evil cause in so far as, despite the loyalty that it arouses in me, it is destructive of loy alty in the world of my fellows. My cause is, indeed, always such as to involve some loyalty to loyalty, because, if I am loyal to any cause at all, I have fellow-servants whose loyalty mine supports. But in so far as my cause is a predatory cause, which lives by overthrowing the loyalties of others, it is an evil cause, because it involves disloyalty to the very cause of loyalty itself.
IV In view of these considerations, we are now able still further to simplify our problem by laying stress upon one more of those very features which seemed, but a moment since, to complicate the matter so hopelessly. Loy alty, as we have defined it, is the willing de votion of a self to a cause. In answering the ethical individualists, we have insisted that all of the higher types of loyalty involve auton omous choice. The cause that is to appeal to me at all must indeed have some elemental THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY fascination for me. It must stir me, arouse me, please me, and in the end possess me. Moreover, it must, indeed, be set before me by my social order as a possible, a practically significant, a living cause, which binds many selves in the unity of one life. But, never theless, if I am really awake to the signifi cance of my own moral choices, I must be in the position of accepting this cause, as the Speaker of the House, in the incident that I have narrated, had freely accepted his Speak- ership. My cause cannot be merely forced upon me. It is I who make it my own. It is I who willingly say: "I have no eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this cause shall command." However much the cause may seem to be assigned to me by my social sta tion, I must cooperate in the choice of the cause, before the act of loyalty is complete.
Since this is the case, since my loyalty never is my mere fate, but is always also my choice, I can of course determine my loyalty, at least to some extent, by the consideration of the actual good and ill which my proposed cause LOYALTY TO LOYALTY does to mankind. And since I now have the main criterion of the good and ill of causes before me, I can define a principle of choice which may so guide me that my loyalty shall become a good, not merely to myself, but to mankind.
This principle is now obvious. I may state it thus: In so far as it lies in your power, so choose your cause and so serve it, that, by reason of your choice and of your service, there shall be more loyalty in the world rather than less. And, in fact, so choose and so serve your individual cause as to secure thereby the greatest possible increase of loy alty amongst men. More briefly: In choos ing and in serving the cause to which you are to be loyal, be, in any case, loyal to loyalty.
This precept, I say, will express how one should guide his choice of a cause, in so far as he considers not merely his own supreme good, but that of mankind. That such auton omous choice is possible, tends, as we now see, not to complicate, but to simplify our moral situation. For if you regard men's loyalty THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY as their fate, if you think that a man must be loyal simply to the cause which tradition sets before him, without any power to direct his own moral attention, then indeed the conflict of loyalties seems an insoluble problem; so that, if men find themselves loyally involved in feuds, there is no way out. But if, indeed, choice plays a part, — a genuine even if limited part, in directing the individual's choice of the cause to which he is to be loyal, then indeed this choice may be so directed that loyalty to the universal loyalty of all mankind shall be furthered by the actual choices which each enlightened loyal person makes when he selects his cause.
At the close of our first discussion we sup posed the question to be asked, Where, in all our complex and distracted modern world, in which at present cause wars with cause, shall we find a cause that is certainly worthy of our loyalty? This question, at this very moment, has received in our discussion an LOYALTY TO LOYALTY answer which you may feel to be so far pro visional, --perhaps unpractical, --but which you ought to regard as, at least in principle, somewhat simple and true to human nature. Loyalty is a good, a supreme good. If I my self could but find a worthy cause, and serve it as the Speaker served the House, having nei ther eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as that cause should command, then my highest human good, in so far as I am indeed an active being, would be mine. But this very good of loyalty is no peculiar privilege of mine; nor is it good only for me. It is an universally human good. For it is simply the finding of a harmony of the self and the world, — such a harmony as alone can content any human being.
