.

Of equally injurious tendency are the various modes of *relief at the public charge*. They affix upon their beneficiaries the indelible brand of pauperism, which in numerous instances becomes hereditary, and in not a few cases has been transmitted through several generations. Experience has shown that recovery from a condition thus dependent is exceedingly rare, even with the young and strong, who, had they been tided over the stress of need by private and judicious charity, would shortly have resumed their place among the self-subsisting members of the community. Public alms, while they are thus harmful to their recipients, impose upon society a far heavier burden than private charity. This is due in part to the permanent pauperism created by the system, in part to the wastefulness which characterizes public expenditures of every kind. By special permission of the national legislature, the experiment was tried in Glasgow, under the direction of Dr. Chalmers, of substituting private munificence for relief from the public chest, in one of the poorest territorial parishes of the city, embracing a population of ten thousand, and the result was the expenditure of little more than one third of what had been expended under legal authority. At the same time, the poor and suffering were so much more faithfully and kindly cared for, that there was a constant overflow of poverty from the other districts of the city into this. Public charity, when thoroughly systematized, is liable to the still stronger objection, that those who are able to give relief, in ceasing to feel the necessity, lose the will and the capacity of benevolent effort. Yet, were there no public provision for the poor, there would be cases of destitution, disease, disability, and mental imbecility, which would elude private charity, however diligent and generous. It must be remembered, too, that the same causes may at once enhance the demand for beneficent aid, and cripple its resources. Thus, in a conflagration, a flood, a dearth, or a commercial panic, while the stress of need among the poor is greatly intensified, the persons on whose charity, under ordinary circumstances, they could place the most confident reliance, may be among the chief sufferers. Thus, also, during the prevalence of infectious disease, a large proportion of those who are wont to perform the offices of humanity for the suffering, are withdrawn by their own fears, or those of their friends, from their wonted field of service. Then, too, there are various forms of disease and infirmity, which demand special treatment or a permanent asylum; and while institutions designed to meet these wants are more wisely and economically administered under private than under public auspices, the state should never suffer them to fail or languish for lack of subsidy from private sources. The most desirable condition of things undoubtedly is that—more nearly realized in France than in any other country in Christendom—in which the relief of the poor and suffering in ordinary cases, and the charge of charitable institutions to a large degree, are left to individuals, voluntary organizations, and religious fraternities and sisterhoods, while government supplements and subsidizes private charity where it is found inadequate to the need.

The demands upon beneficence are by no means exhausted, when material relief and aid have been bestowed. Indeed, alms are often given as a purchase of quitclaim for personal service. But the manifestation and expression of sympathy may make the gift of immeasurably more worth and efficacy. Considerate courtesy, delicacy, and gentleness are essential parts of beneficence. There are very few so abject that they do not feel insulted and degraded by what is coldly, grudgingly, superciliously, or chidingly bestowed; while the thoughtful tenderness which never forgets the sensibilities of those whom it relieves, inspires comfort, hope, and courage, arouses whatever capacity there may be of self-help, and is often the means of replacing the unfortunate in the position from which they have fallen.

*Beneficence has a much broader scope than the mere relief of the poor and suffering.* In the daily intercourse of life there are unnumbered opportunities for kindness, many of them slight, yet in their aggregate, of a magnitude that eludes all computation. There is hardly a transaction, an interview, a casual wayside meeting, in which it is not in the power of each person concerned to contribute in an appreciable degree to the happiness or the discomfort of those whom he thus meets, or with whom he is brought into a relation however transient. In all our movements among our fellow-men, it is possible for us to "go about doing good." What we can thus do we are bound to do. We perceive and feel that this is fitting for us as social and as mutually dependent beings. We are conscious of the benefit accruing to us from little, nameless attentions and courtesies, often of mere look, or manner, or voice; and from these experiences we infer that the possibility, and therefore the duty of beneficence is coextensive with our whole social life.

The *measure of beneficence*, prescribed for us on the most sacred authority, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," needs only to be stated to be received as authentic. It supplies a measure for our expectations also, as well as for our duties. We have a right to expect from others as much courtesy, kindness, service as, were they in our place and we in theirs, we should feel bound to render to them,—a rule which would often largely curtail our expectations, and in the same proportion tone down our disappointments and imagined grievances.

There is another scriptural precept, "*Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,*" which might at first sight seem impracticable, yet which, as we shall see on closer examination, represents not only a possible attainment, but one toward which all who heartily desire and love to do good are tending. There are various conditions under which, confessedly, human beings love others as well as themselves, or better. What else can we say of the mother's love for her child, for whose well-being she would make any conceivable sacrifice, nay, were there need, would surrender life itself? Have we not also sometimes witnessed, a filial devotion equally entire and self-forgetting?

Nor are instances wanting, in which brothers and sisters, or friends who had no bonds of consanguinity, have shown by unmistakable deeds and sufferings that their love for one another was at least equal to their self-love. This same love for others, as for himself, is manifested by the self-devoting patriot, the practical philanthropist, the Christian missionary. There is ample ground for it in the theory of humanity which forms a part of our accustomed religious utterance. We call our fellow-men our brethren, as children of the same Father. So far as sayings like these are sentiments, and not mere words, there must be in our feelings and conduct toward and for our fellow-men in general a kindness, forbearance, self-forgetfulness, and self-sacrifice similar to that of which, toward our near kindred, we would not confess ourselves incapable. Here it must be borne in mind that the precepts of Christianity represent the perfection which should be our constant aim and our only goal, not the stage of attainment which we are conscious of having reached, or of being able to reach with little effort.

