Social process

The popular judgment of the hour has little to do with the matter, one way or the other. An author may be a “best seller,” like Walter Scott, or almost unread, like Wordsworth, and fare equally well with the higher court; though in this as in all departments of life most contemporary reputations prove transitory, because their “fitness” is to a special and passing phase of the human mind, and not to its enduring needs.

However, literary reputation also has its symbolism, and a name may come to be remembered as the type of a school or a tendency rather than strictly on its own merits. Sainte-Beuve, an authority on such a matter, remarks in his essay on Villon: “But the essential thing, I see clearly, even in literature, is to become one of those names convenient to posterity, which uses them constantly, which employs them as the résumé of many others, and which, as it becomes more remote, not being able to reach the whole extent of the chain, measures the distance from one point to another only by some shining link.”

Democracy does not in the least alter the fact that literary fame is assigned by a small but perpetual group of experts. In one sense the process is always democratic; in another it is never so: there is democracy in that all may share in the making of fame who have discrimination enough to make their opinion count, but the number of these is always small, and they constitute, in this field, a kind of self-made aristocracy, not of professed critics alone, but of select readers intelligently seeking and enjoying the best. The fame of men of letters, philosophers, artists, indeed of nearly all sorts of great men, reaches the majority only as the people outside the grounds hear the names of the players shouted by those within. We know who it was that was great, but just why he was so we should, if put to it, be quite unable to tell.

This certainty and justice of literary fame, which distinguish it sharply from other kinds, depend not only upon the literary class but upon the precision of the record—the fact that the deed upon which the fame rests is imperishable and unalterable—and also upon the extremely personal and intimate character of the achievement itself, which makes it comparatively independent of external events, and capable of being valued for its own sake at any time and by anybody competent to appreciate it. It is more fortunate in this respect than political achievement, which is involved with transient institutional conditions.

For similar reasons the other and non-literary sorts of fame are certain and enduring very much in proportion as they interest the literary class. The latter, being artists or critics of art, have a natural predilection for other arts as well as their own, and cherish the fame of painters, sculptors, actors, and musicians. Actors, especially, whose art leaves no record of its own, would scarcely be remembered were it not for the enthusiasm of literary admirers, like Lamb and Hazlitt and Boswell. As to painting or sculpture, thousands of us who have little direct knowledge or appreciation of the great names have learned to cherish them at second hand through the fascination of what has been written by admiring men of letters. On the other hand, the comparative neglect of inventors, engineers, and the captains of industry and commerce is due in great part to their not appealing strongly to the literary type of mind.

If one’s work has no universal appeal to human nature, nor any special attraction for the literary class, it may yet survive in memory if there is a continuing technical group, with a recorded tradition, to which it is significant. Professions, like law, surgery, and engineering; the branches of scientific research, as astronomy, geology, and bacteriology; long-lived practical interests, like horticulture and breeding; even traditional sports and pastimes, like golf, yachting, pugilism, and football, have their special records in which are enshrined the names of heroes who will not be forgotten so long as the group endures. A tradition of this kind has far more power over time than the acclaim of all the newspapers of the day, which indeed, without the support of a more considerate judgment, is vox et præterea nihil.

I can see no reason to expect that the men of our day who are notable for vast riches, or even for substantial economic leadership in addition to riches, will be remembered long after their deaths. This class of people have been soon forgotten in the past, and the case is not now essentially different. They have no lasting spiritual value to preserve their names, nor yet do they appeal to the admiration and loyalty of a continuous technical group. Their services, though possibly greater than those of statesmen and soldiers who will be remembered, are of the sort that the world appropriates without much commemoration.

A group which is important as a whole, and holds the eye of posterity for that reason, preserves the names of many individual members of no great importance in themselves. They help each other to burn, like sticks in a heap, when each one by itself might go out. English statesmen and men of letters have a great advantage over American in this respect, because they belong to a more centralized and interrelated society. To know Burke and Goldsmith and Johnson is also to know Garrick and Boswell, and Mrs. Thrale, Fox, North, Pitt, Sheridan, Walpole, and many others, who, like characters in a play, are far more taken together than the mere sum of the individuals. Indeed a culture group and epoch of this kind is a sort of play, appealing to a complex historical and dramatic interest, and animating personalities by their membership in the whole. We love to domesticate ourselves in it, when we might not care greatly for the individuals in separation.

So every “great epoch”—the Age of Pericles in Athens, of Augustus in Rome, of the Medici in Florence, of Elizabeth in England, gives us a group of names which shine by the general light of their time. And in the same way a whole nation or civilization which has a unique value for mankind may give immortality to a thousand persons and events which might otherwise be insignificant. Of this the best illustration is, no doubt, the Hebrew nation and history, as we have it in the Bible, which unites patriarchs, kings, prophets, apostles and minor characters in one vast symbol.

