principle of self-care and self-love. Each man is given charge of his
own body and life. By foresight he is to guard against danger. By
self-defense he is to ward off attack. By fulfilling the instincts for
food, for work and rest he is to maintain the integrity of his being.
Upon each individual rests the solemn obligation to make the most
possible of himself, and to store up resources of knowledge and
virtue, of friendship and heart treasure. But when a man has treated
his reason as a granary and stored it with food, his memory as a
gallery, and filled it with pictures of a beautiful past, his reason
and will as armories, and stored them with weapons against the day of
battle, then a second principle asserts itself. Responsible for his
own growth and happiness, man is made equally responsible for the
happiness and welfare of those about him. By so much as he has secured
his own personal enrichment, by that much he is bound to secure the
enrichment and social advantage of his fellows. To love one's self at
the expense of one's fellows is for selfness to become malignancy. To
love one's neighbors more than one's self is foolishness and
self-destruction.
Whatever of value the individual has, comes from fidelity to the first
of these principles. Self-love working toward reason makes a man a
scholar; working toward his imagination, makes him artist and
inventor; working toward his gift of speech, makes him an orator;
working with pride makes him self-reliant and self-sufficing. And when
the principle of love for others asserts itself, this love, working
toward poverty, transforms man into a philanthropist; working toward
iniquity, makes man a reformer; working toward freedom, makes him a
patriot and a hero; working toward God, makes him a saint and a seer.
The new astronomy makes much of the three cosmic laws. Our earth, by a
form of self-love called molecular attraction, ceases to be scattered
dust, and takes on the shape of a rich and beautiful planet. But
self-loved, our earth is also sun-loved, and drawn by invisible bands
it is swept forward out of winter into summer. Then enters in a third
principle, by which Neptune and Uranus, lying upon the edge of space,
seek fellowship with our planet and hold it at a fixed distance from
the sun's fierce heat. Thus self-love has given the earth
individuality, the love of other planets secures stability, while the
sun's love gives movement and wealth. Working together, these three
principles secure the harmony and stability of the planetary world.
Similarly, each individual is part of a great social system. Each
moves forward under the embrace of three laws, called love to God,
love to neighbor, and love to self. Upon obedience to these laws rests
all social wealth and civilization.
We hear little of individualism, and much of the solidarity of
society. A bloodless and selfish destruction of the rights of the many
has threatened the very foundations of human happiness and compelled
the recognition of the fact that the weakness and injury of one are
the weakness and injury of all. Ours is a world in which the law of
the survival of the fittest not only works, but works very rapidly.
Thus the more wealth a man has the more he can achieve. To-day, it is
said, the various members of the Rothschild family in the different
capitals of Europe control nine billions of dollars. This sum is
accumulating like a rolling snowball, and will soon surpass, and
perhaps absorb the wealth of several of the smaller European nations.
Similarly, in the realm of wisdom, the more a man knows the more he
can know. Sir William Jones tells us that he gave five years to
mastering his first language, while six weeks were sufficient for
acquiring his fortieth dialect. Thus, too, in the realm of inventive
skill, each tool becomes the parent of a score of other tools. The
studies preparatory to Edison's first mechanism covered a long period
of years; but, gaining momentum, his inventive skill increased in
geometric ratio, until to-day the famous electrician holds nearly a
thousand patents; but, as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing is
so ruinous as failure. The weaker a man is, the weaker he must become.
When a man who seeks employment is shabby and gaunt and nerveless, his
poverty lessens his chances, but to-morrow he will be weaker and
shabbier, and day by day the rapidity of his declension will increase.
