Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 10

To rescue a drowning man is right, for such action normally tends to human welfare; if the rescued man turns out a great criminal, or escapes this death to suffer a worse, the act of rescuing the drowning remains a desirable and therefore moral act. On the other hand, if one man slanders another, with the result that the latter, refuting the slander, thereby attains prominence and position, the act of slander, normally harmful, remains an immoral act.

It is a failure to recognize this necessarily general character of our moral judgments that raises the problem of Job. The ancient Israelites saw clearly that righteousness was the road to happiness; [Footnote: Cf. for example, "Righteousness tendeth to life; he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death." "Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord, that walketh in his ways. Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee."] and when a righteous man like Job fell into misfortune, they accused him of secret sin. Job is conscious of his innocence, of having done his part aright, and cannot understand how he has come to such an evil pa.s.s. It would have brought him no material alleviation, but it might have saved him some mental chafing, to recognize that morality is simply doing our part. When we have done our best we are still at the mercy of fortune. Happiness, as Aristotle pointed out, is the result of two cooperating factors, morality and good fortune. [Footnote: Nichomachean Ethics, book I, several places: e.g, in chap. VII, "To const.i.tute happiness there must be, as we have said, complete virtue and fit external conditions."] If either is lacking, evil will ensue. If all men were perfectly virtuous, we should still be at the mercy of flood and lightning, poisonous snakes, icebergs and fog at sea, a thousand forms of accident and disease, old age and death. The millennium will not bring pure happiness to man; he is too feeble a creature in the presence of forces with which he cannot cope. Morality is just-the best man can do; and it is not to be blamed for the twists of fate that make futile its efforts. (3) Are there not, however, cases where conduct which we agree is right is not even likely to bring the greatest happiness attainable; where not only immediate but lasting happiness is to be deliberately sacrificed in the name of morality? Suppose, for example, a politician who becomes convinced of the evils of the liquor trade ruins his career in a hopeless fight against the saloons. He loses his office, his income, his honor in the sight of his a.s.sociates; he brings suffering upon his innocent wife and children; and all for no good, since his fight is futile and ineffective. Surely any one could foresee that such action would make only for unhappiness, or for no happiness commensurable with the sacrifice. Yet if we agree with his premise, that the liquor trade is a curse to humanity, we deem his conduct not only conscientious but objectively n.o.ble and right. How can we justify that judgment?

In the first place, we cannot be sure, beforehand, that such a fight will not be successful. Forlorn hopes sometimes win. We must encourage men to venture, to take chances; only so can the great evils that ride mankind be banished. If there is a fighting chance of accomplis.h.i.+ng a great good it is contemptible not to try; society must maintain a code that leads at times to quixotic acts.

In the second place, the fight, even if in itself hopeless, is sure to have valuable indirect results. It arouses others to the need; it stimulates in others the willingness to sacrifice self-interest and work for the general good. Every such honorable defeat has its share in the final victory. The subtle benefits that result from such moral gallantry are not evident on the surface, but they are there. No push for the right is wholly wasted. It pays mankind to let its heroes lavish their lives in apparently ineffective struggles; through their example the apathetic ma.s.ses are stirred and moved a little farther toward their goal.

In general, we may say that the belief that virtue is not the right road to happiness betrays inexperience and immaturity of judgment.

A moderate degree of morality saves man from many pitfalls into which his unrestrained impulses would lead him. The highest levels of morality bring a degree of happiness unknown to the "natural man." Who are the happiest people in the world? The saints; those who are inwardly at peace, who play their part with absolute loyalty. Even the irremediable misfortunes of life do not affect them as they do the worldly man; they have "learned the luxury of doing good." Of morality a recent writer says, "Its distribution of felicity is ideally just. To him who is most unselfish, who sinks most thoroughly his own interests in those of the race of which he is a unit, it awards the most complete beat.i.tude." [Footnote: J. H. Levy, of London, in a funeral oration.]

