The Goldfish | Page 5

of me; are
they not part of me as I hold the cup or the glass in my hand? Is my
coat more characteristic of me than my house--my sleeve-links than my
wife or my collie dog? I know a gentlewoman whose sensitive,
quivering, aristocratic nature is expressed far more in the Russian
wolfhound that shrinks always beside her than in the aloof, though
charming, expression of her face. No; not only my body and my
personal effects but everything that is mine is part of me--my chair with
the rubbed arm; my book, with its marked pages; my office; my bank
account, and in some measure my friend himself.
Let us agree that in the widest sense all that I have, feel or think is part
of me--either of my physical or mental being; for surely my thoughts
are more so than the books that suggest them, and my sensations of
pleasure or satisfaction equally so with the dinner I have eaten or the
cigar I have smoked. My ego is the sum total of all these things. And if
the cigar is consumed, the dinner digested, the pleasure flown, the

thought forgotten, the waistcoat or shirt discarded--so, too, do the
tissues of the body dissolve, disintegrate and change. I can no more
retain permanently the physical elements of my personality than I can
the mental or spiritual.
What, then, am I--who, the Scriptures assert, am made in the image of
God? Who and what is this being that has gradually been evolved
during fifty years of life and which I call Myself? For whom my father
and my mother, their fathers and mothers, and all my ancestors back
through the gray mists of the forgotten past, struggled, starved, labored,
suffered, and at last died. To what end did they do these things? To
produce me? God forbid!
Would the vision of me as I am to-day have inspired my grandfather to
undergo, as cheerfully as he did, the privations and austerities of his
long and arduous service as a country clergyman--or my father to die at
the head of his regiment at Little Round Top? What am I--what have I
ever done, now that I come to think of it, to deserve those sacrifices?
Have I ever even inconvenienced myself for others in any way? Have I
ever repaid this debt? Have I in turn advanced the flag that they and
hundreds of thousands of others, equally unselfish, carried forward?
Have I ever considered my obligation to those who by their patient
labors in the field of scientific discovery have contributed toward my
well-being and the very continuance of my life? Or have I been content
for all these years to reap where I have not sown? To accept, as a
matter of course and as my due, the benefits others gave years of labor
to secure for me? It is easy enough for me to say: No--that I have
thought of them and am grateful to them. Perhaps I am, in a vague
fashion. But has whatever feeling of obligation I may possess been
evidenced in my conduct toward my fellows?
I am proud of my father's heroic death at Gettysburg; in fact I am a
member, by virtue of his rank in the Union Army, of what is called The
Loyal Legion. But have I ever fully considered that he died for me?
Have I been loyal to him? Would he be proud or otherwise--is he proud
or otherwise of me, his son? That is a question I can only answer after I
have ascertained just what I am.

Now for over quarter of a century I have worked hard--harder, I believe,
than most men. From a child I was ambitious. As a boy, people would
point to me and say that I would get ahead. Well, I have got ahead.
Back in the town where I was born I am spoken of as a "big man." Old
men and women stop me on the main street and murmur: "If only your
father could see you now!" They all seem tremendously proud of me
and feel confident that if he could see me he would be happy for
evermore. And I know they are quite honest about it all. For they
assume in their simple hearts that my success is a real success. Yet I
have no such assurance about it.
Every year I go back and address the graduating class in the high
school--the high school I attended as a boy. And I am "Exhibit A"--the
tangible personification of all that the fathers and mothers hope their
children will become. It is the same way with the Faculty of my college.
They have given me an honorary degree and I have given them a
drinking fountain for