Startled by these considerations, our generation perceives that
success feeding upon its gains will soon drink up all the energies of
the earth, while failure, growing more ruinous, will sweep multitudes
into the abyss. Therefore, society has come to fully recognize the
importance of a mutual love and mutual service. When a man falls we
are less and less ready to kick him. If the poorly born drops behind
in life's race, society is increasingly ready to set him upon some
beast. If some man's brain is spongy, and his mental processes slow,
the stronger minds are belting his faculties to their swifter
energies. If a man's moral springtime is slow, says one of our social
reformers, society fits up for him a little ethical conservatory, with
steam heat and southern exposure, where the buds are given a little
judicious stimulating and pushing.
Society is recognizing the debt of strength to weakness. The man who
has skill in speech is becoming a voice for the dumb. Those who have
skill toward wealth are becoming the almoners of bounty toward art,
education and morals. Men who selfishly get much and give little, who
have become Dead Seas of accumulated treasure, are losing their
standing in society. More and more cities are bestowing their honors
and esteem upon those who serve their fellows. Men are becoming
magazines, sending out kindness everywhither. Men are becoming
gardens, filling all the air with pungent fragrance. Men are becoming
castles, in which the poor find protection. The floods of iniquity
have long covered the earth, but love is the dove bringing the olive
branch of peace. Love sings the dawn of a new day.
Our generation does well to emphasize the principle of social sympathy
and social liability. But, because individual worth is being
threatened, the time seems to have fully come for also emphasizing
man's duty to love and make the most of himself. Of late, self-care
and self-enrichment, as a principle of life, have been berated and
harshly condemned. Yet Christ recognized selfness as a principle most
proper and praiseworthy and one to be used as the basis and measure of
all moral worth. By so much as man loves and secures for himself the
physical benefits and social incitements of life, by that much he is
to love his fellows. And the failure to love one's self wisely and
passionately ends by making it impossible for man to love his fellows.
Plato's thought is ever with us: "The granary must be filled before
the poor are fed; knowledge must be gained before knowledge is given."
Happy the philanthropist whose generosity has founded school or
library. But this gift of to-day is made possible only by the industry
and thrift of yesterday. Happy the surgeon whose skill in a crisis
hour has saved some valuable life. But the hand that performs what
seems a miracle of surgery has back of it twenty years of vigilant
study and practice.
Ours is a world in which the amount of wisdom or wealth or friendship
to be distributed is predetermined by the amount required. The flow of
the faucet is determined by the fullness of the reservoir. The speed
of the electric car is fixed by the energy stored in the power house.
The power of the piston is in the push of the accumulated steam. The
Nile has force to feed civilizations, because there are a thousand
streams and rivers, a thousand hills and mountains lying back of the
Nile's current, and crowding it forward. If we could sit down by the
famous Santa Barbara vine, and speaking with it as with a familiar
friend, ask how it came to give man a half-ton of purple treasure in a
single summer, the reply would be that this rich treasure was grown
and given in one summer because two hundred summers were given to
growing a vast root and trunk, to large stems and stalks.
When Nestor stood forth before the Greek generals and counseled attack
upon Troy, he said: "The secret of victory is in getting a good
ready." Wendell Phillips was once asked how he acquired his skill in
the oratory of the lost arts. The answer was: "By getting a hundred
nights of delivery back of me." Shakespeare tells us all that the
clouds give in rain what they get in mist, which is the poet's way of
saying that what he gave in inspiration he got by way of
perspiration. Some years ago a young man asked a distinguished scholar
and writer what he thought of the higher education. "If I were twenty,
and had but ten years to live," answered the publicist, "I would spend
the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the
tenth." Indeed, the measure of influence in any man is the measure of
his reserves. The youth who will rule to-morrow is the youth who
to-day is storing up resources of knowledge and wisdom, of
self-reliance and courage.
All history does but repeat the principle. Surveying the past, we note
that the nations that have made great contributions to civilization
have been isolated. Our historians tell us that the Hebrew gave
conscience and morals, the Greek reason and culture, the Roman law and
government, the Teuton liberty and the rise of woman. But, singularly
enough, not one of these nations lived in an open, extended country.
