have this effect, what must a permanent diversion accomplish? It
will accomplish precisely what is indicated by the look and
language of our two young friends at the station-house. It will
develop muscle for the uses of a special calling, and make ugly
and clumsy men of those who should be symmetrical; and at the same
time it will repress mental development, and permanently limit
mental growth--at least, so long as the mind shall be associated
with the body. I suppose that every fecundated germ of human being
is endowed with a certain possibility of development--a
complement of vital energy which will be expended in various
directions, according to the circumstances which may surround it
and the will of its possessor. If it shall be mainly expended upon
the growth and sustentation of muscle, it will not be expended
upon the growth and sustentation of mind; and I have no hesitation
in saying that it is an absolute impossibility for a man who
engages in hard bodily labor every day to be brilliant in
intellectual manifestation. The tide of such a man's life does not
set in that direction. An hourglass has in it a definite quantity
of sand; and when I turn it over, that sand falls from the upper
apartment into the lower; and while it occupies that position it
will continue to fall until the former is exhausted and the latter
is filled. Moreover, it will never take its place at the other end
of the instrument, until it is turned back. It is precisely thus
with a human constitution. The grand vital current moves only in
one direction, and when it is moving toward muscle it is not
moving toward mind, and when it is moving toward mind it is not
moving toward muscle. This fact is illustrated sufficiently by the
phenomena of digestion. After a man has eaten a hearty dinner, he
becomes dull, even to drowsiness or perfect sleep. Why? Simply
because the tide of nervous energy sets towards digestion, and
there is not enough left to carry on mental or voluntary muscular
operations.
A resident of a city riding into the country, especially if he be
an intellectual man, and engaged in intellectual pursuits, will be
thrilled by what he sees around him. The life of the farmer, planted
in the midst of so much that is beautiful, having to do with nature's
marvellous miracles of germination and growth, moving under the
open heaven with its glory of sky and meteoric change, and
accompanied by the songs of birds and all characteristic rural sights
and sounds, will seem to him the sweetest and the most enviable
that falls to human lot. But the hard-working farmer sees nothing
of this. What cares he for birds, unless they pull up his corn?
What cares he for skies, unless he can make use of them for drying
his hay, or wetting down his potatoes? The beautiful changes of
nature do not touch him. His sensibilities are deadened by hard
work. His nervous system is all imbedded in muscle, and does not lie
near enough to the surface to be reached by the beauty and music
around him. All he knows about a daisy is that it does not make
good hay; and he draws no appreciable amount of the pleasure
of his life from those surroundings which charm the sensibilities of
others.
We are in the habit of regarding the farming population of the
country as the most moral and religious of any, yet if we look at
them critically, we shall find that their piety is of a negative,
rather than a positive character. They are men in the first place
who have very few temptations, either from without or from within.
There are no professional tempters around them to lure them into
the more seductive paths of sin. The woman whose steps take hold
on hell does not pass their doors; the gambler spreads no snares
for them; no gilded palace invites them to music and intoxicating
draughts; they are not maddened by ambition; and they have no
vanity that leads them to degrading and ruinous display. If they
are little assailed from without, they are not more moved toward
vice from within. The fact that their vital energies are all
expended upon labor relieves them from the motives of temptation.
Men whose muscles are overworked have no vitality to expend upon
vices. The devil cannot make much out of a man who is both tired
and sleepy. If we inquire of the ministers who have charge of
rural parishes, they will usually tell us that an audience of
mechanics is better than an audience of farmers, and that the
miscellaneous audience of a city is better than either. It is
impossible for men who have devoted every bodily energy they
possess to hard labor during the waking hours of six days, to go
to church and keep brightly awake on the seventh. Country
ministers will also admit that they have in their parishes less
help in social and conference meetings than the pastors of city
parishes, and that no great movements of benevolence ever
originate in, or are carried on by, rural churches.
As a matter of course, life cannot have much dignity or much that
is characteristically human in it unless it be based upon active
intellectuality, genuine sensibility, a development of the finer
affections, and positive Christian virtue. When a man is a man, he
never "tucks in grub." When a man lies down for rest and sleep he
does not "go to roost." To a man, marriage is something more than
"hitching on," and a dirty shirt is a good deal more of a
"surprise" to a man's back than a clean one. There is no doubt
about the fact that a life whose whole energies are expended in
hard bodily labor is such a life as God never intended man should
live. I do not wonder that men fly from this life and gather into
the larger villages and cities, to get some employment which will
leave them leisure for living. Life was intended to be so adjusted
that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always
subordinate to the soul. It was never meant by the Creator that
the soul should always be subordinate to the body, or sacrificed
to the body.
