Social process

A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SUCCESS—SUCCESS AND THE SOCIAL ORDER—INTELLIGENCE—AGGRESSIVE TRAITS—SYMPATHETIC TRAITS—HANDICAPS—A TEST OF ABILITY

The question of success is a sociological question, in one phase at least, because it concerns the relation of the individual to the group, of the personal process to that of society at large. It should be somewhat illuminating to regard it from this point of view.

What is success? To answer this rightly we must unite the idea of personal self-realization with a just conception of the relation of this to the larger human life. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong if we say that success is self-development in social service. It must be the former, certainly, and if it is true that the higher forms of the personal life are found only in social function, it must be the latter also.

This view well stands the test of ordinary experience. It is self-development in social service that most surely, gives the feeling of success, the fullest consciousness of personal existence and efficacy. No matter what a man’s external fortunes may be, how slender his purse or how humble his position, if he feels that he is living his real life, playing his full part in the general movement of the human spirit, he will be conscious of success. The martyrs who died rejoicing at the stake had this consciousness, and so, at the present time, may soldiers have it who perish in battle, and thousands of others, whose work, if not so perilous, offers no prospect of material reward—missionaries, social agitators, investigators, and artists. It is not confined to any exceptional class but is found throughout humanity. If a man is working zealously at a task worthy in itself and not unsuited to his capacity, he has commonly the feeling of success.

Success of this sort meets another common-sense test in that it usually gives the maximum influence over others of which one is capable. People do not influence us in proportion to their external power, but in proportion to what we feel to be their intrinsic significance for life; their ideals, their fidelity to them, their love, courage, and hope. And one who gives himself heartily to the highest service he feels competent to, will attain his maximum significance.

Success, then, is a matter of effective participation in the social process; and to get a clearer idea of it we may well consider further what the latter calls for. The organization of society has two main aspects, that of unity and that of differentiation, the aspect of specialized functions and the aspect of a total life for which these functions co-operate. The life of the individual, if it is to be one with that of society, must share in these aspects, must have a specialized development and at the same time a unifying wholeness. He must be able, by endowment and training, to do well some one kind of service, as carpentry, let us say, or farming, or banking; and must also have a breadth of personality which participates largely in the general life and makes him a good citizen. The social process is like a play in that no actor can do his own part well except as he enters into the spirit of the whole: he must be a true member, the organization needs to be alive in every part. A nation is a poor thing unless the citizen is a patriot, entering intelligently into its spirit and aims, and the principle applies in various manners and degrees to a community, a shop, a school—any whole in which one may share.

If one thinks of the human process at large, with its onward striving, its experimentation, its conflicts and co-operations, its need for foresight and for unity of spirit; and then asks what kind of an individual it takes to do his full part in such a process, he will be on the track of the secret of personal success. It calls for energy and initiative, because these are the springs of the process; self-reliance and tenacity, because these are required to discover and develop one’s special function; sympathy and adaptability, because they enable one to work his function in with the movement as a whole. And intelligence is needed everywhere, in order that his mind may reflect and anticipate the process, and so share effectively in it.

Whatever we are trying to do, we need a sound imagination and judgment, and lack of these enters into nearly all cases of inefficacy and failure. If a machinist, let us say, understands as a whole the piece of work upon which he is engaged, he can do his part intelligently, adaptively, and with a sense of power; and in so far is a successful man. He serves well and develops himself. If, beyond this, he has the mind to grasp as a whole the work of some department of the shop, so as to see how it ought to go, if he has also the understanding of men, based on imagination, which enables him to select and guide them; he is fit to become a foreman. Similar powers of a larger range make a competent superintendent. And so with social functions in general, large or small. A good President of the United States is, first of all, one who has the constructive social imagination to grasp, in its main features, the real situation of the country, the vital problems, the significant ideas and men, the deep currents of sentiment. Without this there can be no real leader of the people. Likewise each of us has an ever-changing social situation to deal with, and will succeed as he can understand and co-operate with it.

A good administrative mind is a place where the organization of the world goes on. It is the centre of the social process, where choices are made and men and things assigned to their functions.

I have found it a main difference among men, and one not easy to discern until you have observed them for some time, that some have a constructive mind and some have not. One whom I think of has a remarkably keen and independent intellect, and is not at all lacking in ambition and self-assertion. Those who know him well have expected that he would do remarkable things, and the only reason why he has not, that I can see, is that his ideas do not seem to undergo the unconscious gestation and organization required to make them work. There is something obscurely sterile about him. On the other hand, I have known a good many young men, not particularly promising, who have gradually forged ahead just because their conceptions, though not brilliant, seemed to have a certain native power of growth, like that of a sound grain of corn. All life is an inscrutable and mainly unconscious growth, and it is thus with that share of it that belongs to each of us.

