As to Public Life : Part 1

How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success
by Major A.R. Calhoon

(Page 13 of 26)

The relations of the citizen to the state, and of the state to the citizen, are reciprocal. Every man who becomes a member of an established government, whether it be voluntary, as where an oath of allegiance is taken to obey the laws, or involuntary, as by birth, which is the case of a majority of all citizens, he surrenders certain natural rights in consideration of the protection which the government throws about him.

In a state of nature, man is free to do as he pleases, without any recognition of the rights of others; and his power to have his own way is entirely dependent on the physical strength and courage which he has to enforce it. This is why, in a savage state, war is the almost constant business of the men, and the strongest and the bravest of the lawless mob, tribe, or clan usually becomes leader.

When through either of these agencies a man finds himself a member of an established government, he owes to that government implicit obedience to its laws, in consideration of the protection to life and property which that government throws about him.

In consideration of the protection which the banded many, known as the state, gives to the individual, the individual pledges implicit obedience to the laws of the state.

Horace says : _Dulci et decorum est pro patria mori_ - meaning that it is brave and right to die for one's country. Old Dr. Sam Johnson, like his successor, Carlyle, was apt to sneer at the grander impulses of humanity. He said on one occasion: "Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel." And yet we know that the most noble characters of all history have been the men who felt, with Horace, that it was noble to die for one's country.

Americans, perhaps more than any other people in the world at this time, have an intense appreciation of this spirit of patriotism. From the days of the Revolution to the present time, our most prominent and most respected characters have been the men who, in the forum or in the field, have devoted their lives to the preservation and elevation of the Republic.

Public life has its rewards, but they rarely come to the honest man in the form of dollars. Franklin, Jackson, Taylor, Jolinson, Grant, Garfield, and Lincoln were all the sons of poor men, and they died poor themselves; but who can say that their lives were not grandly successful.

An interest in politics should be the duty of everyone, but the young man who enters public life for the sake of the money he may accumulate from office, starts out as a traitor to his country and an ingrate to his fellows.

Public life should be an unselfish life. The service of the public requires the strongest bodies, the clearest brains, and the purest hearts, and the man who devotes his life to this great purpose must find his reward in a duty well performed, rather than in the financial emoluments of office.

Duty is the spirit of patriotism, and while this spirit should run through every act in every calling, it must particularly distinguish the man who has entered the public service as a soldier or civil official. It is duty that leads the soldier to face hardships and death without flinching, and the same high impulse should stimulate the conduct where there is no physical danger.

Samuel Smiles, to whom we are indebted for much that is valuable in this work, has the following to say in this connection about duty:

"Duty is a thing that is due, and must be paid by every man who would avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an obligation - a debt - which can only be discharged by voluntary effort and resolute action in the affairs of life.

"Duty embraces man's whole existence. It begins in the home, where there is the duty which children owe to their parents on the one- hand, and the duty which parents owe to their children on the other. There are, in like manner, the respective duties of husbands and wives, of masters and servants; while outside the home there are the duties which men and women owe to each other as friends and neighbors, as employers and employed, as governors and governed.

"'Render, therefore,' says St. Paul, 'to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loved another have fulfilled the law.'

"Therefore duty rounds the whole of life, from our entrance into it until our exit from it - duty to superiors, duty to inferiors, and duty to equals - duty to man, and duty to God. Wherever there is power to use or to direct, there is duty. For we are but as stewards, appointed to employ the means entrusted to us for our own and for others' good.

"The abiding sense of duty is the very crown of character. It is the upholding law of man in his highest attitudes. Without it, the individual totters and falls before the first puff of adversity or temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and full of courage. 'Duty,' says Mrs. Jameson, 'is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own desolation.'

"Duty is based upon a sense of justice - justice inspired by love, which is the most perfect form of goodness. Duty is not a sentiment, but a principle pervading the life: and it exhibits itself in conduct and in acts, which are mainly determined by man's conscience and free will."

Sir John Packington, one of England's most famous men, said in speaking of his public life:

Published by the Christian Herald, Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, Bible House, New York.
Copyright 1895 by Louis Klopsch.