Chapter I: Part 1

AN AMERICAN RELIGION

Work
Play
Breathe
Bathe
Study
Laugh
Live
Love

¶ I believe that no one can harm us but ourselves; that sin
is misdirected energy; that there is no devil but fear; and
that the Universe is planned for good ❦ We know that work is a
blessing, that Winter is as necessary as Summer, that Night is
as useful as Day, that Death is a manifestation of Life, and
just as good. I believe in the Now and Here. I believe in you
and I believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes for
righteousness ❦ ❦ ❦

THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
ELBERT HUBBARD

THE ROYCROFTERS

Copyright, 1916, by
The Roycrofters

¶ Of this edition of _The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard_ there
have been printed 9983 copies on Roycroft watermarked paper,
made by hand, especially for The Roycrofters, at Fabriano,
Italy, and of the edition signed and numbered, this copy is
Number

¶ Why not make this a world of friends?

CONTENTS

The American Philosophy 11

Freedom and Responsibility 25

Corporal Punishment 30

Purpled Ease 39

Consecrated Lives 57

Marriage and Divorce 65

The Taxation of Church Property 79

Free Motherhood 96

Why I Am a Philistine 104

Oral Righteousness 122

The Health Habit 128

The Elks’ Creed 134

Remember the Weekday 143

Reciprocity 148

Vaccination 153

Equal Suffrage 159

Just Boys 163

The Sea 168

Epigrams 171

CREDO

_Elbert Hubbard_

¶ I believe in the Motherhood of God. I believe in the blessed Trinity of Father, Mother and Child. ¶ I believe that God is here, and that we are as near Him now as ever we shall be. I do not believe He started this world a-going and went away and left it to run itself. I believe that we are all sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts. ¶ I believe in freedom—social, economic, domestic, political, mental, spiritual ❦ I believe in every man minding his own business. I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts. ¶ I believe in the purifying process of sorrow, and I believe that death is a manifestation of life. I believe the Universe is planned for good ❦

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ELBERT HUBBARD

THE RADIANT LIFE

_Elbert Hubbard_

¶ I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected—ready to say “I do not know,” if so it be—to meet all men on an absolute equality—to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unafraid and unabashed ❦ I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy or fear. I wish others to live their lives, too—up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, dictate, interfere, give advice that is not wanted, nor assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I will do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. I desire to Radiate Life ❦ ❦ ❦