Each forceful race has dwelt upon some island or peninsula. The Hebrew
was shut in between the desert and the sea, and there restrained until
he accumulated his moral treasure. He was compelled to fall back upon
his own resources. By practice he found out that it was not best to
steal; that society lived more happily and peacefully when the
property of each individual was respected. Similarly, God gave him the
work of formulating each of the ten commandments. Slowly the moral
treasure grew. The jurist gave law, the poet sang songs, the prophet
poured out his rhapsody, the patriot and martyr died for principle,
and the roll of the heroes lengthened. At last the pages of Jewish
history were filled with names glowing and glorious as the nights with
stars.
Then came Jesus Christ, filling all the land with spiritual energies.
Soon the pressure of moral forces was so strong as to break through
all restraints. Then these moral treasures poured forth over all the
earth. Having given the two thousand years before Christ to
accumulating its moral energies, the Hebrew race acquired momentum
enough to continue the civilizing tide through the two thousand years
after Christ. Similarly Greece, the mother of the arts and sciences,
was shut in between the mountains and the sea until the intellectual
tides grew deep and strong.
But not alone does history urge us to make the most of ourselves. All
our great men illustrate the same principle. Of late attention has
been called to the fact that our cities are being ruled by men whose
childhood and youth were spent in the country. Isolated, brooding for
years in the fields and forests, these boys developed a forceful
individuality. A recent canvass of the prominent men in New York City
showed that eighty-five per cent were reared in the villages and rural
districts. Seventeen of our twenty-three presidents came from the
farm. A census of the colleges and seminaries in and about Chicago
showed that the country is furnishing eighty per cent of our college
students. The chances of success seem one hundred to one in favor of
the country boy. Many explain this by saying that there is a
mathematical relation between a fine physique and a firm, intellectual
tread. Good thinking rests upon fine brain-fiber. But this is only
half the truth.
These giants from the country learned in youth not to depend upon
books and newspapers, but upon their eyes and ears. Having no external
resources, they turned their thoughts inward and led forth their own
faculties. They did not wait until they opened the journal to find out
what they thought about some important subject, but, unaided, they
wrought out their own opinions, and through self-reliance grew great.
Should any sower go forth to sow in the streets of the city, he would
reap but a small harvest. The hard, beaten roadway would give the
grain no lodgment; but sown on the open furrows, the seed roots and
grows. Thus the mind of the city youth is a roadway beaten down by the
myriad events of life. His individuality is a root having little
chance to grow.
The mornings rain newspapers, the evenings increase events, the very
skies rain pamphlets. Individuality is overwhelmed with many things.
Soon the mind ceases to develop its own mental treasure, and is
content to receive its incitements from without. Because schools and
colleges are multiplied, the youth who has never gone to the bottom of
a single subject imagines that he is a fine student. Because his
shelves are crowded with books, the man deceives himself into thinking
that he has read them all. Because our age is rich in mechanical
appliances and inventions, many who cannot drive a nail straight
imagine that they have been really instrumental in ushering in this
magnificent epoch. Many sing peans of exultation over this wondrous
civilization who are mental and industrial paupers, whose chief ground
of congratulation is that they got themselves born into this
particular century. But power does not come that way. Moses will
control all our jurists to-morrow because he spent forty years in the
desert reflecting upon the principles of justice. Paul had the honor
to fashion our political institutions because he gave twelve years of
general preparation and three years of special application to the
study of individual rights. Milton tells us that he spent four and
thirty years of solitary and unceasing study in accumulating his
material for a heroic poem that the world would not willingly let die.
