OR
What Is the Real Purpose of Rotary
By
ARTHUR G. STAPLES
From Chaos to Cosmos
OR
What Is the Real Purpose of Rotary
"VALEDICTORY" By * * * * * The Unselfish Service of "VALEDICTORY" AT Lewiston-Auburn By ARTHUR G. STAPLES Friday, November Twenty-One 1924 * * * * * Published for (Copyright: Lewiston-Auburn Rotary Club) VALEDICTORY This is the "Valedictory" of the "graduation exercises" of Lewiston and Auburn Rotary, Lewiston (Maine), Nov. 21, 1924. For a month, Rotarians had conducted group-classes studying Rotary and meeting at various homes. This Valedictory delivered by A. G. Staples on that occasion is published by the Club. * * * * * There are two kinds of energy or service in the Universe-co-ordinated and non-co-ordinated. In a recent article by Michael Pupin, to which we referred in one of the meetings of our class, during the study of Rotary, one of these kinds of energy or service is called Chaos and the other is called Cosmos. STEAM AND THE STEAM ENGINE A familiar example of the two forms of energy or service is steam and the steam engine. Steam is non-co-ordinated energy-atoms of power bombarding each other, fighting fiercely, seeking to escape, ready to tear asunder anything that opposes it. When it so escapes, it explodes and kills. Steam in its raw state is power as we call it-non-co-ordinated energy. The steam engine takes the steam and transforms it into working power; it co-ordinates all of its bombarding atoms into orderly procession. It puts it to a definite use. It creates a machine; it turns wheels; it does work for man. The steam engine is co-ordinated power. It is a cosmos made from chaos; exactly as worlds were formed out of space by slow co-ordination of atoms. The very wood of this table is a co-ordinated service. It is a cosmos made out of the chaos of atoms concealing within themselves, possibly, power enough to wreck a city. It is said that in a silver dollar is enough power so controlled by co-ordination to move all the wheels of New England. CO-ORDINATE SERVICE So most of the effort of human-kind is to co-ordinate non-co-ordinate energy into what we, from our own standpoint, the standpoint of our needs in life, call service. We do this in respect to the body as in work and in play, in mass play; in football; in baseball; in factories; in shops; in systems-all efforts to co-ordinate chaotic conditions into co-operative and co-ordinated systems of production. ROTARY OBLIGATIONS We have been putting in a month or so-in this Rotary Club-seeking to educate ourselves in the realities of this Rotary movement. I know that it has been profitable, for we have had testimonials from many that the communion of thought, the development of new conceptions of members who have been all too silent in the past, have been astonishing. A member of our class has surprised its members by his fertility of thought and his clarity of understanding. We would miss the prime meaning of Rotary, however, did we deal wholly with details of our own management. I would therefore link it up with all such good purposes, with the church, with the nation, with international government, with co-ordinated work of all sorts; the schools, the steam engine, the electric motor, the missionary in distant fields, the court of law, with the making of worlds, with the birth of new stars and planets, from chaos to cosmos; or from service undirected, uncontrolled, to a service that is controlled by understanding and by a sense of obligation to humanity. ROTARY AND THE CHURCH The greatest effort to co-ordinate and direct service as an energy of human life, not speaking of the physical world, is in the various movements of religious sort-whatever they may be. Each people has its own. The Jew reveres Jehovah; the Christian adds Jesus to his reverence. Needless to advert to other peoples; the followers of Buddha or Confucius or Mahomet. Each is effort at co-ordinated service. Our Christian conception of human service is found in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Golden Rule. Rotary has caught or tried to catch up out of the Golden Rule and the various beatitudes a civic service, without creed, without sectarianism and tried to translate it into business, into social life, into professional ethics, into homelife and into fellowship, which they seek to blossom into friendship. PURPOSE OF SERVICE Maybe we have gotten out of our studies the conceptions of the purpose of the service that we want to co-ordinate and the ends to which it ought to be directed. Maybe not. It is my interest to suggest that purpose, therefore, in a few words.>br> Briefly stated: they are 1st an ideal or a practical conception of the service that we consider to be the basis of our worthy enterprise. This is a very inclusive proposal. If we have each gotten a certain ideal of what is in this movement; what it may perhaps bring to bear, we have so far gotten hold of Rotary. I rather think that it is the first civic movement that pretends to devote itself to ethical matters exclusively, and make entertainment and self-improvement secondary. You will perhaps carry in mind always that its symbol is a wheel and that when an impulse is started at the hub or elsewhere for that matter, it works through all parts because the wheel is a unit and is as strong only as its weakest part. ROTARY'S IDEAL So this is your machine; this is its co-ordinated business. It is the only practical and active civic organization that is based on ethics. It has no creed and takes its ethics from all sources. It matters not whence they come-Old Testament, New Testament, Koran or Talmud-all the same, so long as they are based on the Golden Rule. Its ideal is betterment of everybody, ourselves included, and betterment of conditions in business and