In these lectures I do not found my ar gument upon some remote ideal. I found my case upon taking our poor passionate human nature just as we find it. This "eager anxious being" of ours, as Gray calls it, is a being that we can find only in social ties, and that we, nevertheless, can never fulfil THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY without a vigorous self-assertion. We are by nature proud, untamed, restless, insatiable in our private self-will. We are also imitative, plastic, and in bitter need of ties. We pro foundly want both to rule and to be ruled. We must be each of us at the centre of his own active world, and yet each of us longs to be in harmony with the very outermost heavens that encompass, with the lofty order liness of their movements, all our restless doings. The stars fascinate us, and yet we also want to keep our own feet upon our solid human earth. Our fellows, meanwhile, over whelm us with the might of their customs, and we in turn are inflamed with the natu rally unquenchable longing that they should somehow listen to the cries of our every in dividual desire.
Now this divided being of ours demands reconciliation with itself; it is one long strug gle for unity. Its inner and outer realms are naturally at war. Yet it wills both realms. It wants them to become one. Such unity, however, only loyalty furnishes to us, --loy- LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY ally, which finds the inner self intensified and exalted even by the very act of outward look ing and of upward looking, of service and obedience, — loyalty, which knows its eyes and its tongue to be never so much and so proudly its own as when it earnestly insists that it can neither see nor speak except as the cause de mands, — loyalty, which is most full of life at the instant when it is most ready to become weary, or even to perish in the act of devotion to its own. Such loyalty unites private passion and outward conformity in one life. This is the very essence of loyalty. Now loyalty has these characters in any man who is loyal. Its emotions vary, indeed, endlessly with the temperaments of its adherents; but to them all it brings the active peace of that rest in a painful life, — that rest such as we found the mystic, Meister Eckhart, fully ready to prize. Loyalty, then, is a good for all men. And it is in any man just as much a true good as my loyalty could be in me. And so, then, if indeed I seek a cause, a worthy cause, what cause could be more worthy than the THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYA-LTY cause of loyalty to loyalty; that is, the cause of making loyalty prosper amongst men? If I could serve that cause in a sus tained and effective life, if some practical work for the furtherance of universal human loyalty could become to me what the House was to the Speaker, then indeed my own life- task would be found; and I could then be assured at every instant of the worth of my cause by virtue of the very good that I per sonally found in its service.
Here would be for me not only an unity of inner and outer, but an unity with the unity of all human life. What I sought for myself I should then be explicitly seeking for my whole world. All men would be my fellow-servants of my cause. In principle I should be opposed to no man's loyalty. I should be opposed only to men's blindness in their loyalty, I should contend only against that tragic disloyalty to loyalty which the feuds of humanity now exemplify. I should preach to all others, I should strive to practise myself, that active mutual furtherance of universal loyalty which LOYALTY TO LOYALTY is what humanity obviously most needs, if indeed loyalty, just as the willing devotion of a self to a cause, is a supreme good.
And since all who are human are as capable of loyalty as they are of reason, since the plainest and the humblest can be as true- hearted as the great, I should nowhere miss the human material for my task. I should know, meanwhile, that if indeed loyalty, unlike the "mercy" of Portia's speech, is not always mightiest in the mightiest, it certainly, like mercy, becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. So that I should be sure of this good of loyalty as something worthy to be carried, so far as I could carry it, to every body, lofty or humble.
Thus surely it would be humane and reason able for me to define my cause to myself, — if only I could be assured that there is indeed some practical way of making loyalty to loyalty the actual cause of my life. Our question therefore becomes this: Is there a practical way of serving the universal human cause of loyalty to loyalty? And if there is THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY such a way, what is it? Can we see how per sonally so to act that we bring loyalty on earth to a fuller fruition, to a wider range of efficacy, to a more effective sovereignty over the lives of men? If so, then indeed we can see how to work for the cause of the genuine kingdom of heaven.
VI Yet I fear that as you have listened to this sketch of a possible and reasonable cause, such as could be a proper object of our loy alty, you will all the while have objected: This may be a definition of a possible cause, but it is an unpractical definition. For what is there that one can do to further the loyalty of mankind in general? Humanitarian efforts are an old story. They constantly are limited in their effectiveness both by the narrowness of our powers, and by the complexity of the human nature which we try to improve. And if any lesson of philanthropy is well known, it is this, that whoever tries simply to help mankind as a whole, loses his labor, so long as.