Among the more aggressive traits that enter into success I might specify courage, initiative, resolution, faith, and composure. These are required in undertaking and carrying through the hazardous enterprises of which every significant life must consist.

Success will always depend much upon that explorative energy which brings one into practical knowledge and into contact with opportunity. The man of courage and initiative is ever learning things about life that the passive man never finds out. He learns, for example, that it is almost as easy to do things on a great scale as on a small one, that there are usually fewer competitors for big positions than little ones, that few tasks are very difficult after you have broken your way into them, that bold and resolute spirits rule the world without unusual intellect, and that the ablest men commonly depend upon the quality rather than the quantity of their exertions. Practical wisdom of this sort is gained mainly by audacious experimentation.

In general, life is an exploring expedition, a struggle through the wilderness, in which each of us, if he is to get anywhere, needs the qualities of Columbus or Henry M. Stanley. He must make bold and shrewd plans, he must throw himself confidently into the execution of them, he must hang on doggedly in times of discouragement, and yet he must learn by failure. We need all the opportunity that society can give us, but it will do us little good without our own personal force, intelligence, and persistence.

In our Anglo-Saxon tradition doggedness is a kind of institution. There is a tacit understanding that the right thing to do is to undertake something difficult and venturesome, and then to hang on to it, with or without encouragement, until the last breath of power is spent. “So long as I live,” said Stanley, about to start on one of his journeys across Africa, “something will be done; and if I live long enough all will be done.”

Traits like courage and initiative begin in a certain overflow of energy, but they easily become habitual, like everything else. If in one or two instances you overcome the inertia and apprehension that keeps men stuck in their tracks, and discover that God helps those who help themselves, you soon learn to continue on the same principle. Boldness is as easy as timidity, indeed much easier, as it is easier for an army to attack, than successfully to retreat. The militant attitude gives a habitual advantage.

The higher kind of self-reliance is the same as faith; faith in one’s intuitions, in life and the general trend of things, in God. I am impressed by observation with the fact that success depends much upon a living belief that the world does move, with or without our help, and that the one thing for us to do is to move with it and, if possible, help it on. If one has this belief it is easy and exhilarating to go ahead with the procession, while dull and timid spirits think that life is stationary and that there is no use trying to make it budge.

In 1856 Lincoln, who was endeavoring to arouse sentiment against the extension of slavery, called a mass meeting at Springfield, Illinois, to further his views; but only three persons attended, himself, his partner Herndon, and one John Pain. When it was evident that no more were coming, Lincoln arose and after some jocose remarks on the size of his audience, went on to say: “While all seems dead, the age itself is not. It liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life the world does move, nevertheless. Be hopeful, and now let us adjourn and appeal to the people.”^[16]

Life is constantly developing and carrying us on in its growth. We do not need to impel it so much as we sometimes think. A main thing for us is to hang on to our higher hopes and standards and have faith that the larger life will supply our deficiencies. God is a builder; to be something we must build with him; understanding the plan if we can, but building in any case.

Composure is partly a natural gift, but partly also an acquired habit, enabling a man to exert himself to his full capacity without worry and waste; to sleep soundly by night after doing his utmost by day, like the Duke of Wellington, who declared, “I don’t like lying awake; it does no good, I make it a point never to lie awake,” and who, if I remember correctly, took a nap while waiting for the battle of Waterloo to begin. The commanding positions of life are held by men of fighting capacity, and this demands the ability to bear hard knocks, reverses and uncertainty without too much disturbance. Richelieu said that if a man had not more lead than quicksilver in his composition he was of no use to the state.

There is a certain antagonism between composure and imagination, both of which are prime factors in success. The latter tends to make one sensitive and apprehensive, while the former requires that he take things easily and cast out worry. The ideal would be to have a sensitive imagination which could be turned off or on at will; but this is hardly possible, though discipline and habit will do wonders in toughening the spirit.

we are assured by Emerson; but in fact there are many who cannot learn to endure with equanimity the roughand-tumble of ordinary competition, and need, if possible, to seclude themselves from it. This was apparently the case with Darwin—who fell far short of Wellington’s standard as to lying awake—and with a large part of the men who have done creative work of a finer sort. Indeed such work, if pursued incontinently, involves a mental and nervous strain and a morbid sensibility which has brought many choice spirits to ruin.