Another influence of similar character is the knowledge and feeling that the fame in question is accepted and social, so that we are part of a fellowship to be moved by it. I take it that much of the delight that people have in reading Horace comes from the sense of being in the company not only of Horace but of hundreds of Horace-spirited readers. We love things more genially when we know that others have loved them before us.

The question whether fame is just, considered as a reward to the individual, must on the whole be answered: No, especially if, for the reasons already given, we except the literary class. Justice in this sense has little to do with the function of fame as a symbol for impressing certain ideas and sentiments and arousing emulation. What name best meets this purpose is determined partly by real service, but largely by opportuneness, by publicity, by dramatic accessories, and by other circumstances which, so far as the individual is concerned, may be called luck. “So to order it that actions may be known and seen is purely the work of fortune,” says Montaigne, “’tis chance that helps us to glory.... A great many brave actions must be expected to be performed without witness, and so lost, before one turns to account; a man is not always on the top of a breach or at the head of an army, ... a man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life against a hen-roost, he must dislodge four rascally musketeers from a barn; ... and whoever will observe will, I believe, find it experimentally true that occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous.”^[29] It is no less true, I suppose, in the wars of our day, and of a hundred soldiers equally brave and resourceful, only one gets the cross of honor. In a high sense this is not only for the man who happens to receive it, but for a company of nameless heroes of whom he is the symbol.

And so in all history; it is partly a matter of chance which name the myth crystallizes about, especially in those earlier times when the critical study of biography was unknown. We are not certain that Solomon was really the wisest man, or Orpheus the sweetest singer, or Sir Philip Sidney the most perfect gentleman, but it is convenient to have names to stand for these traits. In general, history is no doubt far more individual, more a matter of a few great names, than is accomplishment. Mankind does things and a few names get the credit. Sir Thomas Browne expressed the truth very moderately when he said that there have been more remarkable persons forgotten than remembered.

We hear rumors of the decay of fame: it is said that “modern life ... favors less and less the growth and preservation of great personalities”;^[30] but I see no proof of it and doubt whether such a decay is conformable to human nature. Other epochs far enough past to give time for selection and idealization have left symbolic names, and the burden of proof is upon those who hold that ours will not. I do not doubt there is a change; we are coming to see life more in wholes than formerly; but I conceive that our need to see it as persons is not diminished.

Has there not come to be a feeling, especially during the Great War, that the desire for fame is selfish and a little outgrown, that the good soldier of humanity does not care for it? I think so; but it seems to me that we must distinguish, as to this, between one who is borne up on a great human whole that lives in the looks and voices of those about him, like a soldier in a patriotic war, or a workman in the labor movement, and one who is more or less isolated, as are nearly all men of unique originality. The latter, I imagine, will always feel the need to believe in the appreciation of posterity; they will appeal from the present to the future and, like Dante, meditate come l’uom s’eterna.

The desire for fame is simply a larger form of personal ambition, and in one respect, at least, nobler than other forms, in that it reflects the need to associate ourselves with some enduring reality, raised above the accidents of time. “Nay, I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.”^[31]

It is the “last infirmity of noble minds,” if it be an infirmity at all, and few of the greatest of the earth have been without it. All of us would regard it as the mark of a superior mind to wish to be something of imperishable worth, but, social beings as we are, we can hardly separate this wish from that for social recognition of the worth. The alleged “vanity” of the desire for fame is vanity only in the sense that all idealism is empty for those who can see the real only in the tangible.

And yet it would be a finer thing to “desire the immortal” without requiring it to be stained with the color of our own mortality.

ADVANTAGES OF COMPETITION—WHY MODERN CIVILIZATION DOES NOT ENERVATE—COMPETITION AND SYMPATHY—HIGHER AND LOWER COMPETITIVE SPIRIT—THE PECUNIARY MOTIVE—IS EMULATION IN SERVICE PRACTICABLE?—LOWER MOTIVES INEFFICIENT—THE “ECONOMIC MAN”

There used to be much condemnation of our present state of society based on the idea that competition is a bad thing in itself, a state of war where we want a state of peace, generating hostile passions where we need sympathy and love. It seems, however, that we are coming to recognize that all life is struggle, that any system which is alive and progressive must be, in some sense, competitive, and that the real question at issue is that of the kind of competition, whether it is free, just, kindly, governed by good rules and worthy objects, or the reverse.

The diffusion of personal opportunity, and of the competition through which alone it can be realized, has a remarkable effect in awakening energy and inciting ambition. In so far as a man can and does live without any exacting test of himself he fails to achieve significant character and self-reliant manhood. It is by permitting this and so relaxing the tissue of personal character that static societies and classes have decayed in the past. On the contrary, one who has made his way in a competitive society has learned to choose his course, to select and develop one class of influences and reject others, to measure the result in practice, and so to gain self-knowledge and an effective will. The simplest workman, accustomed to make his way, becomes something of a diplomatist, a student of character, a man of the world.