The American Philosophy

So this, then, is an essay on the American Philosophy. The American Philosophy is founded on the Science of Economics. ¶ Just here, in order that we may speak a common language, a few definitions are in order. Economics is the Science of the production, distribution and use of wealth. Science is accurate, organized knowledge founded on fact—or, as Herbert Spencer expressed it, “Science is the classified knowledge of the common people.” All that which is simply assumed, believed, conjectured, taken on dogmatic statement, or mayhap read out of printed books, is unscientific, no matter how plausible ❦ All practical businessmen are scientists. ¶ Business is a vocation. Philosophy is—or should be—an avocation. To make a business of philosophy is to institutionalize and dilute it, just as to institutionalize love and religion is to degrade and lose them. Religion is philosophy touched with emotion ❦ Philosophy is your highest conception of life, its duties and its destiny. A religious organization is a different thing from religion. A religious organization is built on a feeling made static, or fear frozen stiff. It then becomes a superstition, and is employed as a police system, and is taxed all the traffic will bear. ¶ Science is definite, accurate, organized knowledge concerning the things that make up our environment. Modern philosophy is the distilled essence of wisdom that eventually flows from science. Or, if you please, philosophy is the explanation of science—a projection from science ❦ Transportation, manufacturing, distribution, advertising and salesmanship are all variants of business. Each and all are scientific, that is, capable of analyzation and demonstration. Weight, size, color, number, qualities and time are all elements of science. ¶ Theology is antique and obsolete philosophy. It never is nor ever was scientific, not being derived from knowledge. Faith is the first item in its formula. Theology comes to us from dogmatic statements gotten from books or the hearsay words of men long dead. Theology is voodooism; in matters of importance it is in the same class as alchemy, astrology, palmistry, mantology and augury ❦ Science is understood, while theology is believed. Psychology is the science of human minds and their relationship one to another ❦ Superstition is scrambled science, or a religious omelet flavored with fear. ¶ Organized religion being founded on superstition is, perforce, not scientific ❦ And all that is not scientific—that is, truthful—must be bolstered by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand. ¶ Business, to be successful, must be based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics, not guesswork. Civilization turns on organization. And organization, in order to be of any value, must be scientific. ¶ Economics is a new science. History does not show a single instance of its existence in the days of Greece and Rome ❦ They had simple mathematics, but not complex. Fractions, percentages, statistics, averages, were beyond them. The blueprint, even for humorists, was unguessed ❦ Philosophy was speculation; business was barter. Since then, up to within a few years ago, the problem of how man could save his soul has been uppermost. This world has been neglected in the endeavor to gain another. When the Science of Economics is finally formulated it will be expressed first in America ❦ In America all nations meet and blend. Here the factors, elements and categories of Economics are to be found. Here we have one language, and no more, and this is necessary for the expression of a new science ❦ The first endeavor to found Economics as a science was the work of Adam Smith. ¶ And when Thomas Henry Buckle said that Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_ had influenced the world for good more than any other book ever written, save none, he stated truth. ¶ Economics changes man’s activities. As you change a man’s activities you change his way of living, and as you change his environment you change his state of mind. Precept and injunction do not perceptibly affect men; but food, water, air, clothing, shelter, pictures, books, music, will and do. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, all wrote on Economics, but none was an Economist. Each based his logic largely on presumption, assumption and hypothesis. If this happens, then that will occur. They were Political Economists—they pursued Economics as a policy, not as truth. They loved love, not the lady. They were students of Economics, and their work was not grounded in Science. Since the days of Smith, Mill and Marx we have had many students of Economics ❦ But the world has not yet produced an Economist. To be an Economist, a man must be a Scientist. He must be both a man of action, and one who knows why he acts. He must work and he must contemplate his work. He must act and he must think. ¶ A Scientist is the man who has done the thing—who has seen and knows. Then from his positive knowledge springs his Philosophy. And the Philosophy of a businessman, analyzed, explained and formulated, would constitute a Science of Economics. ¶ The American Philosophy will be formulated by Scientists—by Businessmen who have succeeded. Thackeray’s lawyer in the Debtors’ Prison, who was working out a new financial policy for the Nation, was not a Scientist ❦ His knowledge was academic and his scheme conjectural. Science was outside of his orbit. He lacked experience. He had feelings, but not facts ❦ He did not have enough cosmic mortar to construct an arch. Emotionalism, charity, altruism, optimism, are not science, and they may be hysteria. ¶ When I speak of success I do not mean it in the sordid sense. A successful man is one who has tried, not cried; who has worked, not dodged; who has shouldered responsibility, not evaded it; who has gotten under the burden, not merely stood off, looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact, the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. To go down with the ship in storm and tempest is better than to paddle away to Paradise in an Orthodox canoe. To have worked is to have succeeded—we leave the results to time. Life is too short to gather the Harvest—we can only sow. ¶ Up to the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six