To him who complains that he is moral but not happy, the answer is, Be more moral! A high enough morality, a complete enough consecration, will lead, in all but very abnormal cases, to happiness in the individual life, as well as make its due contribution to the happiness of others.

Is there anything better than morality?

It is this lack of vision, this immature skepticism as to the service of morality to human welfare, that has fired a flame of revolt in certain minds, a revolt not merely against incidental defects and outworn conceptions of morality, but against morality uberhaupt. The declamations of these Promethean rebels make it clear, however, that their protest is but the old fault of condemning a necessary inst.i.tution altogether for its imperfections or its abuses. Morality has been blended with superst.i.tion and tyranny, has been often blind, perverted, narrow, checking n.o.ble impulses and choking the rich and happy development of life. But it is one thing to arraign these accidents and corruptions of morality; it is quite another to discard the whole system of guidance of which they are but the excrescences and mistakes. This usurping is, of course, also in large part a thirst for novelty, a love of paradox, of practicing ingenuity in making the better appear the worse; it is in part a volcanic eruption of suppressed longings and a protest against the inadequacy of our present code to provide opportunity and happiness for the ma.s.ses. The motives vary with the individual rebels.

It must suffice, however, from among the many leaders of this revolt, to quote that clever but unbalanced German iconoclast, Nietzsche. Typical of his doctrine is the following: [Footnote: Genealogy of Morals (ed. Alex. Tille), Foreword, p. 9.] "Never until now was there the least doubt or hesitation to set down the 'good'

man as of higher value than the 'evil' man-of higher value in the sense of furtherance, utility, prosperity, as regards MAN in general (the future of man included). What if the reverse were true? What if in, the 'good' one also a symptom of decline were contained, and a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic by which the present might live AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FUTURE? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but also in humbler style- more meanly? So that just morality were to blame, if a HIGHEST MIGHTINESS AND SPLENDOR of type of man-possible in itself were never attained? And that, therefore, morality itself would be the danger of dangers?"

The point of this tirade is that morality puts a wet blanket over human powers; it is a bourgeois ideal, saving men, indeed, from pain, but also robbing life of its picturesqueness and glory. Many people frankly prefer "interesting" to "good" people; Nietzsche generalizes this feeling. Morality is to him uninteresting, dull, a code for slaves, for the clash of combat, the tang of cruelty and l.u.s.t, the tingle of unrestrained power. Every man for himself then, and the Devil take the hindmost. Shocked as we are by this brutal platform, there is something in it that appeals to the red blood and adventurous spirit in us; after all, we are not far removed from the savage, and the thought of a psalm-singing, tea-drinking, tamely good world is abhorrent to the marrow of us. Stevenson, with his delightfully irresponsible audacity, sighs for an occasional "furlough from the moral law"; and there are times for most of us when it seems as if we should choke and smother under the everlasting "Thou shalt not!" But the daring rebel, the defiant t.i.tan, comes creeping back to the shelter of morality with a headache or something worse, and discovers that his Promethean boldness was but childish petulance; that it is futile and foolish to try to escape the inexorable laws of human life. There are, in fact, two adequate answers that can be made to the despiser of morality:

(1) Dull or not, repressive or not, morality is absolutely necessary.

It is better than the pain, the insecurity, the relapse into barbarism, that immorality implies. Our whole civilization, everything that makes human life better than that of the beasts of prey, would collapse without its foundation of moral obedience. The regime of slas.h.i.+ng individualism would kill off many of the weaker who are precious to humanity-a Homer (if he was blind), a Keats, a Stevenson; nay, if carried to extreme, it would put an end to the race. For who are the weakest, the "hindmost," but the babies! Sympathy and love and self sacrifice, at least in parents, are necessary if the race is to endure a generation. But even for the individual, the penalties of immorality are too obvious to need recapitulation. If morality is repression, it is the minimal repression consistent with the maintenance of successful and happy life. Its real aim is to bring life, and life more abundantly.

