Thomas Campbell Foster

“ The very tide of life is made fuller thus, even as the tide of thought is made fuller by turning from mere reflection to a interchange of ideas and thoughts with those around. While there is work to be done in the way of increasing others' happiness, no man—not even the most jaded and satiated—need ask himself the sickly question, "Is life worth living?" ”

“ The fact really is, that the children of selfish parents are as a rule more selfish in character than those of the unselfish; they grow up to be as unpleasant in their ways as the children of careless, unwatchful parents; and their unpleasantness is more apt to be permanent. Yet the unchecked ways of children whose parents yield unwisely to them, illustrate well on a small scale (even though happily the mischief is often transient) how the assertion of just claims, and the restraint of wrong-doing, involve a form of egoism which must be regarded as a duty. ”

“ The one loses the power of enjoyment through his over-anxiety for self-gratification, the other unconsciously pursues—through his kindliness of character—the very course which a wise and thoughtful consideration of the plan best qualified to secure self-gratification would suggest. The one, while caring unduly for himself, is exhausting and satiating his power to care for any form of pleasure, the other while ministering to the enjoyments of others is fostering his own capacity for enjoyment. ”

“ Those who see what is needed, or at least the direction in which improvement may reasonably be sought, yet remain silent in the belief that it is no business of theirs, are as unintelligent as those who stupidly assent to what—without thinking—they suppose to be good for them and to be provided for by those who know better than themselves; though often, when traced to their source, the measures in vogue are found to be of no better origin than the body itself which submits to them.
A low standard of intelligence in the community affects the welfare of all, in many different ways. ”

“ If we were, we might point out that in such cases there is much more at issue than the mere value of the lives at stake. If I saw a child, weak-minded, crippled, of small worth as a member of the body social, in danger from which I could save it at the risk or even the certainty of losing my own life (which I might judge of more value to the community) , I trust that, whether I had to act on impulse or after reflection, I should act, not as weighing the value of that life against my own, but rather as considering what would be the evil influence of cowardice and meanness in a community. ”

“ Even mere material success—which does not always mean happiness—is not advanced in the longrun by disregard of others. The man of business gains in unnumbered ways by consideration for the rights and interests of his fellow-workers, and loses in as many by selfish disregard for them. Nay, even in the trivial affairs of ordinary life, at home and abroad, the kindly and considerate gain constantly, while the careless and indifferent as constantly suffer. ”

“ Grant the human race to be what we know it to be, a constantly developing family, and the contradiction vanishes—we simply learn that what is best for one time is not best for another, even among one and the same people; how much more, then, must the best rules of conduct vary when different peoples as well as different times are considered! ”

“ I shall still be at issue with those who assert, apparently without thinking—certainly without alleging any reasons—that conduct and duty are not matters for scientific discussion at all, that they have no scientific aspect, and that such considerations as the progress and improvement of life, the increase of the fullness and happiness of life, and so forth, have no bearing whatever, and should have none, on our opinion as to what is right or wrong. ”

“ The same is true of every system of conduct ever propounded. We may believe the rule sound and good in its own time and place, "Whosoever shall smite you on the right cheek turn to him the other also," and "If any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." A man may believe these rules to be more than sound and good, to be of divine origin—yet recognize that in our own time, and here, in Europe or America, the rules would work ill. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we had found a system of perfect altruism commending itself as best, the acceptance of such a system would be no sacrificing of self to others, but would mean the acceptance of the principle that every one else was bound to assist in all his ways and wishes the accepter of this seemingly altruistic code—to sympathize with him in all his sorrows, and to care for him far more than for themselves. ”

“ But the selfishness of what is called patriotism—though it is as unlike true patriotism as personal selfishness is unlike due and wise self-regard—still remains as a virtue in the minds of most men, though characterized by inherent defects akin to those which belong to personal, family, and parochial selfishness. Men fail, indeed, to recognize any selfishness in undue care for what is called a man's own country—though with but vague and indefinite meaning. ”

“ Who can doubt, as he compares the worn and weary look of one with the bright and cheerful aspect of the other, that regard for others counts for something toward the welfare and the happiness of self? ”

“ The care of self will be felt as a duty to others; due care of others will become a source of gratification to self. Society will be simply, on an enlarged scale and in a more varied form, such a community as might be formed by a number of kindly, well-meaning persons, of good capacity and pleasing manners, brought together for purposes of travel, research, or pleasure. In such a community it would be felt that each person's first duty was to take due care of self, first as just to himself, and secondly (yet chiefly) as a duty to the rest of the community. ”

“ In such cases, while it is by no means desirable to give up ways which are in themselves essential to the well-being of the society of which we form part, we must—as a duty—resist the encroachments of objectionable persons—not the less that the matter insisted upon is one to which we attach importance, so that our firmness has its egoistic aspect. Men are but children of a larger growth, and there is no surer or better way of eliminating at least the grosser forms of selfishness than by so resisting unjust claims that they—simply fail. ”