The self-reliant and path making traits are more and more necessary as society increases in freedom and complexity, because this increase means an enlargement of the field of choice and exploration within which the individual has to find his way. Instead of restricting individuality, as many imagine, civilization, so far as it is a free civilization, works quite the other way. We may apply to the modern citizen a good part of what Bernhardi says of the individual soldier in modern war: “Almost all the time he is in action he is left to himself. He himself must estimate the distances, he himself must judge the ground and use it, select his target and adjust his sights; he must know whither to advance; what point in the enemy’s position he is to reach; with unswerving determination he himself must strive to get there.”^[17]

The sympathetic traits supplement the more aggressive by enabling one to move easily among his fellows and gain their co-operation. Modern conditions are more and more requiring that every man be a man of the world; because they demand that he make himself at home in an ever-enlarging social organism.

I suppose that if one were coaching a young man for success, no counsel would be more useful than this: “Approach every man in a friendly and cheerful spirit, trying to understand his point of view. Such a spirit is contagious, and if you have it people will commonly meet you in the same vein. Do not forget your own aims, but cultivate a belief that others are disposed to do them justice.” We are too apt to waste energy in apprehensive and resentful imaginations, which tend to create what they depict. It is notable that the principle of Christian conduct, namely, that of imagining yourself in the other person’s place, is also a principle of practical success.

The spirit of a man is the most practical thing in the world. You cannot touch or define it; it is an intimate mystery; yet it makes careers, builds up enterprises, and draws salaries.

Retiring people who work conscientiously at their task but lack social enterprise and facility, often feel a certain sense of injustice, I think, at the more rapid advancement of those who have these traits but are, perhaps, not so conscientious and well-grounded. A man of decidedly good address and not wholly deficient in other respects can secure profitable employment almost on sight, and be rapidly promoted over men, otherwise fully equal to him, who lack this trait. And there may, after all, be no injustice in this, because the selection is based on a real superiority in any work calling for influence over other people. Perhaps the best refuge for the retiring man is to reflect that character is a main factor in such influence, and that if he has this and plucks up a little more courage in asserting it, he may find that he has as much address as others.

I believe that the more external and obvious handicaps to success are much less serious than is ordinarily supposed. Such traits as deafness, lameness, bad eyesight, ugliness, stammering, extreme shyness, and the like, are often detrimental only in so far as they are allowed to confine or intimidate the spirit, and will seldom prevent a courageous person from accomplishing what is otherwise within his ability. They are by no means such fatal obstacles to intercourse as they may appear. The very fact that one has the heart to face the world on the open road regardless of an obvious handicap may make him interesting, so that while he may have to suffer an occasional rebuff from the vulgar, the men of real significance will be all the more apt to respect and attend to him.

And the effect on his own character may well be to define and concentrate it, and give it an energy and discipline it would otherwise have lacked. Those apparently fortunate people who have many facilities, to whom every road seems open, are hardly to be envied; they seldom go far in any direction. Except in some such way as this, how can we explain the cases in which the totally blind, for example, have succeeded in careers like medicine, natural science, or statesmanship? I judge that they do it not because of superhuman abilities, but because they have the hardihood to act on the view that the spirit of a man and not his organs is the essential thing.

The most harmful thing about handicaps, especially in the children of well-to-do parents, is often the injudicious commiseration and sheltering they are apt to induce. This may well go so far as to deprive such children of natural contact with reality and prevent their learning betimes just what they have to contend with and how to overcome it.

The natural test of a man’s ability is to give him a novel task and observe how he goes about it. If he is able he will commonly begin by getting all the information within reach, reflecting upon it and making a plan. It should be a bold plan, and yet not rash or impracticable, though it may seem so; based in fact upon a just view of the conditions, and especially of the personalities, with which he has to deal. It will be, emphatically, his own plan, and an able man will generally prefer to keep it to himself, because he knows that he may have to change it, and that discussion may raise obstacles.

In carrying it out he will show a mixture of resolution and adaptability; learning by experience, modifying his plan in details, but in the main sticking to it even when he does not clearly see his way, because he believes that courage and persistence find good luck. He “plays the game” to the end, and if he fails he has too strong a sense of the experimental character of life to be much discouraged.