It has been thought rather a mystery that modern civilization does not enervate men as the ancient is believed to have done. In the case of the Roman and earlier empires the natural course of things, apparently, was for a vigorous nation, after a career of conquest, to become rich, luxurious, degenerate, and finally to be conquered by tribes emerging from savagery and hardihood to follow a similar course. In our days it seems that a people may remain civilized for centuries without loss of their militant energy, and, roughly speaking, the nations who have advanced most in the arts of peace display also the most prowess in war.

The main reason for this I take to be that modern civilization preserves within itself that element of conflict which gives the training in courage and hardihood that was formerly possible only in a savage state. The ancient civilizations were in their nature repressive; they could achieve order and industry over wide areas only by imposing a mechanical and coercive discipline, which left little room for individual development and accustomed the mass of men to routine and servility. Thus we read, regarding Rome, that “The despotic imperial administration upheld for a long while the Roman Empire, and not without renown; but it corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the Roman populations, and left them, after five centuries, as incapable of defending themselves as they were of governing.”^[32]

Much has been said of the need of a moral equivalent for war, in order that we may dispense with the latter without losing our virile traits; but it may well be thought that as a sphere for individual combativeness, for daring, resolution, self-reliance and pertinacity, our civil life is, on the whole, far superior to war, which requires a strict and somewhat mechanical type of discipline, putting only a limited responsibility on the soldier. Indeed the attractiveness to the imagination of military service lies largely in this very fact, that it is non-competitive, that it promises to take one out of the turmoil of individualistic struggle and give him a moral rest. It offers the repose of subordination, the “peace of the yoke,” and many have enlisted, very much as many others have sought the cloister, to escape from harassing responsibilities and live under rule.

The idea that competition is always destructive of sympathy will not bear examination. It may be destructive or it may not, depending, among other things, on whether it is fair, whether the rules are well understood and enforced, whether the objects striven for are ennobling or otherwise, and whether the competitor has been properly trained to run his course. Injustice, lack of standards, low aims and unfitness generate bad feeling, because the individual has not the sense of doing his part in a worthy whole. A good kind of competition will be felt to be also a kind of co-operation, a working out, through selection, of one’s special function in the common enterprise.

Indeed it is chiefly through competition that we come to know the world, to get a various insight into peoples’ minds, and so to achieve a large kind of sympathy; while those who lead a protected life generally lack a robust breadth of view and sense of justice. A man, like Abraham Lincoln, who has worked his way from bottom to top of a society everywhere competitive, may still be, as he was, a man of notable tenderness, as well as of a reach of sympathy which only this experience could develop.

I take it, then, that real progress in this regard consists not in abolishing the competitive spirit but in raising it to higher levels, and that the questions just what this means, and whether it is practicable, and how, are the ones we need to discuss.

Suppose that we make a rough division between the lower self-seeking and emulation in service. The distinction is based mainly on whether the self-assertion, present in both cases, is or is not suffused and dominated by devotion to the common good. The lower spirit would include all merely sensual impulses, as hunger, cold, and the like, and also more imaginative motives, such as the fear of want, the greed of acquisition, the love of power, the passion for display, the excitement of rivalry, even the love of honor and renown, so long as these are merely personal, and include no conscious loyalty and service to a common ideal. It is lower, of course, not in the sense that it is always morally wrong, but from the point of view of a higher or lower appeal to human nature. In this respect we must regard as lower even the struggles of a man to provide for his family, so long as he, with his family, form a mere self-asserting unit with no sense of co-operation with other units.

Emulation in service does not displace other impulses, but suffuses them with a sense of devotion to a larger whole, so that they are modified, elevated, controlled, or even suppressed by the immanence of this greater idea. Rivalry and the pursuit of honor will remain, but under the discipline of “team-work” so that the individual will always, at need, prefer the good of the whole to his personal glory. A man will strive to meet the wants of himself and his family, but along with these, and more present to his imagination because larger and more animating, will be the sense of service to some public and enduring ideal.

I do not wish to overlook or depreciate the pecuniary motive. As a symbol of control over the more tangible goods of life money rightly plays a large part in guiding and stimulating our efforts. The motive back of such efforts is in no way revealed by the fact that they seek to work themselves out through pecuniary acquisition, but may be very selfish or quite the opposite. A man may want money for drink, or opium, or for a good book, or to help a friend, or to save the life of a sick child. The money is rather a derivative than an original motive, except as we may come to love it for its own sake; it is a mechanism indispensable to the organization of life. And the precise measurement and adjustment of pecuniary reward and service, in the more tangible kinds of production, with increased pay for increased efficiency—such as is attempted in the new science of management—is a logical development of the price system and should have good results.