I am perfectly aware that I am not revealing pleasant truths. We
are very much in the habit of glorifying rural life, and praising
the intelligence and virtue of rural populations; and if they
believe us, they cannot receive what I write upon this subject
with pleasure. But the question which interests these people most
is not whether my statements are pleasant but whether they are
true. Is the philosophy sound? Are the facts as they are
represented to be? Does a severe and constant tax upon the
muscular system repress mental development, and tend to make life
hard and homely and unattractive? Is this the kind of life
generally which the American farmer leads? Is not the American
farmer, generally, a man who has sacrificed a free and full mental
development, and all his finer sensibilities and affections, and a
generous and genial family and social life, and the dignities and
tasteful proprieties of a well-appointed home, to the support of
his muscles? I am aware that there are instances of a better life
than this among the farmers, and I should not have written this
article if those instances had not taught me that this everlasting
devotion to labor is unnecessary. There are farmers who prosper in
their calling, and do not become stolid. There are farmers who are
gentlemen--men of intelligence--whose homes are the abodes of
refinement, whose watchward is improvement, and whose aim it is to
elevate their calling. If there be a man on the earth whom I
honestly honor it is a farmer who has broken away from his slavery
to labor, and applied his mind to his soil.
Mind must be the emancipator of the farmer. Science, intelligence,
machinery--these must liberate the white bondman of the soil from
his long slavery. When I look back and see what has been done for
the farmer within my brief memory, I am full of hope for the
future. The plough, under the hand of science, is become a new
instrument. The horse now hoes the corn, digs the potatoes, mows
the grass, rakes the hay, reaps the wheat, and threshes and
winnows it; and every day adds new machinery to the farmer's
stock, to supersede the clumsy implements which once bound him to
his hard and never-ending toil. When a farmer begins to use
machinery and to study the processes of other men, and to apply
his mind to farming so far as he can make it take the place of
muscle, then he illuminates his calling with a new light, and
lifts himself into the dignity of a man. If mind once gets the
upper hand, it will serve itself and see that the body is properly
cared for. Intelligent farming is dignified living. For a farmer
who reads and thinks, and studies and applies, nature will open
the storehouse of her secrets, and point the way to a life full of
dignity and beauty, and grateful and improvable leisure.
LESSON XIII.
REPOSE.
"Peace, greatness best becomes; calm power doth guide
With a far more imperious stateliness
Than all the swords of violence can do,
And easier gains those ends she tends unto." DANIEL.
"When headstrong passion gets the reins of reason,
The force of nature, like too strong a gale,
For want of ballast oversets the vessel." HIGGONS.
"Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,
As I do thee." SHAKSPEARE.
Mrs. Flutter Budget was at church last Sunday, She always is at
church; and she never forgets her fan. I have known her for many
years, and have never known her to be in church without a fan in
her hand, and some article upon her person that rustled
constantly. Her black silk dress is death to devotion over the
space of twenty feet on all sides of her. She fixes the wires in
the bonnets of her little girls, then takes their hats off
entirely, then wipes their noses, then shakes her head at them,
then makes them exchange seats with each other, then finds the
text and the hymns for them, then fusses with the cricket, and
then fans herself unremittingly until she can see something else
to do. During all this time, and throughout all these exercises,
the one article of dress upon her fidgety person that has rustle
in it, rustles. It chafes against the walls of silence as a caged
bear chafes, with feverish restlessness, against the walls of his
cell; and as if the annoyance of one sense were not sufficient,
she seems to have adopted a bob-and-sinker style of trimming, for
hat and dress, and hair and cloak, and every thing that goes to
make up her externals. Little pendants are everywhere--little
tassels, and little balls, and little tufts--at the end of little
cords; and these are all the time bobbing up and down, and
trembling, and threatening to bob up and down, like--
"The one red leaf, the last of its clan
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost bough that looks up at the sky."
Any person who sits near Mrs. Flutter Budget, or undertakes to
look at her during divine service, loses all sense of repose, and
all power of reflection. The most solemn exercises in which the
mind engages cannot be carried on with a fly upon the nose, and
any teasing of a single sense, whether of sight, or sound, or
touch, is fatal to religious devotion. I presume that if the
pastor wishes to find the most sterile portion of his field, he
needs only to ascertain the names of those who occupy pews in the
vicinity of this lively little lady. Her husband died two years
ago, of sleeplessness, and a harassing system of nursing.