DO THE WICKED PROSPER?—THE GENERAL ANSWER—APPARENT SUCCESS OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS—LACK OF GROUP STANDARDS—DIVERGENT STANDARDS—EFFECT OF A NON-CONFORMING RIGHTEOUSNESS—MIGHT VERSUS RIGHT—MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF MIGHT AND RIGHT

Apparently the minds of men have always been troubled by the question whether it really does pay to be righteous. One gets the impression from certain of the Psalms and other passages in the Old Testament that the Jews were constantly asking themselves and one another this question, and that the psalmists and prophets strove to reassure them by declaring that, though the wicked might seem to prosper, they would certainly be come up with in the long run. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”^[18] “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree, yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea I sought him but he could not be found.”^[19] “I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.”^[20] The question is also mooted by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, while Shakespeare, in his 66th Sonnet, mentions “captive good attending captain ill” among the things which make him cry for restful death. Even the Preacher says: “Be not righteous overmuch, why shouldst thou destroy thyself?” Is honesty the best policy, and, if so, in just what sense?

I would answer that there is never a conflict between a real or inner righteousness and a real or inner success; they are much the same thing; but there may easily be a conflict between either of them and an apparent or conventional success. Conscious wrong-doing must always be detrimental to a success measured by self-development and social service. Its effect upon the wrong-doer himself is to impair self-respect and force of character. He divides and disintegrates himself, setting up a rebellion in his own camp, whereas success calls for unity and discipline. A man who is bad, in this inner sense, is in so far a weak and distracted man. As Emerson remarks, one who “stands united with his thought” has a large opinion of himself, no matter what the world may think.

It is also true that the sense of righteousness and integrity gives him the maximum influence over others of which he is capable, and so the greatest power to serve society. If we are weak and false to our own conscience, this cannot be hidden, and causes us to lose the trust and co-operation of others. It is not at all necessary to this that we should be found out in any specific misdeed; our face and bearing sufficiently reveal what we are, and induce a certain moral isolation, or at least impair our significance and force. Character is judged by little things, of which we ourselves are unaware, and rightly, because it is in these that our habitual tendency is revealed. They register our true spirit and mode of thinking, which cannot be concealed though we are the best actors in the world. If there is anything disingenuous about us, anything which will not bear the light, those who consider us will feel its presence, even though they do not know what it is.

In so far as a man consciously does wrong he tears himself from that social whole in which alone he can live and thrive. In this way it is true that “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil.”^[21]

I suppose that so long as it is kept on this high ground few would deny the truth of the principle. Men generally admit that spiritual significance is enhanced by moral integrity. Some, however, would question whether it has much application to success in a more ordinary and perhaps superficial sense of the word, to the attainment of wealth, position, and the like.

But even here it is in great part sound. If we take the ordinary man, whose moral conceptions do not differ much from those of his associates, and place him in an ordinary environment, where there is a fairly well-developed moral sense according to the standards of the group, it will be true that righteousness tends, on the whole, to prosperity. The lack of it puts one at odds with himself and his group in the manner already noted. The unrighteous man is swimming against the current, and though he may make headway for a while it is pretty sure to overcome him in time. Men of experience almost always assert, sincerely and truthfully, I believe, that honesty and morality are favorable to success.

The sceptic, however, is apt to say that though the principle may be plausible in itself and edifying for the graduating class of the high school, common experience shows that it does not work in real life; and he has no difficulty in pointing to cases where success seems to be gained in defiance of morality. It may be worth while, therefore, to discuss some of these. I think they may be brought under three classes: those in which success is only apparent or temporary; those in which a wrong-doer succeeds by uncommon ability, in spite of his wrong-doing; and those which involve a lack or divergence of group standards.

It is always possible to gain an immediate advantage by disregarding the rules that limit other people, but in so doing one defies the deeper forces of life and sets the mills of the gods at work grinding out his downfall. He may cheat in fulfilling a contract or in a college examination, but he does this at the expense of his own character and standing. “Look at things as they are,” we read in the Republic of Plato, “and you will see that the clever unjust are in the case of runners, who run well from the starting-place to the goal, but not back again from the goal; they go off at a great pace, but in the end only look foolish, slinking away with their ears down on their shoulders, and without a crown; but the true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned.” Montaigne held with Plato, and said: “I have seen in my time a thousand men of supple and ambiguous natures, and that no one doubted but they were more worldly-wise than I, ruined where I have saved myself: Risi successu carere dolos.”^[22] I recall being told by a man of business experience that “sharpness” in a young man was not a trait that promised substantial success, because he was apt to rely upon it and fail to cultivate more substantial qualities.