*The love of enemies* is also enjoined upon us by Jesus Christ. Is this possible? Why not? There are cases where one's nearest kindred are his worst enemies; and we have known instances in which love has survived this rudest of all trials. Were the Christian idea of universal brotherhood a profound sentiment, it would not be quenched by enmity, however bitter. Enmity toward ourselves need not affect our estimate of one's actual merit or claims. If we should not think the worse of a man because he was the enemy of some one else, why should we think the worse of him because he is our enemy? He may have mistaken our character and our dispositions; and if so, is he more culpable for this than for any other mistake? Or if, on the other hand, he has some substantial reason for disliking us, we should either remove the cause, or submit to the dislike without feeling aggrieved by it. At any rate we can obey the precept, "Do good to them that hate you;" and this is the only way, and an almost infallible way, in which the enmity may be overcome, and superseded by relations of mutual kindness and friendship.



Chapter XI.

FORTITUDE; OR DUTIES WITH REFERENCE TO UNAVOIDABLE EVILS AND SUFFERINGS.

There are, in almost every prolonged human experience, *privations and sufferings to be endured, disappointments to be submitted to, obstacles and difficulties to be surmounted and overcome*. From whatever source these elements of experience proceed, even if from blind chance, or from fate (which denotes the utterance or decree of arbitrary and irresponsible power), the strong man will brace himself up to bear them; the wise man will shape his conduct by them; the man of lofty soul will rise above them. But the temper in which they will be borne, yielded to, or surmounted, must be contingent on the belief concerning them. If they are regarded as actual evils, they will probably be endured with sullenness, or submitted to with defiance and scorn, or surmounted with pride and self-inflation. Even in the writings of the later Stoics, which abound in edifying precepts of fortitude and courage under trial, there is an undertone of defiance, as if the sufferer were contending with a hostile force, and a constant tendency to extol and almost deify the energy of soul which the good man displays in fighting with a hard destiny. If, on the other hand, physical evils are regarded as wise and benign appointments of the Divine love and fatherhood, the spirit in which they are borne and struggled against is characterized by tenderness, meekness, humility, trust, and hope. It is instructive in this regard to read alternately the Stoics and St. Paul, and to contrast their magnanimous, but grim and stern resignation, with the jubilant tone in which, a hundred times over, and with a vast variety of gladsome utterance, he repeats the sentiment contained in those words, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." As ours is the Christian theory as to the (so-called) evils of human life, we shall recognize it in our treatment of the several virtues comprehended under the general title of Fortitude.



Section I.

Patience.(16)

*Patience* is incumbent on us, only under inevitable sufferings or hardships, or under such as are incurred in the discharge of manifest duty, or for the benefit of our fellow-men. Needless sufferings or privations we are bound to shun or to escape, not to bear. The caution and foresight by which they may be evaded hold an essential place among the duties of prudence. Nor does reason or religion sanction self-imposed burdens or hardships of any kind, whether in penance for wrong-doing, as a means of purchasing the Divine favor, or as a mode of spiritual discipline.

Patience implies *serenity, cheerfulness, and hopefulness*, under burdens and trials. It must be distinguished from apathy, which is a temperament, not a virtue. There are some persons whose sensibilities are so sluggish that they are incapable of keen suffering, and of profound and lasting sorrow. We can hardly call this a desirable temperament; for its capacity of enjoyment is equally defective, and, as there is more happiness than misery in almost every life, he whose susceptibility of both pain and pleasure is quick and strong is, on the whole, the gainer thereby. The serenity of patience requires vigorous self-command. It is essential, first of all, to control, and as far as possible to suppress, the outward tokens of pain and grief. They, like all modes of utterance, deepen the feeling they express; while a firm and self-contained bearing enhances the fortitude which it indicates. Control must also be exercised over the thoughts, that they be abstracted from the painful experience, and employed on themes that will fill and task them. Mental industry is the best relief that mere philosophy has for pain and sorrow; and though it certainly is not a cure, it never fails to be of service as a palliative. Even when bodily distress or infirmity renders continuous thought impossible, the effort of recollection, or the employment of the mind in matters too trivial for its exercise in health, may relieve the weariness and lighten the stress of suffering. Nor let devices of this sort be deemed unworthy of a place even among duties; for they are often essential means to ends of high importance. They assert and maintain the rightful supremacy of the mind over the body; they supersede that morbid brooding upon painful experiences which generates either melancholy or querulousness; and they leave in the moral nature an unobstructed entrance to all soothing and elevating influences.