The Flutter Budgets are a numerous family in America. They are not
all as restless as Madame, but the characteristics of the blood
are manifest among them all. They never know repose; and, what is
worse than this, they dread if they do not despise it. They are
immense workers--not that they do more work, and harder than their
neighbors, but they make a great fuss about it, and are always at
it. They rise early in the morning, and they sit up late at night;
and they do this from year's end to year's end, whether they
really have any thing to do or not. They cannot sit still. They
have an unhealthy impression that it is wrong for them not to be
"doing something" all the time. Nothing in the world will make
them so uncomfortable and so restless as leisure. Mrs. Flutter
Budget could no more sit down without knitting-work, or a sock to
darn, in her hands, than she could fly. As she has many times
remarked, she would die if she could not work. To her, and to all
of her name and character, constant action seems to be a
necessity. The craving of the smoker for his pipe or cigar, the
incessant hankering of the opium-eater for his drug, the terrible
thirst of the drunkard for his cups--all these are legitimate
illustrations of the morbid desire of the Budgets for action or
motion. The man who has the habit of using narcotics is not more
restless and unhappy without his accustomed stimulus, than they
are with nothing to do. In truth, I believe the desire for action
may become just as morbid a passion of the soul as that which most
degrades and demoralizes mankind.
If I were called upon to define happiness, I could possibly give
no definition that would shut out the word repose. I do not mean
by this that no person can be happy except in a state of repose,
but I mean, rather, that no man can be happy to whom repose is
impossible. The highest definition of happiness would probably
designate the consciousness of healthy powers harmoniously
employed as among its prime elements; but there can be no
happiness that deserves its name without the consciousness of
powers that are able to subside from harmonious action into
painless repose. I know a little girl who plays out of doors at
night as long as she can see, and who, when called into the house,
takes up a book with restless greed for mental excitement, and
then begs to be read to sleep after she has been required to put
down her book and go to bed. She would be called a happy child by
those who see her playing among her mates, yet it is easy to
perceive that her happiness is limited to a single attitude and
condition of body and mind. A happier child than she is one who
can enjoy open-air play, and then quietly sit down at her mother's
side and enjoy rest. That is an inharmonious and unhealthy state
of mind which chafes with leisure; and he is an unhappy man who
cannot sit down for a moment without reaching for a newspaper, or
looking about him for some quid for his morbid mind to chew upon.
So I count no man truly happy who cannot contentedly sit still
when circumstances release his powers from labor, and who does not
reckon among the rewards of labor a peaceful repose.
No; Mrs. Flutter Budget is not a happy woman; and, as I have
intimated before, she seriously interferes with the happiness and
the spiritual prosperity of those about her. When she can find
nothing to do, then she worries. Those children of hers are
worried nearly to death. If, in their play, they get any dirt upon
their faces, they are sent immediately to make themselves clean.
If they soil their clothes, they are shut up until reduced to a
proper state of penitence. They are kept out of all draughts of
air for fear of a cold; and if they should take cold, why, they
must take medicine of the most repulsive character as a penalty.
If they cough out of the wrong corner of their mouths, she
suspects them of croupy intentions; and if they venture, at some
unguarded moment, on a cutaneous eruption, they are immediately
charged with the measles, or accused of small-pox. If they quietly
sit down for a moment of repose, she apprehends sickness, and
stirs them about to shake it off. Even sleep is not sacred to her,
for if she finds a flushed face among the harassed little
slumberers, she wakes its owner to make affectionate inquiries.
Her husband, as I have already stated, died two years ago. She
worked upon his nervous system to such an extent that he was glad
to be rid of the world, and of her. I think a man would die, after
awhile, with constantly looking at the motion of a saw-mill. The
jar of a locomotive makes the toughest iron brittle at last; and
the wear and tear of a restless wife are beyond the strongest
man's endurance.
I have noticed that persons who have influence upon the minds of
others, maintain constantly a degree of repose. I do not mean that
those have most influence who use their powers sparingly, but that
a certain degree of mental repose--or what may possibly be called
imperturbableness--is necessary to influence. Mrs. Flutter Budget
always talks in a hurry, and talks of a thousand things, and is
easily excited. Her neighbor, carefully avoiding the causes which
ruffle her, and preserving the poise of her faculties, insists on
her point quietly, and carries it. The repose of equanimity is a
charm which dissolves all opposition. The mind which shows itself
open to influences from every quarter, and is swayed by them, is
not its own master. The mind that never rests is invariably full
of freaks and caprices. The mind that has no repose shows its
dependence and its lack of self-control. There cannot go out of
such a mind as this a positive influence, any more than there can
go forth from a candle a steady light, when it stands flickering
and flaring in the wind, having all it can do to keep its flame
from extinction. There must be that repose of mind which springs
from conscious self-control and consciousness of the power of
self-control, under all ordinary circumstances, before a man can
hope to have influence of a powerful character upon the minds
about him. The driver of a coach-and-six, with all the ribbons in
his hands, and a thorough knowledge of his horses and his road,
sits upon his box in repose; and that repose inspires me with
confidence in him; but if he should be constantly on the look-out
for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, and
constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence in him,
and wish I were in anybody's care but his.