Saint Louis, who was the exemplar of all the virtues of his age, enlarged his dominions, withstood aggression and built up his administration all the more successfully for his saintly character. “He was as good a king as he was a man,” and his unique position as the first prince in Europe “was due not so much to his authority and resources as to the ascendancy won by his personal character and virtues.”^[23]

Apparently the world is full of injustice; men often get and keep places to which they have no moral right, as judged by the way they function; but the unconscious forces inevitably set to work to correct the wrong, and as a rule, and in due time, the apparent success is revealed as failure. It is a wound against which the moral organism gradually asserts its recuperative energy.

Again, wrong-doing is often associated with uncommon ability, which is the real cause of a success that would probably be greater, certainly of a higher kind, if the man were righteous. We cannot expect that a merely passive morality—not to cheat, swear, steal, or the like—should suffice for an active success. That requires positive qualities, like energy, enterprise and tenacity, which are indeed moral forces of the highest order, but may be associated with dishonesty or licentiousness. We might easily offset Saint Louis with a list of great men, more in the style of Napoleon, whose personal behavior was not at all edifying. Since life is a process, and the great thing is to help it along, it is only just that active qualities should succeed.

Those cases of successful wrong-doing where a lack of group standards is involved can be understood if we take account of the network of relations in which the man lives. The view that success and morality go together supposes that he is surrounded by fairly definite and uniform standards of right kept alive by the interplay of minds in a well-knit group. This is the only guarantee that the individual will have a conscience or a self-respect which will be hurt if he transgresses these standards, or that the group will in any way punish him.

But the state of things may be so anarchical that there is no well-knit, standard-making group, either to form the individual’s conscience or to punish his transgressions. This will be more or less the case in any condition of social transition and confusion, and is widely applicable to our own time. If the economic system is disintegrated by rapid changes, there will be a lack of clear sense of right and wrong relating to it, and a lack of mechanism for enforcing what sense there is: so that we need not be surprised if piratical methods in business go unpunished, and are practised by men otherwise of decent character. Beyond this an enormous amount of immorality of all kinds, in our time, may be ascribed to the unsettled condition in which people live. They become moral stragglers, not kept in line by the discipline of any intimate group. This applies not only to those whose economic life shifts from place to place, but also to those who have a stable economic function, but, like many “travelling men,” lead a shifting, irresponsible social life.

It is often much the same with men of genius. The very fact that they have original impulses which they must assert against the indifference or hostility of the world about them, compels them to a certain moral isolation, and in hardening themselves against conformity they lose also the wholesome sense of customary right and wrong. So they live in a kind of anarchy which may be inseparable from their genius, but is detrimental to their character, and more or less impairs their work.

You may, if you please, pursue the same principle into international relations and the political philosophy of Machiavelli. Among nations bad faith and other conduct regarded as immoral for individuals has flourished because international public opinion has been faint and without hands. This is more true of some epochs than others, and was particularly the case among the small, despotic and transitory states of Italy in the time of the Renaissance. Machiavelli, I suppose, desiring above all things the rise of a Prince who, by gaining supreme power, should unite and pacify the country, laid down for his guidance such rules of success—immoral if applied to personal relations—as he believed were likely to work in the midst of the moral anarchy which prevailed. There is, however, no sound reason for erecting this opportunism into a general principle and holding that international relations are outside the moral sphere. They come within that sphere so fast as single nations develop continuity and depth of life, and nations as a group become more intimate. Then moral sentiment becomes a force which no nation can safely disregard.

In many cases of what we judge to be bad conduct the man belongs to a group whose standards are not the same as those of our own group by which we judge him. If his own group is with him his conscience and self-respect will not suffer, nor will he, so far as this group is concerned, undergo any blame or moral isolation. Practically all historical judgments are subject to this principle. I may believe that slaveholding was wrong; but it would be very naïve of me to suppose that slaveholders suffered from a bad conscience, or found this practice any bar to their success. On the contrary, as it is conventional morality that makes for conventional success, it would be the abolitionist who would suffer in a slaveholding society. It is simply a question of the mores, which, as Sumner so clearly showed, may make anything right or anything wrong, so far as a particular group is concerned.

