Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/813

Rh house. The following Sunday men came from the city with a view to purchasing some lots which the moral man was desirous of selling. He took the prospective buyers over the lots with great alacrity, showing the good points. The neighbor reproved the moral man, who became extremely angry. Laborers frequently denounce a trust with great bitterness of feeling, and yet they proceed to form a labor trust with the express purpose of making labor dear and shutting off competition. They refuse to let an outside workman mine coal, except at the risk of his life, although his children may be starving. Do the workmen experience the same feeling of indignation at their own conduct in forming a trust as they do toward other trusts? A woman was one day genuinely indignant because candidates lacking a certain characteristic had been elected members of her club. In less than a week she was trying to secure the admission of a friend who lacked precisely the same quality. No feeling of indignation at her own conduct ruffled that woman's brow this time. We frequently hear it said, "If I were to do as she is doing, how angry she would be!" There is one test which the majority of persons can apply to themselves. They have told another something in confidence, and have felt indignant because he betrayed that confidence. There are very few persons who have not at some one time in their life betrayed a confidential secret to some one else. Amusing as it seems, it is common to hear a person accuse himself of a breach of trust, saying, as he tells a secret, "This was told me in confidence." His egoistic emotion will not allow him to say, "I am not worthy of confidence," although he would unhesitatingly draw that conclusion in the case of another. His egoistic emotion prompts him to make the same kind of excuse that a murderer offered for his crime: "A person should expect to be murdered if he keeps so much gold about him." We occasionally hear some one remark, "I know of no person that has a higher ideal for others or a lower one for self."

It is confidently remarked that the egoistic emotions can not warp mathematical truths, for they are inflexible and unerring. Such a statement might do very well in schoolrooms, but it has no place elsewhere. A noted lawyer said: "I have a client who is a plaintiff in a damage suit. Now, a damage, if expressed at all, must be mathematically expressed. My client's damages amount to the sum of two and two, or four. But he can not possibly add his own two and two of damage without making the sum five. The defendant adds this same two and two and makes the sum three. If it were not for the fact that the emotions of self will not allow men to add units correctly, quite a percentage of my practice would be gone. If men were sure that selfish emotion would not prompt another man to take advantage of