PREFACE 

            What a pleasant surprise, and what an enjoyable experience it is to bring this little book into being!  When I delivered that first talk on the Four-Way Test of Rotary in 1971-1972 Rotary year, I never dreamed that one day there would be seven such talks and someone would suggest they should be printed.  One way I could serve the Rotary cause while working hard at my seven-days-a-week job, was by speaking at various Rotary Clubs on the Four-Way Test.  The first talk was to my home club, Westwood Village Rotary in Los Angeles, California.  Lowell Laueson, the President of our club, attended a District Conference and evidently spoke positively about my speech.  Immediately requests began to come in for me to deliver the talk at clubs all over Los Angeles.  I was surprised and delighted.  Some form of the speech was delivered more than one hundred times.  Each talk required three or more hours, including travel time, but I was pleased to have that privilege.

            A few months ago my friend of many years, Henry Tseng, called me and suggested that I should consider publishing the different versions of the talk on the Four-Way Test.  When I looked back over my notes it was discovered that there were at least seven different speeches on differing aspects of the subject.  I discussed this ethical guide for the things we think, and say, and do from the historical viewpoint, how the test came to be created, from the personal viewpoint of the freedom to decide what kind of person each of us decides to be, from the standpoint of the whole earth as a giant Spaceship, from the Third World way of looking at things, from the view of a United States patriot, etc.  It proved to be quite a challenging and enjoyable adventure.

            The aspect that most appealed to me was the opportunity to talk to so many leaders of business in our various communities.  It was a chance to talk about our world and it's problems, the challenge of our culture, and the opportunity to do something that could make a difference positively.  Many people feel hopeless and helpless in our world.  Here is a chance to show a real concern for truth, fairness, justice and peace.  Ethics does not enjoy the simplicity of what has been called "precise science".  Ethics can only lighten the darkness slightly but not dispel it entirely.  This is disconcerting to those who want an infallible code of "do's" and "don'ts".  In the Four-Way Test we do not have a law, but a principle, an ideal toward which we strive.  But it is an ethical challenge that can help us light a candle in the night, rather than merely curse the darkness.

            And so, we send these seven talks out to you with the hope that you will find them helpful, at least suggestive, and perhaps pass them on to another Rotarian.  The section of prayers, we trust, may assist you in those quiet moments when you think about life, its meaning and its destiny

Myron J. Taylor
Written on March 29, 2002
Two days after my 78^th birthday.