pplies to all that
they do, and to it may be attached the blame for all the things which
they lack or do wrongfully. If a man has been wronged, he must
personally right the wrong. If a man runs for office, people support him
as a man and no questions are asked as to his platform. If a man
conducts a store, people buy from him because he sells the goods, not
because the goods commend themselves to them. And so by common consent
and practise, the individual interests are first. Naturally this leads
to many cases of lawlessness. The game of some of our people is to
evade the law; of others, to ignore the law entirely."

The pioneer had in his religion but one essential doctrine,--the
salvation of the soul. His church had no other concern than to save
individuals from the wrath to come. It had just one method, an annual
revival of religion.

The loneliness of the pioneer's soul is an effect of his bodily
loneliness. The vast outdoors of nature forest or prairie or mountain,
made him silent and introspective even when in company. The variety of
impacts of nature upon his bodily life made him resourceful and
self-reliant; and upon his soul resulted in a reflective, melancholy
egotism. His religion must therefore begin and end in personal
salvation. It was a message, an emotion, a struggle, and a peace.

The second great characteristic of the pioneer was his emotional
tension. His impulses were strong and changeable. The emotional
instability of the pioneer grew out of his mixture of occupations. It
was necessary for him to practise all the trades. In the original
pioneer settlement this was literally true. In later periods of the
settlement of the land the pioneer still had many occupations and
representative sections of the country even until the present time
exhibit a mixture of occupations among country people most unlike the
ordered life of the Eastern States. Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations"
makes clear that the practise of many occupations induces emotional
conditions. Between each two economic processes there is generated for
the worker at varied trades a languor, which burdens and confuses the
work of the man who practises many trades. This languor is the source of
the emotional instability of the pioneer.

The pioneer's method of bridging the gap between his many occupations
was simple. When he had been hunting he found it hard to go to plowing:
and if plowing, on the same day to turn to tanning or to mending a