The conflict of group standards within a larger society is also a common example. The political grafter, the unscrupulous man of business, the burglar, or the bad boy, seldom stands alone in his delinquency, but is usually associated with a group whose degenerate standards more or less uphold him, and in which he may be so completely immersed as not to feel the more general standards at all. If so, we cannot expect his conscience will trouble or his group restrain him. That must be done by the larger society, inflicting blame or punishment, and especially, if possible, breaking up the degenerate group. In many, perhaps most, of such cases the mind of the individual is divided; he is conscious of the degenerate standards and also of those of the larger group; they contend for his allegiance.

There is no question of this kind more interesting than that of the effect upon success of a higher or non-conforming morality. What may one expect when he breaks convention and strives to do better than the group that surrounds him? Evidently his situation will in many respects be like that of the wrong-doer; in fact he will usually be a wrong-doer in the eyes of those about him, who have no means of distinguishing a higher transgression from a lower.

In general this higher righteousness will contribute to an intrinsic success, measured by character, self-respect, and influence, but may be expected to involve some sacrifice of conventional objects like wealth and position. These generally imply conformity to the group that has the power to grant them.

The rewards of the first sort, if only a man has the resolution to put his idea through, are beyond estimate—a worthy kind of pride, a high sense of the reality and significance of his life, the respect and appreciation of congenial spirits, the conviction that he is serving man and God. The bold and constant innovators—whatever their external fortunes may be—are surely as happy a set of men as there is, and we need waste no pity upon them because they are now and then burned at the stake.

The ability to put his idea through, however, depends on his maintaining his faith and self-reliance in spite of the immediate environment, which pours upon him a constant stream of undermining suggestions, tending to make him doubt the reality of his ideas or the practicability of carrying them out. The danger is not so much from assault, which often arouses a wholesome counteraction, as from the indifference that is apt to benumb him. Against these influences he may make head by forming a more sympathetic environment through the aid of friends, of books, of imaginary companions, of anything which may help him to cherish the right kind of thoughts. From the mass of people he may expect only disfavor.

The trouble with many of us is that, though we reject the customary, we have not the resolution and the clearness of mind to carry out our own ideals and accept the consequences. We try to serve two masters. Conscious that we have deserved well of the world in striving for the higher right, we are not quite content with the higher sort of success appropriate to such a striving, but vaguely feel that we ought to have external rewards too—which is quite unreasonable. This falling between two stools is a much more common cause of failure than excessive boldness. To gain wealth or popularity is success for some, and for them it is a proper aim; but the man of a finer strain must be true to his finer ideal. For him to “decline upon” these things is ruin.

Sir Thomas Browne remarks that “It is a most unjust ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty” by demanding the goods of body and fortune when we already have those of mind, and goes on to say that God often deals with us like those parents who give most of their material support to their weak or defective children, and leave those that are strong to look out for themselves.^[24] Ordinary success—wealth, power, or standing coming as the prompt reward of endeavor—is, after all, for second-rate men, those who do a little better than others the jobs offered by the ruling institutions. The notably wise, good, or original are in some measure protestants against these institutions, and must expect their antagonism. The higher success always has been and always must be attained at more or less sacrifice of the lower. The blood of the martyrs is still the seed of the church.

We ought to be prepared for sacrifice; and yet in these more tolerant times there may be less need for it than we anticipate, and many a young man who has set out prepared to renounce the world for an ideal has found that he was not so much ahead of his time as he thought. Sometimes he has gained more honor and salary than was good for him, and has ended in a moral relaxation and decline. I think that even if one were advising a young man with a view to worldly success alone, and it were a question between conformity and a bold pursuit of ideals, the latter would usually be the course to recommend, since the gain in character and intrinsic power in following it would more than offset, in most cases, the advantage of conventional approval. Ministers who offend churches by modern views, politicians who refuse to propitiate the corrupt element, business men who will not make the usual compromises with honesty, are as likely as not to profit by their course, though they should be prepared for the opposite. That which appeals to the individual as a higher right seldom appeals to him alone, but is likely to be obscurely working in others also, and on the line of growth for the group as a whole, which may therefore respond to his initiative and make him a leader.

Perhaps this same principle may illuminate the general question of Might versus Right in the social process. We mean by might, I suppose, some established and tangible form of power, like military force, wealth, office, or the like; while right is that which is approved by conscience, perhaps in defiance of all these things. It would seem at first as if these two ought to coincide, that the good should also be the strong.

