The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Virtue and Reward
A GOOD deal of the literature for children which I have read during the last twenty years promulgates the idea that virtue is entitled to and gets its immediate, adequate, and usually its pecuniary reward, and that evil doers live a dreary and unhappy life and come to a horrible end. If one is honest or unselfish or truthful or does his duty under temptation, there is always the generous employer to send one on an unexpected vacation or the long-lost uncle to return with gold watches and filled purses for trips to Europe.
The college student it seems to me must often have been brought up on this sort of reading matter, for if he does not crib in examination, even though his facts are drawn from his imagination, he is likely to feel that this virtue should be rewarded by his being passed; if he tells the truth about any dereliction, he thinks he is being treated unjustly if he is not entirely forgiven; if he works unselfishly in politics or on a class committee, he is aggrieved if he does not get a "rake-off" or a gold watch-fob. No undergraduate would now think of working on a college publication if he did not expect ultimately to get in on the division of the surplus. His is the virtue that calls for tangible reward.
I have not always found it so in real life. It was something of a shock to me when I was a boy to find that when I called the attention of our bank cashier to the fact that he had over-paid me, he was irritated to have been detected in an error rather than grateful for having been spared a small loss.
"I told you the truth, and now I'm fired," a student said to me not long ago. The satisfaction of having done right was not enough for him, he wanted the gold fob; and the fact that I knew the truth before he told it to me did not change things in his mind; he thought himself entitled to the rake-off.
In many instances, perhaps in most instances, virtue does bring its definite reward, and the evil doer is punished, but one does not have to go far to find the derelict who is riotously happy and successful, and the faithful, honest soul who gets no recognition. Anyway, why should not one do right because it is right, and be honest and truthful and clean because he has principle? One's self-respect, the strength and joy that come from living up to the ideal, are after all the best rewards of virtue, and if one expects no other he will not be disappointed.
March