On Relying on Laws and Locks

On the question of being safe with someone: After all other considerations are taken into account and given their proper appraisal, we had just as well, first and always, face this fact: that the only things we can count on ultimately are honesty, integrity, and high qualities of character.

There is no such thing as being permanently safe simply with laws or with locks. No lock was ever made that gives full and lasting protection against a cunning and determined dishonesty because the same kind of brains that can make a so-called safe lock can outsmart a so-called safe lock. The same kind of brains that can make a code can break a code. The same kind of mind that can devise a so-called “fool-proof” system, can, if determined to do so, outsmart a “fool-proof” system.

Laws and locks retard dishonest people, but they don’t stop dishonesty. Only honesty can stop dishonesty only integrity, only high qualities of character. And whenever we have to put ourselves in someone else’s hands, as we often do, whenever we have to trust people in any occupation, in any profession, in any relationship in life, we should look beyond skill, beyond talent, beyond personality, beyond appearance, beyond ability beyond all these (but including them also if we can) we should look for qualities of character. And if we can’t count on character, there is very little that we can count on.

No man has reason to sleep very well if his whole trust is placed in locks and alarms, for people have proved repeatedly, with boldness and craftiness and cunning, that they can invade the most safely guarded precincts; that they can perpetuate multi-million dollar frauds upon the public; that they can circumvent accounting systems, audits and rules and regulations. And with more laws and locks than we have ever had before, and with more men checking on other men, there is more and ever more violation of laws and of locks.

Too often, in too many places, too many of us have too much put our trust in mere physical factors, in the arm of flesh, and have too much forgotten the inner make-up of the man. But when we have found someone with high qualities of character, someone without evil intent, someone who knows the difference between what is his and what isn’t, what is honorable and what isn’t, we have found a possession beyond price for one of the greatest blessings of life is someone to trust, someone to be safe with.