In Pilgrim's Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that
which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor
and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can
be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily
becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.
There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There
should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in
business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker
, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper,
with merciless severity makes such attack provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely
truthful... To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include
decent men in the general condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of cynical belief in
and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate
with untold damage to the country as a whole. The fool
who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is
is well-nigh as
dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good
American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse
than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked
before they could grow to fruition.
Roosevelt uses the words "patriot" and "American in the line. "There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good
American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter" to make an appeal to
the audience's (5 points)
Oa
civic pride
Ob
suspicions
oc
logic
Od
religious beliefs
Hi