Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/280

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268
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of giving to worthy objects. The capitalist could not render a much worse service to the community than to take entirely off other people's shoulders burdens that it is best every one should bear in some degree. No, but the capitalist should certainly employ his great advantages and resources in bringing the conditions of a really human life within the reach of ever-increasing numbers of human beings. It does not do to regard our fellow-men as mere ciphers, as pawns on the chess-board of life, to be used or sacrificed according to the exigencies of the game. Mr. Gladstone was greatly laughed at some years ago by the cynical school so largely represented in English journalism, particularly in weekly journalism, because he had used the argument that, after all, the voters whom he proposed to enfranchise were "our own flesh and blood." For all that, the truth he hinted at is a good one to remember. Certainly it is a bad one to forget; and terrible trouble may come of carrying forgetfulness of it too far. Our object in this brief article has been mainly to express the opinion that much good would come of greater frankness on both sides in the now pending labor contests. If both sides would really talk business, which they can only do by expressing their real thoughts and purposes, there would be more hope of a permanent reconciliation. We believe that, when it came to the rub, thousands of the working class would shrink from pronouncing against the régime of free competition; while the holders of wealth would certainly be slow to formulate the doctrine of social irresponsibility.


"DON'T!"

A little manual of social proprieties, published under the name of "Dont!" has obtained a wide circulation; and, as its negative precepts are inspired by much good sense and good taste, we have no doubt the tiny book will prove of real value. But, while good social habits are well worth forming, good intellectual ones are at least of equal importance; and it occurs to us that there is ample room for a manual that, in a series of brief and pithy sentences, would place people on their guard against the most obvious intellectual errors and vices. Possibly the objection might be raised that, while everybody wants to be cured of his or her social solecisms (if the expression may be permitted), none so little desire to be cured of intellectual faults as those who are most subject to them. Who, it might be asked, applies the moral denunciations of the pulpit to himself? Who would apply to himself the cautions of your proposed manual? Granted, we reply, that it is easier to bring home to the individual conscience the sin of eating with a knife than the sin of reasoning falsely or acting unjustly, we should still be glad to see a telling compilation of the most needed "Dont's" for the use of all and singular who make any profession of an independent use of their intellects. Some of the maxims would be commonplace; but then the object would not be to lay down novel truths so much as to enforce old ones. Let us throw out a few at random, by way of a start:

Don't think that what you don't know is not worth knowing.
Don't conclude that, because you can't understand a thing, nobody can understand it.
Don't despise systems of thought that other men have elaborated because you can not place yourself at once at their point of view.
Don't interpret things too much according to your own likes and dislikes. The world was not made to please anybody in particular, or to confirm anybody's theories.
Don't imagine that, because a thing is plain to you, it ought to be equally so to everybody else.