Ashley Bricks
Introduction to Mass Communications – Directed Study
Doctor Jack H. Simons
January 6, 2008
Lincoln Steffens: One Man’s Search for Truth
“Most people, you know, say it was Adam. But Adam, remember, he said that it
was Eve, the woman; she did it. And Eve said no, no, it wasn’t she; it was the serpent.
And that’s where you clergy have stuck ever since. You blame that serpent, Satan. Now
I come and I am trying to show you that it was, it is, the apple.”1
From the earliest recollections of his childhood until the end of the time he wrote
about in his autobiography, Lincoln Steffens challenged the status quo in his search for
meaning and ultimate truth and devoted his life to finding his place in the world; the
reasons behind the morals or lack thereof of mankind; and the source for, the definition
of, and the cure for evil.
Enjoying early fantasies with a detailed imagination, the young child Lincoln
soon became familiar with the difference between perception and reality, between truth
as one knows it to be and truth as one wants it to be. He also learned quickly and to his
grave disappointment that his imagination – his desired reality – was much more pleasant
than the reality in which he truly lived. As the young boy based his whole world on each
passing fancy (on horses, on racing, on politics, etc), he was faced with disappointment
each step of the way: traveling on his pony did not open up to him the wide world he
thought it would; horse races were predetermined and not a product of honest racing; and
bribery ruled the world of politics. He learned to hate the “bad men” who had ruined
those early perceptions he had had, but he learned to hate even more those adults who did
1
P. 574
1
Ashley Bricks
not know the truth, who naively held to the same thoughts he had had and had still not
discovered reality.
With this disappointed thought towards the adult world added to the already
present feeling of the adult’s inability to connect and understand children, Lincoln
continued to find his perceptions incorrect. Neither Cambridge nor Oxford, nor the many
other colleges he attended internationally, could satisfy his desire for learning, nor did
they even attempt to answer any of the deeper life questions he had. He was disappointed
to find that although knowledge surrounded these academic institutions, the faculty could
not give him the answer he sought – the definition and foundational basis for truth. He
settled on the fact that the high philosophers had “no test of right and wrong; they have
no basis for ethics.”2
This search for the “basis for ethics” consumed Lincoln and directed not only his
further education but also his world travel, his journalistic career, and his life as a whole.
He looked into the arts only to hear artists speak of the relative “best” in art – it was all
subjective. He studied philosophy only to determine it lacked ethics completely; he
unsuccessfully tried to find the basis for psychology; and he eventually left his search for
ethics to study morals, a transition he said was from “what ought to be done to what is
done.”3
As Lincoln worked as a reporter, his view of ethics became very relativistic; he
began to define ethics by what works and advances the individual, valuing intelligence
over sincerity. This was spurred on by his involvement with men like James B. Dill, a
2
3
P. 127
P. 151
2
Ashley Bricks
politician who exposed his own unethical work for Lincoln to report, justifying it by
saying it was free advertising.
Over time, Steffens tried to put ethics aside and focus on other issues; but try as
he might, his search for truth dictated his steps of research and his involvement in
business and politics. As he seemed to find no answers for his pending questions, he had
to try another angle. He soon justified crimes, saying the “dip” (pickpocket) couldn’t
help what he did; he reasoned when dealing with evil, concluding “nothing was right…-is there any right—or wrong” and settled on the fact that evil was merely “conflicting
interests, between two blind opposite sides, neither of which is right or wrong”4.
More questions began to develop and remain unanswered: “Can an honest man do
dishonest things and remain honest? Is a strong man, however bad, socially better than a
weak man, however good?”5 Unfortunately, Lincoln was not finding answers to his
questions of ethics and morals, and this only hardened him until he was fascinated with
crime, settled on situational ethics – “Ethics are professional; they differ in different
occupations”6 – and disappointed to find most of his former ideas on morals apparently
incorrect.
He began to entertain the idea that perhaps evil and corruption were natural.
“Political corruption is, then, a process. It is not a temporary evil, not an accidental
wickedness, not a passing symptom of the youth of a people. It is a natural process ….
Treason, in brief, is not a bad act; it is an inevitable, successful policy….”7 Deciding this
was so, he began to say that the wrong involved with graft and corruption within the
4
P. 246
P. 274
6
P. 328
7
Pp. 413
5
3
Ashley Bricks
government was found in the fact that it failed to benefit the society for which the
government worked. The public had entrusted themselves to the guidance and care of the
politician, and his lack of loyalty was his sin.
