Verify your Compass [pp. 173-177]

VERIFY YOUR COMPASS.
unexceptional-success, and without the slightest
liability to the objection which has to some slight
extent given countenance to the aversion which
has arisen here. With this amendment of the
system once introduced, it becomes obvious that
the law of "compulsory vaccination" is a righteous one, and that the dislike and opposition of
any individual to a benceent arrangement determined by the sense, and appointed for the
safety, of ninety-nine of every hundred in the
community qualified to form a judgment, ought
to be sternly overridden. Conscience is a far
more unendurable plea for disobedience in this
case than in the last. There disobedience threatened only the life of the offender's child; here
it threatens the lives, health, and comeliness of
thousands of his fellow citizens.
The practical conclusion to be drawn from
all these considerations, stated nakedly and
broadly, would strike most persons as somewhat startling. It is this: that conscientiousness in its absolute form-that is, being a slave
to your conscience, always doing what it tells
you to do-is commendable or defensible only
on the preliminary assumption that you have
taken every available pains to enlighten and
correct it. You can be safe and justified in
obeying it implicitly only when you have ascertained, or done all in your power to ascertain,
first, that it is qualified to command; and, secondly, that what you take for conscience is not
in reality egotism, ignorance, incapacity, intolerance, or conceit under a thin disguise. To
make sure of this is no easy business. It requires not only good sense (a much rarer gift
than we fancy), but great intelligence, a cultivated mind, modest as well as earnest searching
after truth, to entitle a man to give himself over
to his conscience. Never must he be allowed to
plead it as an excuse for mistake or wrong. In
fine, and in plain truth, it is not every manperhaps we might say it is but few men-that
can afford to keep a conscience —a conscience of
this absolute and imperious sort at least. To
direct floundering or blinded souls, just as much
as to cure diseased bodies, needs a license and
a diploma from some college competent to confer
such.
In the navy, and I believe in the merchant
service as well, it is the practice as soon as a
ship is ready for sea, or ordered on an expedition, to pass her through a preliminary ceremony, known technically as "being swung."
It is absolutely indispensable; she is not held to
be fit for duty till it has been performed. It consists in verifying her compasses-ascertaining
by actual and minute comparison with compasses on shore that those instruments by which
she is to direct her course throughout her voyage are perfect and accurate, point aright, are
impeded in their operation by no fault of construction, and liable to no deviation from the
influence of disturbing attractions. As a matter
of fact the magnetic compasses of few ships are
found to be thoroughly exact, or to point truly
and precisely to the north-sometimes swerving
from that direction as much as ten degrees, and
owing this variation most commonly to the position and amount of iron of which the ship is partially constructed. Before the ship is suffered
to sail, this variation must be either rectified or,
as is more commonly the practice, registered and
allowedfor. It is obvious that, unless this were
done, not only would the vessel not know for
certain whither she was steering, nor arrive except by accident at her intended port; but that
ship, cargo, and the lives of the crew might
every day be wrecked on any hidden rock or
headland-in fact, that her course and fate would
be at the mercy of chance.
In the case of ships setting forth upon voyages across the Atlantic Ocean all this anxious
caution is observed lest the guiding instrument
to which they trust should be imperfect or misleading. Yet men habitually set out upon the
voyage of life-far longer in duration, beset with
perils from rocks and hurricanes immeasurably
greater, and fraught with issues incontestably
more serious-with a compass as their guide
which they trust as blindly and obey as implicitly as any mariner who ever sailed the
seas, yet which in countless instances they
have never been at the pains to test before installing it in a position of command, and which
they seldom if ever pause to question, verify, or
adjust.
VWr. R. GREG, in the Nineteenth Century.
VOL. VI.-I2
177