students of Sumner would feel that an enthusiasm for individuals would have helped his service of the whole, fine as that was. Here is the place to discuss in your own mind whether there is any way of balancing the social and individual interests so that each gets its share of attention. The social group.is the bigger fact, but it is impossible without the individuals who make it up, and they would seem the fundamental fact. What is the truth and what is the error in saying that the state exists for citizens and not citizens for the state? Under what conditions should a fraternity exist for its members and when should its members think of themselves rather than in terms of the fraternity? Sharing the common life of the social group, we come to honest acknowledgment of the claims of its good and evil on us. The reenforcing of good (22:22; 40: 10) is as important as the opposing of evil. It gives the same chance for energy, and is all the more promising because it is always rewarded with a measure of success. Negative attitudes have always to be supplemented by positive ones to become effective. Men who know what we ought not to do are likely to be merely troublesome, until some man comes along who knows what ought to be done instead. The man whom we dread is the one who can pick flaws in plans, but has no constructive thing to propose. The best argument against a poor way of doing things is a better way of doing them. A bewildered Freshman returned from an hour with his tutor saying that he now knew so many things that he must not do during his first year that he would welcome at least one thing that he could do! Service of the social group demands more than the attitude of opposition to its evil. But it does demand that attitude, for all that. The presence of a wrong or doubtful thing puts every man on his guard if he is really trying to help. It is not hypocritical, it is only sensible, to consider who are present before one speaks (39:1, 2). There are criticisms which it is wise to make in some hearings which would be most unwise in other hearings. Judgments on the Church mean one thing to church people and quite another thing to scoffing outsiders. You can see that in the use these people make of the attacks which evangelists make on the Church. Inside people accept them as challenges to cure the evils complained of, knowing that the evangelist himself still loves and honors the Church or he would not stay in it. Outside people make it an added reason for disregarding or sneering at the Church. Apply the same thing to criticism of faculty actions or student votes; under what conditions are they wise, and when are they not so? Is it any use, in your own community, to try to stop criticism of official actions? Is the criticism generally healthy? So far as you take part in it yourself, can your purpose and method be wholly approved? II All the way through our relation to the social group is the demand for the poised life. The success of evil, the frequent difficulty of good, tend to unsettle us. The foundation under us seems insecure and our feet almost slip (73:2). We can even come to feel that we have been wasting our effort, making fools of ourselves for nothing (73:13). Over against this natural mood of depression was written much of Psalms 26, 37, 49, and 73. The resistance had been made, but what had come of it? And there is no relief from the feeling of futility but the assurance that such effort does always pay, does always help, does always work toward victory. That is because, as Carnegie Simpson says in "The Fact of Christ," "This is really not the world for worldliness." The universe is not ordered to give either advantage or permanence to wrong. That grew so clear to one of the men who had let himself be troubled about it that he says he was brutish and ignorant when he thought it (73:22). A later writer (Nolan Rice Best in The Continent, June, 1916) says that the world is not "a success as an arena for sensuous enjoyment." "If in place of trying to get rich, to have fun or to be famous, one sets out to build up in himself a strong character, then the world helps him forward by every circumstance it surrounds him with. The only thing the world is perfectly fitted for is the development of moral character in men." The argument for that is good, but it required more insight and more patience than some of us have had. Only the persistent habit of taking high views and long views will give us that patience and insight. If we are determined not to take such views, we cannot keep our poise in the world as it is. Low views and short ones give us warrant for thinking that moral qualities do not count and that the main thing is to "get there" by the shortest possible route. That is the first step toward joining in the very things which we once opposed; so we become merely reenforcing members of anything our social group may determine to do, rubber-stamping the orders of the group. Nothing else seems worth while; but as a matter of fact, doing that sort of thing is less worth while still. And the worst part of that is that it kills in us the spirit of fight. Professor James used to argue for a moral equivalent of war, and the phrase has struck a good chord in many writings since. Several such substitutes have been suggested, but none is more feasible than the larger conflicts that are on in the whole social order of today. And as we have come to feel that the man who hides or skulks in the day of battle is only second in shame to the man who deserts to the enemy and fights against his brothers, so we are coming to feel that the man who stands by when the great issues are being joined in life, on college campus or in community, taking no part, is only a shade meaner than the man who goes over to the other side and adds the weight of his life and influence to the burden that must be moved before the wrongs can be righted. One of the sharpest condemnations in the psalms is the one that charges an enemy with seeing a thief and consenting with him (50:18). The priest and the Levite in Jesus' Samaritan story did nothing bad, except that doing nothing was itself bad. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT AND STUDY Consider the value of George Borrow's expression: "Fear God and take your own part." How does it fit into the thought of our necessary membership in a social group? Is war a constructive element in the social order? What moral value has it to justify Professor James' expression? CHAPTER V Self Against the Social Group DAILY READINGS Fifth Week, First Day Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, Nor standeth in the way of sinners, Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers: But his delight is in the law of Jehovah; And on his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also doth not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The wicked are not so, But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. -Psalm 1. Here is a man set over against a group. The group is always put in the plural; one man of a certain type is on the other side. The attitude which he takes is worded here negatively: "Walketh not, standeth not, sitteth not." Of course it is also positive, for every man in his social relations has to walk and stand and sit somewhere. Refusing to be in one relation involves choosing to be in another relation. Ordinarily our social group helps us. Everybody can be better for being in college or in a society or in a church, if he is brave enough to hold himself up against some influences. He must not commit himself to sneezing because the group takes snuff. He must live in the social group, opposing the walk, the way, the seat of certain people in it. Which people they are will determine the kind of man he is. That cannot be maintained on a purely negative basis. "You cannot drive out bad air with a club"; only the inflow of good air gets rid of it. In Jesus' story the evil spirit came back again to the house and finding it empty possessed it again (Luke 11:24-26). Our only safeguard against lower attractions is in finding higher pleasures. We keep out bad thoughts by meditations that are good. The psalm says that the man who does so is blessed, happy. It works out so in the long run; the process may have in it other elements, but strong men are not asking to be happy on the spur of the moment. Fifth Week, Second Day The largest danger of a bad social group is not that it may do some external damage to a man, but that it may absorb one into itself, making him like itself, dyeing him with its own colors. It is becoming like the men whom one now disapproves on high moral grounds that constitutes the tragedy of many lives. Being lied about is no great matter; being made a liar is the serious thing. Lies are like measlesthey do no special damage unless they strike in. Booker Washington used often to say that holding another man in the gutter is always harder on the upper than on the under You have to be there yourself in order to hold him there. He is there against his will, and may not be hurt by it; you are there by your own will and cannot escape being injured. Who recovers sooner from a fraudulent victory, the winner or the loser? The loser can come to laugh over it; the winner knows himself a fraud whenever he thinks of it. It is becoming like the wrong group that is to be dreaded. man. Unto thee, O Jehovah, will I call: My rock, be not thou deaf unto me; Lest, if thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, When I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle. Draw me not away with the wicked, And with the workers of iniquity; That speak peace with their neighbors, -Psalm 28: 1-3. |