But this sort of motivation is wholly inadequate to the higher incitement of human nature. It takes hold of us, for the most part, in a somewhat superficial way, and if allowed to guide rather than follow the deeper currents of character, it degrades us into avarice and materialism. Certainly that is a poor sort of man to whom it offers the only or the chief inducement to endeavor. He is not fully alive in his higher parts, a mercenary recruit in the social army rather than a patriot fighting for love and honor. The best men choose their occupation because they love it, and believe they can do something worthy and lasting in it, though, like nearly all of us, they are much guided as to details by the pecuniary market.

We may, then, take for granted the working of this inducement, in its proper sphere, and go on to consider the motives that lie deeper.^[33]

I suppose most of us would admit that emulation in service is desirable and is actually operative in some quarters, but would question whether it is not too high to be generally practicable.

It does not appear, however, to be limited to exceptionally high kinds of persons. It quite generally prevails in school and college athletics, where much hard work and self-denial is undergone without inducement of any kind except a collective enthusiasm which makes each one feel that the success of the team is more than any glory that may come to himself. Yet no one will claim that human nature in college students is much above the average. And what shall we say of soldiers, who are ordinary men, drawn from all classes of society, but who soon learn to value the honor of their company or regiment so high that they are eager to risk their lives for it, and that without any hope of private reward? Public spirit is congenial to human nature, and we may expect everything from it, even the utmost degree of self-sacrificing service, if only the public cause is brought home to our hearts.

Even in our present confused and selfish scheme of economic life the best work is largely done under the impulse of service emulation. This is the case, for example, in most of the professions. Teachers are glad to get as much money for their work as they can, but what all good teachers are thinking about in the course of their labors, and what sustains and elevates them, is the service they hope they are doing to the common life. The same is true of doctors, engineers, men of science, and, let us hope, lawyers, journalists, and public officials. The library service has aptly been cited as an example of the energy and efficiency which may be attained under the higher emulation with little or no appeal to pecuniary ambition. Librarians are paid by salaries, which are moderate at most, and not at all sure to increase with success, yet in no social function, perhaps, has there been displayed more zeal, devotion, and initiative, or more remarkable progress in serving the public. I may add that the good books, to disseminate which the library exists, were produced in a spirit of honor and service and not, chiefly, for gain.

Nor can there be much doubt that a great part of mechanical workmen, having a skilled trade into which it is possible to put interest and a progressive spirit, are animated by the sense of sharing in a great productive whole. Perhaps, like most of us, they need at times the spur of knowing that they must work, but this is not what is most present to their imaginations or elicits their best endeavors. The wage question, as the focus of controversy, is kept before our minds and leads us, I believe, to exaggerate the part which pecuniary calculations play in the mind of the handicraftsman. For the most part he resembles the teacher or doctor in that he wishes to think no more about money in connection with his work than he feels he has to. The mechanics I see about me—plumbers, masons, furnace-men and the like—are as full of the zest of life as any class; they like the struggle, the sense of hope and power and honest service.

How far the same is true of business men I shall not attempt to say; certainly more than theories of the “economic man” would lead us to expect; yet here, without doubt, we have the class in which a pecuniary individualism is most rife and in which there is most need to foster a higher spirit.

There is a trend throughout society to substitute higher motives for lower, and this is not only because the former are more agreeable, but because they are more effectual. It was formerly thought that school children would not learn to read, write, and spell without constant fear and frequent experience of the rod; but now good schools dispense entirely with this incentive, and find emulation and the pleasure of achievement more efficacious. In the church the fear of hell fire is being supplanted by appeals to love, loyalty, and service. Even those convicted of crime, it is believed, can be more easily managed and with better results to themselves by a discipline which appeals to their self-respect and gives them a chance to show that they are men like the rest of us. Fear is a poor motive, because it does not evoke those energies that are bound up with ambition, sympathy, social imagination, and hope.

It is gratifying to find that the organizers of industry are coming to ascribe more and more value to human sympathy and the golden rule. In an article by a manufacturer, published in a business magazine, I read that the aim in handling men is to bring about a “family feeling.” “The best way to hold them is to know them.... It is important not to drive. Fear of the boss never inspired any real team-work, and no good working force was ever built up without team-work. The men in positions of responsibility must make the men under them really want to work with and for them.”^[34] Another manufacturer, a man of phenomenal success, says: “It is the easiest thing in the world to inspire this loyalty, but it is not to be done by any trick. It’s simply a matter of honest and sincere understanding of the workman’s interests, a recognition of his ambitions as a human being. If your men feel that is your attitude toward them they will do their best every hour of the day.”^[35]

In so far, then, as our social order fails to cultivate the sense of willing service in a worthy whole it is failing in higher efficiency. In great part the actual working is as if we formed an army of intelligent and high-spirited men, and proceeded to drive them to their duty by the lash, as was formerly done, instead of appealing to patriotism and the emulation of regiments and companies, as in modern armies. It operates on a low plane of discipline and without the spiritual co-operation of the agent.

