The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1899-01-19
(Danville Regi,ter.)

(Danville Regi,ter)
Words and phrases are emblems OF
thought-sound emblems when we
speak them, pictorial emblems when
TEN is by no means a perfect one, and
so many of us have never completely
mastered the cipher code that errors
in the use of the emblems propagate
themselves most easily and gain
authority through being perpetuated,
until at last they modify the true en-
blem, and real confusion Of thought
as to the original idea is the result.
And as it is necessity of life that
much of what we call thought comes
to us ready-coined and passes about
like currency, it follows that confused
thought, which is counterfeit, affects
us morally-for thought affects ac-
ton, and action affects character.
Many good man goes wrong-in
his argumcnt-and,t through that in
his influence and his self-persuasion,
because he thinks too emblematically
and has had some of those aforemen-
toned counterfeits passed upon him
at some earlier stage.
'.Public spirit is one of our COM
monest phrases, but the idea that is
truly embodied in it is by no means
the idea that is most commonly con-
veyed by it to many minds. Public
spirit is very generally identified with
species of altruism-with the idea
Of sclf-sacrilice, which does not COM
mend itself to the unregenerate
human heart.
But il we look into the matter ana
lvtically we shall see that the public
spirited man is not necessarily the
man who foryetS or sacrifices himself
for the benefit of his fellows. The
truth is that there is ALWAYS a self
interest which the individual may
properly conserve as against the in
terest of the public. 1t is, for in
stance. undoubtedly to the advantage
of the public that the merchants
of the community should sell their
wares with the least profit to them
selves; but is an eXaction Of profits
above the minimum any evidence of a
lack Of public spirit? TO make two
blades of grass grow where there is
| only one is esteemed a mark of public
spirit. The desire to attract new in
dustries to ones city, to have ten fac
| tories instead of five, is a most famil-
lar test of the attribute in question.
But must the public spirited dealer
in given class of merchandise labor
increasingly to establish business in
rivalry to his own upon the neighbOr-
| ing street corner?
There is sellishness which is a
| vice and there is seltishness which
is virtue Even Christianity itself,
shot through and through as is its
fabric with self-abnegation and oblit-
Grafton of self, makes its appeal to
| the higher selfishness. Ones own
soul is ones first care. One may not
| lose ones own soul to save another's,
sublime as the conception may seem
to the mind that can perceive moth
ing but analogies For the Kingdom
of Heaven is within us, and there is a
dcad-lne within the penetralia be-
| yond which self-sacritice is moral sui
| eide
Seltishness, it will be seen, is one
of those strange words which include
an idea and its opposite, and that fact
explains the paradox.
| Such misconceptions and difficulties
as have gathered about the idea o.
seltishness have, in some degree, fas
| tened themselves around the idea o.
public spirit.
| When these are cleared away public
| spirit stands forth rather as a higher
wisdom than as 4 virtue, unless true
insight be virtue.
| Public spirit is simply that con
temptation of matters in which the
community, not the individual mem
Der of it, is the unit, and the calcula
tion of advantage takes in all thu
factors. not merely the most obvious
ones. 1t views apparent losses from
the standpoint of him who loses hi
life in order to find it. Whateve
subtraction there may be in it from
the isolated individual there is
greater addition to community mem
bership.
In short, the lack of the public
spirit is the penny-wise and pound
foolish policy.
He that reaps benefit at the eN
pense Of the community in which h
lives and from which he draws a sus
tenance, is lacking in public spirit
not because he may not regard him
self-but because his immediate gain
obscure from view those greater pos
sible gains which he should estimate
among his losses. Greedily he dc
YOURS his seed corn and complacentl
strokes his NAV, giving never
thought to the white harvest tina
would have come. He is DRAWN
blood from the breast that nourishe
him and his is not the fullness c
growth, but the brief distention an
falling away of the leech,
Public spirit is realization of tn
inter-dependence of members of soc
ETY.. the larger view forced upon mar
/ kind by disastrous experience. 1t
J no altruistic philosophy. 1t is OF
posed to that theory that for sham
will unfold itself in words no furthe
than the smirking aphoriSm. "Busi
ness is Business" Business is bus
ness and sometimes very bad busineS
at that.