LOYALTY TO LOYALTY he does not first undertake to help those near est to him. Loyalty to the cause of universal loyalty -- how, then, shall it constitute any practical working scheme of life?
I answer at once that the individual man, with his limited powers, can indeed serve the cause of universal loyalty only by limiting his undertakings to some decidedly definite per sonal range. He must have his own special and personal cause. But this cause of his can indeed be chosen and determined so as to constitute a deliberate effort to further uni versal loyalty. When I begin to show you how this may be, I shall at once pass from what may have seemed to you a very unprac tical scheme of life, to a realm of familiar and commonplace virtuous activities. The only worth of my general scheme will then lie in the fact that, in the light of this scheme, we can, as it were, see the commonplace virtues transfigured and glorified by their relation to the one highest cause of all. My thesis is that all the commonplace virtues, in so far as they are indeed defensible and effective, are THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY special forms of loyalty to loyalty, and are to be justified, centralized, inspired, by the one su preme effort to do good, namely, the effort to make loyalty triumphant in the lives of all men. The first consideration which I shall here insist upon is this: Loyalty, as we have all along seen, depends upon a very character istic and subtle union of natural interest, and of free choice. Nobody who merely follows his natural impulses as they come is loyal. Yet nobody can be loyal without depending upon and using his natural impulses. If I am to be loyal, my cause must from moment to moment fascinate me, awaken my muscular vigor, stir me with some eagerness for work, even if this be painful work. I cannot be loyal to barren abstractions. I can only be loyal to what my life can interpret in bodily deeds. Loyalty has its elemental appeal to my whole organism. My cause must become one with my human life. Yet all this must occur not without my willing choice. I must control my devotion. It will possess me, but not without my voluntary complicity; for I LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY shall accept the possession. It is, then, with the cause to which you personally are loyal, as it was with divine grace in an older theology. The cause must control you, as divine grace took saving control of the sinner; but only your own will can accept this control, and a grace that merely compels can never save.
Now that such an union of choice with natural interest is possible, is a fact of human nature, which every act of your own, in your daily calling, may be used to exemplify. You cannot do steady work without natural in terest; but whoever is the mere prey of this passing interest does no steady work. Loy alty is a perfect synthesis of certain natural desires, of some range of social conformity, and of your own deliberate choice.
In order to be loyal, then, to loyalty, I must indeed first choose forms of loyal conduct which appeal to my own nature. This means that, upon one side of my life, I shall have to behave much as the most unenlightened of the loyal do. I shall serve causes such as my natural temperament and my social oppor- THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY tunities suggest to me. I shall choose friends whom I like. My family, my community, my country, will be served partly because I find it interesting to be loyal to them.
Nevertheless, upon another side, all these my more natural and, so to speak, accidental loyalties, will be controlled and unified by a deliberate use of the principle that, whatever my cause, it ought to be such as to further, so far as in me lies, the cause of universal loyalty. Hence I shall not permit my choice of my special causes to remain a mere chance. My causes must form a system. They must constitute in their entirety a single cause, my life of loyalty. When apparent conflicts arise amongst the causes in which I am interested, I shall deliberately undertake, by devices which we shall hereafter study in these lec tures, to reduce the conflict to the greatest possible harmony. Thus, for instance, I may say, to one of the causes in which I am natu rally bound up: - " I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more."
LOYALTY TO LOYALTY And in this familiar spirit my loyalty will aim to be, even within the limits of my own per sonal life, an united, harmonious devotion, not to various conflicting causes, but to one system of causes, and so to one cause.
Since this one cause is my choice, the cause of my life, my social station will indeed sug gest it to me. My natural powers and pref erences will make it fascinating to me, and yet I will never let mere social routine, or mere social tradition, or mere private caprice, impose it upon me. I will be individualistic in my loyalty, carefully insisting, however, that whatever else I am, I shall be in all my practical activity a loyal individual, and, so far as in me lies, one who chooses his per sonal causes for the sake of the spread of universal loyalty. Moreover, my loyalty will be a growing loyalty. Without giving up old loyalties I shall annex new ones. There will be evolution in my loyalty.
