WORK IN A NATIONAL FOREST 



No. 8, The Everyday Ranger 



By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN 



1HAVE been reading a book written -till more plainly stated by Professor 



by a man whom I remember, years Royce, whose book I heartily commend 



ago, when he was a short, stubborn, to all the thinkers in the Forest Serv- 



auburn-haired mountain boy, who came ice: "Loyalty is the will to believe in 



to the preparatory department of the something eternal, and to express that 



newly established University of Cali- belief in the practical life of a human 



fornia. Pie is now a professor of phil- being." 



osophy never mind where. In this And how is all this related to the 

 book he explains with convincing clear- plain forest rangers and guards the 

 ness what seem to me the essentially men behind the guns? They will not 

 right relations of a man to himself, to read this philosophy ; they will not fol- 

 his cause, to humanity, and to the uni- low any of the age-old discussions about 

 verse. success, expediency, truth. No ! But 

 This book sums it all up in the word like the old rover in Stevenson's fable, 

 loyalty, as ultimately defined by him to they will seize their axes and run joy- 

 mean that which says to a man: "The ously to die with Odin. 

 best that you can get lies in self-sur- 1 must admit that long before the 

 render and in your personal assurance "philosophy of loyalty" was made the 

 that the cause to which you surrender subject of a book. I tried faithfully to 

 yourself is indeed good. But your put some such ideas into the minds of 

 cause, if it is indeed a reality, has a rangers until I found that they were 

 good about it which no one man and there already, and that their loyalty to 

 no mere collection of men can ever ver- the large and growing ideals of a great 

 ify. This good of the cause is essen- cause were teaching me much more 

 tially superhuman in its type, even than T could ever hope to teach them, 

 while it is human in its embodiment, for They were finding out for themselves 

 it belongs to an union of men. to a that "it is better to be a spoke in a 

 whole of human life which transcends wheel than a spoke out of a wheel." 

 the individuality of any man, and They had not become ranger- for the 

 which is not to be found as something pleasure of it. nor for the worldly suc- 

 belonging to any mere collection of cess, but because, having -\vrn a Ik-- 

 men. T.et your supreme good, then, be giance. they had "neither eye- t see 

 this: That you regard the cause a> nor ears to hear." save as the Forest 

 real, as good, and that if the cause be Service commands. Hut they cannot 

 lost to any merely human sight, you talk much about it i and Ivw very for- 

 liold it to be nevertheless living i' 1 i' x tunate that i I can imagine just 

 own realm not apart, indeed, from what some gri/./led old ranger says at 

 human life, but in the form of the fill- the camphre a week after one of our 

 filmcnt of many human lives in one." Saturday night meetings: 



Again, he Stuns it up : "T.oyalty is the "The lx>-s gave us a string about 1 .y- 



will to manifest, so far as is po^jhle. alty ; said to play this game for all 



the Eternal, that is. the conscious and there is in it. Taint decent to do noth- 



superhuman unity of life, in the form of in' else." 



the acts of an individual self." ( 'r. as 1 look back to 1002. when 1 came 



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