*Cheerfulness* in the endurance of pain and hardship must result in great part from the belief. If I regard myself as irresistibly subject to an automatic Nature, whose wheels may bruise or crush me at any moment, I know not why or how I could be cheerful, even in such precarious health or prosperity as might fall to my lot; and there could certainly be no reassuring aspect to my adverse fortune. But if I believe that under a fatherly Providence there can be no suffering without its ministry of mercy, no loss without its greater gain within my reach and endeavor, no hardship without its reflex benefit in inward growth and energy, then I can take and bear the inevitable burdens of this earthly life in the same spirit in which I often assume burdens not imposed upon me from without, for the more than preponderant benefit which I hope to derive from them. But if I have this faith in a benignant Providence which will not afflict me uselessly, I am under obligation not to let my faith, if real, remain inactive in my seasons of pain, loss, or grief. I am bound so to ponder on my assured belief, and on such proofs of it as may lie in my past experience, that it shall give its hue to my condition, its tone to my thought, its direction to the whole current of my sentiment and feeling. Thus may endurance be not only calm, but cheerful, because pervaded by the conviction that at the heart of all that seems evil there is substantial good.

Yet, it cannot be denied that there are life-long burdens and griefs,—incurable illnesses, irretrievable losses, bereavements that will never cease to be felt, and cannot be replaced. Especially in advanced years there are infirmities, disabilities, and privations, which cannot by any possibility have a resultant revenue equivalent to what they take from us; for in old age the growth of character is too slow to be worth the sacrifice which in earlier life may be more than compensated by the consciousness of spiritual enlargement and increase. How shall these burdens be borne cheerfully? They cannot, unless they be also borne hopefully. But if there be presented to the faith, beyond the earthly life, a future, the passage into which is to be made the easier by loss and sorrow here; if families are there to be reunited, and void places in the affections filled again; if worthy hopes, seemingly disappointed, are only postponed for a richer and happier fulfilment,—there is in that future exhaustless strength for solace and support under what must be endured here. Earthly trial must seem light and momentary in view of perfect and eternal happiness; and thus the hope that lays hold on an infinite domain of being is coined into utilities for the daily needs of the tried, suffering, afflicted, and age-bowed, supplying to patience an element without which it cannot be made perfect.



Section II.

Submission.

There are events, seemingly adverse, which in themselves are transient, and inflict no permanent discomfort, but which necessitate the surrender of cherished expectations, the change of favorite plans, it may be, the life-long abandonment of aims and hopes that had held the foremost place in the anticipated future. Here submission of some sort is a necessity. But the submission may be querulous and repining; it may be bitter and resentful; it may be stern and rigid. In the last of these types only can there be any semblance of virtue; and this last can be virtuous, only where inevitable events are attributed to Fate, and not to Providence. But if a wise and kind Providence presides over human affairs, its decrees are our directory. The very events which hedge in, mark out our way. The tree which has its upward growth checked spreads its branches; that which is circumscribed in its lateral expansion attains the greater height. The tendrils of the vine are guided by the very obstacles placed in its way. Thus, in human life, impassable barriers in one direction prescribe aims and endeavors in a different direction. The things that we cannot do determine the things that we ought to do. The growth which is impeded must give place to growth of a different type, and to us undoubtedly more wholesome, more congenial with our capacities, more conducive to our true well-being. What seem obstacles may be supports, giving the best possible direction to our active powers, and so training our desires and affections as to lead to higher happiness and more substantial good than could have otherwise been attained.

*Submission*, then, *must be grounded in faith*. The inevitable must be to us the appointment of Omniscient Love. In our childhood the very regimen and discipline that were least to our taste proceeded often from the wisest counsels, and in due time we acquiesced in them as judicious and kind, nor would we in the retrospect have had them otherwise. As little as we then knew what was best for our well-being in the nearer future, we may now know as to what is best for us in a remote future, whether in the present or in a higher state of being. All that remains for us is acquiescence, cheerful and hopeful, in a Wisdom that cannot err, in a Love which can will only the best of which we are capable.

*Submission* is not merely a passive, but equally *an active virtue*. Inevitable events impose imperative duties. In the direction which they indicate there is work for us, of self-culture, of kindness, of charity. Our characters can be developed, not by yielding, however cheerfully, to what seem misfortunes, but by availing ourselves of the opportunities which they present, in place of those of which they have deprived us. When the way we had first chosen is barred against us, we are not to lie still, but to move onward with added diligence on the way that is thus opened to us. If outward success is arrested and reverted, there is only the more reason for improving the staple of our inward being. If those dearest to us have passed beyond the reach of our good offices, there are the more remote that may be brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence. If our earthly life is rendered desolate, the affections, hopes, and aims thus unearthed may by our spiritual industry and thrift be trained heavenward. All this is included in full submission to the will of the Divine providence; for that will is not our loss, disappointment, or suffering, but our growth, by means of it, in quantity of mental and spiritual life, in capacity of duty, and in the power of usefulness.



Section III.

Courage.

Patience, as its name imports, is a passive quality; Submission blends the passive and the active; while *Courage* is preeminently an active virtue. Patience resigns itself to what must be endured; submission conforms itself to what it gladly would, but cannot reverse; courage resists what it cannot evade, surmounts what it cannot remove, and declines no conflict in which it is honorable to engage. It is obvious that the occasions for these virtues are widely different. Patience has its place where calm and cheerful endurance is the only resource; submission, where there must be voluntary self-adaptation to altered circumstances; courage, where there is threatened evil which strenuous effort can avert, mitigate, or subdue.

*Courage is a virtue, only when it is a necessity.* There is no merit in seeking danger, in exciting opposition, in courting hostility. Indeed, conduct of this description more frequently proceeds from persons who know themselves cowards and fear to be thought so, than from those who are actually possessed of courage. But there are perils, encounters, enmities, which cannot by any possibility be avoided, and there are others which can be avoided only by the sacrifice of principle, or by the surrender of opportunities for doing good, and which, therefore, to a virtuous man are inevitable.

