Concerning Synthetic Substitutes for Character – Sunday, October 31, 1943
There has long been a philosophy too widely entertained that a personal weakness could be offset by a legal device. For example, there have been those who have supposed that if a man weren’t fundamentally honest, you could make him honest merely by passing a law against dishonesty, or that if a man weren’t disposed to be moral, you could assure his morality by legislating against immorality. And this line of thinking has gone yet further.
There was a day, for example, when more business was done on the strength of personal integrity—more on character and less on collateral. But in some places collateral has tended to replace character. But, lest we forget it, integrity of character is still an indispensable element of any transaction, regardless of what other safeguards may be insisted upon. And this isn’t true only of personal negotiations; it is true also of national and international relationships, because nations are only groups of people and governments are only men—and agreements are worth no more than the integrity of those who are responsible for them.
He who has the word of a man of honor has something to count on, but he who has a document with a gold seal on it, may have only a scrap of paper, because history, both past and current, has proved that there is no security that can not be “watered,” no strong box that cannot be broken, no treaty that cannot be scrapped, no truce that cannot be violated, no fortress that cannot be leveled, no oath that cannot be dishonored, unless behind all these things there stand men of high principle. The only relationships in this world that have ever been worth while and enduring, have been relationships in which one man could trust another—not relationships in which one man was forced to seek ways of protecting himself against another, because, in the first place, you can’t legislate a man or a nation or a people into being good, and there is no legal device yet found that will surely and permanently protect anyone from anyone else who is persistently determined to be false or dishonorable.
Maybe one of these days, if we haven’t done so already, we shall begin again to bank more on character and less on collateral, more on personal responsibility and less on legislation, more on private resourcefulness and less on public relief, more on common sense and less on regulation, more on simple justice and less on the involvement’s of litigation, more on principle and less on expediency—because there’ isn’t any law that can be enforced, there isn’t any security that is worth the gilded seal affixed to it, there isn’t any promise that’s worth the breath that speaks it, there isn’t any commitment that’s binding beyond the present, there isn’t any free enterprise that can be saved, there isn’t any future for anyone, except on the basis of personal and national integrity. But in looking for such a day, we must remember that there isn’t any synthetic formula for the making of integrity. If it is to be had, it begins at the cradle and for generations back—and permeates every phase of home, community, and national life. And if you can’t build on character, you can’t build on anything—for long.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Oct. 31, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
October 31, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,741