Integrity--Without Side Considerations

The subject of integrity suggests itself for consideration. The words associated with it are themselves reassuring: “… the quality of being complete, … unbroken—unimpaired—moral soundness, purity, honesty, freedom from corrupting influence or practice, strictness in the fulfillment of contracts… and in the discharge of trusts.”

This is the quality that gives assurance that, as things seem to be, they are; that an endorsement represents an honest judgment, and not merely an opinion paid for.

In a simple forthright sentence, Washington said: “I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”—and Alexander Pope added: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” Herbert Spencer said: “Not education, but character, is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.” “…Young Washington resolved to adhere absolutely to truth,” wrote Douglas Southall Freeman, “to practice rigid honesty, to do his full duty, to put forth his largest effort, to maintain uniform courtesy and, above all, to deal justly.”

In this he may have left us our greatest heritage; or at least he left us an example of a quality of character we must have, if we are to preserve the heritage we have.

Surely there is no greater need for our tie than the need for integrity, for being true to trust, being assured that the whole substance of things can be seen from the top of the table. And this is not something that new laws or legislation will fix, or new rules or regulations, for ingenious men will always find ways to circumvent both laws and locks.

Integrity is simply something that a man is within himself. It is, in a sense, the assurance that what one sees, what something seems, what should be, what is said to be, is something that can be counted on, without side considerations.