3.12 Moral Growth
Virtues and Vices
Virtue has merit because it marks progress toward the good.
Whenever a person freely resists the pull of harmful tendencies, real virtue is present. Yet not all virtue has the same degree. Its fullest expression is the sacrifice of personal interest for the good of others, without hidden motive or hope of return. The greatest merit belongs to the most disinterested charity.
Some people seem to do good naturally, without inner struggle. Their ease does not lessen their worth. It shows that earlier battles have already been won. What is difficult for others has become habitual in them. Goodness now flows spontaneously because it has been deeply acquired.
This helps explain why truly advanced worlds differ from less mature ones. Where good spirits predominate, the impulse toward what is right is natural, and a bad intention appears as a shocking exception. Humanity moves toward that condition as it learns to understand and practice charity in its genuine sense.
The Most Characteristic Sign of Imperfection
Among the clearest signs of moral imperfection, selfishness stands out.
Many qualities can give the appearance of morality, and some of them do represent real progress. Yet they are not always firm when tested. A person may seem upright until self-interest is touched; then the deeper motive appears. True selflessness is rare enough that it is often admired as something extraordinary.
Attachment to material things also reveals impurity. The more a person is absorbed in possessions, comfort, and worldly advantages, the less clearly that person understands life’s higher destiny. Selflessness, by contrast, shows a broader and more elevated view of the future.
Selflessness and Discernment
Selflessness has merit, but it does not replace good judgment.
A person may give generously and yet use resources badly, scattering them without real benefit. Such a person is worthy for the spirit of self-denial, but not for the good that might have been accomplished through wiser use. Wealth is neither meant to be hoarded nor wasted. It is a trust.
Its possessor remains responsible not only for obvious misuse, but also for neglected possibilities: the suffering that could have been relieved, the help that could have reached those truly in need, and the good that was lost through carelessness.
Doing Good Without Ulterior Motive
Good should be done from charity, not calculation.
To seek earthly reward for generosity empties it of its purity. Even the hope of spiritual advantage can diminish merit when the act is performed mainly as a transaction. Yet there is an important distinction. Those who do good solely because they love what is good, because they wish to be pleasing to God, and because they want to relieve suffering already possess a higher degree of advancement. Their progress is more direct because it springs from the heart rather than from self-interest.
Still, the desire to improve one’s future condition is natural and not in itself blameworthy. What matters is the motive. There is selfishness in counting the profit to be gained from each charitable act. There is no selfishness in striving to correct oneself, overcome passions, and draw nearer to God. Moral reform aimed at spiritual elevation belongs to the true purpose of life.
Intellectual Progress and Material Knowledge
Material knowledge is not useless simply because earthly life is brief.
Scientific and practical learning can serve others, and in serving others it becomes part of moral life. It also helps the spirit itself. Intellectual progress accelerates spiritual development. Knowledge gained in one life prepares the spirit to learn more quickly beyond it.
No branch of knowledge is entirely wasted. Every true idea contributes something to advancement. Since the perfected spirit must know fully, progress must unfold in every direction, including the understanding of material realities.
Wealth, Hardship, and Responsibility
Wealth becomes a moral test.
When two wealthy people live only for personal enjoyment, greater blame falls on the one who has known poverty and suffering. Such a person understands hardship from experience and therefore fails more seriously when refusing relief to others.
The continued accumulation of goods without benefit to anyone reflects disordered principles. To excuse this by saying that the wealth is being saved for heirs does not justify the spirit behind it.
Misery can also take different forms. One miser denies himself even necessities and dies clinging to his treasure. Another is stingy only toward others while spending freely on personal pleasures and refusing every useful sacrifice. The second is guiltier because selfishness is more openly active in him. The first already suffers part of his punishment in the narrowness of his own life.
The Desire for Wealth in Order to Do Good
To desire wealth for the sake of doing good can be admirable, but such a motive requires sincerity.
It is easy for hidden self-interest to enter. Often the first person one intends to benefit is oneself. Because of this, the desire should be examined carefully. The value of the intention depends on how free it is from vanity, ambition, comfort-seeking, and disguised personal advantage.
On Studying the Defects of Others
Looking at others’ faults can either corrupt or instruct.
It is wrong when done to criticize, expose, or humiliate, because such an attitude lacks charity. It may be useful when a person studies the failings of others in order to avoid the same failings in oneself. Even then, tolerance remains necessary. Charity includes patience with others’ imperfections.
Before condemning another’s defect, a person should ask whether the same reproach could be directed inward. Self-improvement is a better response than censure. If avarice is noticed, practice generosity. If harshness is noticed, become kind. If pettiness is noticed, become large-hearted in word and deed. The safer path is always to remove the greater fault within oneself rather than dwell on the lesser fault in another.
Exposing the Ills of Society
To uncover social evils is not wrong in itself. Everything depends on the intention.