“ We have only to consider the condition of any European country, our own included, in the good old times which so many ignorant persons regret as a sort of golden age, to see how unsatisfactory must be the state of a nation in which only a stern code of laws, or the dread of retaliation, protects each against the undue egoism of his fellows. Internal wrong-doing and the necessity for constant struggle to resist such wrong-doing made each nation unstable. ”

“ Which is better?—to proclaim with our lips rules of conduct which none of us really follow, and to denounce those who show that the rules which the best-minded among us really strive to follow are such as tend most to improve the condition of the body social, or frankly to recognize the just and equitable rules of conduct which after all are the real guides of the actions of all well-meaning men? ”

“ The evil effects of self-neglect, whether in the form of overwork, or asceticism, or avoidance of all such pleasurable emotions as lighten the toils and worries of life, or in other ways, affect posterity as well as the individual life. Ill-health and weakness are transmitted to children and to children's children through many generations. It is not going too far to say that on the average more misery is wrought and to a much greater number by neglect of self than can be matched by any amount of benefit conferred during life, still less by such benefit as directly arises from self-sacrifice. ”

“ Directly and indirectly, in loss of blood and material, in the paralysis of trade as well as in increased expenditure, our people has to pay for its imperial instincts, just as the man of over-bearing, hard, and selfish nature has to pay in many ways for the gratification of his instincts imperious. There are the same reasons, based on material profit, for inculcating just and considerate dealings between peoples as there are for encouraging just and considerate dealings between man and man. ”

“ There the best men keep out of politics for a reason which rightly understood should make all the best men take most anxious interest in politics. Because in America offices are too often filled by mere adventurers, because bribery and corruption are rife, and because fraudulent conduct is common among politicians, therefore should it be held the duty of every right-minded American to do his best to enforce the wholesome changes so obviously required—as they might be enforced if so many of the best Americans were duly altruistic. ”

“ By overwork and self-sacrifice—self-devotion if you will—a man may in a few years effect much material good to those around him—perhaps more than in the time he could have effected by a wiser apportionment of his work and strength. But at the end of a much shorter period of work than he could have accomplished with ease and pleasantness, ere a tithe perhaps of the good he was really competent to do has been effected, his health breaks down, his strength fails him, he can no longer do the good he wanted so much to do. ”

“ But it should be remembered that a moral law which commends to each man a particular line of conduct, is a law which, if accepted and followed by all, influences each man by the effect it produces on all the rest. Thus, a rule of conduct seemingly egoistic, and really egoistic as affecting the individual, becomes, in any society which accepts and obeys it, purely altruistic in its effect ”

“ It might be shown that the man who selfishly seeks his own comfort really goes the worst possible way to secure his own happiness. But, apart from this, such a man is not the man of whom I am speaking. I am inquiring what the man should do who really wishes to increase the happiness of those around him most effectively; and I show how his care for their happiness involves, if he is wise, a due regard for his own happiness and well-being also—and even primarily, because his existence and his fitness to do good necessarily came before the good he may be able to do. ”

“ As men rise in the scale of being, they pass from the sense of duty within the family to the sense of duty between man and man throughout society, and thence—though as yet this development is very limited—to the sense of right between different races and nations. We have seen that undue care of self is self-injurious and eventually must be self-destructive in the family. There is a corresponding law for undue care of self in social relations, as there is (however persistently at present the vast majority of men overlook or fail to see the fact) for undue regard of self among the nations. ”

“ I may remark in passing that the man who most freely acknowledged, as a matter of pure reasoning, that in such a case he ought to weigh his own life's worth against the worth of that other life would probably be the first to risk his life for others; while the man who made cheap parade of his readiness to sacrifice his life would probably be the readiest to slink away at the moment of danger. We are not considering, however, what men should do under sudden impulse of danger affecting others—and especially the weak and tender. ”

“ Consider the pleasure given by a painting representing a scene which moves our sympathies, or the delight with which we read some work of fiction in which kindly emotions are dealt with, and it will be seen how large a portion of our æsthetic gratifications depend on our sympathy with others. The hard and selfish care little for art and nothing for fiction. ”

“ If, instead of indicating a due regard for self and a proper subordination of self to others, our study of the morality of happiness had indicated as best for the community a series of duties directed solely to the benefit of self, yet the adoption of such a moral code by all men would be altogether unselfish, seeing that it would mean the forsaking of all right or title to help or sympathy from others; and others are many, while self is but one. ”

“ How should we bear to lose the pleasures which painting and sculpture, music and fiction, afford us? How even should we bear to change the pleasures given by the kindly and sympathetic art of to-day for the harsher effects of the arts of harder times when only deeds of conquest or ceremonial observances were represented in paintings and sculptures, suggested in musical strains, or recited in story or in song? ”