The choice of my cause will in consequence be such as to avoid unnecessary conflict with the causes of others. So far I shall indeed THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY negatively show loyalty to loyalty. It shall not be my cause to destroy other men's loyalty. Yet since my cause, thus chosen and thus organized, still confines me to my narrow personal range, and since I can do so little directly for mankind, you may still ask whether, by such a control of my natural interests, I am indeed able to do much to serve the cause of universal loyalty.
Well, it is no part of the plan of this dis course to encourage illusions about the range of influence that any one poor mortal can exert. But that by the mere force of my prac tical and personal loyalty, if I am indeed loyal, I am doing something for the cause of universal loyalty, however narrow my range of deeds, this a very little experience of the lives of other people tends to teach me. For who, after all, most encourages and incites me to loyalty? I answer, any loyal human being, whatever his cause, so long as his cause does not arouse my hatred, and does not directly injure my chance to be loyal. My fellow's special and personal cause need not be directly LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY mine. Indirectly he inspires me by the very contagion of his loyalty. He sets me the example. By his loyalty he shows me the worth of loyalty. Those humble and obscure folk of whom I have before spoken, how pre cious they are to us all as inspiring examples, because of their loyalty to their own.
From what men, then, have I gained the best aid in discovering how to be myself loyal? From the men whose personal cause is directly and consciously one with my own? That is indeed sometimes the case. But others, whose personal causes were apparently remote in very many ways from mine, have helped me to some of my truest glimpses of loyalty.
For instance: There was a friend of my own youth whom I have not seen for years, who once faced the choice between a schol arly career that he loved, on the one hand, and a call of honor, upon the other, --who could have lived out that career with worldly success if he had only been willing to conspire with his chief to deceive the public about a matter of fact, but who unhesitatingly was loyal to THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY loyalty, who spoke the truth, who refused to conspire, and who, because his chief wras a plausible and powerful man, thus delib erately wrecked his own worldly chances once for all, and retired into a misunderstood ob scurity in order that his fellow-men might henceforth be helped to respect the truth better. Now, the worldly career which that friend thus sacrificed for the sake of his loy alty is far from mine; the causes that he has since loyally served have not of late brought him near to me in worldly doings. I am not sure that we should ever have kept our inter ests in close touch with one another even if we had lived side by side. For he was and is a highly specialized type of man, austere, and a little disposed, like many scholars, to a life apart. For the rest, I have never myself been put in such a place as his was when he chose to make his sacrifice, and have never had his great choice set before me. Nor has the world rewarded him at all fairly for his fidelity. He is, then, as this world goes, not now near to me and not a widely influential LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY man. Yet I owe him a great debt. He showed me, by the example of his free sacri fice, a good in loyalty which I might other wise have been too blind to see. He is a man who does not love flattery. It would be use less for me now to offer to him either words of praise or words of comfort. He made his choice with a single heart and a clear head, and he has always declined to be praised. But it will take a long time, in some other world, should I meet him in such a realm, to tell him how much I owe to his example, how much he inspired me, or how many of his fellows he had indirectly helped to their own loyalty. For I believe that a good many others besides myself indirectly owe far more to him than he knows, or than they know. I believe that certain standards of loyalty and of scientific truth fulness in this country are to-day higher than they were because of the self-surrendering act of that one devoted scholar.
Loyalty, then, is contagious. It infects not only the fellow-servant of your own special cause, but also all who know of this act.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY Loyalty is a good that spreads. Live it and you thereby cultivate it in other men. Be faithful, then, so one may say, to the loyal man; be faithful over your few things, for the spirit of loyalty, secretly passing from you to many to whom you are a stranger, may even thereby make you unconsciously ruler over many things. Loyalty to loyalty is then no unprac tical cause. And you serve it not by becom ing a mere citizen of the world, but by serving your own personal cause. We set before you, then, no unpractical rule when we repeat our moral formula in this form: Find your own cause, your interesting, fascinating, personally engrossing cause; serve it with all your might and soul and strength; but so choose your cause, and so serve it, that thereby you show forth your loyalty to loyalty, so that because of your choice and service of your cause, there is a maximum of increase of loyalty amongst your fellow-men.