When abuses are brought to light in a sincere effort to correct them, the work may serve the good. When the aim is scandal, entertainment, or the pleasure of unveiling corruption, the act becomes morally compromised, even if the facts are real. Delight in exposing evil stains the spirit.
The inner sincerity of a writer or reformer need not always be judged by others. What is sound in the message may still be accepted. If the work is corrupt in spirit, the responsibility lies with the one who produced it. The clearest proof of sincerity is personal example.
Morality in Words and Morality in Life
Fine principles have little value when left unapplied.
A person may publish noble and uplifting teachings that help others advance, yet fail to live by them. The good accomplished through such works is real, but the contradiction remains serious. To understand moral truth and still refuse to practice it is a heavier fault than ignorance. Knowledge increases responsibility.
Moral teaching without action resembles seed kept unsown. It contains possibility, but yields no nourishment unless it is made to grow.
Awareness of One’s Good Actions
It is not wrong to recognize the good one has done.
Just as a person should be aware of faults in order to correct them, so one should also recognize when an evil tendency has been overcome. Conscience must weigh actions according to the law of justice, love, and charity. By doing so, one can discern what is right and take legitimate satisfaction in moral victory.
The danger lies elsewhere. Satisfaction becomes a fault when it turns into vanity. Quiet gratitude for having acted well strengthens the soul; pride in one’s virtue weakens it and introduces a new imperfection.
The Passions
The passions do not arise from an evil principle in themselves.
Their root lies in human nature. They are connected to needs, tendencies, and capacities that were given for a purpose. In their proper place, they can be forces for action, courage, perseverance, and accomplishment. They can intensify human strength and help carry life forward.
What makes them harmful is not their origin, but their excess.
A passion becomes disordered when the will no longer governs it. When a person directs passion, it can be useful, like a strong horse under control. When passion takes command, it becomes dangerous. Its power remains the same, but instead of serving good ends, it pushes the person into imbalance and harm.
The boundary is clear: a passion ceases to be good when it causes injury to oneself or to others, and when one is no longer master of it.
These impulses may greatly enlarge human power. They can become levers that multiply energy and support noble action. Yet the same force, if left unruled, leads to excess. Then what might have served good becomes a burden that overwhelms the person who should have governed it.
Because every passion begins in some natural sentiment or need, its principle is not evil. Evil enters through exaggeration. Passion, in this sense, is not the original need itself but the need carried beyond its right measure. The fault lies not in the cause, but in the excess and in the harm that excess produces.
There is also a deeper spiritual consequence.
Every passion that draws a person more strongly toward the merely animal side of life carries that person farther from the spiritual side. By contrast, every feeling and movement of the soul that raises a person above selfish appetite shows the growing predominance of spirit over matter. In that elevation lies progress toward perfection.
Overcoming Evil Tendencies
Human beings are capable of overcoming their evil tendencies through their own efforts.
Often the obstacle is not lack of power, but lack of will. Real effort is rarer than people suppose. Many say they want to change, yet their desire remains superficial. The will may speak, while inwardly the person still clings to the passion. In such cases, the claim of helplessness is often an illusion sustained by secret consent.
When people believe their passions are irresistible, it is frequently because some impure part of them still takes pleasure in those passions. The struggle is not merely against an outside force, but against inner attachment.
Those who sincerely work to restrain their passions discover something important about themselves: they are more than their impulses. In mastering passion, the spirit asserts its freedom over matter. Each victory is a genuine triumph of the higher nature over the lower.
Spiritual Aid
No one is left unaided in this struggle.
If a person sincerely prays to God and asks for the help of a guardian angel, good spirits come in support. Helping human beings resist harmful influences and grow stronger in the good belongs to their work. Their assistance does not replace effort, but strengthens it.
Divine help and human resolve must work together. The person must truly want freedom, and spiritual aid responds to that sincere desire.
The Most Effective Means
The most effective way to resist the predominance of the bodily nature is self-denial.
Self-denial does not mean contempt for life or the destruction of natural faculties. It means learning not to be ruled by appetite, vanity, impulse, or self-indulgence. It is the deliberate discipline by which the spirit keeps command.
Through self-denial, passion is not annihilated but ordered. Its force remains, yet it is directed toward what is good. In that discipline, the human being grows inwardly stronger, less captive to excess, and more capable of rising toward the spiritual life.
Selfishness
Of all vices, selfishness is the root.
Every evil can be traced back to it. However varied the forms of vice may seem, selfishness lies beneath them. As long as the cause remains, the effects will continue to appear. Anyone who truly seeks moral perfection must therefore work to uproot every selfish tendency from the heart, because selfishness cannot live alongside justice, love, and charity. It weakens and neutralizes every other good quality.