the business world was tainted by trickery in trade ❦ The methods of booth and bazaar were everywhere practised. Business was barter, and he who could cheat and not get caught was accounted clever. On the customs of the time there was no copyright. They were a take-over from monarchical days ❦ But a new ethic has arrived. Within ten years’ time the thought has gone through the entire business fabric that to cheat and not get caught is really a worse calamity than to get caught. To be caught means that some one has applied the brake and you are given pause. Not to get caught means that you are headed for the precipice on the high clutch and down grade. To cheat another is to cheat yourself. Theology did not teach us this, for precept and preaching never touch our lives. We shed them. We are moved in only one way, and that is by self-interest ❦ Cut off our food-supply and we are no longer apathetic. And self-interest is a form of selfishness; it is the desire for life ❦ It is the instinct of self-preservation in action. It was all a matter of mental growth, evolution. ¶ The discovery of truth as our most valuable business asset is the one great achievement of the age in which we live ❦ For truth there is no substitute, and this discovery was made by businessmen. Honesty as a working policy was first put forth by Benjamin Franklin; and his remark was regarded as a mere pleasantry until yesterday. The clergy have not yet adopted it; the doctors are considering it, and the lawyers haven’t heard of it. However, all these will finally adopt it, as a last resort, as a means of self-preservation. ¶ Economics based on falsehood leads to dissolution. Falsehood is a polite form of conquest. The lie is exploitation. The preacher has diverted us while the lawyer picked our pocket; the doctor gives you ether and accomplishes the same result ❦ Egypt, Rome and Greece lived on their slaves and outlying colonies. ¶ Slave labor is the most expensive kind. In time the land is exhausted, and the slaves die. But before this happened to the capitals that were, the aristocrats who wasted, destroyed and consumed had gotten nervous debility, and were impotent, also impudent. Then they died and the barbarian overran the land ❦ A wise Economist—and America has many—could have figured out exactly how long Babylon and Nineveh would have lasted ❦ None of these ancient civilizations produced economists. They had soothsayers, priests, lawyers, poets, artists, clowns, dramatists, orators, rhetoricians, singers, philosophers. And most of all they had guzzlers and gormands. But they had no scientists, and their philosophy, being based on augury, dreams, theology and fear, was futile and fallacious. A philosophy that is not founded on science is false in theory and base in practise. ¶ Modern business betters human environment. ¶ It means gardens, flowers, fruits, vegetables; it means quick, safe and cheap transportation of people, commodities and messages; it means books, maps, furniture, pictures, playgrounds, pure water, perfect sewerage, fresh air, sunshine, health, happiness, hope, light and love—because business gives opportunities for all to work, earn, grow and become. Business consists in the production, transportation and distribution of the things that are necessary to human life. Through this exercise of our faculties we educe the best that is in us; in other words, we get an education. ¶ Inasmuch as business supplies the necessities of life, it is impossible to have a highly evolved and noble race except where there is a science of business. Business is human service. Therefore, business is essentially a divine calling. ¶ Once men believed religion to be the chief concern of mortals here below. Other men have thought that killing is the chief concern of mortals here below. Gladstone once said, “Only two avenues of honor are open to young men in England—the army and the church.” This has been the prevailing opinion of the world for nearly two thousand years, and is the one reason why the Dark Ages were dark. During those years of night the fighting man was supreme. It was a long panic, and human evolution was blocked through fear ❦ The race crawled, crept, hid, dodged, secreted, lied and nearly died. We now say that the Science of Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity ❦ Business is intelligent, useful activity. The word “busy-ness” was coined during the time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class, who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing ❦ Men of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. But this word “business,” first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker, has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace, not busy-ness. ¶ The world can be redeemed only through business; for business means betterment, and no business can now succeed that does not add to human happiness. ¶ We believe that only the busy person is happy, and that systematic, daily, useful work is man’s greatest blessing. We are a nation of workers, builders, inventors, creators, producers. We are the richest country, per capita, in the world; and our wealth has come from the farm, the forest, the factory, the mine, the sea. We have dug, plowed, pumped smelted, refined, transported and manufactured ❦ We did not inherit our wealth, neither have we laid tribute on other countries, as did those earlier civilizations. Any individual who uses the word “commercial” as an epithet, who regards business enterprise as synonymous with graft and greed, who speaks of certain men as “self-made” and others as “educated,” who gives more attention to war than to peace, who seeks to destroy rather than to create and build up, is essentially un-American ❦ The word “education” sometimes stands for idleness, but the American Philosophy symbols work, effort, industry. It means intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable and wise busy-ness—helping yourself by helping others. ¶ The world’s greatest prizes in the future will go to the businessman. The businessman is our only scientist, and to him we must look for a Science of Economics that will eradicate poverty, disease, superstition—all that dissipates and destroys. The day is dawning!