(2) But if we are looking for something great, for adventure and excitement and battle against odds, we can find it much better than in brutally slas.h.i.+ng at our fellows, or running amuck at the beck of our impulses, by putting our valor at the service of some really great human endeavor. If we want to get into the big game, the great adventure, we must pit ourselves, with the leaders of mankind, against the hostile universe. The men and women who set our blood tingling and our hearts beating fastest are-Darwin, discoverer by patient labor of a great cosmic law; Pasteur, conqueror at last over a terrible human disease; Peary, first to plant foot upon the axis of the world; Goethals, builder of a ca.n.a.l that links the oceans. The steady march of a moralized civilization, presenting united front to the cosmos, is infinitely more glorious than the futile, aimless, and petty struggles of an anarchic immorality. Our half-disciplined life is already far richer and more romantic than the life of Nietzsche's "supermen" could be; and we are only a little way along the road of moral progress.

The real superman will be a BETTER man, a man of tenderness and chivalry, of loyalty and self-control, a man of disciplined heart and purified will; to attain to such a supermanliness is, indeed, a heroic and splendid achievement, worthy of our utmost endeavor, and calling into play all our n.o.blest powers.

Some there are, accustomed to the vision of tables of stone engraved by the hand of G.o.d and set up for man's obedience amid Sinaitic thunders, for whom the discovery of the humble human and prehuman origin, and the stumbling hit-or-miss evolution, of morality dulls its sanct.i.ty.

But any one who is tempted for this reason to deride morality may console himself with the reflection that everything else of supreme importance in human life is of plebeian ancestry. Reason, art, government, religion, had their crude and superst.i.tion-ridden beginnings. Man himself was once hardly different from a monkey. Yet there is a spark of the divine in him and in all these arts and inst.i.tutions which he with the aid of the cosmic forces has evolved. Surely a juster judgment may find a sublimity in this age-long march from the clod toward the millennium that could never belong to the spectacular but very provincial myths of the Semites. The emotions ever lag behind the intellect; and our hearts may still yearn for the neighborly and pa.s.sionate battle-G.o.d of the Pentateuch. Moreover, we shall continue to recognize a vast fund of truth and insight in those early folk tales and primitive codes. But there comes a deeper breath to the man who realizes that morality and religion long antedate the Jewish revelation, and comes to see G.o.d in the tens and hundreds of thousands of years of slow but splendid human progress. Historical codes of morals are, indeed, seamed with superst.i.tion and are progressively displaced; but morality persists. At no time has man wholly solved the problem of life, but he must ever live by the best solution he has found. The innumerable codes are so many experiments, their very differences bearing witness to the need of some set of guiding principles for conduct.

It is sometimes said that morality, being a merely human invention, may be discarded when we choose. To this we may reply that morality bears, indeed, the indisputable marks of human instinct, will, and reason; but it is not an invention; it is a lesson, slowly learned.

In its humanness lies its value. It is not an alien code, irrelevant to human nature; it is a natural function; it is the greatest of human inst.i.tutions unless that be religion, which is its flower and consummation. Morality is made for man, for his use and guidance; what could possibly have greater sanct.i.ty or authority for him? Rebel as he may, and chafe under its restraints, he always comes back to morality; perhaps to a revised code, but to essentially the same control; for he cannot do without it. Our morality has its defects, but it is on the right track. A clearer insight into its teleological necessity, the purpose it exists to serve, will direct us in our efforts to revise it, so to fas.h.i.+on it as to make it productive of still greater good in the time to come. But if we discard it altogether, we are "like the base Indian" who "threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe."