The *physical courage*, commonly so called, which is prompt and fearless in the presence of imminent danger, or in armed conflict with enemies, may be, or may not be, a virtue. It may proceed from a mind too shallow and frivolous to appreciate the worth of life or the magnitude of the peril that threatens it; it may, as often in the case of veteran soldiers, be the result of discipline without the aid of principle; or it may depend wholly on intense and engrossing excitement, so that he who would march fearlessly at the head of a forlorn hope might quail before a solitary foe. But if one be, in the face of peril, at the same time calm and resolute, self-collected and firm, cautious and bold, fully aware of all that he must encounter and unfalteringly brave in meeting it, such courage is a high moral attainment. Its surest source is trust in the Divine providence,—the fixed conviction that the inevitable cannot be otherwise than of benignant purpose and ministry, though that purpose may be developed and that ministry effected only in a higher state of being. To this faith must be added a strong sense of one's manhood, and of his superiority by virtue of that manhood over all external surroundings and events. We are conscious of a rightful supremacy over the outward world, and deem it unworthy to succumb, without internecine resistance, to any force by which we may be assailed, whether that force be a power of nature or a wrongful assault from a fellow-man. It is the presence of this consciousness that wins our admiration for all genuine heroism, and the absence of it at the moment of need that makes cowardice contemptible.

There is a *moral courage* required in pursuing our legitimate course in life, or in discharging our manifest duty, notwithstanding straitnesses, hindrances, obstacles, to which the feeble and timid could not but yield. The constituent elements of this type of courage are precisely the same that are needed in the encounter with physical peril. In both cases it is equally unmanly to succumb until we have resisted to the utmost. But while physical courage can at best only insure our safety, moral courage contributes essentially to the growth of mind and character; and the larger the opportunity for its exercise, the greater will be the mass of mind, the quantity of character, the power of duty and of usefulness. Straitnesses develop richer resources than they bar. Hindrances nurture hardihood of spirit in the struggle against them, or in the effort to neutralize them. Obstacles, when surmounted, give one a higher position than could be attained on an unobstructed path. The school of difficulty is that in which we have our most efficient training for eminence, whether of capacity or of moral excellence. What are accounted inevitable evils are, when met with courage, only benefits and blessings, inasmuch as they bring into full and vigorous exercise the hardier muscles and sinews of the inner man, to measure strength with them or to rise above them.

Courage is needed in *the profession and maintenance of the true and the right*, when denied, assailed, or vilipended. Communities never move abreast in the progress of opinion. There are always pioneer minds and consciences; and the men who are in advance of their time must encounter obloquy at least, often persecution, loss, hardship, sometimes legal penalties and disabilities. Under such circumstances, there are doubtless many more that inwardly acknowledge the unpopular truth or the contested right, than there are who are willing to avow and defend their belief. Many are frightened into false utterance or deceptive silence. But there must be in such minds a conscious mendacity, fatal to their own self-respect, and in the highest degree detrimental to their moral selfhood. It demands and at the same time nurtures true greatness of soul to withstand the current of general opinion, to defy popular prejudice, to make one's self "of no reputation" in order to preserve his integrity unimpaired. Therefore is it that, in the lapse of time, the very men who have been held in the lowest esteem rise into eminence in the general regard, sometimes while they are still living, oftener with a succeeding generation. Martyrs in their day, they receive the crown of martyrdom when the work which they commenced is consummated. The history of all the great reforms which have been successive eras in the moral progress of Christendom is full of names, once dishonored, now among the foremost of their race.

This type of courage has, in less enlightened ages than our own, been made illustrious by *those who have sacrificed life rather than deny or suppress beliefs* which they deemed of vital moment. It can hardly be anticipated that the civilized world will recede so far into barbarism as to light again the death-flame of persecution; but it may be questioned whether the chronic sacrifice of all which men most desire in life requires or manifests less of heroism than in earlier times furnished victims for the arena or the stake.

In the moral hierarchy the first rank is probably due to *the courage that inspires and sustains arduous and perilous philanthropic enterprise*. The martyr for opinion suffers or dies rather than stain his soul with the positive guilt of falsehood; while the philanthropist might evade toil and danger without committing any actual sin, or making himself liable to censure or disapproval either from God or man. In the former case, hardship or danger is rendered inevitable by the felt necessity of self-respect; in the latter, by the urgency of a love for man equal or superior to the love for self. As examples of this highest type of courage, it may suffice to name Howard, whose labors for prison-reform were pursued at the well-known risk and the ultimate cost of his life; Florence Nightingale and the noble sisterhood inaugurated by her, who have won all the untarnished and undisputed laurels of recent wars on both sides of the Atlantic; and the Christian missionaries to savage tribes and in pestilential climates, who have often gone to their work with as clear a consciousness of deadly peril as if they had been on their way to a battle-field.



Chapter XII.

ORDER; OR DUTIES AS TO OBJECTS UNDER ONE'S OWN CONTROL.

