A Man's Value to Society (15 page)

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life. That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in his "Les Misérables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison--this time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys. Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By confessing his identity and going himself.

In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room. Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for this old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supporting more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to the galleys.

Then with muscles tense as steel, with jugular vein all swollen and purple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by the Bishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all upon the blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugo says: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter." What was it in him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion the mayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where an old man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin had bleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through the window, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left the golden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length an officer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead a long while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew your conscience." Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt the candlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but God sees you." Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayor arose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached the distant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was about to be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessed his identity. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and the lawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a light within dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on the German monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannot and will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscience shining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the face of Moses before him!

As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happiness and formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood. The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character in their hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. In Romola, George Eliot exhibits Tito as a gifted and ideal youth. The orphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon him all the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of the schools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longing for foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could not deny him, but took passage for Tito and himself and sailed for Alexandria. But the motto of Tito's life was, get all the pleasure you can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and a burden. One night, conscience battled for its life with Tito. At midnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist the leather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving the gray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak.

Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of the noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful young tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and so conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger.

Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The masterpieces of Sophocles and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Göethe and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him into the open sky.

Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, He implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty. It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has an intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease the gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor--a condition of things that still prevails in some sections.

Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a time when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of God.

Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaks as an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moral sense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness or iniquity. To its judgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes and ambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril from filth!

Conscience has also relations to judgment. It pronounces upon the inner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within that makes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, the schoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Hero and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent young Coleridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive made what was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right.

Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire. Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four years of age. When a few brief summers and winters had passed over his head, the language of far-off Russia had passed completely out of the child's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness, in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language of childhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down or death is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all the deeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a few minutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact. Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where a foul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain the floor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed and planed, still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks. This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stain through the very fiber and substance of the soul.

Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrance standing out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands in the West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these island peaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and the mountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the great plains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of the past are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's king be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to the judgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents God and acts in His stead.

Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is he who is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection, toward plan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only in spots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, and conscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns the heat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turns off the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upper rooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that should govern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings. Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the week days. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons. On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.

In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those days the baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasants forth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved the murderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were very conscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor's flocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superstition. Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his host at a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps would have braved death on the battle-field, was pricked by his conscience for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God who makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful sinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen.

Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious toward some charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered that he had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years. Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon his knees. Nature and God were in the merchant's counting-room, but not the buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agent that secured all his success and prosperity.

Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they become strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home, friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected--but the business, never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying, their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street. They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says, "That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in the great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man for the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his flocks--so much wool to be sheared.