daily life. So much for a practical statement of a down-to-earth ideal. ROTARY IN BUSINESS Our studies ought to have instructed us that Rotary is a business matter. That it is to exert itself through daily life of men and women as a matter of practical do-ordination of business; domestic, professional, civil life, charitable service, community of friendliness, etc. A BIG CONTRACT This is a large contract-but it is what happened when, as I started out to say-God started the world in Chaos and finally attuned it to a great law of orderly movement until the very stars sang together. It is what happened when the wild chaos of gases that swung through the wide arc of space, rounded into this ball that we call earth; it was what happened when man first made the greatest invention of earth-the wheel, and made the disconnected forces of friction and of movement roll along on the eternal measure of God's infinite plan, the circle. It was what happened when spiritual man formed the church to teach the chaos of passion and of desire how to rule itself. It was what happened when universities were formed to teach and when the school-marm caught up the spelling book and sought to bring the chaos of the child's mind into the orderly procession of sounds and symbols. "TO CONQUER HATE" I want to use again a story and an illustration, that I have used before and have printed in relation to the life of a friend who with all his little human faults and minor peculiarities yet lived the life of unselfish service. The illustration is this. * * * * * Lewiston Journal Printshop Transcribed by Lisa Taylor Tompson, Mr. Staples' Great-granddaughter
At the Close of a Rotary School
ARTHUR G. STAPLES
ROTARY
Graduation
Lewiston-Auburn Rotary
We no not require any definitions of Chaos, maybe none of Cosmos.
Chaos is energy, service, motion without control or direction. Cosmos is energy or service translated into a purpose, a cosmos, the universe of which earth is a part, for instance, working symmetrically. Cosmos represents the moving of divine laws. Chaos is the material from which the Universe, so moving according to law, is made.
Once - again! Let me repeat: two forms of energy, the non-co-ordinated and the co-ordinated. The one is Chaos, without form and void; the other is the universe or the Cosmos in co-operation, co-ordination.
We do it in schools to teach the mind. We try to get the chaotic methods of thought into orderly and productive lines: to take as the steam-engine takes the varied bombardments and chaotic thoughts of men and women, and control them as we control the steam of the boiling water so that it may drive humanity along to higher and higher points of discovery and adventure.
We do it in regard to spiritual matters; we get together in churches, in clubs, in associations and try to lead chaotic thought into directions of united endeavor. Governments are efforts of the same-to co-ordinate service and energy into laws to the needs of mankind.
In other words it is a co-ordinated movement of various and hitherto scattered energies correlated into a working machine as the steam of boiling water is transmitted to the valve and piston and wheel to make the wheels that are cogged into each other in the machine produce the goods. It thus has a real, perhaps unappreciated majesty. At least, such is my idea to suggest. I feel that, small as we are, we are linked with eternal law.
We have been working for two or three or four weeks to educated ourselves in running this machine. It is difficult, for we seek to produce a philosophy of living. We want kindness, fellowship, abolishment of class and business hatreds, and envies, human helpfulness, forgiveness, to the end of better living. Our international president puts it a little differently when he says that for generations of mankind the energy and conquering power of these generations lay dormant and search for it was dissipated in racial, religious, social prejudices and made useless for want of a common sense of direction. In other words it was non-co-ordinated power. It was waste steam. It was the radio, unharnessed. We have joined ourselves therefore to the Divine Law-to the rational law of the universe; to a scientific and common-sense movement, that we may in every day life, control and co-ordinate this dormant power.
2nd, next comes the active application of each rotarian's ideal of Rotary to his daily business and his home and community life. This has been emphasized very well in our classes.
These two are all there is to Rotary. I have said, however, that each may have gotten his own ideal of Rotary. I feel that to leave it thus, is to leave it rather in the air; for my business as I understand it in the valedictory is to sum up what happens to be my conception of the matter; to clarify if possible.
So I return to my first statements. You should have gotten the idea that Rotary is a movement of use, practical use to society. That it is to take what were formerly scattered good-will; waste steam, and convert it to unselfish use for public and human good. You understand that an ideal of Rotary is to assist society to understand and to have and to enjoy justice, fair play; to increase good-will among men; to create better understanding of each other's problems; to interpret the Golden Rule into daily life and business. This is not a hifalutin program. It is not hot air or talking through one's hat.
It is simple and easily understood ideal and working principle. Rotary has its entertainments, its fun, its fellowship, but it is ideally a machine to co-ordinate scattered and wasted energy in human service not through the church as an agency but through business, professions, home firesides and in all of the daily walks of life.
What about it in business?