There are many duties that are self-defined and self-limited. Thus, the ordinary acts of justice and many of the charities of daily life include in themselves the designation of time, place, and measure. There are other duties, of equal obligation, which admit of wide variance as to these particulars, but which can be most worthily and efficiently performed only when reference is had to them. There are, also, many acts, in themselves morally indifferent, which acquire their moral character as right or wrong solely from one or more of these particulars. Thus recreations that are innocent and fitting on Saturday, may be inconsistent with the proprieties of Sunday; conversation and conduct perfectly befitting the retirement of home may be justly offensive in a place of public concourse; or there may be great guilt in the excessive use of that which used in moderation may be blameless, fitting, and salutary.



Section I.

Time.

*A life-time is none too long for a life's work.* Hence the fitness, and therefore the duty, of a careful economy of time. This economy can be secured only by a systematic arrangement of one's hours of labor, relaxation, and rest, and the assignment to successive portions of the day, week, or year, of their appropriate uses. The amount of time wasted, even by an industrious man who has no method or order in his industry, bears a very large proportion to the time profitably employed. In the needlessly frequent change of occupations, there is at each beginning and ending a loss of the working power, which can neither start on a new career at full speed, nor arrest itself without previous slackening. This waste is made still greater by the suspense or vacillation of purpose of those who not only have no settled plans of industry, but often know not what to do, or are liable, so soon as they are occupied in one way, to feel themselves irresistibly drawn in a different direction.

But in the distribution of time *a man should be the master, not the slave of his system*. The regular work and the actual duty of the moment do not always coincide. Due care for health, the opportunity for earned and needed recreation, the claims of charity, courtesy, and hospitality, in fine, the immediate urgency of any duty selfward, manward, or Godward, should always take precedence of routine-work however wisely planned. Obstinate adherence to system may lead to more and greater criminal omissions of duty than would be incurred, even in the spasmodic industry which takes its impulse from the passing moment. It must be remembered that timeliness is the essential element of right and obligation in many things that ought to be done, especially in all forms of charity, alike in great services, and in those lesser amenities and kindnesses which contribute so largely to the charm of society and the happiness of domestic life. There are many good offices which, performed too late, were better left undone,—courtesies which, postponed, are incivilities,—attentions which, out of season, are needless and wearisome.

*Every day, every waking hour has its own duty*, either its special work, or its due portion of one's normal life-work. Procrastination is, therefore, as unwise as it is immoral, or rather, it is immoral because it is unwise and unfitting. The morrow has its own appropriate duties; and if to-day's work be thrown into it, the massing of two days' good work into one exceeds ordinary ability. The consequence is, either that both days' works are imperfectly performed, or that part of what fitly belongs to the morrow is pushed farther on, and the derangement of duty made chronic. Thus there are persons who are always in arrears with their engagements and occupations,—in chase, as it were, after duties which they never lose from sight, and never overtake.

*Hardly less grave,* though less common, *is the error of those who anticipate duty*, and do to-day what they ought to do to-morrow. The work thus anticipated may be superseded, or may be performed under better auspices and with fewer hindrances in its own time; while it can hardly fail to interfere injuriously with the fit employment or due relaxation of the passing day. Moreover, the habit of thus performing work before its time at once betokens and intensifies an uneasy, self-distrusting frame of mind, unfavorable to vigorous effort, and still more so to the quiet enjoyment of needed rest and recreation. There are those, who are perpetually haunted by the forecast shadows, not only of fixed, but of contingent obligations and duties,—shadows generally larger than the substance, and often wholly destitute of substance.

*Punctuality*(17) denotes the most scrupulous precision as to time,—exactness to a moment in the observance of all times that can be designated or agreed upon. In matters with which we alone are concerned, we undoubtedly have of right, and may often very fittingly exercise, the dispensing power. Thus, in the arrangement of our own pursuits, the clock may measure and direct our industry, without binding us by its stroke. It is often of more consequence that we finish what is almost done, than that we change our work because the usual hour for a change has arrived. But where others are concerned, rigid punctuality is an imperative duty. A fixed time for an assembly, a meeting of a committee or board of trust, or a business interview, is a virtual contract into which each person concerned has entered with every other, and the strict rules that apply to contracts of all kinds are applicable here. Failure in punctuality is dishonesty. It involves the theft of time, which to some men is money's worth, to others is worth more than money. It ought not to surprise us if one wantonly or habitually negligent in this matter should prove himself oblivious of other and even more imperative obligations; for the dullness of conscience and the obscure sense of right, indicated by the frequent breach of virtual contracts as to time, betoken a character too feeble to maintain its integrity against any strong temptation.



Section II.

Place.

The trite maxim, *A place for everything, and everything in its place*, so commends itself to the sense of fitness, as hardly to need exposition or enforcement; yet while no maxim is more generally admitted, scarce any is so frequently violated in practice. In duty, the elements of time and place are intimately blended. Disorder in place generates derangement in time. The object which is out of place can be found only by the waste of time; and the most faithful industry loses a large part of its value when its materials are wanting where they ought to be, and must be sought where they ought not to be.

