The Essentials of Spirituality | Page 6

who is sick and
suffering, remember how you would admonish him that he is not the
first or the only one that has been in like case, how you would expect of
him fortitude in bearing pain as an evidence of human dignity. Exhort
yourself in like manner; expect the same fortitude of yourself. If any
one has done you a wrong, remember what you would adduce in
palliation of the offence if another were in the same situation;
remember how you would suggest that perhaps the one injured had
given some provocation to the wrongdoer, how you would perhaps
have quoted the saying: "Tout comprendre est tout pardonner"--"to
understand is to pardon," how you would in any case have condemned
vindictive resentment. In the moral world each one counts for one and
not more than one. The judgment that you pass on others, pass on
yourself, and the fact that you are able to do so, that you have the
power to rise above your subjective self and take the public universal
point of view with respect to yourself, will give you a wonderful sense
of enfranchisement and poise and spiritual dignity. And, on the other
hand (and this is but the obverse of the same rule), look upon everyone
else as being from the moral point of view just as important as you are;
nay, realize that every human being is but another self, a part of the
same spiritual being that is in you, a complement of yourself, a part of
your essential being. Realize the unity that subsists between you and
your fellow-men, and then your life will be spiritual indeed. For the
highest end with which we must be ever in touch, toward which we
must be ever looking, is to make actual that unity between ourselves
and others of which our moral nature is the prophecy. The realization of
that unity is the goal toward which humanity tends.
Spirituality depends upon our tutoring ourselves to regard the welfare
of others--moral as well as external--as much our concern as our own.

What this practically means the following illustration will indicate. A
certain bank official, a man of excellent education and of high social
standing, committed a crime. He allowed himself in a moment of
lamentable weakness to use certain trust funds which had been
committed to him to cover losses which he had sustained. He intended
to replace what he had taken, of course, but he could not do so, for he
became more and more deeply involved. One night as he was alone in
his office it became plain to him that the day of reckoning could no
longer be put off. He was at the end of his resources. The morrow
would bring exposure and ruin. Then the temptation seized him to
make away with himself. He had a charming wife and two lovely
daughters. He was the revered head of the household; in the eyes of his
family the paragon of honor. He was universally esteemed by his
friends, who knew not his temptation and his fall. On that night in the
lonely office he could not bear to think of meeting the future, of being
exposed as a criminal in the eyes of his friends, of bringing upon his
family the infamy and the agony of his disgrace. Should a man in his
situation be permitted to commit suicide? If we were at his elbow
should we allow him to do so? This question was submitted to one of
my Ethics classes. The students at first impulsively decided in the
affirmative, for they argued, as many do, that right conduct consists in
bestowing happiness on others, and wrong conduct in inflicting
suffering on others; and now that the man had committed the crime,
they maintained he could at least relieve those whom he loved of his
presence by taking himself out of their way. True, someone said, the
exposure was inevitable in any case, and the shock of discovery could
not be averted; but we were forced to concede that from the point of
view of suffering, the pain involved in the sudden shock could not be
compared to the long-drawn-out anguish which would result if he
continued to live. For presently he would forfeit his liberty; he would
sit as a prisoner in the dock. His wife and daughters, loyal to their
duties even toward an unworthy husband and father, would be found at
his side. They would hear the whispers, they would see the significant
nods, they would endure all the shame. Later on, when the trial was at
an end, the prisoner would stand up to hear the verdict. They would
still be near him. Still later there would be the pilgrimage to the prison
on the Hudson. They