What we need is not to abandon but to steadily improve our code; and whereas any one can pick flaws, only the man of trained mind and controlled desire can discover feasible lines of advance. "When all is said, there is nothing as yet to be changed in our old Aryan ideal of justice, conscientiousness, courage, kindness, and honor. We have only to draw nearer to it, to clasp it more closely, to realize it more effectively; and, before going beyond it, we have still a long and n.o.ble road to travel beneath the stars." [Footnote: Maeterlinck, "Our Anxious Morality," in The Measure of the Hours.] The conception of morality as the organization of interests will be found in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics, and in many recent ethical books and papers. Among them are R. B. Perry's Moral Economy, G. Santayana's Reason in Science (chap. IX); William James, "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" (in the Will to Believe and Other Essays).

A discussion of whether morality really makes for happiness will be found in Leslie Stephen, System of Ethics, chap. X; W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chap. VIII. For Nietzsche's theory, see his Beyond Good and Evil. There are many excellent replies; a brief but adequate one will be found in Perry, op. cit, chap. I.

PART III

PERSONAL MORALITY

CHAPTER XV

HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY

With the general nature and justification of morality in our minds, we may now seek to apply our criteria of conduct to the concrete problems that confront us, first taking up those problems which, however important their social bearings, are primarily problems of private life, problems for the individual to settle, and then turning to those wider problems which the community as a whole must grapple with and solve by public action.

Bodily health is the foundation of personal morality; to act at all there must be physical energy available; and, other things equal, the man with the greatest store of vitality will live the happiest and most useful life. Christianity has too often forgotten this fundamental truth, which needs emphasis at the very outset of our concrete studies in morality.

What is the moral importance of health?

(1) Health is in itself a great contribution to the intrinsic worth of life. To awake in the morning with red blood stirring in the veins, to come to the table with hearty appet.i.te, to go about the day's work with the springing step of abounding energy, and to reach the close of day with that healthy fatigue that quiets restless desire and betokens the blessed boon of sound and dreamless sleep-this is to be a long way on the road to contentment. Health cannot in itself guarantee happiness if other evils obtrude; but it removes many of the commonest impediments thereto, and normally produces an increase in all other values. Heightened vitality means an increased sense of power, a keener zest in everything; troubles slide off the healthy man that would stick to the less vigorous. Bodily depression almost always involves mental depression; our "blues" usually have an organic basis. It was not a superst.i.tion that evolved our word "melancholy" from the Greek "black (i.e., disordered) liver" nor is it a mere pun or paradox to say that whether life is worth living depends upon the liver.

More than this, health is opportunity. The man of abundant energy can taste more of the joys of life, can enlarge the bounds of his experience, can use precious hours of our brief span which the weakling must devote to rest, can learn more, can range farther, can venture all sorts of undertakings from which the other is precluded by his lack of strength. All these experiences, if they are guided by prudence and self-control, bring their meed of insight and skill and character.

It is only through living that we grow, and health means the potentiality of life.

(2) Health means efficiency, more work done, greater usefulness to society. Sooner or later every man who is worth his salt finds some task the doing of which arouses his ambition and becomes his particular contribution to the world. How bitterly will he then regret the heritage denied him or foolishly squandered, the handicap of quivering nerves, muscular flabbiness, wandering mind, that impedes its accomplishment! Determination and persistence may, indeed, use a frail physique for splendid service; such names as Darwin, Spencer, Prescott, remind us of the strength of human will that can override physical obstacles and by long effort produce a great achievement. But for one victor in this struggle of will against body there are a hundred vanquished; and even these men of genius and grit could have accomplished far more if they had had normally serviceable bodies.