But if we accept the idea that life is progress, it is easy to see that no such coincidence is to be expected. If we are moving onward and upward by the formation of higher ideals and the struggle to attain them, then our conscience will always be going out from and discrediting the actual forms of power. Whatever is will be wrong, at least to the aspiring moral sense. We have, then, between might and right, a relation like that between the mature man and the child, one strong in present force and achievement, the other in promise. Right appeals to our conscience somewhat as the child does, precisely because it is not might, but needs our championship and protection in order that it may live and grow. As time goes on it acquires might and gradually becomes established and institutional, by which time it has ceased to be right in the most vital sense, and something else has taken its place. In this way right is might in the making, while might is right in its old age. Unless we felt the established as wrong, we could not improve it. The tendency of every form of settled power—ruling classes, the creeds of the church, the formulas of the law, the dogmas of the lecture-room, business customs—is bound to be at variance with our ideal. The conflict between might and right is permanent, and is the very process by which we get on.

This way of stating the case would seem to indicate that it is right that precedes and makes might, that a thing comes to power because it appeals to conscience. But it is equally true that might makes right, because ruling conditions help to form our conscience. As our moral ideals develop and we strive to carry them out, we are driven to compromise and to accept as right, principles which will work; and what will work depends in great part on the existing organization, that is, on might. If an idea proves wholly and hopelessly impracticable, it will presently cease to be looked upon as right. The belief in Christian principles of conduct as right would never have persisted if they were as impracticable as is often alleged; they are, on the contrary, widely practised in simple relations, and so appeal to most of us as pointing the way to reasonable improvement in life at large.

Might and right, then, are stages in the social process, the former having more maturity of organization. They both spring from the general organism of life, and interact upon each other. That which proves hopelessly weak can hardly hold its place as right, but no more can anything remain strong if it is irreconcilably opposed to conscience. A heresy in religion is at first assailed by the powers that be as wrong, but if it proves in the conflict to have an intrinsic might, based on its fitness to meet the mental situation, it comes to be acknowledged as right. On the other hand, a system, like militarism, may seem to be the very incarnation of might, and yet if it is essentially at variance with the trend of human life, it will prove to be weak. Behind both might and right is something greater than either, to which both are responsible, namely, the organic whole of onward life.

FAME AS SURVIVAL—SYMBOLISM THE ROOT OF FAME—PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE ESSENTIAL—THE ELEMENT OF MYTH—INFLUENCE OF THE LITERARY CLASS—THE GROUP FACTOR—IS FAME JUST?—IS IT DECAYING?

Fame, I suppose, is a more extended leadership, the man’s name acting as a symbol through which a personality, or rather the idea we form of it, is kept alive and operative for indefinite time. As ideas about persons are the most active part of our individual thought, so personal fames are the most active part of the social tradition. They float on the current of history not dissolved into impersonality but individual and appealing, and often become more alive the longer the flesh is dead. Biography, real or imaginary, is what we care for most in the past, because it has the fullest message of life.

Evidently fame must arise by a process of survival; if one name has it and another does not, it is because the former has in some way appealed more effectively to a state of the human mind, and this not to one person or one time only, but again and again, and to many persons, until it has become a tradition. There must be something about it perennially life-giving, something that has power to awaken latent possibility and enable us to be what we could not be without it. The real fames, then, as distinguished from the transitory reputations of the day, must have a value for human nature itself, for those conditions of the mind that are not created by passing fashions or institutions, but outlive these and give rise to a permanent demand.

Or, if the appeal is to an institution, it must be to one of a lasting sort, like a nation or the Christian Church. As Americans we cherish the names of Washington and Lincoln because they symbolize and animate the national history; but even these are felt to belong in the front rank only in so far as they were great men and not merely great Americans.

The one great reason why men are famous is that in one way or another they have come to symbolize traits of an ideal life. Their names are charged with daring, hope, love, power, devotion, beauty, or truth, and we cherish them because human nature is ever striving after these things.

It will be hard to find any kind of fame that is wholly lacking in this ideal element. All the known crimes and vices can be found attached to famous names, but there is always something else, some splendid self-confidence, some grandiose project, some faith, passion, or vision, to give them power. It may not be quite true to say,

but it is certain that there is nothing to which the ear of the world is so sensitive as to such accents, or which, having heard, it is less willing to forget. Every scrap of real inspiration, whether in art or conduct, is treasured up, when once it has been recorded, and is fairly certain to prove ære perennius.