No doubt there are workers, under existing conditions, who take no pride in their work and will not work at all, perhaps, except when they are driven to it by the fear of want. But there is reason to think that these are chiefly those who have had a brutalizing and discouraging experience. A good military officer will recruit a company of just such men, and after a few months of discipline have them eager to excel in their duty and ready to face death. It is all a matter of how they are appealed to. And is it not the case, also, that there is a large class in industry who display more pride in their work and sense of duty and service regarding it, than could reasonably be expected, in view of the inconsiderate, mechanical, and selfish way in which they are commonly treated? If a man finds that he is hired when he is a source of gain and turned off when he is not; treated usually without personal appreciation and often with harshness, and set at monotonous work whose value to the world is not easy to feel; it would hardly be supposed that he would show much loyalty or spirit of service, and yet many do, under just such conditions. The truth is that human nature needs to believe in life, and even as we see that people cling to the goodness of God when he seems to send them nothing but misfortunes, so they often show more loyalty to the economic order than it appears to deserve.

It is almost certain that the grosser forms of economic want and terror, like corporal punishment in the schoolroom, paralyze rather than stimulate the energies of society. This liability to starvation and freezing, degradation and contempt for not having money in one’s pocket, with no inquiry why, this nightmare of evil to be averted not by service but by money, and only money, no matter how you get it—this is overdoing the pecuniary motive. It brutalizes the imagination and creates an unhuman dread that impels to sensuality and despair.

I do not deny that there will be shirkers under any system, but it seems plain that their numbers are rather increased than diminished by harshness and neglect, and will be reduced in proportion as we make the whole life, from infancy onward, one that develops self-respect, hope and ambition.

The argument for savagery—facilis descensus Averni—is much the same in all spheres of life. A parent beats a child, and, finding him still recalcitrant, thinks he needs more beating; a teacher whose suspicious methods and appeals to fear have alienated his scholars is all for more suspicion and intimidation; an employer who, having made no effort to gain the confidence of his men, finds that they are disloyal, is convinced that nothing but repression can solve the labor question; the people that are trying to control the negro by terrorism and lynching believe that more of these methods is the remedy for increasing negro crime; governments exasperate each other into war by ill will and hostile preparations, and then argue that, war being inevitable, ill will and hostile preparations are the only rational course to take. We shall never get out of these vicious circles until we take our stand on the higher possibilities of human nature, as shown by experience under right conditions, and proceed to develop these by faith and common sense.

One of the main forces in keeping economic motive on a low moral level has been the doctrine that selfishness is all we need or can hope to have in this phase of life. Economists have too commonly taught that if each man seeks his private interest the good of society will take care of itself, and the somewhat anarchic conditions of the time have discouraged a better theory. In this way we have been confirmed in a pernicious state of belief and practice, for which discontent, inefficiency, and revolt are the natural penalty. A social system based on this doctrine deserves to fail.

When pressed regarding this matter economists have not denied that their system rests on a partial and abstract view of human nature; but they have held that this view is practically adequate in the economic field, and have often seemed to believe that it sufficed for all but a negligible part of human life. On the contrary, it is false even as economics, and we shall never have an efficient system until we have one that appeals to the imagination, the loyalty, and the self-expression of the men who serve it.

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF A HIGHER EMULATION—SUPPORT BY A GROUP SPIRIT—A SENSE OF SECURITY—SELF-EXPRESSION—CONCLUSION

The condition under which human nature will be ruled by emulation in service is, in general, simple. It is that one be immersed in a group spirit and organization of which such emulation is a part. If we have this, no unusual virtue is required to call out devotion and sacrifice, only the ordinary traits of loyalty and suggestibility. In college athletics or in a regiment a man is surrounded by good fellows with whom he is in ardent sympathy, all whose thoughts are bent upon the success of the group. It is not only that he knows he has his own glory or shame at stake, but more than this, the spirit of the whole flows in upon him and submerges his separate personality, until that spirit really is himself. He does not count the cost but lives and acts in the larger life. It is said of one of the national armies, “each man is for his company, each company is for its regiment, each regiment is for the army, and the army is for the collective honor of them all.”

The complete merging of self-consciousness is for times of special enthusiasm, but if the intimate group is lasting it forms a habit of thought and feeling that dominates the ambition and conscience of the individual, so that what would otherwise be a selfish struggle for power is raised to emulation in the service of the group. The man of science toiling in his laboratory is ennobled and supported by the sense of a great whole in which he is working, and of other men, his comrades and rivals, whose opinions will reward and immortalize his discoveries. So it is with the various branches of literature, with the fine arts, and with all the true professions. Indeed this is just the distinguishing trait of a true profession, that it should have a continuing spirit and tradition capable of moulding to high issues the minds of its members. And we might say that the aim of reform, as regards motivation, is to make every social function a true profession. It would seem that there is no function so distasteful that it might not conceivably be ennobled in this way. What could be more repellent at first view than much of the work of the surgeon or the nurse? Yet we see how it is transformed by group consciousness and pride.