(3) Health makes morality easier and likelier. The pernicious influence of bodily frailty and abnormality upon mind and morals has always been recognized (cf. the mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients), but was never so clearly seen as today. The lack of proper nutrition or circulation, the state of depressed vitality resulting from want of fresh air, exercise, or sleep, are important factors in the production of insanity and crime. Over fatigue means a weakening of the power of attention, and hence of will, a paralyzing of the highest brain centers, a lowered resistance to the more primitive instincts and pa.s.sions. Chronic irritability, moroseness, pathological impulses of all sorts, generally betokens eyestrain, dyspepsia, constipation, or some other bodily derangement. With the regaining of normal health the unruly impulses usually become quieter, sympathy flows more freely, the man becomes kinder, more tolerant, and morally sane. Professor Chittenden of Yale is quoted as saying that "lack of proper physical condition is responsible for more moral ... ills than any other factor." Certain temptations, at least, bear more hardly upon the man of weak and unstrung nerves; in Rousseau's well known words, "The weaker the body, the more it commands." And in general, abnormal organic conditions involve a warping of the judgment, a twisted or unbalanced view of life (e.g. Wordsworth's "Spontaneous reason breathed by health"), which leads away from the path of virtue. All honor, then, to the men who have kept clean and true and cheerful through years of bodily depression; such conquest over evil conditions is one of the finest things in life. But n.o.bility of character is hard enough to attain without adding the obstacle of a reluctant body; and although some virtues are easier to the invalid, and some temptations removed from his circ.u.mscribed field of activity, it remains true in general that health is the great first aid to morality.

Can we attain to greater health and efficiency? If health is, then, so important to the individual and society, its pursuit is not a selfish or a trivial matter; it is rather a serious and unavoidable duty. The gospel of health is sorely needed in our modern world. Young men and women use up their apparently limitless capital with heedless waste; those who start with a lesser inheritance neglect the means at their command for increasing their stock of strength and winning the power and exuberance of life that might be theirs. There are, of course, many cases of undeserved ill health; we ill understand as yet the causes and enemies of bodily vigor, and many a gallant fight for health has gone unrewarded. But in the great majority of cases a wise conduct of life would retain robust strength for the threescore or more years of our allotted course, increase it for those who start poorly equipped, and regain it for those who by mischance, blunder, or imprudence have lost their heritage. Yet half the world hardly knows what real health is. Our hospitals and sanitariums are crowded, our streets are full of half-sick people-hollow chests, sallow faces, dark-rimmed eyes, nervous, run-down, worn-out, brain-f.a.gged, dragging on their existence, or dying before their time, robbed by stupidity and ignorance of their birthright of full-breathed rosy-cheeked health, and robbing the society that has reared them of the full quota of their service. Health is not merely freedom from disease; we have a right to what Emerson called "plus health." And among the men who rightly awaken our enthusiasm are those who out of a frail childhood have built up for themselves by perseverance and will a manhood of physical power, endurance, and efficiency.

The principles of health for the normal man are few and simple, the reward great; what stands in the way is partly our apathy and indifference, partly our incontinent appet.i.tes, partly the unwholesome and deadening social influences in which we find ourselves enmeshed.

For those who care enough, almost unlimited vistas open up; as Spinoza has it, "No one has yet found the limits of what the body can do."

William James was convinced [Footnote: See his essay, "The Energies of Man," in Memories and Studies.] that the potentialities of human energy and efficiency are but half realized by the best of us. We must learn better to run the human machine. Our prevalent disregard of the conditions of bodily vigor, our persistent carelessness in the elementary matters of hygiene and health, is nothing short of criminal.

"We would have health, and yet still use our bodies ill; Bafflers of our own prayers from youth to life's last scenes."

Happiness that impairs health seldom pays. Where it is a question of useful work done at the expense of our fatigue, there may be more question; normally such sacrifices are undesirable; but what seems over fatigue may not really be so, and the earnest man will err on this side rather than run risk of pusillanimous s.h.i.+rking. Moreover, some work practically requires an over effort for its accomplishment; and no man of mettle will begrudge his very life-blood when necessary.

Overwork is "the last infirmity of n.o.ble minds." Yet when not really necessary, it must be ranked as a sin, and not too generously condoned.

The intense compet.i.tion of modern industry, the complexity of our economic machinery, the colossal acc.u.mulation of facts which must be mastered for success, bring heavy pressure to bear upon those who have their way to make in the world. The pace is fast, and many there are that die or break from overstrain when at the height of their usefulness.