Freedom and Responsibility

I am told that hospitals, jails, almshouses and insane-asylums are for people who are unable to care for themselves properly. Therefore, they are sent to these places, where men and women, specially delegated, spend their lives looking after them. ¶ So it seems that the incompetent, in addition to not adding to the wealth of the world, actually take competent people from a world of usefulness to minister to them. After a few years as a guard, the man is quite as incompetent as are the prisoners—and more so—because the prisoner works and the guard does nothing but guard. ¶ And for the man who works there is a chance; but the man who doesn’t is damned, body and soul. Hospitals, prisons and poorhouses are places where people live who can’t or won’t work. These places do not cure our bodily or social ills—they are palliatives, all. They do not prevent incompetence nor stop the production of the weak and incompetent. Every year we have to pull down our hospitals and build greater. Ben Lindsey, Luther Burbank, John Davey, Horace Fletcher, all men essentially of one type, are working to shut off the regular annual crop of criminals ❦ Preachers have preached their silly tales of where we came from and where we are going to, directing the attention of men from this world to another, and with myth, miracle, mystery—with dead languages, dead ideas and dead formulas—have scared the world stiff. That’s why we are sick. ¶ We have bred from the worst in the worst possible way, under the worst conditions ❦ We have it thundered at us from a million pulpits that the indissoluble marriage-tie was a sacred scheme, devised by God Almighty, who also provided that women shall be incarcerated in a kitchen. The result has been the doormat wife, with a liar for a husband—for men lie only to inferiors and tyrants—and a brood of legitimate candidates for hospitals, poorhouses and prisons. ¶ Christianity was absolutely supreme for a thousand years. Did she abolish poverty, disease and crime? Not exactly—these things increased under Christian rule. And Religion is not yet willing to step aside and give Science a chance ❦ Revivalists get a thousand children in a room and play on their nervous sensibilities in the name of the Gentle Christ, and then the doctors vaccinate them with pus from diseased animals, and we wonder why they die or go insane! The Clerics killed Ferrer because he was working to make men free. ¶ Freedom means responsibility. And responsibility means the making of decisions. By deciding for ourselves we grow, and this exercise of the will in deciding what is best to do and doing it is the only method of attaining growth known in Nature. But woman’s decisions have been made for her by male man, and so low has she sunk that millions of women are willing that this should continue. The passion for freedom is Nature’s cry for growth. ¶ A judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New York once said to me: “Divorce should be as free as marriage, and if it were, there would be no more separations than there are now. We give men and women the right to put their heads into a noose, but decline to let them pull their heads out. Those whom God hath joined together no man can put asunder. Also, the word ‘illegitimate’ should be stricken from the judicial record, forever. An act may be illegitimate, but a child, never.” ¶ “Why don’t you talk like this in public?” I asked. And the answer was, “If I did, I’d lose my job inside of twenty-four hours.” “Well,” I said, “I’ll say it for you.” “If you do and mention my name I’ll—but, say, you will not, you must not quote me. You can agitate—I can only conform ❦ We are ruled by the archaic. You are working to make men free, and only a free people can be a healthy, happy, virtuous, self-reliant and competent people. Keep ’er going, but on your life, don’t quote me. Here’s two dolodocci to renew my subscription to _The Fra_.”