Apart from considerations of utility, order is an aesthetic duty. It is needed to satisfy the sense of beauty. Its violation offends the eye, insults the taste. The aesthetic nature craves and claims culture. It has abundant provision made for it in external nature; but so large a part of life must be passed within doors, at least in a climate like ours, that it is starved and dwarfed, if there be not in interior arrangements some faint semblance of the symmetry and harmony of the universe. To effect this needs neither abundance nor costliness of material. A French man or woman will charm the eye at a cost which in England would be represented by bare and squalid poverty. A Parisian shop-window will make with a few francs' worth of goods an exhibition of artistical beauty which might challenge the most fastidious criticism. These effects are produced solely by prime reference to fitness of place,—to orderly arrangement,—to a symmetry which all can understand, and which any one might copy. Our very capacity of receiving gratification from this source is the measure of our duty in this regard. If with the simplest materials we can give pleasure to the soul through the eye by merely assigning its fit place to every object, order is among the plainest dictates of beneficence.

*Order is essential to domestic comfort and well-being*, and thus to all the virtues which have their earliest and surest nurture in domestic life. There are homes at once affluent and joyless, groaning with needless waste and barren of needed comfort, in which the idea of repose seems as irrelevant as Solomon's figure of lying down on the top of a mast, and all from a pervading spirit of disorder. In such dwellings there is no love of home. The common house is a mere lodging and feeding place. Society is sought elsewhere, pleasure elsewhere; and for the young and easily impressible there is the strongest inducement to those modes of dissipation in which vice conceals its grossness behind fair exteriors and under attractive forms. On the other hand, the well-ordered house affords to its inmates the repose, comfort, and enjoyment which they crave and need, and for those whose characters are in the process of formation may neutralize allurements to evil which might else be irresistible.



Section III.

Measure.

There are many objects, as to which *the question of duty is a question of more or less*. To this class belong not only food and drink, but all forms of luxury, indulgence, recreation, and amusement. In all these the choice lies between excess, abstinence, and temperance. The tendency to excess is intensely strong, when not restrained by prudence or principle. This tendency is by no means confined to the appetite for intoxicating liquors, though modern usage has restricted to excess in this particular the term intemperance, which properly bears a much more extended signification. There is reason to believe that there is fully as much intemperance in food as in drink, and with at least equally ruinous consequences as to capacity, character, health, and life,—with this difference only, that gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while drunkenness maddens; and that the glutton is merely a dead weight on the community, while the drunkard is an active instrument of annoyance and peril. There are probably fewer who sink into an absolutely beastly condition by intemperance in food than by intemperance in drink; but of persons who do not expose themselves to open scandal, those whose brains are muddled, whose sensibilities are coarsened, and whose working power is impaired by over-eating, are more numerous than those in whom similar effects are produced by over-free indulgence in intoxicating drinks. Intemperance in amusements, also, is not uncommon, and would undoubtedly be more prevalent than it is, were not the inevitable necessity of labor imposed on most persons from a very early period. In this matter the limit between temperance and excess is aptly fixed by the term recreation, as applied to all the gay and festive portions of life. Re-creation is making over, that is, replacing the waste of tissue, brain-power, and physical and mental energy occasioned by hard work. Temperance permits the most generous indulgence of sport, mirth, and gayety that can be claimed as needful or conducive to this essential use, but excludes all beyond this measure.

*Abstinence* from all forms of luxury and recreation, and from food and drink beyond the lowest demands of subsistence, has, under various cultures, been regarded as a duty, as an appropriate penance for sin, as a means of spiritual growth, as a token of advanced excellence. This notion had its origin in the dualistic philosophy or theology of the East. It was believed that the sovereignty of the universe was divided between the semi-omnipotent principles of good and evil, and that the earth and the human body were created by the evil principle,—by Satan or his analogue. Hence it was inferred that the evil principle could be abjured and defied, and the good principle propitiated in no way so effectually as by renouncing the world and mortifying the body. Fasting, as a religious observance, originated in this belief. It was imported from the East. The Hebrew fasts were not established by Moses; they were evidently borrowed from Babylon, and seem to have been regarded with no favor by the prophets. The Founder of Christianity prescribed no fast, nor have we any reason to believe that his immediate disciples regarded abstinence as a duty. Christian asceticism in all its forms is, like the Jewish fasts, of Oriental origin, and had its first developments in close connection with those hybrids of Christianity and Oriental philosophy of which the dualism already mentioned forms a prominent feature.

With regard to all objects of appetite, desire, and enjoyment, *temperance* is evidently fitting, and therefore a duty, unless there be specific reasons for abstinence. Temperance demands and implies moral activity. In the temperate man the appetites, desires, and tastes have their continued existence, and need vigilant and wise control, so that he has always work to do, a warfare to wage; and as conflict with the elements gives vigor to the body, so does conflict with the body add strength continually to the moral nature. The ascetic may have a hard struggle at the outset; but his aim is to extirpate his imagined enemies in the bodily affections, and when these are completely mortified, or put to death, there remains no more for him to do, and moral idleness and lethargy ensue. Simon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years on pillars of different heights, had probably stupefied his moral faculties and sensibilities as effectually as he had crushed to death the appetites and cravings of the body. It must not be forgotten that the body no less than the soul is of God's building, and that in his purpose all the powers and capacities of the body are good in their place and uses, and therefore to be controlled and governed, not destroyed or suppressed. The mediaeval saint, feeding on the offal of the streets, was unwittingly committing sacrilege, by degrading and imbruting an appetite for which God had provided decent and wholesome nutriment.