Selfishness appears deeply tied to personal interest, which is why it seems so difficult to eradicate. Yet it is not an eternal feature of human nature. As human beings become more enlightened about spiritual reality, they give less importance to material things. In the same movement, the institutions that inflame passions and encourage rivalry must also be reformed. This depends above all on education.
Selfishness is one of the greatest evils affecting life on earth, but it belongs to the impurity of the spirits incarnated here, not to the human species in its essence. Through successive lives and gradual purification, spirits free themselves from selfishness just as they rid themselves of other imperfections. There are already people on earth who are notably free from it and who practice genuine charity. They are more numerous than is often supposed, but true virtue does not seek display.
Civilization may seem at times to intensify selfishness rather than diminish it. Yet this growth of the evil helps reveal its ugliness. When selfishness has produced enough suffering, the need to destroy it becomes unmistakable. Once human beings free themselves from its domination, they will live with one another in a spirit of fraternity. The strong will support the weak instead of oppressing them. No one will lack what is necessary, because all will practice justice. Such a condition belongs to the reign of the good that is being prepared.
Means of Destroying Selfishness
Selfishness is among the hardest of human imperfections to uproot because it is sustained by the influence of matter. Laws, social structures, habits, and forms of education often support it instead of correcting it.
It weakens as moral life gains predominance over material life. A clearer understanding of the soul’s true destiny also diminishes it. When human beings understand that their future is spiritual and not limited to temporary earthly interests, the exaggerated importance given to personality begins to fade. A broader view of existence reduces the tyranny of self-concern.
The selfishness of others also helps perpetuate selfishness in oneself. People become defensive because they feel surrounded by those who think only of themselves. Seeing little generosity around them, they begin to look first to their own protection and advantage. In this way, selfishness reproduces itself through mutual distrust.
For that reason, charity and fraternity must become the foundation of social institutions and of the relations that govern both individuals and nations. When each person sees others acting with generosity and fairness, concern for self naturally lessens. Example has a moralizing force. Contact with people who live by charity encourages the same disposition in others.
In times when selfishness overflows, genuine virtue requires real sacrifice. To put aside one’s own personality for the sake of others, especially when that sacrifice may not be recognized, is among the highest expressions of moral life. Such renunciation opens the way to the happiness reserved for those who have learned not to live for themselves alone. Those who think only of themselves isolate themselves by that very choice, and they suffer the abandonment that selfishness inevitably creates.
Education and Moral Reform
Much has been done to advance humanity. Good sentiments are more often praised, encouraged, and honored than in many earlier times. Yet selfishness still acts like a devouring worm within society. It is a widespread evil, touching everyone to some degree, and it must be fought as one would fight an epidemic.
To cure it, the causes must be sought out carefully. They are found throughout the whole social order, from family life to national life, from poverty to wealth, in visible influences and hidden ones alike. Whatever excites, sustains, or develops selfishness must be identified. Once the causes are known, remedies become possible. Even if the evil cannot be removed all at once, it can be reduced step by step until the poison is gradually drawn out.
The deepest remedy lies in education, but not in instruction alone. The needed education is one that forms moral character as well as intelligence. Properly understood, education is the key to moral progress. It is not enough to fill the mind with knowledge; character must also be guided, disciplined, and cultivated.
To shape character requires tact, experience, and careful observation. It is a serious mistake to think that knowledge alone is enough to form a person well. Anyone who has observed children from different social conditions from the beginning of life can see how many harmful influences surround them: weakness, ignorance, negligence, poor example, and misguided methods of correction. It is no surprise, then, that so much moral disorder appears later. Yet many difficult tendencies are not hopeless. More natures than one might imagine would yield good fruit if they were well cultivated.
Selfishness and Human Happiness
Human beings naturally want happiness. They labor constantly to improve their condition and to discover the causes of their suffering. Once they understand that selfishness is one of those causes, they will recognize it as an enemy to their own well-being.
Selfishness gives rise to pride, ambition, greed, envy, hatred, and jealousy. It disturbs every social relation. It creates division, destroys trust, and forces people into a constant defensive posture toward one another. It changes friendship into hostility and turns community into rivalry.
It is therefore not only morally wrong; it is incompatible with happiness and even with personal security. The more suffering it causes, the more clearly people will feel the need to fight it, as they would fight a plague or any destructive scourge. In the end, even self-interest will teach the necessity of overcoming selfishness.
Selfishness is the source of all vices, just as charity is the source of all virtues. To destroy the former and develop the latter must be the aim of every sincere effort, if one wishes to secure happiness both in this life and in the life to come.
The Characteristics of a Moral Person
Real progress in a person is recognized by the way the spirit expresses itself through bodily life.
A spirit shows its advancement when the actions of its earthly life are governed by the law of God, and when it already understands, in some measure, the life of the spirit before entering it fully. Moral growth is not proved by words, appearances, or outward devotion, but by conduct.