The existence of a group spirit and tradition implies several things whose power to raise and animate the individual mind are manifest. Among these are social emotion, standards of merit, and a certain sense of security.

We all know how hard it is to get up steam if each of us has to build a little fire of his own and cannot draw from any general reservoir of heat. Few men can go ahead under such conditions, and those few do it at a great expense of effort. On the other hand, nearly all of us delight in sharing an emulative excitement, and a man who, from pure lethargy, is almost worthless when working alone may easily prove efficient in a group. I once employed to cut and pile wood a man whom I had seen doing wonders in a gang, but I found that it was only in a gang that he would do anything at all. The power to work energetically by oneself is a high quality which we need to cultivate, but it exists only in limited quantity, and even so is usually dependent upon imaginative contact with a group.

As to standards, it is in the nature of the continuing thought of a group to cherish heroes, to set up ideals and models of achievement, and to impress these upon the members. The Christian Church has its central Example and its noble army of saints and martyrs for the emulation of the faithful, and every live organization, down to the gang of bad boys in the alley, has something of the same sort.

These aims and symbols need to be high, definite, and appealing, in order that they may instigate imagination and effort; and to bring them to this condition requires time and co-operative endeavor in the group as a whole. Contemporary life in almost every department is weak at this point; even where there is the most ardent good-will it is apt to fail of results because of crude and uncompelling standards.

By a sense of security I mean the feeling that there is a larger and more enduring life surrounding, appreciating, upholding the individual, and guaranteeing that his efforts and sacrifice will not be in vain. I might almost say that it is a sense of immortality; if not that, it is something akin to and looking toward it, something that relieves the precariousness of the merely private self. It is rare that human nature sustains a high standard of behavior without the consciousness of opinions and sympathies that illuminate the standard and make it seem worth while. It lies deep in the social nature of our minds that ideals can hardly seem real without such corroboration.

In a still more tangible sense I mean a reasonable economic security. A man can hardly have a good spirit if he feels that the ground is unsure beneath his feet, that his social world may disown and forget him to-morrow. There is scarcely anything more appalling to the human spirit than this feeling, or more destructive of all generous impulses. It is an old observation that fear shrinks the soul; and there is no fear like this. The soldier who knows that he may be killed at any moment may yet be perfectly secure in a psychological sense; secure of his duty and of the sympathy of his fellows, his mind quite at peace; but this treachery of the ground we stand on is like a bad dream. As one will shrink from attaching himself in love and service to a person whom he feels he cannot trust, so he will from giving his loyalty to an insecure position. It is impossible that such tenure of function as now chiefly prevails in the industrial world should not induce selfishness, restlessness, and a service only mercenary.

The member of a professional group or of a labor-union gets security largely from his standing in the group, which insures that if he is unjustly ousted from one position he can rely upon getting another. It is natural, however, that where this is the case his loyalty will be to the group rather than to the employer. If the latter treats men as machines he will get mechanical service. Moreover, it is not to be expected that a man will give his full loyalty and service to an employer merely as such, as the source of his pay. To enlist his higher spirit he must feel that the work itself is honorable, that he is serving his country, humanity, and God.

A nation can hardly preserve that interest and loyalty which makes it truly strong unless it can so order things that the individual feels the nation’s care for him, its eye upon his virtues and failings, its appreciation of what he has done, and readiness to stand by him in undeserved trouble. Well-devised systems of education, assistance in finding work, protection against injustice, advice and temporary relief in difficulties, insurance against sickness, accident, and old age—measures of this kind, supplementing, but not supplanting, his own efforts, will go far to make him a real patriot. An intricate society calls for many helps which would formerly have been thought paternal.

The position of a university teacher, under prevalent conditions, illustrates fairly well the benefits of a reasonable security. After a period of probation, intended to be exacting, he is given a permanent appointment which is understood to be forfeitable only by misconduct, although his promotion, which is gradual and extends over a long period, depends upon the degree of his achievement. An equal inducement to exert himself is the hope of service, in teaching and research, and of the appreciation of this by students and colleagues, a hope which is almost certain to be realized if he does his part. He has reason, also, to anticipate considerate treatment in sickness or other trouble, and is often assured of a pension in old age. The plan seems to work well in leading men to labor faithfully and in calling forth a higher quality of service than would be elicited by more stringent treatment. One feels that he has the duty and opportunity to put his very self into his function—his faith, his aspiration, his originality, if he has any. Whatever inefficiency may be found is to be attributed, I should say, not to the principles of motivation, but either to defects in the process by which men are chosen, or perhaps to the lack, in some lines of teaching, of high and clear standards of achievement. The favorable effect of a secure and yet animating environment is beyond question.