VII Yet herewith we have only begun to indi cate how the cause of loyalty to loyalty may LOYALTY TO LOYALTY be made a cause that one can practically, efficaciously, and constantly serve. Loyalty, namely, is not a matter merely of to-day or of yesterday. The loyal have existed since civ ilization began. And, even so, loyalty to loyalty is not a novel undertaking. It began c;o be eftxctive from the time when first people could make and keep a temporary truce dur ing a war, and when first strangers were re garded as protected by the gods, and when first the duties of hospitality were recognized. The way to be loyal to loyalty is therefore laid down in precisely the rational portion of the conventional morality which human ex perience has worked out.
Herewith we approach a thesis which is central in my whole philosophy of loyalty. I announced that thesis in other words in the opening lecture. My thesis is that all those duties which we have learned to recognize as the fundamental duties of the civilized man, the duties that every man owes to every man, are to be rightly interpreted as special in stances of loyalty to loyalty. In other words, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY all the recognized virtues can be defined in terms of our concept of loyalty. And this is why I assert that, when rightly interpreted, loyalty is the whole duty of man.
For consider the best-known facts as to the indirect influence of certain forms of loyal conduct. When I speak the truth, my act is directly an act of loyalty to the personal tie which then and there binds me to the man to whom I consent to speak. My special cause is, in such a case, constituted by this tie. My fellow and I are linked in a certain unity,— the unity of some transaction which involves our speech one to another. To be ready to speak the truth to my fellow is to have, just then, no eye to see and no tongue to speak save as this willingly accepted tie demands. In so far, then, speaking the truth is a special instance of loyalty. But whoever speaks the truth, thereby does what he then can do to help everybody to speak the truth. For he acts so as to further the general confidence of man in man. How far such indirect in fluence may extend, no man can predict.
LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY Precisely so, in the commercial world, hon esty in business is a service, not merely and not mainly to the others who are parties to the single transaction in which at any one time this faithfulness is shown. The single act of business fidelity is an act of loyalty to that general confidence of man in man upon which the whole fabric of business rests. On the contrary, the unfaithful financier whose disloyalty is the final deed that lets loose the avalanche of a panic, has done far more harm to general public confidence than he could possibly do to those whom his act directly assails. Honesty, then, is owed not merely and not even mainly to those with whom we directly deal when we do honest acts; it is owed to mankind at large, and it benefits the community and the general cause of commercial loyalty.
Such a remark is in itself a commonplace; but it serves to make concrete my general the sis that every form of dutiful action is a case of loyalty to loyalty. For what holds thus of truthfulness and of commercial honesty holds, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY I assert, of every form of dutiful action. Each such form is a special means for being, by a concrete deed, loyal to loyalty.
We have sought for the worthy cause; and we have found it. This simplest possible of considerations serves to turn the chaotic mass of separate precepts of which our ordi nary conventional moral code consists into a system unified by the one spirit of universal loyalty. By your individual deed you indeed cannot save the world, but you can at any moment do what in you lies to further the cause which both for you and for the human world constitutes the supreme good, namely, the cause of universal loyalty. Herein con sists your entire duty.
Review in the light of this simple considera tion, the usually recognized range of human duties. How easily they group themselves about the one principle: Be loyal to loyalty.
Have I, for instance, duties to myself? Yes, precisely in so far as I have the duty to be actively loyal at all. For loyalty needs not only a willing, but also an effective servant.
