This Is
Not Teaching Of The Highest Order; But It Is Teaching Well Adapted
To Human Circumstances, And Has Obtained For Itself A Wide Credit.
One Is Driven, However, To Doubt Whether Even This Teaching Is Not
Too High For The Frontier Man.
Is it possible that a frontier man
should be scrupulous and at the same time successful?
Hitherto
those who have allowed scruples to stand in their way have not
succeeded; and they who have succeeded and made for themselves
great names, who have been the pioneers of civilization, have not
allowed ideas of exact honesty to stand in their way. From General
Jason down to General Fremont there have been men of great
aspirations but of slight scruples. They have been ambitious of
power and desirous of progress, but somewhat regardless how power
and progress shall be attained. Clive and Warren Hastings were
great frontier men, but we cannot imagine that they had ever
realized the doctrine that honesty is the best policy. Cortez, and
even Columbus, the prince of frontier men, are in the same
category. The names of such heroes is legion; but with none of
them has absolute honesty been a favorite virtue. "It behoves a
frontier man to be smart, sir." Such, in that or other language,
has been the prevailing idea. Such is the prevailing idea. And
one feels driven to ask one's self whether such must not be the
prevailing idea with those who leave the world and its rules behind
them, and go forth with the resolve that the world and its rules
shall follow them.
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