These thoughts were only fed by the startling realization that the public preferred
graft and corruption to a decent government, as he learned by watching the reform and
subsequent relapse of New York City. His search for answers left him finding the social
solution in first intellectual integrity and later “The Golden Rule”. Either way, he
determined the source of evil in society was not “bad men” but “privileged business.”8
As he recognized firsthand that the “good men” were not good and the “bad men”
not so bad, he found solace in examining himself to find his bad point and in joining the
ranks as a self-proclaimed “crook”, able to empathize with the “bad men” he was
learning to admire.
Lincoln, in his reading of the New Testament for a source of vision for the public,
further believed that “Jesus had discovered and declared …the worthlessness of the good
people. He said that he could not save the righteous, only sinners.”9 He was assured by
the story of how the public was offered either goodness (Jesus) or evil (Barabbas) – the
people chose evil and let good die – and he came to the conclusion that the Apostles were
Communists and that Communism was indeed the practical application of Christianity.
However, Lincoln, in his failure to understand the basis of evil, could neither find
nor understand the true source of a solution. He continued to form his idea of an evil that
was based on one’s environment and on an over-reigning force that could not be denied:
8
9
P. 479
P. 525,6
4
Ashley Bricks
“Something was making them all do what they did not want to do;”10 and “you and your
kind, the ablest, most intelligent, most imaginative, daring, and resourceful leaders of
society, are and must be against society and its laws and its all-around growth.”11
When asked “Who started evil?” he replied that the question was not who but
what. He went so far as to blame the apple for Adam and Eve’s sin, saying that “man’s
ideas were determined by the teachings of his childhood, by his business interests, by his
environment, and not by logic.”12 He even declared that man’s ideals were in and of
themselves, one of the two sources of evil.
Lincoln even wondered if “maybe bribery and corruption [were] acts of God” and
those who fight it “the agents of the Devil”13 He did eventually confess that he “had been
contending, with all [his] kind, always against God.”14
Steffens eventually sought out a practical way to deal with the present evil:
intelligent crooks. He said, “All I want to do is to make it impossible for them to be
crooks and not know it. Intelligence is what I am aiming for, not honesty. We have, we
Americans, quite enough honesty now. What we need is integrity, intellectual honesty….
If we can have all such positions filled with intelligent men who, knowingly, corrupt
government, it would be a great step ahead of where we are now—betrayed by a lot of
honest men who think they are the moral pillars of society.”15 He even justified
involvement with illegal or immoral activity by saying that if one stopped that
involvement, it would force someone else to be involved, someone who, perhaps, did not
10
P. 612
P. 573
12
P. 575
13
P. 829
14
P. 872
15
P. 608, 9
11
5
Ashley Bricks
realize the full responsibility and evil with which they were involved. “He would have
the cultural advantage of knowing he was in the business … and could not get out except
by putting into it some one else who might not appreciate the moral advantage of selfknowledge.”16
In the end, Lincoln also found the ultimate source for the solution to the problem.
The solution, however, did not realize it had a problem. Over the course of his studies,
reasoning, and experience, Lincoln Steffens found that the church historically offered the
“vision of world salvation.”17 However, currently, the church had lost its focus until
finally he decided that “Christianity does not work with Christians … but it does with
sinners.”18 In looking back at the Puritan Christians, Steffens observed that they “kept
their religion and their culture out of politics and business. They formed … watertight
compartments of the mind, learned to start to think one way and do another …. They
could corrupt their democratic, agricultural government and social organization to their
business uses and still be honest men … They could stand for free speech, a free press,
and all that, and tyrannically suppress agitators and buy up or boycott papers that spread
discontent.”19 In the end, Lincoln Steffens concluded that “it is literally true that the
Christian churches would not recognize Christianity if they saw it.”20
How sad a final conclusion: that after decades upon decades of a man’s search for
the foundation of truth and the definition of right and wrong, he should find the defining
institution absent-minded, caught up in the hypocrisy of the world, forgetting its own
16
P. 611
P. 613
18
P. 670
19
P. 607
20
P. 688
17
6
Ashley Bricks
foundation, its own responsibility, and its whole purpose. Lincoln Steffens sought truth,
but those commanded to seek him failed to offer it.
7