We do not need to be taught that a restless mind is not a reliable
mind. There is an instinct which tells us this. There can be no
reliableness of character without repose. If I should wish to take
a ride, and two horses should be led before me to choose from, I
would take the one that stands still, waiting for his burden and
his command, rather than the one that occupies the road and his
groom with his caracoling and curveting and other signs of
restlessness. I should be measurably sure that one would bear me
through my journey safely and speedily, and that the other would
either throw me, or wear himself out, and so fail of giving me
good service. Saint Peter was a restless man--an impatient man. He
was always the most impulsive, and the most ready to act, as the
servant of the high priest had occasion to remember; but he both
lied and denied his Lord. It was John reposing upon the breast of
Jesus, who most drew forth the Lord's affection. Martha, worrying
about the house, cumbered with much serving, chose a part inferior
to that of Mary who reposed at the feet of Jesus. It is only in
repose that the powers of the mind are marshalled for great
enterprises and for progress. It is in repose, when passion is
sleeping and reason is clear-eyed, that the military chieftain
marks out his campaign and arranges his forces. He is a poor
commander who throws his troops into the field, and fights without
order, or struggles for no definite end; and there are multitudes
of men who throw themselves into life with an immense splutter,
and fight the fight of life with a great deal of noise, but who
never make any progress, because they have never drawn upon repose
for a plan.
Repose is the cradle of power. It is the fashion to say that great
men are men of great passions, as if their passions were the cause
rather than the concomitant of their greatness. Great elephants
have great legs, but the legs do not make the elephants great.
Great legs, however, are required to move great elephants, and
wherever we find great elephants, we find great legs. Small men
sometimes have great passions, and these passions may so far
overcome them that they shall be the weakest of the weak. The
possession of great passions is often a disadvantage to weak men
and strong men alike, because they furnish so many assailable
points for outside forces. A fortress may be very strongly built,
but if its doors are open, and scaling ladders are run permanently
down from its walls for the accommodation of invading forces, its
strength will be of very little practical advantage. Great
passions are oftener the weak, than the strong points of great
men. Now I do not believe it possible for a man to exercise a high
degree of power upon the hearts and minds of others, and, at the
same time, be under the influence of any variety of passion. A man
cannot be the shivering subject of an outside force, acting upon
him through his passions, and at the same time a centre of
effluent power. Action and passion are opposed to each other; and
when one has possession of the soul the other is wanting. They
involve two distinct attitudes of the mind, as truly as do
thanksgiving and petition.
The world often finds fault with great men because they are cold;
but they could not be great men if they were not cold. A physician
is often preferred by a family or patient because he is "so
sympathizing," as they call it. They forget that a physician is
necessarily untrustworthy in the degree that he is sympathetic
with his patients. A physician may be thoroughly kind, and out of
his kindness there may grow a gentle manner which seems to spring
from sympathy; but I say unhesitatingly that in the degree by
which a physician is sympathetic with his patients, is he unfitted
for his work. A dentist who feels, in sympathy, the pain that he
inflicts upon a child, is unfitted to perform his operation. The
surgeon who sensitively sympathizes with a man whose diseased or
crushed limb it has fallen to his lot to remove, has lost a
portion of his power and skill, and has become a poorer surgeon
for his sympathy. Physicians themselves show that they understood
this when a case for medical or surgical treatment occurs in their
own families. If their wives or their children are sick, they
cannot control their sympathies; and the moment they are aware of
this, they lose all confidence in themselves. They cannot reduce
the fracture of a child's limb, or prescribe for a wife lying
dangerously ill, because their sympathies are so greatly excited
that their judgment is good for nothing. In other words, they are
in an attitude or condition of passion--they are moved and wrought
upon by outside forces, to such a degree that they cannot act.
If an orator rise in his place, and show by the agitation of his
nerves, his broken sentences, and his choked utterances, that
emotion is uppermost in him, he has no more power upon his
audience than a baby. We pity his weakness, or we sympathize with
him; but he cannot move us. He is a mastered man, and until he can
choke down his passion he cannot master us. A man rises in an
audience in a state of furious excitement, and fumes, and yells,
and gesticulates, but he only moves us to pity, or disgust, or
laughter. His passion utterly deprives him of power. We call Mr.
Gough an actor, as he undoubtedly is; and we pretend to be
disgusted with him for simulating every night, for a hundred
nights in succession, the emotions which move us. We forget that
if Mr. Gough should really become the subject of the passions
which he illustrates, he would lose his power upon us, and kill
himself besides. He takes care never to be mastered, and takes
care also that all the machinery which he uses shall contribute to
his mastery of us. I do not deny that passion may be made
tributary to the power of men. Oil is tributary to the power of
machinery by lubricating its points of friction; and warmth, by
bringing its members into more perfect adjustment; but if the
machinery were made to wade in oil, or were heated red hot, oil
and heat would be a damage to it.