Such, overpressure does not pay; it means that less work will in the end get done. When we consider also the moral dangers it involves, the glumness or irritability of taut nerves, the unhealthy tension that demands strong excitements and does not know how to rest or enjoy quiet and restorative pleasures; when we consider the broken men and women that have to be taken care of, the widows and children of the workers who have died before their time, the children perhaps weakened for life because of the tired condition of their parents at birth; when we consider the number of defective children born to such overworked parents, we realize that it is not primarily a question of enjoying life more or less, it is a matter of grave economic and moral import.

[Footnote: Cf. M. G. Schlapp, in the Outlook, vol. 100, p. 782.]

Whether we actually work harder, on the whole, than our forebears, and whether there is actually a decrease in the health and endurance of the younger generation today owing to the overstrain of their parents, is open to dispute. Certainly when one compares a portrait of Reynolds, Gainsborough, or Stuart with one by Sargent, Thayer, or Alexander, there is a noticeable difference of type, indicative of a different ideal of life in the upper stratum of society, an ideal of effort and efficiency, which is far better than a patrician dilettantism, but has in turn its dangers.We need to recall the line of AEschylus, "All the G.o.ds' work is effortless and calm." Or Matthew Arnold's sonnet on Quiet Work:

"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, A lesson that on every wind is borne, A lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity: Of toil unsevered from tranquility, Of labor that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry..."

Most of us would find our powers adequate to our duties if we learned to rest when we are not working, and spend no energy in worry and fretfulness. [Footnote: Cf. W. James's essay on "The Gospel of Relaxation," in Talks to Teachers and Students, or Annie Payson Call's books, of which the best known is Power Through Repose.] This nervous leakage is a notoriously American ailment; we knit our brows, we work our fingers, we fidget, we rock in our chairs, we talk explosively, we live in a quiver of excitement and hurry, in a chronic state of tension. We need to follow St. Paul's exhortation to "Study to be quiet"; to learn what Carlyle called "the great art of sitting still."

We must not lower our American ideal of efficiency, of the "strenuous life"; but it is precisely through that self-control that is willing to live within necessary limitations, and able to cut off the waste of fruitless activity of mind and body, that our national efficiency can be maintained at its highest.

Is continued idleness ever justifiable?

We do not need Stevenson's charming Apology for Idlers, to know that rest and recreation are as wholesome and necessary as work. But idleness is only profitable and really enjoyable when it comes as an interlude in the midst of activity. There is much to be done, and no one is free to s.h.i.+rk his share of the world's work; we may enjoy our vacations only as we have earned the right to them. Except for invalids and idiots, continued idleness never justifiable. Clothes we must have, and food, and shelter, and much else; if a man does not produce these things for himself, or some equivalent which he can fairly exchange for them, he is a parasite upon other men's labor. "Six days shalt thou labor" is the universal commandment, and "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." An old Chinese proverb runs, "If there is one idle man, there is another who is starving." Certainly a state in which the ma.s.ses will have their drudgery lightened for them and opportunity for a well rounded human life given, will be attained only in a society where there are no drones; and no man or woman worthy of the name will be content to live idly on the labor of others. "Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors"; it is not fair to accept so much without giving what we can in return.

For most men and women there is, of course; no alterative; they must work or live a wretched, comfortless life, with the actual risk of starvation. A few may prefer the precarious existence of the tramp, or pauper; but they must pay the price in homelessness and hazard.

Except for abnormal social conditions, the vile housing of the poor, the hopeless monotony and overlong hours of most forms of unskilled labor, the lure of drink, and the deprivation of the natural joys of life, there would be few of these voluntary idlers among the poor.

The aversion to work, when it is decently agreeable, in decent surroundings, and not carried to the point of fatigue, is abnormal; and it is by the improvement of the conditions and remuneration of labor that we must seek to cure that unwillingness to work, in the poor, which Tolstoy came to believe was their greatest curse.