Corporal Punishment

Children’s diseases are a logical result of children’s beatings ❦ To shock, pain, grieve, anger or violently suppress a human being is to run a grave risk of lowering that individual’s physical vitality to a point where the person is an easy prey for any disease that happens along. That which interferes with the vital functions, even in a transient way, is not wise nor good. ¶ Extreme anger is apt to be followed by lassitude or some marked physical disturbance. In fact, it is well known that hate secretes a toxin which manifests itself in the breath, and in the tissues ❦ What we call a disease is a symptom of vitality decreased to a point where the forces of dissolution are active. A shock which will blanch the cheek disturbs the circulation, and interferes with the digestion. ¶ Perhaps the whipping did not mutilate, but it angered and shocked until a fever followed. Dyspepsia is a matter of the nerves. Much of our bad theology, if we could trace it, would be found to have its rise in indigestion. And that it has caused pathological disturbances of countless varieties, from catarrh to acute mania, is known to every thinking physician. ¶ And of all causes of sickness, I know of none that has borne a greater crop of cosmic cockleburs than the old-time plan of whipping children. When Solomon put forth that unwise saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” an extent of harm was done the human race that no pen can compute. That one statement should have convinced every intelligent person that the Bible was just like every other book—good and bad in spots. If accepted literally, the Bible is an atrocious book, false, obscene and misleading, tending to insanity, disease and death. Fortunately, we are now allowed to take the Bible as the garbled literature of a barbaric and superstitious past, collected from many sources, and good and bad, wise and silly, sublime and vicious—all as the case may be. ¶ That millions of parents have bolstered their brutal tendency to punish and inflict pain by that remark about sparing the rod, every one knows. And always the tendency to beat the little thing, too weak to strike back, was more to ease the feelings of the parent than to improve and benefit the child. Moreover, it was educating the child, for the youngster grew up and inflicted upon its own children all the horror that it had, itself, endured. It was heir to the brutality, heir to the Bible, heir to the strap, birch, rod, ferrule and hairbrush, so these were in daily use in all Christian homes. ¶ In my childhood, I remember a Baptist preacher who lived neighbor to us ❦ This man was loud, lacrimose, brutal, a devout Christian, and a preacher of power, snatching many souls from the burning. The way that gospel sharp used to pass out his tidings of great joy broke in on my childish fancies, so I became convinced that if God was really just, that pious, bawling beast who fed fat on our chickens would go to hell, sure. But I kept my suspicions to myself. This preacher had a strap cut from a side of sole-leather—a strap three feet long, with tails, with which he used to beat up one of his nine or ten children every day ❦ From the baby wearing diapers to a big boy of sixteen, and a girl full-grown, they all got it. I have heard their cries for mercy ring out on a winter’s night when they would run out into the yard to escape their pious parent intent on saving their souls. ¶ Once, one of his daughters, a girl of fifteen, spent ten cents for a blue ribbon, and appeared in church with the ribbon in her hair. Her father saw her from his place in the pulpit. He noted her mark of pride ❦ He denounced her before the congregation, and expressed a hypocritical, pious pain that his own flesh and blood should be guilty of such devilish frivolity. Then he ordered her out of the church. When he got home after the service, he fell upon her with the strap. It pained him, but he felt it was his duty to correct her. The mother was a sick and undone little creature, who twice had twins, and bore at least one baby a year, except the year when her lord and master crossed the plains and got alkalied. And this woman really believed, too, that the children should be punished, and so she had a way of reporting them, thus, “I’ll tell your father on you when he comes home!” She, too, believed in Solomon, and she believed also in her husband’s religion. Poor thing, she was too busy bearing babies to really think anything out for herself ❦ But that Sunday afternoon, when her husband felt it his duty to whip the daughter, the girl ran to the mother and demanded protection. The good man was laying on the strap, anywhere, over the girl’s head, shoulders, her arms and hands, although usually he picked out some choice portion of anatomy and did an artistic job. ¶ Yet this time the girl fought back, and she was only a slim slip of a thing. But now, the womanhood in her was aroused. She felt insulted. She struck, she bit, she scratched, she screamed. And then she ran to her mother ❦ Something in the little yellow mother was now aroused. Her child was being abused. Well, what of it! Hadn’t she seen these whippings going on daily for twenty years? But this was different ❦ The adolescent girl had only given way to her innocent and natural desire to put forth a little color and be beautiful. Now it was brute man against woman. The mother seized the strap. It was jerked through her clenched hands with such violence that it took the skin with it. The preacher had backed the girl into a corner, and with one hand clutching her hair was laying on the strap with the other, in the name of the Lord. The mother was behind. Suddenly she seized a long-handled skillet that was on the kitchen-stove, she swung it with both hands, and it landed square on the man’s head ❦ He was dazed, and turned half-around. Then he got another one. He was getting a kitchen shower. One sharp edge of the skillet skinned one of his ears and cut it half-off, as Peter touched up the servant of the High Priest. The blood ran in a stream. The woman seeing the gore, and amazed at her own temerity, fell in a dead swoon. The girl escaped and ran over to our house. My father and mother hurried over, and, kid-like, I followed. We found the preacher on his knees, praying over his wife, begging God for her recovery ❦ He told us he had stumbled and fallen against the cook-stove. My father took a stitch in the ecclesiastic souse, and washed off the blood of the lamb ❦ The woman soon recovered and was put to bed. The girl took care of herself. She told my mother the truth of the incident, but was cautioned not to repeat it to others, and she didn’t. ¶ The next Sunday the holy man preached as usual, unctuous and oily, smiling and smirking, thundering ponderously betimes, warning us to flee the wrath to come. ¶ This daughter died at eighteen, of galloping consumption. One of the boys achieved considerable local fame as a horse-thief. I believe he was the only one of that big family who reached maturity, and this was because he had a pachyderm hide and a heart of gneiss ❦ Several of the children died in babyhood, the rest ran the gamut of about all the diseases in the books. And finally, the Lord’s will was done. A long row of little white headstones in the village graveyard marks where they sleep, freed from the strap, awaiting a glorious resurrection at the Last Great Day. ¶ What killed them? The strap, I should say, carried to its logical limit, with a plentiful lack of love. Spare the rod and save the child, for love is life, and hate is death. Love is better than a cat-o’-nine-tails, and Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, was a lobster—at least part of the time.