A great vitality belongs, however, to anything which can bring the ideal down out of its abstractness and make it active and dramatic. A dramatic appeal is an appeal to human nature as a whole, instead of to a specialized intellectual faculty, to plain men as well as educated, and to educated men through that plainer part of them which is, after all, the most fully alive. So men of action have always a first lien on fame, other things being equal—Garibaldi, for example, with his picturesque campaigns, red shirt and childlike personality, over the other heroes of Italian liberation. And next to this comes the advantage of being preserved for us in some form of art which makes the most of any dramatic possibilities a man may have, and often adds to them by invention. Gibbon, Macaulay, Scott, not to speak of Shakespeare, have done much to guide the course of fame for English readers.

Perhaps it was this survival of salient personal traits, often trivial or fictitious, that Bacon had in mind when he remarked “for the truth is, that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and drowneth that which is weighty and solid.”^[25] But, after all, traits of personality may be as weighty and solid as anything else; and where they are inspiring it is right that they should be immortal. The merely trivial, of this kind, seldom endures except by association with something of real significance.

It is noteworthy that what a man did for humanity in the past is not the chief cause of fame, and not sufficient to insure it unless he can keep on doing something in the present. The world has little or no gratitude. If the past contribution is the only thing and there is nothing presently animating in the living idea of a man, it will use the former, without caring where it came from, and forget the latter.

The inventors who made possible the prodigious mechanical progress of the past century are, for the most part, forgotten; only a few names, such as those of Watt, Stephenson, Fulton, Whitney, and Morse being known, and those dimly, to the public. Some, like Palissy the potter, are remembered for the fascination of their biography, their heroic persistence, strokes of good fortune or the like; and probably it is safe to conclude that few men of this class would be famous for their inventions alone.

As Doctor Johnson remarks in The Rambler,^[26] the very fact that an idea is wholly successful may cause its originator to be forgotten. “It often happens that the general reception of a doctrine obscures the books in which it was delivered. When any tenet is generally received and adopted as an incontrovertible principle, we seldom look back to the arguments upon which it was first established, or can bear that tediousness of deduction and multiplicity of evidence by which its author was forced to reconcile it to prejudice and fortify it in the weakness of novelty against obstinacy and envy.” He instances “Boyle’s discovery of the qualities of the air”; and I suppose that if Darwin’s views could have been easily accepted, instead of meeting the bitter and enduring opposition of theological and other traditions, his popular fame would have been comparatively small. He is known to the many chiefly as the symbol of a militant cause.

It is, then, present function, not past, which is the cause of fame, and any change which diminishes or enhances this has a parallel effect upon reputation. Thus the fame of Roger Bacon was renewed after an obscurity of six centuries, because it came to be seen that he was a significant forerunner of contemporary scientific thought; and Mendel, whose discovery of a formula of heredity was at first ignored, became famous when biology advanced to a point where it could appreciate his value. There are many cases in the annals of art of men, like Tintoretto or Rembrandt, whose greatest fame was not attained until the coming of a later generation more in harmony with them than were their contemporaries.

It is because fame exists for our present use and not to perpetuate a dead past that myth enters so largely into it. What we need is a good symbol to help us think and feel; and so, starting with an actual personality which more or less meets this need, we gradually improve upon it by a process of unconscious adaptation that omits the inessential and adds whatever is necessary to round out the ideal. Thus the human mind working through tradition is an artist, and creates types which go beyond nature. In this way, no doubt, were built up such legendary characters as Orpheus, Hercules, or King Arthur, while the same factor enters into the fame of historical persons like Joan of Arc, Richard I, Napoleon, and even Washington and Lincoln. It is merely an extension of that idealization which we apply to all the objects of our hero-worship, whether dead or living.

And where a historical character becomes the symbol of a perennial ideal, as in the case of Jesus, his fame becomes a developing institution, changing its forms with successive generations and modes of thought, according to the needs of the human spirit. This, apparently, is the genesis of all life-giving conceptions of divine personality.

There are aspects of fame that cannot be understood without considering the special influence upon it of the literary class. This class has control of the medium of communication through which fame chiefly works, and so exerts a power over it somewhat analogous to the power of the financial class over trade; in both cases the forces of demand and supply are transformed by the interests of the mediating agent.

One result of this is that literary fame is, of all kinds, the most justly assigned. Candidates for it, of any merit, are rarely overlooked, because there is always a small society of inquiring experts eager and able to rescue from oblivion any trait of kindred genius. They are not exempt from conventionalism and party spirit, which may make them unjust to contemporaries, but a second or third generation is sure to search out anything that deserves to survive, and reject the unworthy. “There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.”^[27] In this way, by the reiterated selection of an expert class with power to hand on their judgments, there is a sure evolution of substantial fame.