Temperance is better than abstinence, also, because *the moderate use of the objects of desire is a source of refining and elevating influences*. It is not without meaning that, in common speech, the possession or loss of the senses is made synonymous with mental sanity or derangement. By the temperate gratification of the senses the mind is sustained in its freshness, vigor, and serenity; while when they are perverted by excess, impaired by age, or deadened by disease, in that same proportion the mental powers are distracted, enfeebled, or benumbed. Taste, the faculty through which we become conversant with the whole realm of beauty, and than which devotion has no more efficient auxiliary, derives its name from what the ascetic deems the lowest animal enjoyment, which, however, has its range of the very highest ministries. The table is the altar of home-love and of hospitality, and there are clustered around it unnumbered courtesies, kindnesses, and charities that make a large part of the charm and joy of life. So far is thoughtfulness for its graceful and generous service from indicating a low type of character, that there is hardly any surer index of refinement and elegant culture than is furnished by the family meal. Similar remarks apply to the entire range of pleasurable objects and experiences. While there are none of them in which excess is safe, they all, when enjoyed in moderation, stimulate the mental powers, develop and train the aesthetic faculty, and multiply beneficial relations alike with nature and with society.

*Temperance*, rather than abstinence, *is needed on grounds connected with social economy*. Labor for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a tithe of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a nation of idlers. It is the demand for objects of enjoyment, taste, luxury, that floats ships, dams rivers, stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates the wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance that sustain and aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, wants, and burdens; while moderate, yet generous use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of universal industry, progress, comfort, and happiness.

But there are *cases in which abstinence*, rather than temperance, *is a duty*.

*Past excess* may render temperance hardly possible. From the derangement consequent upon excess, an appetite may lose the capacity of healthy exercise. In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and useless limb, we should suppress the appetite which we can no longer control. Physiological researches have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating drinks, when long continued, produces an organic condition, in which the slightest indulgence is liable to excite a craving so intense as to transcend the control of the will.

*Inherited proclivities* may, in like manner, render temperance so difficult as to make abstinence a duty. It is conceivable that a nation or a community may, by the prevalence of excess in past generations, be characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance as to render general abstinence a prerequisite to general temperance.

Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many around us our *example* in what we may enjoy innocently would be ensnaring and perilous. The recreation, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has become a source of corruption, it may be our duty to forego. The indulgence, safe for us, which would be unsafe for our associates, it may be incumbent on us to resign. The food, the drink which would make our table a snare to our guests, we may be bound to refrain from, though for ourselves there be in it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an amusement or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a question of social morality falling under this head. The joyous side of life must be maintained. The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events have recreations, games, festivities, and of these there is not a single element, material, or feature that has not been abused, perverted, or invested with associations offensive to a pure moral taste. To disown and oppose them all in the name of virtue, is to prescribe a degree of abstinence which can have the assent of those only who have outlived the capacity of enjoyment. The more judicious course is to favor, or at least to tolerate such modes of indulgence as may for the present be the least liable to abuse, or such as may in prospect be the safest in their moral influence, and by sanctioning these to render more emphatic and efficient the disapproval and rejection of such as are intrinsically wrong and evil.



Section IV.

Manners.

The ancients had but one word for *manners and morals*. It might be well if the same were the case with us,—yet with this essential difference, that while they degraded morals to the level of manners, a higher culture would lead us to raise manners to the level of morals. The main characteristics of good manners are comprised in the three preceding Sections. They are the observance, in one's demeanor and conduct toward others, of the fitnesses of time and place, and of the due and graceful mean between overwrought, extravagant, or fantastic manifestations of regard on the one hand, and coldness, superciliousness, or indifference on the other. Courtesies, like more substantial kindnesses, are neutralized by delay, and, when slow, seem forced and reluctant. Attentions, which in their place are gratifying, may, if misplaced, occasion only mortification and embarrassment, as when civilities befitting interior home-life are rehearsed for the public eye and ear. Nor is there any department of conduct in which excess or deficiency is more painfully felt,—a redundance of compliments and assiduities tending to silence and abash the recipient, while their undue scanting inflicts a keen sense of slight, neglect, and injury.

*Politeness* must, indeed, in order even to appear genuine, be the expression of sincere kindness. There is no pretence so difficult to maintain as the false show of genial and benevolent feeling. The mask cannot be so fitted to the face as not to betray its seams and sutures. Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. Its spontaneous expressions may be rude and awkward; or they may take forms not readily understood and appreciated. There are conventional modes of polite demeanor no less than of courteous speech. These modes may have no intrinsic fitness, yet they acquire a fitness from their long and general use; and while the mere repetition of stereotyped formulas whether in word or deportment is justly offensive, he who would have his politeness recognized and enjoyed must beware lest he depart too widely from the established sign-language of society. There is a brusquerie often underlying hearty kindness and good fellowship, which at the outset pains, wounds, and repels those brought within its sphere, and which the most intimate friends endure and excuse rather than approve.