Purpled Ease

_No quarter! We want all that you possess. We will be content
with nothing less than all that you possess. We want in our
hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind. Here are
our hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take your
governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from
you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as the
peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your
metropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands._—_Jack
London._

The above is taken from a postal card sent out by the publishers of Jack London’s books. Jack is a Marxian Socialist all day long, and he is much more frank than most of his party. All the other Socialists I ever met, alternately admit and deny that what they want is a division of property ❦ Jack London stands by his guns and declares, “We want all you possess.” And when he says “you” he means the people who own property. He is talking to the owners and managers of the “tools,” by which he means the railroads, mills, shops, stores, factories, mines and steamships. That is to say, Jack is going to take things away from the present owners and give these things to “we.” Jack assumes that property in the hands of the Socialist would be much better managed than it is now in the hands of those who own it. ¶ This threat of Jack’s would be a tragic thing if Jack and his pals were really going to do all they say they are. But they are not going to do anything but talk. That is their “hold.” Folks who can, do; those who can’t, chin. Jack is a writing tramp who roams the world for thrills and copy. He is kindly, intelligent, amusing, indolent, and absolutely without the power to manage anything—even his own tongue. He is a good fellow; and he makes folks think. In fact, he is the sparker to this paragraph. Jack made me think, he made me mad, he made me laugh, and he made me write. Personally I like the rogue—he is most companionable, especially if you have no work to do. ¶ The tendency of property of every sort is towards depreciation and dissolution. Only eternal vigilance and tireless industry keep a manufacturing plant or a farm effective ❦ Jack does not know this. Jack thinks that to own property is to be immune from work. The truth is, ownership is a responsibility and a burden. Most of the Socialists I know do not work—they only talk about work. ¶ What they want is an orthodox heaven of ease, where the harps are always in tune and the robes are always laundered. If Jack could take away the property from those who have it and set them to work like peasants and “runty clerks,” then the Socialists would live in “purpled ease,” as Jack and many other childish, silly folks think that rich people do now. ¶ There is an “idle rich” class, but it is a very small class, and it is not made up of the people who manage things. It is made up of remittance-men—and some of these are Socialists, who play at equality, badger the busy, and patronize the poor. Leave the idle rich to Nemesis. Disease and death are at their heels. ¶ The men who operate our great enterprises—mills, factories, elevators, banks and department-stores—know nothing of ease. Their working-hours are not limited by the whistle ❦ They sweat blood to meet payrolls and to keep the wheels of trade revolving. Modern business is a most exacting taskmaster. It says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It demands every ounce of energy its devotee has. The thought of a “good time” is not for the businessman. He works, and works eternally. He works because he can’t stop ❦ And this is the man the Socialists are going to send to the fields! Jack London’s view of railroading is only from the bumpers. His philosophy can not deceive the section-hands, nor the train-crews, nor the operators, nor the managers. They work, and they work with care, precision, energy and economy. Each one does the thing he can do best. That is what we all do. If Jack’s hands were the strong hands he pretends, they would be grabbing plow-handles or a shovel, instead of reaching for a hand-me-out ❦ If the hands of Jack and his friends were strong enough, they would own this property towards which they now look with lustful eyes. ¶ The world will be redeemed; it is being redeemed. It is being redeemed not by those who shake the red rag of wordy warfare, who threaten and demand, but by its entrepreneurs—its workers, its inventors, its toilers—the men and women who do the duty that lies nearest them. ¶ The fallacy of the Jack philosophy lies in the assumption that the industries of the world would be much better managed by Jack and his kith than by the men who are now at the helm ❦ In other words, Jack’s claim is that Socialists are a peculiar, separate and distinct class of able, unselfish, competent persons with hands especially strong, who accidentally are out of the game, but who are soon to take possession of things and run everything in such a way that Society will be blessed and benefited as never before. ¶ The fact is, Socialists are not a separate and distinct class. We are all children of Adam and Eve, and the differences in us are more apparent than real ❦ We all have our limitations—read Carlyle! The weaknesses of humanity are inherent in Socialists—only perhaps in greater degree. Their doctrine of reaching Utopia through firing the men who now manage things is the doctrine of despair. Fabian Socialism is something else—it is opportunism ❦ It does what it can, now. It does not