The Contagion

Frank Boreham

Frank Boreham was ordained a Baptist Minister but had preached before Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational and Church of England congregations for many years in Australia. He was the author of forty-eight books and a regular columnist for The Melbourne Age from 1936 to his death in 1959. This article is reprinted from The Melbourne Age, July 10, 1954.

The most vital factor in a man’s complex composition is his own distinctive personality; and the most dynamic prerogative possessed by his personality is its infective quality.

Just as a powerful magnet infects with its own magnetism every steel filing that it attracts to itself, constituting it a magnet in its own right, so each man’s individuality automatically communicates its inherent bloom or blight to everyone and everything that he happens to touch.

In their own essence, inanimate and insensate things like sticks and stones are ethically neutral; they are neither moral nor immoral; they are non-moral; they are incapable alike of goodness and of badness; they lie beyond the ambit of all such arbitrary classifications. But the moment they come into any kind of relationship with man they catch the contagion of his virtues and his vices. For better or for worse, all substances, whether as pliable as wax or as inflexible as granite, fall under his authority, become assimilated to him and acquire the commendable or detestable qualities of their owner.

In his best-known novel, Dr. George Macdonald pictures Malcolm arranging his fish for sale on the beach at Portlossie. A woman approaches and asks Malcolm if the fish are good or bad. “That depends!” the salesman cryptically replies. “How can it depend?” demands the prospective purchaser. “Well you see,” the young fisherman explains, “if a bad man buys these fish and they nourish him for his badness, they are bad fish; whereas, if a good man buys them and they strengthen him for his goodness, they are good fish!” The principle is of universal application.

Here, let us suppose, sits a man at his desk. A sheet of paper is spread out before him and a drop of ink trembles at the point of his pen. In themselves the paper and the ink are totally destitute of ethical tendencies. But think of the possibilities, for weal or for woe, that open up to them through their association with him!

With that sheet of paper and that drop of ink a poet could set the whole world singing and could impart to the fluttering folio a high commercial value. With that sheet of paper and that drop of ink a millionaire could scribble a few words that would endow with enormous wealth the happy recipient of the document. With that sheet of paper and that drop of ink a statesman could write a declaration of war that would turn the earth into a shambles.

The same is, of course, true of money. The moment a man earns a pound, that pound becomes part and parcel of his own personality. If he be a good man the pound will be a good pound and will be so spent and so administered as to give a fillip to all that is most wholesome and uplifting in the community. If he be a bad man, the pound will be a bad pound, and, in its investment, will infect with its owner’s taint all that it touches in its flow.

Money is what we ourselves make it; from the moment at which it becomes ours it bears our own image and superscription.

Since a man’s fingertips constitute themselves the magic wands by which he transmutes everything he touches into radiations of himself, it follows that the world through which he moves is simply himself a million times magnified.

Each man creates his own world, and creates it in his own image. To a bad man, the world wears a sinister aspect; the sad man finds it a vale of tears; around the glad man’s path the loveliest flowers are blooming; whilst the good man is embarrassed by the wealth of goodness that meets him at every turn. Ω