James Allen (1909)
If one looks superficially at a piece of cloth, he sees it as a piece of cloth, but if he goes further and inquiries into its manufacture, and examines it closely and attentively, he sees that it is composed of a combination of individual threads, and that, while all the threads are interdependent, each thread pursues its own way throughout, never becoming confused with its sister thread. It is this entire absence of confusion between the particular threads which constitutes the finished work – a piece of cloth: any inharmonious commingling of the thread would result in a bundle of waste or a useless rag.
Life is like a piece of cloth, and the threads of which it is composed are individual lives. The threads, while being interdependent, are not confounded one with the other. Each follows its own course. Each individual suffers and enjoys the consequences of his own deeds, and not of the deeds of another. The course of each is simple and definite; the whole forming a complicated, yet harmonious, combination of sequences. There are action and reaction, deed and consequence, cause and effect, and the counterbalancing reaction, consequence, and effect is always in exact ratio with the initiatory impulse.
A durable and satisfactory piece of cloth cannot be made from shoddy material, and the threads of selfish thoughts and bad deeds will not produce a useful and beautiful life – a life that will wear well, and bear close inspection. Each man makes or mars his own life; it is not made or marred by his neighbor, or by anything external to himself. Each thought he thinks, each deed he does, is another thread – shoddy or genuine – woven into the garment of his life; and as he makes the garment so must he wear it. He is not responsible for his neighbor’s deeds; he is not the custodian of his neighbor’s actions; he is responsible only for his own deeds; he is the custodian of his own actions.
The “problem of evil” subsists in a man’s own evil deeds, and it is solved when those deeds are purified. Says Rosseau: “Man, seek no longer the origin of evil; thou thyself art its origin.”
Effect can never be divorced from cause; it can never be of a different nature from cause. Emerson says: “Justice is not postponed; a perfect equity adjusts the balance in all parts of life.”
And there is a profound sense in which cause and effect are simultaneous, and form one perfect whole. Thus, upon the instant that a man thinks, say, a cruel thought, or does a cruel deed, that same instant he has injured his own mind; he is not the same man he was the previous instant; he is a little viler and a little more unhappy; and a number of such successive thoughts and deeds would produce a cruel and wretched man. The same thing applies to the contrary – the thinking of a kind thought, or doing a kind deed – an immediate nobility and happiness attend it; the man is better than he was before, and a number of such deeds would produce a great and blissful soul.
Thus, individual human conduct determines, by the faultless law of cause and effect, individual merit or demerit, individual greatness or meanness, individual happiness or wretchedness. What a man thinks, that he does; what he does, that he is. If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.