Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1880 — Responsibility for Others. [ARTICLE]

Responsibility for Others.

None but very selfish ot very foolish persons seek to evade that responsibility for others which is so' important an element in the whole structure of the world's life; and unwillingness to assume one's proper duties in the line ot this responsibility is a direct and accurate measure of the self-seeking or the mental and moral incapacity from which it springs. We must be responsible for others in one way or another, whether we will or not. Mutual privilege and mutual duly unite in making one man the representative of, and to a certain extent the substitute for, other men, no matter what be his station in life. No one is so great as to avoid this responsibility, which grows heavier and heavier with tho increasing power of the individual upon whom it falls; and on the other hand, no human being is so humble as not to be responsible for the words and deeds, ana even the spiritual welfare, of somebody else. This world is a social world, in which, by God’s plain ordering, !t is simply impossible for any person to throw on, though he may evade or deny, his constant duty toward other persons —a duty which is not a whit lessened by the equally plain fact that man's moral nature is self-controlled, and that the punishment for sin falls upon the individual sinner, however sorely he may have been tempted or misled by those who ought to have stood in a position of responsibility toward him. Those who are well aware that they stand in a representative and responsible position toward others—in that of a parent, an employer, a teaoher, a leader, or other place of direct management and trust—seldom appreciate tne fall burden of their duties. It is not enough to reoognize, in a general way, the met that they have a “solemn duty” or a “sacred trust.” They ought also to go from general to particular; to consider just how and wnen they are responsible for the acts and the welfare of those to whom they stand in any position of leadership. But if those who know their responsibility, without fully appreciating and obeying it, are thus negligent, much more are those who, not being in an official, or parental, or otherwise evident, position of trust, never stop to think that they have any duties as influencing,, and therefore leading and being responsible for, those with whom they come in contact. In one way or another, all men are leaders, so long as they remain among the number of rational and independent beings. We may be perfectly sure that some one will remember our ill-considered words; that some one will treasure up the memory of our bad deeds; that tho pattern which we set, from our most trivial act to the whole fabric of our lives, will certainly be taken as a model by persons who are younger or weaker than we, or by those who, of stronger character than ours, are yet willing to try to excuse their own shortcomings by an expressed or implied, “ He did it, and so I will.” We do not need to go into the consideration of the vast and vaguely defined, but appallingly real, domain of unconscious influence, in order to discover the fact that no man can live unto himself. If we will bnt open our eyes upon the life immediately around us, if we will believe the spoken and unspoken testimony which oomes to us, if we will remember—and apply to our treatment of others—how much we ourselves have been influenced by those who, as leaders or exemplars, have responsibly molded our own lives and characters’ we shall not long remain in doubt a* to the extent ana the gravity of oar individual duty in this matter.

If any one is desirous of beginning to regulate his life more strictly in its relations of responsibility for others, he may make a wholesome commencement by paying more rigid attention to the character of the persons whom he introduces or conducts to the society of others. A mere personal introduction ought to be, and is held to be by the true gentleman or gentlewoman, an act of grave social sponsorship, in which one s own character is involved. Then, too, we should regard as a not less sacred thing the giving of a letter of introduction or recommendation; for a letter has more fixed permanence than a spoken word, and never should be given heedlessly. Persons who would not willingly utter a lie, or steal tbeir friends' money, too often write » fulsome falsehood, in tbe guise of a letter of commendation, and thereby steal what has vastly more than a money value—the confidence and the happiness ot him to whom the letter is sent. Far fewer would be the number of lost friendships and of wasted influences, if we more fully reoognized Die everpresent duty and prmlege of our personal responsibility for others, in all its degrees, from the least to the greatest. — B. S. Times.