LOYALTY TO LOYALTY My duty to myself is, then, the duty to pro vide my cause with one who is strong enough and skilful enough to be effective according to my own natural powers. The care of health, self-cultivation, self-control, spiritual power — these are all to be morally estimated with reference to the one principle that, since I have no eyes to see or tongue to speak save as the cause commands, I will be as worthy an instrument of the cause as can be made, by my own efforts, out of the poor material which my scrap of human nature provides. The highest personal cultivation for which I have time is thus required by our principle. But self-cultivation which is not related to loyalty is worthless.
Have I private and personal rights, which I ought to assert? Yes, precisely in so far as my private powers and possessions are held in trust for the cause, and are, upon occasion, to be defended for the sake of the cause. My rights are morally the outcome of my loyalty. It is my right to protect my service, to maintain my office, and to keep THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY my own merely in order that I may use my own as the cause commands. But rights which are not determined by my loyalty are vain pretence.
As to my duties to my neighbors, these are defined by a well-known tradition in terms of two principles, justice and benevo lence. These two principles are mere aspects of our one principle. Justice means, in general, fidelity to human ties in so far as they are ties. Justice thus concerns itself with what may be called the mere forms in which loyalty expresses itself. Justice, there fore, is simply one aspect of loyalty — the more formal and abstract side of loyal life. If you are just, you are decisive in your choice of your personal cause, you are faithful to the loyal decision once made, you keep your promise, you speak the truth, you respect the loyal ties of all other men, and you con tend with other men only in so far as the defence of your own cause, in the interest of loyalty to the universal cause of loyalty, makes such contest against aggression un- LOYALTY TO LOYALTY LOYALTY TO LOYALTY avoidable. All these types of activity, within the limits that loyalty determines, are demanded if you are to be loyal to loyalty. Our principle thus at once requires them, and enables us to define their range of application. But justice, without loyalty, is a vicious for malism.
Benevolence, on the other hand, is that aspect of loyalty which directly concerns itself with your influence upon the inner life of human beings who enjoy, who suffer, and whose private good is to be affected by your deeds. Since no personal good that your fellow can possess is superior to his own loyalty, your own loyalty to loyalty is itself a supremely benevolent type of activity. And since your fellow-man is an instrument for the furtherance of the cause of universal loyalty, his welfare also concerns you, in so far as, if you help him to a more efficient life, you make him better able to be loyal. Thus benevolence is an inevitable attendant of loyalty. And the spirit of loyalty to loy alty enables us to define wherein consists a THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY wise benevolence. Benevolence without loy alty is a dangerous sentiment alism. Thus \\ viewed, then, loyalty to universal loyalty is ^ indeed the fulfilment of the whole law.
IV CONSCIENCE LECTURE IV CONSCIENCE ONE of the main purposes of these lectures is to simplify our conceptions of duty and of the good. When I am in a practical per plexity, such as often arises in daily life, that friend can best advise me who helps me to ignore useless complications, to see simply and directly, to look at the central facts of my situation. And even so, when a moral ist attempts a rational theory of duty, he ought, like the practical adviser of a friend in perplexity, to do what he can to rid our moral situation of its confusing complications. In these lectures I am trying to accomplish this end by centralizing our duties about the one conception of loyalty.
I Conventional morality, as it is usually taught to us, consists of a maze of precepts. Some of these precepts we have acquired THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY through the influence of Christianity. Some of them are distinctly unchristian, or even antichristian. Whatever their origin, whether Christian or Greek or barbarian, they lie side by side in our minds; and sometimes they tend to come into conflict with one another. Be just; but also be kind. Be generous; but also be strict in demanding what is your due. Live for others; but be careful of your own dignity, and assert your rights. Love all mankind; but resent in sults, and be ready to slay the enemies of your country. Take no thought for the morrow; but be careful to save and to in sure. Cultivate yourself; but always sacrifice yourself. Forget yourself; but never be so thoughtless in conduct that others shall justly say, "You have forgotten yourself." Be mod erate in all things; but know no moderation in your devotion to righteousness. Such are a few of the well-known paradoxes of our popular morality. And these paradoxes are, for the most part, no mere accidents. Nearly all of these apparently conflicting moral max- CONSCIENCE