Homer wrote the "Iliad" because he was blind and driven in upon his
own resources. Dante wrote his "Inferno" because he was exiled, and in
isolation had time to store up his mental treasure. Webster and
Lincoln spent years in the forests and fields, reflecting and
brooding, analyzing and comparing. Many a long summer passed while
they sowed and garnered their mental treasure. Pasteur gave our
generation much, because for thirty years he isolated himself and got
much to give. When Lowell speaks of the attar of roses, he reminds us
of the whole fields of crimson blossoms that have been swept together
in one tiny vial. When Starr King saw the great trees of California
standing forth twenty-five feet in diameter and lifting their crowns
three hundred feet into the sunshine, he was so impressed by their
dignity and beauty as to be touched into tears; but the size of the
trees did not explain his emotion. It was the thought of the reserve
energies that had been compacted into them. The mountains had given
their iron and rich stimulants, the hills had given their soil, the
clouds had given their rain and snow, a thousand summers and winters
had poured forth their treasure about the vast roots. Thus the authors
and statesmen who will help the next generation are to-day engaged in
loving themselves and making the most of their talents. Not until they
have compacted within themselves a thousand knowledges and virtues
will they be able to love others.
With sadness let us confess that our age is sinning grievously against
this principle of self-care and self-love. Individual worth is being
sorely neglected. An age is great not through a large census roll, but
through a multitude of great souls, just as a book is valuable not by
having many pages, but by containing great ideas. The paving-stones in
our streets are very different from sapphires. The bringing together
of 65,000,000 small granite blocks will not turn these stones into
diamonds. It is only when each stone is a gem that the increase of
number means the increase of beauty. No nation is moving forward
toward supremacy merely because the weak individuals began to go in
droves. In our education we are singing peans and praise about our
schools and new methods of education. Meanwhile Frederic Harrison
insists that in fifty years the public schools of Great Britain have
turned out not one mind of the first order. Some of those who have
achieved renown in literature or statecraft were self-educated. The
rest enjoyed the help of some parent or friend, who very early in the
child's career took the pains to search out the child's strongest
faculty, and then asked some tutor or teacher to assist in nourishing
the special talent toward greatness.
At home, President White is telling us that our authors and poets are
dead, and have no successors. Nor could it be otherwise. When a
skillful driver wishes to develop the speed of a thoroughbred colt, he
specializes upon this one animal. No sensible horseman would put forty
colts upon a track and try to develop their speed by driving them
around in a drove. It remains for the parents of this country to adopt
the method of training their children in droves, and educating them in
herds. Our common-school system began in the necessity for the
division of labor. Settling in the wilds of New England, the men went
into the forests with axes, or to the field with their hoes. The
mothers went into the garden or to the loom. Rather than that their
children should have no education, many parents came together and
asked some one man or woman to do the work for all. Thus our common
schools were born out of poverty and emergency.
But at length has come a time when parents, in blind worship of a
system, have farmed their children out to intellectual wet-nurses.
Many children who possess talent of the first order in the realm of
poetry or literature are compelled during the most precious period of
life to spend years upon subjects that yield them no culture effect.
Meanwhile their enthusiasm is wasted, and their strongest faculties
starved. Only when it is too late do they discover the cruel injustice
that has been wrought upon them, and recognize that they must remain
unfulfilled prophecies. Our common schools have wrought most
effectively for our civilization. They are the hope of society. But
not until our parents become enthusiastic teachers, and our homes
assist the school rooms, will men cease complaining that the nation's
great men have no successors, and that genius has departed from our
people.
The time has fully come for the nation also to begin to love itself.
All perceive that the individual has no right to be so generous
to-day as to have nothing to bestow to-morrow. Wisdom guards to-day's
expenditures lest to-morrow's capital be impaired. He is a poor
husbandman who so overtaxes his fields or vineyards as to exhaust the
soil or destroy the vine. Yet many events seem to prove that our
nation has sorely injured itself by over-kindness. It has forgotten
that only God can love everybody. In trying to help the many it has
threatened its power to help any. It has been like a man who on a
January day opens his windows and tries to warm all out of doors, only
to find that he has frozen his family within the house, and warmed no
one without. If we journey into the factory towns in New England,
where the youthful Whittier and Longfellow were trained, we find the
school-houses with windows boarded over. The little churches also are
deserted and the doors nailed up. Listening to the "reformers" in our
parks on a Sunday afternoon, we are amazed by the virulent attacks
upon our institutions. Conversing with the foreman of a large group of
men laying water-pipes, we are astonished at his statement that he has
not a single man who can write well enough to keep the time and hours
of these toilers. Standing in Castle Garden, where the emigrant ship
unloads its multitudes, we hear the physician exclaim: "It will take
this nation a hundred years to expel this vice and scrofula from its
blood."