For instance we have studied high ethical standards in business and professions; development of acquaintance as a basis for better service to neighbors; recognition of the worthiness of all useful professions; and finally a broadening of the work of Rotary and an enlargement of its vision into a hope that worthiness of all useful professions; and finally a broadening of the work of Rotary and an enlargement of its vision into a hope that it may be of service as a leader in the effort to secure an international friendship and Rotary co-ordination. As our creed puts it, the advancement of good-will and understanding and international peace through a world-fellowship in business and by the way of business and professional men who chance to be united in this particular one Rotary Ideal which we have been trying to grasp.
To get hold of Rotary as an ideal, therefore, has been the object of this intensive period of study. We can hardly expect to get it all at once. We may each have a different conception of it-as I have said-as each person has a different conception of life itself. We build largely on our previous conceptions. But this sort of work, continued, will grown and grow, as does all our school life to the end of our days. We find our primary studies incoherent; and then some day the whole study unfolds in all of its glorious meaning. All things in Rotary are contributory to its purpose, which is to co-ordinate the scattered energies of the various groups of business and professional men of a community into a power-service. That power-service is to be directed to the ideal of a world-fellowship in business and professions, under the broad aegis of justice and human-kindness. As ye would that other men do unto you; do ye even so to them.
It is very simple. It is a positive declaration (this Golden Rule) as I have always said on other occasions. It has a very active verb in it which is a command of the Master who said it many a time and oft, in various ways. DO. It means "service," that oft used word which is nothing but the verb-DO. Your ideals will take care of themselves so long as you carry this simple motto in your life. It includes everything-that ye should do to others as ye would that others do to you. It includes all ethics, all service, all love, all charity, all fellowship, all codes of business ethics, all helpfulness, all sorts of efforts to understand the other fellow and not the misunderstanding or the imputing of bad motives to others; all willingness to forgive and forget evil.
It is all of one sort. And what has been back of it-again that word, service, unselfish service, service for fellow-men. You better not have lived than not have understood this. Down into a forgotten grave without the record of that. Better the love of the community than great riches to leave behind with no one to sorrow at your parting. I have lately lost a friend. What of him shall I always carry in mind? Not his riches, not his possessions, nothing but the memory of a true and gallant gentleman, of fine honor, of rich mind, of unselfish service, of unconscious living of the Rotary spirit that we have been studying. The ideals of Rotary Service which he exemplified.
So this sums up as it seems to me, what we have been trying to discover for the past months of study out of this somewhat non-co-ordinated material of Rotary teachings which have been developed for the past twenty years by its members and leaders. We have done something to have studied. It must not end here. I would suggest that we have occasional sessions devoted to this subject wholly-the preaching of sermons, the giving of talks embodying the substance of this so-called Rotary ideal of an unselfish service. Its ramifications are as broad as our lives. Its various applications are as many as the activities of our own existences. But under it all is the simple message of unselfish service and that is not to be used-that word service-in the hackneyed way of commercial systems; but in the broad understanding of a helpful and practical way of general living.
In the Great War, there was established in London a sort of clearing house for news of beloved ones who were in the trenches or in any portion of the battle front on land or sea. Great Britain called this house in honor of George Tolbert, a hero. Here went mothers seeking news of sons; here went sisters for news of brothers and sweethearts, lamenting long silences from their beloved.
In the way of telegraphic service this house was given the telegraphic code-call to To C. H. Not long ago, this house was opened again as a permanent service, a station of fellowship and memorial. Its work in the War had been so appealing, its ministrations so delicate and lovely and fine and idealistic; it must continue its work among the children of men.
So one night the Prince of Wales and Sir James Barrie, that wonderful maker of fairy tales for those who read, a wizard of words, went there to light the lamps, in the Tolbert House.
And as they lighted them they said this ritual, which might indeed be ours in Rotary as we light the torch that our ideals suggest. "What lights this lamp?" said one; and the answer came, "Unselfish Service."
"What keeps these lamps lit?"
Again the answer, "Unselfish Service."
"What is service?"
And the answer came, "It is the rent we pay for the room we occupy on earth."
"What do the words mean To C. H.?"
"To conquer hate; to conquer hate."
Is not that what Rotary is striving for-unconscious, perhaps, of its mission; blind perhaps; reviled of those who do not or would not or can not, alas, understand it, going on faithful to its plan and stretching its vision until perhaps it may see what each day means as we live and what tomorrow and tomorrow holds out to us, as we aspire to it? Is not this the idea of it:--
The vision, the beginning and the end of these our efforts, futile perhaps, but yet faithful, as good servants of the cause? Is not this the vision, the dream we necessarily have of Rotary? Listen:A little work, a little play
To keep us going-and so good day.
A little warmth, a little light
Of Love's bestowing-and so good night.
A little fun to match the sorrow
Of each day's growing-and so good morrow.
A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing-and so good-bye.
April 2010