Truly moral individuals practice the law of justice, love, and charity in its purest form. They examine themselves sincerely. In questioning their conscience, they ask whether they have violated that law, whether they have done any evil, whether they have done all the good within their power, whether anyone has a legitimate complaint against them, and whether they have treated others as they themselves would wish to be treated.
Those who are filled with charity and love for their neighbor do good for its own sake, without expecting reward. They are willing to sacrifice personal interest for the sake of justice. Their goodness is not calculated. It comes from a genuine recognition of duty and from a sincere concern for others.
They are good, humane, and benevolent toward everyone because they see all people as brothers and sisters, whatever their race or belief. Human distinctions do not erase spiritual kinship.
When they possess power or wealth, they regard these not as personal trophies, but as a trust entrusted to them for the benefit of others. Such advantages do not make them vain, because they understand that what has been given can also be taken away.
When the social order places others under their care, they treat them with kindness and benevolence, remembering that all are equal before God. Authority, in their hands, is used to elevate and morally strengthen, never to humiliate or oppress through pride.
They are tolerant of the weaknesses of others because they know that they themselves need tolerance. Remembering their own imperfections, they do not rush to condemn. They keep in mind the command: let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.
They are not vindictive. Following the example of forgiveness, they pardon offenses and remember benefits rather than injuries. They understand that the measure they use toward others will be the measure applied to themselves.
They also respect in others all the rights granted by the laws of nature, just as they wish their own rights to be respected. Their moral life is therefore marked not only by inward feeling, but also by justice in action, humility in power, mercy in judgment, and charity in all human relationships.
Self-Knowledge
The most effective means of improving ourselves in this life and resisting the pull of evil is contained in an ancient maxim: know yourself.
Its wisdom is clear, but its practice is demanding. Self-knowledge does not arise spontaneously. It requires deliberate examination, honesty, and the courage to look within without excuse or self-flattery.
A useful discipline is to review each day at its end. Let the conscience be examined carefully. Recall what was done, what was neglected, what intention guided each action, and whether any duty was left unfulfilled. Ask whether anyone has had reason to complain, whether any harm was caused, and whether any selfish motive was concealed beneath outward respectability.
Such a daily reckoning gradually reveals what must be corrected. It shows not only visible faults, but also hidden tendencies that might otherwise pass unnoticed. When this examination is done sincerely, with prayer for enlightenment and help from God and from one’s guardian angel, it becomes a powerful aid to moral progress.
Certain questions are especially searching. Toward what aim did I act in a given circumstance? Did I do anything that I would blame in another? Did I do anything I would not dare confess openly? If I were called at this moment into the spiritual life, where nothing can be hidden, would I shrink from the gaze of others?
The examination may be made in three directions: first, regarding what has been done against God; next, regarding what has been done against one’s neighbor; and finally, regarding what has been done against oneself. The result will be either peace of conscience or the recognition of a wrong that needs amendment.
Self-knowledge is the key to individual improvement. Yet judging oneself fairly is difficult because vanity readily disguises faults. The miser imagines that greed is only prudence. The proud person mistakes pride for dignity. Many errors appear acceptable when viewed through self-interest.
A reliable test helps cut through this illusion. When uncertain about the moral quality of an action, ask how it would be judged if another person had done it. If it would be blamed in someone else, it cannot be justified in oneself. Justice does not change according to the person.
It is also wise to consider what others think, without dismissing criticism too quickly. Even the opinion of an enemy can be useful, because an enemy has no desire to soften the truth. At times, those who oppose us serve as a mirror, revealing what friends may hesitate to say.
Whoever truly wishes to improve must examine the conscience in order to uproot harmful tendencies as weeds are pulled from a garden. The moral life benefits from the same careful accounting used in ordinary affairs. One may weigh the day’s moral gains and losses, asking whether more good than evil has been produced. If the day has been good, one may rest in peace and await the future without fear.
The questions asked of the conscience should be clear and precise. Vague reflection easily becomes self-deception. Honest yes-or-no answers leave little room for evasion. A few minutes given each day to such work are not wasted. People labor constantly for material security and for rest in old age, enduring fatigue and sacrifice for a future they hope to enjoy. How much more worthwhile is the effort required for moral preparation and lasting peace.
Many are tempted to say that the present is certain while the future is uncertain. Yet the future life is not meant to remain obscure. Human beings are called to understand it clearly enough that doubt no longer rules the soul. For that reason, spiritual truths are brought to attention first through observable effects and then through instruction that each person has a responsibility to receive and embody through right living.
Many faults pass unnoticed simply because they are never examined closely. Frequent interrogation of the conscience reveals how often one has failed without realizing it, especially by neglecting to study the true nature and motive of one’s actions. This method is more exact than relying on a general maxim alone, because it demands personal answers. From those answers, one may discern with greater clarity the measure of good and evil present within and the work still needed for reform.