wait for a revolution—rather it believes in evolution ❦ We climb step by step. Fabian Socialism does not preach class hatred. In fact, it does not recognize that either the “class” or the “mass” exists. People who belong to one so-called class today are in another tomorrow. Most of our so-called predatory rich wiggled up out of the mass—and they may be poor again ❦ Many of the poor will be rich. Watch the immigrants landing at Ellis Island. Can you prophesy to what “class” these boys and girls—curious, quaint, half-frightened—will belong twenty years from now? Many of them will be contractors, lawyers, bankers, scientists, doctors, teachers—it is all a matter of individual energy, intelligence and desire, modified by the antics of the gods of Chance. There is no conspiracy in America to hold people down and under. Class hatred, represented by Marxian Socialism, says there is. There is nothing so savage, cruel and blindly unjust as class hatred. ¶ I’ve been accused of class hatred because I make statements from time to time that seem to reveal a lack of appreciation for the three learned professions. Granted that I do, it is not the man I criticize—it is the office. Doctors, lawyers and preachers are men, caught in a certain environment, trying to win the world’s plaudits and plunder in a certain way ❦ I may consider the way a mistaken one, but I surely do not hate the man. And the fact that I have hundreds of close friends among the professions proves that I am not entirely misunderstood in this matter ❦ Doctors are men. Lawyers are men. Preachers are men. So, also, are judges. Marxian Socialists are men, and all these are very much like the people with whom they mix and associate ❦ Rogue clients evolve rogue lawyers to do their work; fool patients evolve fool doctors; and superstitious, silly people in the pew secrete a pretentious, punk party in the pulpit. For the man, himself, I have only admiration, respect and love—and sometimes pity. I may despise his business and some of his acts, but how can I hate the man, when I realize that his life is a part of the Great One from which mine is derived? This man may quit his business and take up something else. ¶ The criminal is not wholly a criminal—he is only a criminal at times. Some of his impulses are good, and most of them may be excellent; but one mistaken act will brand him forever as a criminal in the world’s assize. ¶ Under the same conditions, if I were of the same quality and temper, I would have done the same ❦ If I criticize lawyers, doctors and preachers, it is simply because there courses through my veins a quality and kind of corpuscle which fits me eminently for success either as a lawyer, doctor or preacher. “A hair, perhaps, divides the false and true,” says old Omar. ¶ Yes, and I missed becoming a practising physician by a hair. Had I gone into Medicine I would have had a team of bays, a coon driver, and a whisker that would have put all the other doctors in my town to the bad. I have the fingers of a diagnostician, a voice that soothes, a presence that heals. If you didn’t have it, I could convince both myself and you that you had. Then I would have cut into your cosmos to find out who was right—and I would have charged you five hundred dollars for the operation. If I were wrong in my diagnosis, you would never have known the difference, for on occasion I can be discreet. ¶ The law is a game that lures: it isn’t a matter of securing justice—not that. Truth has a secondary place in the practise of law, and only very ignorant folks imagine otherwise. The law is a game, and you play to win. The whole thing is fascinating. It is a clash of wits—mind matching mind. As a lawyer, I would have quibbled you six nights and days together; and I would have been a legal lallapaloosa. ¶ Bill Reedy writes, “We are all touched with the essence of the thing against which we strive.” And Bill is sometimes right. That is all we can expect, even from the wisest and best of men, and Bill is both ❦ Yes, I would take kindly to the law, for guff, bluff and stuff come easily within my grasp. I can cross-buttock a fact; side-step an equity; befuddle a judge—some judges; kerflumix a jury; juggle with justice; put reason astride of a barb-wire fence; and prevent a witness from keeping his oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And a fat fee would always reanimate any flagging zeal I might have as to the justice of my client’s cause. ¶ As for the pulpit, I would take it now, were it not so securely fastened down—hypocrisy, gush, glibness, Chicago Tongue,—yes, let Billy Sunday look to his laurels! I, too, could tear a passion to tatters and make the judicious grieve. I could hypnotize myself into a belief that souls were “lost,” like collar-buttons under a bureau, and I was the one man to rescue them ❦ Sure! Especially am I qualified for making Pastoral Calls—or I was once. Also, I have great capacity for chicken-pie, pretense, cheap social honors, and the applause of the unthinking. As a Churchman, reversed haberdashery would have done me proud; breeks would become me, for my shanks have individuality; and a dinky hat would set off my sky-piece in a way not only to arouse curiosity but mirth. Let Dean Hart beware—his job is not so secure as he thinks! ¶ Doctor Samuel Johnson was for a time a member of Parliament in the capacity of cub reporter. One certain speech he reported, and when the gentleman who had made the speech read the report he didn’t exactly recognize it. So he went to