[Footnote: See his What Shall We Do Then? (or What to Do?)]

Much more difficult to cure is the curse of idleness among the rich.

The absence of the need of working, and the possibilities of pleasure seeking which money affords, are a constant temptation to them to live a life of ease. The spectacle is not unfamiliar of rich young men traveling about the world, living at their clubs, spending their energies in gayeties and sports, with hardly a sense of the responsibilities which their privileges entail. Fortunately, however, there is, in America at least, a pretty widespread sense of shame among men about such s.h.i.+rking, and the idler has to face a certain amount of mild contempt. Upon women the pressure of public opinion has not yet become nothing upper-cla.s.s ladies who spend their time at cards, at teas, at the theater, who think of little but dress and gossip, or of the latest novels and music, who evade their natural duties of motherhood or give over care of home and children to hired servants, that they may be freer to live the b.u.t.terfly life, are still too little rebuked by their hard-working sisters and by men. We must impress it upon all that the inheritance of money does not excuse laziness; if the pressure to earn a living is removed, there are numberless ways in which the rich can serve, privileged ways, happy ways, which there is far less pretext for avoiding than the poor have for hating their grim toil. In Carlyle's words, "If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he may have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality?" The rich commonly point the finger of scorn at the poor who turn away from honest work; we may well wonder if they would work themselves at such dirty and dangerous occupations. Many a charity visitor who preaches the gospel of toil is herself, except for some fitful and ineffective "social work," a useless ornament to society who hardly knows the meaning of "toil." If idleness is a mote in the eyes of the poor, it is a beam in the eyes of the rich. Neither blood nor rank nor s.e.x excuses from the universal duty. "We must all toil or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse." [Footnote: Carlyle's writings are full of such wholesome declarations. And cf. W. Dew. Hyde: "An able-bodied man who does not contribute to the world at least as much as he takes out of it is a beggar and a thief; whether he s.h.i.+rks the duty of work under the pretext of poverty or riches." Cf. also Tolstoy, in What to Do? For example (from chap. XXVI), "How can a man who considers himself to be, we will not say a Christian, or an educated and humane man, but simply a man not entirely devoid of reason and of conscience, how can he, I say, live in such a way that, not taking part in the struggle of all mankind for life, he only swallows up the labor of others, struggling for existence, and by his own claims increases the labor of those who struggle, and the number of those who perish in struggle?"] relieved from the necessity of earning a living" (unless one intends to use that freedom for unpaid service), an ideal dangerous to social welfare, and shortsighted for the individual. Work makes up a large part of the worth of life. Drudgery it may be at the time, a weary round, with no compensation apparent; but it is of just such stuff that real life is made. What enn.o.bles it, what gives it meaning, is the courageous attack, the putting of heart into work, the facing of monotony, the finding of the zest of accomplishment. There is no such thing as "menial" work; the was.h.i.+ng of dishes and the carting away of garbage are just as necessary and important as the running of a railway or the making of laws. The real horror is the dead weight of ennui, the aimlessness and fruitlessness of a life that has done nothing and has nothing to do. If the thought of the day's work depresses, it is probably because of ill health, over fatigue, unpleasant surroundings or companions, because of worry, or because the particular work is not congenial. The finding of the right work for the right man and woman is one of the great problems which we have hardly begun to solve. But all of these sources of the distaste for work can normally, or eventually, be reached and the evil remedied. In spite of the burden and the strain, if we could have our way with the order of things, one of the most foolish things we could do would be to take away the necessity of work. Here, as usual, personal and social needs coincide; in the working life alone can be found a lasting satisfaction for the soul and the hope of salvation for society. Are compet.i.tive athletics desirable? As samples of the concrete problems involved in the ideal of health and efficiency, we may briefly discuss two questions that confront particularly the young man. And first, that concerning athletic sports are of marked value: