--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Bennion, Milton collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 9 number: 6 published: 1906-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Milton Bennion, "Concerning the Education of Young Men—II: The Obligation to Serve," *Improvement Era* 9, no. 6 (April 1906): 437–440.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0906unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0906unse start_page: 437 end_page: 440 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1906-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0906unse publication_year: 1906 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1906, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Concerning the Education of Young Men—II: The Obligation to Serve CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN. BY MILTON BENNION, M. A., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. , II.— THE OBLIGATION TO SERVE. Each generation is the trustee of civilization. Each generation owes it to itself and to its posterity to protect its culture, to enrich it and to transmit it. — Nicholas Murray Butler. That all things are inter-related is one of the greatest principles that the study of science and philosophy has revealed. For instance, the movements of each of the heavenly bodies is related to or determined by the movements of all the rest. The absolute creation or annihilation of a star would create a disturbance of the whole material universe. For another instance, every blade of grass is directly dependent, on the one hand, upon the sun, over ninety millions of miles away; and, on the other, upon the geological agencies that have been at work for many centuries, creating a soil in which the roots may obtain nourishment. Again, a human infant is descended from millions of ancestors, and may become the progenitor of millions of other human beings. So whether we study the sciences of matter and energy, of life, of mind, or of society, we find no end of relationship. The number of possible connections is lost in the infinite. Yet in the midst of this undoubted unity, individuality is clearly manifest. What is the relation .of the one to the many? Of the individual to the world? Thus the old Greek philosopher, Parmenides,* and theFifth century B. C. 438 IMPROVEMENT ERA. American scholar, Josiah Royce, * have stated the great problem of philosophy— the pivotal problem about which, since 500 B. C, the most profound philosophical discussions have revolved. I wish here simply to call attention to this fact,and to point out that between the individual, on the one hand, and the universe on the other, there are minor unities composed of groups of individuals. The life of the human race on earth is such a unity. Each individual is not only related to the past through physical heredity, but through social heredity, he is indebted to all historic peoples, because from them he inherits all the achievements of civilization. However great his genius, small indeed is the individual man's contribution to this civilization, compared with what comes to him already created. Among these things on the mental or spiritual side are: language, literature, biography, history, science, music and other fine arts; public and private schools, colleges and universities; government, with all its complicated machinery, its established customs, its written and unwritten law; the church with its theology, moral code and organizations for the promotion of spiritual development. These intellectual and spiritual creations and social institutions represent the accumulated results of the labors of humanity since history began. On the material side, the man of today inherits the results of the application of science and of the labors of countless generations of men. Even in the use of the simplest tool, he is enjoying the benefit of man's struggles in the dawn of civilization. How utterly helpless would he be, how insignificant his attainments, if he had to invent, without model or assistance, such a simple thing as a hoe, and had to prepare from mother earth the material of which the hoe is made ! These apparently simple achievements of the ancients made it possible for their successors to go on to further discovery and invention, until now the individual finds already prepared for his comfort and convenience, railroads, steamships, electric cars, telegraph and telephone lines, electric lights, water systems, and a thousand other things to the production or invention of which he has contributed nothing. Even the roads he * Professor of the History of Philosophy, Harvard University, author of The World and the Individual. 'CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN. 439 drives over, and the paths he walks on, have been prepared by the labor of others. Is he not, then, indebted to the race for this rich and everincreasing inheritance? Instead of boasting of his superiority over the ancients, because of his science and art, his constitutional government, and his material progress, he ought rather to manifest the deepest gratitude to struggling humanity for this great heritage. Does not justice demand that he shall protect this culture and material civilization, enrich it to the extent of his ability, and pass it on to succeeding generations? His debt to the past is immeasurable. To those individuals who struggled and died for his freedom and well-being before he was born, he cannot pay this debt; neither could they discharge their obligations to their progenitors. But there is the obligation, nevertheless, and the possibility of its fulfilment lies in the fact of race unity. The individual is a debtor to humanity, and to humanity, according as God shall give him strength, he may pay this debt. I speak here of obligations to mankind and possibilities of rendering service from a purely secular point of view. Man's obligations to God, and the further possibilities of serving humanity that religion reveals, may be added to this. To anticipate a possible objection, we may ask this question: If, then, man comes into the world a debtor, under obligation£ to serve humanity for all his days, what about his supposed individual freedom, and his ' 'right to do as he pleases, so long as he does not interfere with the like right of others?" But has he any such right? And if he had, would that constitute moral freedom? Would it not include the right of a man, after having been brought up and educated by society, to commit suicide, instead of giving to society something in return for what he has received? It is necessary to distinguish clearly between free agency, legal right and moral right, and to understand the meaning of freedom. Free agency means that a man may serve either God or the devil, without external compulsion. How can a man be compelled to serve the one or the other? It must, in the nature of the case, be a matter for free choice. He has his free agency to commit all sorts of crime, even to murder. Bat he will very soon learn that he has no legal right to do so. The idea of non- 440 IMPROVEMENT ERA. interference with the lives, the property, and the peace of others is commonly taken as a basic principle in determining legal rights. This is good, as far as it goes, but it is not all. A man may live within his legal rights, and remain a moral weakling. The moral life is based upon a higher principle, a much nobler conception of life, — the idea of race-unity and the mutual indebtedness and obligation of man to man. To be an ethical man, means to be a social individual, one whose life is brought into harmony with the idea of the welfare and betterment of humanity. To be a mere individual is no better than to be a toad. If that is the sort of individuality and freedom a man desires, he may find it without troubling himself about the moral law. What, then, is freedom? In a superficial way, and in the ordinary sense, it is to be without external restraint. But moral freedom means much more. A man may be free from external restraints, and yet be a slave to passion, appetite, ill-temper or other form of vice. As conformity to the law of the land is the condition of legal freedom, so only as a man lives the moral law, in both its negative and positive aspects, is he morally free. And moral freedom must always be regarded as an end in education. The discovery of the nature of the moral law has been one of the great aims of both religious and philosophic thought. In both scripture and philosophy morality is prominent and fundamental. Two things move me to ever greater awe ; the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Duty ! Word so sublime and full of meaning, whence art thou, and what origin is worthy of thee? Thou dost not appeal to us through the persuasiveness of passion, nor by threats dost thou seek to stir our wills. Thou wouldst not have us shrink from thee in fear and terror. But thou settest up a law which is of our own souls; to this law thou expecteth unconditional submission. Before the law we bow in awe, even though not always in obedience;, all feelings retire before it in silence, even though they may seek to avoid its decrees.* Education is most certainly a duty. The moral law requires that a person shall fit himself to render the best possible service to * Kant.