Johnson and said, “Look ’ere, young feller, I didn’t say that.” “Certainly not,” said Johnson, “certainly not; but that is what you should have said!” ❦ In recounting his reportorial experiences, Johnson was once asked this question: “What kind of men are there in the House of Commons?” And Johnson replied, “Take the first fifty men you find walking up Fleet Street.” Johnson knew that all men, regardless of their condition in life, are, at heart, very much alike. ¶ And when Fate has flung a man into a certain situation, the man will, if it is a place of some honor, give himself all the credit for having attained it. If it is a position that perhaps carries no honor, the party will always blame some one else for putting him there. We credit ourselves for our successes; we blame others for our faults. Also, we justify ourselves in everything we do ❦ And wise men see plainly that this self-justification is a part of Nature’s great law of self-preservation. The exaggerated Ego is a primal necessity. Good men all and everywhere multiply the value of their work by ten. ¶ Success in life consists in convincing yourself that you are the whole cheese, and then getting the world to accept your view. Rostand’s rooster was fully assured in his own mind that the sun would not come up if he did not crow. The hens being told this by the rooster cackled it back to him, and it became a crystallized part of the orthodox Zeitgeist ❦ And it would have so remained for all time, but for an accident—an accident of love, when a guinea-hen became enamored of the boss of the barnyard. So Life is a paradox—and love is not only illusion, but it is also the great enlightener. ¶ Now, I know Jack London; I know the proletariat; I know the “predatory rich.” And this I know, that so far as happiness is concerned each and all of them have an equal portion ❦ The struggle in getting out of the mass has given Jack’s predatory party a certain power, but he has paid for it with his peace of mind, and has to struggle to hold it. “Purpled ease” is a thing that exists only in Jack’s mental vacuum ❦ That is where the tramp has the start of the millionaire. The tramp can dream it; the other fellow has no time even to think it. ¶ When John Wesley saw the condemned criminal being taken to Tyburn Tree, he turned to his friend and exclaimed, “But for the grace of God, there goes John Wesley!” When Walt Whitman looked upon the wounded and dying soldier, he said, “I am that man!” Emerson wrote in his _Essay on Justice_, “I have in me the capacity for every crime.” ¶ And here is what I say to Jack London: If you and your pals were in possession of the tools of trade, you would commit all the so-called crimes of which you accuse the industrial leaders, and more. The fact that your heart is full of hate proves your unfitness to govern. ¶ These men now in power have climbed step by step to their present position, and at every step had to prove their worth, before they were allowed to go on. These tools of which you speak are sharp, and men like you, unskilled in their use, would cut others with them, and they in turn would take the tools and cut your head off. ¶ Your hands are not as strong as you imagine. The strength of the hands of men is not proven by assertion—it is proven by use. How far can you put the shot? Power unrestrained is always tragic. The world is held in place by the opposition of forces. The men in power are ballasted by responsibility, as never before in history. You have your use as an agitator; so go it, Jack, and say your say. ¶ That fly on the wheel of the chariot of Achilles said, “Oh, just see what a dust we do kick up!” ¶ And this remark of the fly has added to the gaiety of nations. But get enough flies on the chariot of Achilles and not a wheel revolves. The Egyptians in Moses’ time battled with swarms of flies, when the flies scored home-runs and base-hits. Self-interest and the tug of inertia have hypnotized you, Jack, until you, being down in the gutter—through choice—see only your side. Yet, your barbaric yawp is being heard, and I am your antipodal organ, passing it along. ¶ Meanwhile you ride on the bumpers provided by the Trusts, and these bumpers carry you forward to your destination. The pie you eat is made by the Pie Trust, yet you find it palatable and ask for more. If the Pie Trust didn’t make good pies and sell them at a fair valuation, housewives would make their own pies. Or they might find pie-timber too expensive, and then you would go pieless ❦ The great consolidated industries serve society, and their very existence turns on their ability to minister and to help. That which does not serve, dies. If the Trusts overcharge they invite competition and dissolution. ¶ Success lies in co-operation and reciprocity, and the hope of the future is in the fact that the world knows it. We can’t go back to chaos, and start over. We must go on. Light lies ahead, not behind. We are not going to take off the train-crews, and put the tramps in possession. There are accidents occasionally now, but there would be more then. Safety lies in getting rid of the tramps. One wide-awake, vigilant man at the switch is worth more to society than all the tramps who ride the brakebeams. Get to work, Jack, and if you can’t find the job you want, then take the one you can get! To prove yourself able to rastle a big job, get busy and take care of a little one. Power does not reveal itself in scolding. And with all your getting, get busy! ¶ Yours for the Evolution!

Consecrated Lives