As some railways water their stock, and for each dollar issue bonds
for five, in the hope that only one of the five will ever know enough
to ask for their dollar, so the intelligence of the nation has been
watered and diluted. Sometimes a whole ballot-box full of voters'
tickets does not contain the common sense of a single vote of the days
of Hamilton. Our nation often seems like a householder who has given
his night-key to an enemy who has threatened his home with firebrands.
Our nation has loved--not wisely, but too well. The time has come when
it must choose between loving itself and becoming bankrupt in
intelligence and morality. For purposes of educating the nations of
the world as to the true value of free institutions, one little New
England community, where all the citizens were patriots and heroes,
scholars and Christians, where vulgarity and crime were unknown, where
the jail was empty and the church was full, where all young lives
moved toward the school-house--one such community has a value beyond
our present millions.
What the world needs is not multitudes, but examples and ideals. If
one Plato can be produced, he will lift the world. Our citizens ask
artists to paint their pictures--not bootblacks. We ask architects to
erect our public buildings--not chimney sweeps. Loving their city, our
citizens have lined the avenues with beautiful homes and streets with
stores and factories. But here their self-love stops. When great men
have created the city, they ask saloon-keepers to govern it. Well did
the sage say, it was as if we had passed by Daniel Webster and asked
an African ape to speak in his stead. Strange--passing strange--that
our nation and city should forget that all love for others begins with
a wise love for self.
We return from our survey with the conviction that Jesus Christ did
well to make individual worth the genius of Christianity. Having moved
backward along the pathway of history, we have found the streams of
civilization taking rise in some one enriched mind and heart, even as
mighty rivers issue from isolated springs. Looking backward we see
Moses building the Hebrew temple; we see Pericles and Plato fashioning
many shapes of truth and beauty for Athens; we see Dante laying the
foundations of Florence; we see Carlo Zeno causing Venice to rise out
of the sands of the sea; we see Bacon and Luther rearing the
cathedrals of thought and worship, under which the millions find their
shelter. Oppressed by a sense of human ignorance and human sin, a
thousand questions arise. Can one poorly born journey toward greatness
of stature? The Cremona violin of the sixteenth century is a mass of
condensed melody. Each atom was soaked in a thousand songs, until the
instrument reeks with sweetness. But can a human instrument, long out
of tune and sadly injured, e'er be brought back to harmony of being?
In the studio of the sculptor lie blocks of deserted marble. Out of
one emerges a hand, another exhibits the outlines of a face. But for
some reason the artist has forsaken them. It seems that as the chisel
worked inward, it uncovered some crack or revealed a dark stain.
Therefore the sculptor passed it by, preferring the flawless block of
snowy marble. Is the soul soiled by sin, to be cast off by the divine
Sculptor?
Journeying across the plains, travelers looking through the car
windows behold the California trail. The wagon ruts have become
ditches, and the old route is marked by human graves. But long ago men
exchanged the ox cart, the deep wagon ruts, and the wearisome journey,
for palace cars. Thus there are many paths of sin worn deep by
pressure of human feet. Many would fain forsake them. But is there any
divine power to cast up some divine highway? Is there a happiness?
Nature is kind to her grains and sweeps them forward toward harvests;
is kind toward her apple seeds and bids them journey unto orchards; is
kind unto the March days, and bids them journey into perpetual summer.