While it is not indispensable, in order to secure emulation in service, that the work should allow of self-expression and so be attractive in itself, yet in so far as we can make it self-expressive we release fresh energies of the human mind. The ideal condition is to have something of the spirit of art in every task, a sense of joyous individual creation. We are formed for development, and an endless, hopeless repetition is justly abhorrent. No matter how humble a man’s work, he will do it better and in a better spirit if he sees that he can improve upon it and hope to pass beyond it.

Judged by such standards, our present order is inefficient, because its tasks are so largely narrow, drudging, meaningless, unhuman. An English writer has described the pernicious influence of what he calls “the resentful employee,” “the class of people who, without explanation, adequate preparation, or any chance, have been shoved at an early age into uncongenial work and never given a chance to escape.” “He becomes an employee between thirteen and fifteen; he is made to do work he does not like for no other purpose, so far as he can see, except the profit and glory of a fortunate person called his employer, behind whom stand church and state blessing and upholding the relationship.... He feels put upon and cheated out of life.”^[36]

We do not help the individual to feel that he is contributing, in his own way, to an interesting whole. It seems that for this, as for so many other reasons, we must aim at a greater sense of solidarity, to make the common life more real and attractive, and the individual more conscious of his part in it. The idea of freedom as developed in our present institutions is somewhat empty, because negative; we are apt to give a man the choice between drudgery and anarchy, and when we find that we have more of the latter than other nations we think it is because we are so free.

We need, then, a system of social groups, corresponding to the system of functions in society, each group having esprit de corps, emulation and standards within itself, and all animated with a spirit of loyalty and service to the whole. To achieve this would call for no change in human nature, but only in the instigation and direction of its impulses; it would mean chiefly firmer association and clearer ideals of merit among those pursuing the several functions. Pecuniary inducement would play a large part in it, but would be dethroned from the sole and all-sufficing position assigned to it in the prevalent economic philosophy. Freedom, self-expression, and the competitive spirit would be cherished, but could not degenerate into irresponsible individualism.

Much of our higher life is already organized in harmony with this ideal, and we see it applied, in part at least, to many private undertakings and to public enterprises like the building of the Panama Canal. I believe that the principle of emulation in service is one whose operation can gradually be extended so as to take in the great body of productive activity.

LACK OF EXTERNAL DISCIPLINE IN AMERICA—A FREE DISCIPLINE NEEDED—MUST BE BASED ON PURPOSE—RÔLE OF THE COMMUNITY AND THE STATE—AN IDEAL OF DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE

That American life, at least in times of peace, lacks external discipline is grossly apparent. There is a wide-spread want of that demeanor ordered by the sense of some higher whole, which gives purpose, alertness, and dignity to personal behavior. Our society is full of people, of all ages and classes, who have more liberty, in the sense of unrestriction, than they know how to use. Having emancipated themselves from restraint and lacking worthy ideals of what to do next, they spend themselves in crude and inept behavior, not definitely harmful, perhaps, but disgusting from the state of mind it displays.

I am inclined to think there is something deceptive about this apparent laxity, and that the American compares well in real self-control with the individual of more orderly societies. I feel quite sure from my own observation that Germans, for example, young and old, give way to unruly impulses more readily than Americans; indeed a German scholar, resident in America, has fixed upon self-possession as our most distinctive trait.^[37] What we lack is external decorum and the marshalling of individual self-controls into definite and visible forms of service. American life is slipshod rather than anarchic.

Evidently what we need, what the whole world needs, is the growth of a free type of discipline, based on emulation in service rather than on coercion and mechanism. This, if you can get it, is more truly disciplinary than anything external; it takes hold of the individual by his higher impulses, and leads him to identify his very self with the whole he serves. One great task laid upon us is to justify democracy by proving that it has a constructive and disciplinary energy and is by no means the mere individualism and spiritual disorder that its enemies have charged.

I should say that of two societies suffering equally, one from too little external discipline, and the other from too much, the former was in a more hopeful condition. It is, other things equal, more adaptable, in an earlier and more plastic stage of development. If the people are not lacking in constructive power you may expect them to develop as much discipline as they need. But a well-developed formalism, on the other hand, is a mature, rigid thing, not likely to transform itself into freedom by a gradual process, capable of reform only through revolution.

A free discipline is based upon a purpose; that is, the individual must have an object which means so much to him that he will control and guide his wayward impulses in its interest. Of the power of patriotism to do this, in times of national stress and awakening, we have seen memorable examples. It would be superficial, however, to imagine that it can be secured by compulsory military training in times when the people are not convinced of the imminence of military danger. The disciplinary value of such training in Europe has been due to the fact that the people, on the whole, have believed in it, regarding it as the instrument of patriotic defense against the attack which they were taught to look upon as always impending. I should say that only in so far as our future situation is similar, can military preparation play a vital part in it. If the world becomes peaceful, then peaceful service must be the motive of discipline, though it may well include a training capable of being turned to military use.

We get discipline from the activities that take hold of us because they are real and functional. There is much of it in school, if the teaching and atmosphere are such that the scholars put themselves into the work. The home life also supplies it, in so far as it awakens a similar spirit; and one underlying reason for the partial decay of discipline among us is the fact that the family has so largely ceased to have active and definite functions, requiring the co-operation of all the members, and so impressing upon them a spirit of loyalty and service. It is for this reason that we so commonly see a better discipline in the hard-working families of the farming and laboring classes than among people whose life is less strenuous.

There is no more effective means of discipline, in its province, than organized play, mainly because it is voluntary and joyous, so that the individual is eager to put himself into it, while at the same time it requires perseverance and team-work. The chief objection to it, as we have it in America, is the spectacular character it often has, the multitude looking on with a vicarious and sterile excitement at the performance of the few who alone get the discipline, which is itself impaired by the excessive publicity.

Women most commonly get their serious discipline from the care of the household and children, and we see girls who have grown up frivolously in well-to-do families transformed by the responsibilities that follow marriage. For young men bread-winning work is a great disciplinary agent. The struggle to “make good” in trade, business, or profession, and establish one’s right to the respect of his fellows and to a home and family of his own, provides an object, commonly somewhat difficult to attain, for the sake of which one must learn steadfastness and self-control. This economic discipline is, on the whole, an admirable thing in its way, and might be greatly extended and improved by a more regular and adequate training, in the schools and after, and by the development of occupational groups. At the best, however, a discipline based merely on the purpose to make an income and position must be of a somewhat narrow character, not necessarily leading up to any compelling sense of loyalty to the community, the state, or mankind.

The problem of discipline and the problem of ideals are much the same. If we can awaken in ourselves a social and socially religious spirit and ideal, our discipline will come by the endeavor to give this spirit and ideal expression.

Our great lack, as regards higher discipline, has been that we have had no habitual and moving vision of our State. There has been a great deal of a vague kind of patriotism, but it has generally lacked specific ideal, purpose, and form. The ingrained habit of regarding government as a minor part of life, a necessary evil, and the pursuit of second-rate men, has diverted the spiritual energies of our people from public channels, not only impairing our national life and discrediting democracy, but leaving the individual without that sense of public function which his own character requires. The religious ardor which men willingly give to their country when they feel their identity with it is the noblest basis for discipline, and it remains for us to find a means of arousing this other than the gross and obsolescent one of threatened war. We need, along with the growth of freedom and enlightenment, a growing vision of the nation as the incarnation of our ideal, as an upbuilder of great enterprises, as a friend and benefactor of other nations, and as an honorable contestant in an international struggle for leadership in industry, science, art, and every sort of higher service. This might, perhaps, be made the motive for some sort of universal service and training in connection with the schools, which should be as peaceful in spirit as the times permit, though capable of taking a warlike direction if necessary. What a state like Germany has done by the aid of militarism and bureaucracy, yet with a large measure of success, we ought to do in our own way, and do much better.

Our discipline needs to be as diverse as our society. A well-organized plan of life should embrace a system of disciplinary groups corresponding to the chief aspects of human endeavor, each one surrounding the individual with an atmosphere of emulation and with ideals of a particular sort. Democracy should not mean uniformity, but the fullest measure of differentiation, a development everywhere of special spirits—in communities, in occupations, in culture groups, in distinctive personalities.

The ideal discipline for democracy, I think, is one that trusts unreservedly to the democratic principle. It should begin in the family by making the life as intimate and co-operative as possible, so that the children may get the group feeling and become accustomed to act in view of group purposes and ideals. Their training should come through service, self-respect, and example, with as little coercion as possible. In the schools, of all grades, control through self-government and public opinion will probably more and more take the place of mechanism and punishment, and the same plan will be applied to corrective institutions. In the field of play spontaneous groups under wholesome influences—boys’ and girls’ clubs, Boy Scouts, and the like—are capable of an extension which shall bring the whole youth of the land under the sway of their admirable discipline. And so in colleges; it seems to me that we can better get what we want, in the way of health, bearing, self-control, and capacity to meet military and other requirements, if we work mainly through influence, example, and voluntary forms of organization. Except in times of urgent crisis the sentiment of students will resent compulsion and render it more or less ineffective.

It is the same in public life, in economic relations, and in every kind of organization. We shall, in general, get a better discipline by trusting democracy more rather than less, provided this trust is not merely passive but includes a vigorous use of educative methods. Even now, if the test of discipline is self-control, and the power to function responsibly in behalf of any purpose the group may adopt, I question whether we have not shown ourselves as well disciplined as any people. In so far as we have honestly and thoroughly applied the democratic idea it has not failed us.