Page:Johann Jacoby - The Object of the Labor Movement - tr. Florence Kelley (1887).djvu/15

 14 The demand that we make of him is simply this, that he respect in every worker the human being, that he recoznize the laborer whom he employs as a being fully his own equal, and that he treat him accordingly.

Everything, they say, has two sides. In this every-day saying lurks a good piece of popular wisdom;—the most difficult problems of knowledge as of life find their solution in it. Like everything else man himself has two sides, a personal one peculiar to himself as an individual, and a universal one which marks him as a member of a greater whole. In reality the two sides can neither be separated nor sharply distinguished, for it is the two taken together which in their unity, make the man. But in our consciousness temporarily or permanently one side or the other can very well press into the foreground and assert a predominant influence upon our thought and action. Let us assume the case that the special, individual side predominates in a man's character. It would find expression primarily in his estimate of himself, as self-consciousness, self-confidence. "Help yourself," "Hercules helps him who helps himself," becomes such a man's maxim, the rule of his thought and action. If he retains the consciousness of the other universal side of his nature, not losing sight of the connection between himself and his fellow men, he will admit that his own powers do not suffice to obtain him by his personal effort alone, a subsistence worthy of a human being; that man can live and prosper only in society, that brotherly co-operation with others therefore lies in his own interest. Respect for others, sympathy and public spirit will hold his self-consciousness and self-confidence properly in check. Quite otherwise if the consciousness of self gets the upper hand in a man. True, the insufficiency of his own unaided powers cannot escape him even then, for the consciousness of the broad, universal side cannot be wholly suppressed. But the conclusion which he draws from it is in this case different, he will regard others not as his equals, not as equal members of a great whole, of which he, too, forms a part, but as subservient to himself, mere tools for satisfying his needs and gratifying his desires. Thus the consciousness of self, praiseworthy enough in its place, deteriorates into selfishness, and self-consciousness into conceit. Selfishness, pretension and the desire to rule tempt him to make his fellow men serve his own will, all that he believes to be for his own advantage.

What is here said of the individual applies to the whole community. The same powers which are active in the mind of the individual make themselves felt in the life of peoples, in the history of the human race.

The power of man over man, the right of the strong and the oppression of the weak, that is the characteristic feature, the scarlet thread that is woven into the history of antiquity and of the Middle