*Politeness is to be regarded as an indispensable duty.* It is believed that from its neglect or violation more discomfort ensues than from any other single cause, and in some circles and conditions of society more than from all other causes combined. There are neighborhoods and communities that are seldom disturbed by grave offences against the criminal law, but none which can insure itself against the affronts, enmities, wounded sensibilities, rankling grievances, occasioned by incivility and rudeness. Moreover, there are persons entirely free from vice, perhaps ostentatious in the qualities which are the opposites of vices, and not deficient in charitable labors and gifts, who cultivate discourtesy, are acrid or bitter in their very deeds of charity, and carry into every society a certain porcupine selfhood, which makes their mere presence annoying and baneful. Such persons, besides the suffering they inflict on individuals, are of unspeakable injury to their respective circles or communities, by making their very virtues unlovely, and piety, if they profess it, hateful. On the other hand, there is no truer benefactor to society—if the creation of happiness be the measure of benefit—than the genuine gentleman or gentlewoman, who adds grace to virtue, politeness to kindness; who under the guidance of a sincere fellow-feeling, studies the fitnesses of speech and manner, in civility and courtesy endeavors to render to all their due, and in the least details that can affect another's happiness, does carefully and conscientiously all that the most fastidious sensibility could claim or desire.



Section V.

Government.

*The establishment and preservation of order is the prime and essential function of government*; the prevention and punishment of crime, its secondary, incidental, perhaps even temporary use. In a perfect state of society, government would still be necessary; for it would be only by the observance of common and mutual designations of time, place, and measure, that each individual member of society could enjoy the largest liberty and the fullest revenue from objects of desire, compatible with the just claims and rights of others. These benefits can, under no conceivable condition in which finite beings can be placed, be secured except by system, under a central administration, and with the submission of individual wills and judgments to constituted and established authority. A bad government, then, is better than none; for a bad government can exist only by doing a part of its appropriate work, while in a state of anarchy the whole of that work is left undone and unattempted.

*Obedience to government is*, then, fitting, and therefore a duty, independently of all considerations as to the wisdom, or even the justice of its decrees or statutes. If they are unwise, they yet are rules to which the community can conform itself, and by which its members can make their plans and govern their expectations, while lawlessness is the negation alike of guidance for the present and of confidence in the future. If they are unjust, they yet do less wrong and to fewer persons, than would be done by individual and sporadic attempts to evade or neutralize them. Nay, unwise and inequitable laws, to which the habits and the industrial relations of a people have adjusted themselves, are to be preferred to vacillating legislation, though in a generally right direction. Laws that affect important interests should be improved only with reference to the virtual pledges made by previous legislation, and so as to guard the interests involved against the injurious effects of new and revolutionary measures. The tariff regulations of our own country will illustrate the bearing of this principle. It forms no part of our present plan to discuss the mooted questions of free trade and protection. But in the confession of even extreme partisans on either side, the capital and industry of our people could never have suffered so much from any one tariff of duties, however injudicious, as they suffered for a series of years from sudden changes of policy, by which investments that had been invited by the legislation of one Congress were made fruitless by the action of the next, and manufactures stimulated into rapid growth by high protective duties, were arrested and often ruined by their sudden repeal. The stability of laws is obviously a higher good than their conformity to the theoretical views of the more enlightened citizens. Except under a despotism, laws are virtually an expression of the opinion or will of the majority; and laws which by any combination of favoring circumstances are enacted in advance of the general opinion, are always liable to speedy repeal, with a double series of the injurious consequences which can hardly fail to ensue immediately on any change.

But are there no *limits to obedience*? Undoubtedly there are. A bad law is to be obeyed for the sake of order; an immoral law is to be disobeyed for the sake of the individual conscience; and of the moral character of a particular law, or of action under it, the individual conscience is the only legitimate judge. Where the law of the land and absolute right are at variance, the citizen is bound, not only to withhold obedience, but to avow his belief, and to give it full expression in every legitimate form and way, by voice and pen, by private influence and through the ballot-box. But in the interest of the public order, it is his duty to confine his opposition to legal and constitutional methods, to refrain from factious and seditious resistance, to avoid, if possible, the emergency in which disobedience would become his duty, and in case his conscience constrains him to disobedience, still to show his respect for the majesty of law by quietly submitting to its penalty. The still recent history of our country furnishes a case in point. By the Fugitive-Slave Law—which the Divine providence, indeed, repealed without waiting for the action of Congress—the private citizen who gave shelter, sustenance, or comfort to a fugitive slave; who, knowing his hiding-place, omitted to divulge it, or who, when called upon to assist in arresting him, refused his aid, was made liable to a heavy fine and a long imprisonment. Now as to this law, it was obviously the duty of a citizen who regarded the slave as entitled to the rights of a man, to seek its repeal by all constitutional methods within his power. It was equally his duty to refrain from all violent interference with the functionaries charged with its execution, and to avoid, if possible, all collision with the government. But if, without his seeking, a fugitive slave had been cast upon his humane offices, the question then would have arisen whether he should obey God or man; and to this question he could have had but one answer. Yet his obedience to God would have lacked its crowning grace, if he had not meekly yielded to the penalty for his disobedience to the law of the land. It was by this course that the primitive Christians attested their loyalty at once to God and to "the powers that be," which were "ordained of God." They refused obedience to the civil authorities in matters in which their religious duty was compromised; but they neither resisted nor evaded the penalty for their disobedience. Similar was the course of the Quakers in England and America almost down to our own time. They were quiet and useful citizens, performing the same functions with their fellow-citizens, so far as their consciences permitted, and, where conscience interposed its veto, taking patiently the distraining of their goods, and the imprisonment of their bodies, until, by their blameless lives and their meek endurance, they won from the governments both of the mother country and of the United States, amnesty for their conscientious scruples.