but they never achieve highly. Do not try to cultivate this quality if
Nature has been so kind as not to endow you with it. It is not a
masterful quality. Have the courage not only of your convictions--that
is not so hard--but _have the courage of your conceptions_. But do not
simulate courage if you have it not. False courage is worse than
cowardice--it is falsehood and cowardice combined.
Reserve also includes the power to wait; and that is almost as crucial
a test of greatness as courage itself. Many a battle has been lost by
over-eagerness. There was the greatness of Fate itself in the order of
the American officer of the Revolution who said, "Wait, men, until you
see the whites of their eyes."
Time is a young man's greatest ally. That is why youth holds the
whip-hand of the world. That is why youth can afford to dare. It is
also why age does not dare to dare. With youth, to-morrow is merely an
accession of power; but with age--ah, well, with age, as Omar says,
"To-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years."
Fourth: The fourth quality in character, the lowest one in the list,
is Intellect. Not that it is not so valuable as the others, but it is
so abundant, and, without the others, so useless. What is it we hear
the strong-handed Philistines say in the market-place? "Brains are
cheap"; that is what we hear them say. And they say truly. Many years
ago I became acquainted with a millionaire who had acquired his
wealth by building things, raising cattle, erecting factories--not by
shuffling the cards of trade.
His grammar is defective, but his elemental vitality will do you as
much good as a walk in the fresh air after the poisoned and steaming
atmosphere of a crowded room. "How have I succeeded?" said he, in
answer to a question one day. "Oh, by just having the nerve to decide
upon a plan, and then by hiring these brainy fellows to do my work. I
can get the services of the ablest lawyer in this city for a crumb of
the loaf I realize from his thought and industry. The secret of
success? Why, sir, it is will, that is all--will, nerve, 'sand.'"
Let me enlarge on the first great quality of character. Sincerity,
truthfulness--write these on the tablets of your heart; get them into
your blood. This is something that you can cultivate. One of the keen
lawyers of my town whom we elected as judge of our court, and who is
full of the fresh and living wisdom of the people, said this one day:
"A man can cultivate honesty--there is no doubt about that; but a man
who is born honest has a great advantage."
So if you have any taint of the blood which you discover inclines you
toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the
reflection that _insincerity is a losing game_. Put it on the low
ground of self-interest, and be truthful, be "square."
The old saying that "honesty is the best policy" has lost its original
force by much repetition. And it does not go far enough, either. I am
speaking of more than mere mercantile honesty; I am speaking of
political sincerity, of intellectual sincerity. Never attempt to fool
anybody. We live at such a rate of speed, our perceptions have become
so abnormally sensitive and acute, that it is next to impossible to
deceive any one; and he who attempts it is usually the only one
deceived.
If, then, a man can mount upon this humble stepping-stone of low
personal interest to sincerity for the sake of his own advantage, he
will, after a while, be able to climb higher, to the exalted plane of
truthfulness for the sake of truth; and then he will behold the
beatitudes of righteous living, and experience the joys which putting
oneself in harmony with the order of the universe and the on-going of
events never fails to bring. As a great scientist puts it, "Establish
your polarity, young man, and sleep soundly at night."
And courage: A successful manufacturer said to me one day, in
explaining his own success: _"I never let my idea get cold._ That, I
think, is why I have succeeded. When a great business deal came to my
mind, I did not waste my energy inquiring about whether I could do it.
I did not waste time and strength regretting that I was not stronger.
I did not destroy my force by doubting my own conception. I went at
it. I did it. I spent all my energy on execution after I had once
conceived it. Did I not make mistakes following such a plan? Why, of
course I made mistakes; and God protect me from the man who never made
a mistake!
"But acting by that method alone," said he, "is the way I achieved all
my triumphs. I do not pursue that course now, because I am getting
old, and I am in very poor health. Age and ill health make me doubt;
so I have not made any large business success for several years. I
should say that the reason why so many men who are really capable
intellectually fail, is because they are infidels to their own
thought, traitors to their own conception.
"If I could concentrate all the advice of my life into one thing,"
declared this strong wise man, in concluding his comments on failure
and success, "it would be for those young men who expect to do
something constructive to have faith in their idea, and act upon it
before it gets cold. There is a tremendous force in the enthusiasm of
your freshly formed plan. You have contributed largely to the defeat
of your scheme when you have permitted yourself to doubt it."
It was only the other day that the newspapers were full of an
extraordinary achievement of one of the American magicians of
business; and the papers said that the remarkable thing about it was
that the plan flashed upon him in a single evening, as he was leaving
for a long vacation. He acted upon it instantly, and devoted his
fortune, reputation, almost life, to its consummation. He succeeded.
If he had taken six months to have thought over it, his conception
would have been abandoned.
While this man's plan came on him in an evening, a study of his life
shows that, unconsciously to himself, it had been growing for a long
series of years. It flowered out all at once, like the night-blooming
cereus. Cæsar decided to cross the Rubicon on the instant? Yes, but we
cannot doubt that this imperial resolution had been formed the day
when in the Forum, as Macaulay describes it, Cæsar said that the
future Dictator of Rome might be Pompey, or Crassus, or still
somebody else whom nobody was thinking of (that somebody else being
himself, of course).
And, indeed, Cæsar would at that time have been the last that any
Roman would have selected as the master of the world. He was young. He
was small. He seemed almost frail. He was an unspeakable egotist. He
was fastidious in his dress. I have read that he even used perfumes.
And how could the common eye discern, through all of these externals
of frippery, the lion heart, the eagle vision, and the mind of
conquest and empire?
There is a very great danger in the examples just cited. These men
were geniuses, and they are not to be imitated except as their methods
may be applicable to the common man. This paper is for common men--for
people like ourselves. There _are_ geniuses; but their high-wrought
lives, tornado activity, and methods of lightning are not for us. All
the world's real leaders, whether in the fields of thought or action,
whether in the council-chamber of the statesman, on the battle-field
of the warrior, in the study of the writer, or in the laboratory of
the scientist--all have been men of genius. No mediocre man ever was a
great leader in the historic sense.
With our habit of looking at to-day as though it were eternity, we
consider men "leaders," and use the adjectives "great," "splendid,"
etc., as applied to them, when historically these men will hardly be
discernible.
But all the figures large enough to fill history's perspective always
have been and always will be geniuses--men in whom the energy, the
thought, the imagination, the power of hundreds of men are
concentrated. Let us not deceive ourselves, and reap misery and
disappointment by thinking that we can, by any effort, equal them.
Alexander, Cæsar, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, Washington, Darwin,
Goethe, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Pasteur, Edison, Plato, Rhodes, Ito,
Diaz, Peter the Great--we cannot explain these phenomena of human
intellect and character except by the word genius.
All our toil and patience and everything cannot seat us in the high
places of these princes of Nature. "Who, by taking thought, can add a
cubit to his stature?" (The Bible again, you see; we cannot get away
from the Bible.)
But these men never knew that they were geniuses. They would have
known it undoubtedly if they had stopped to think about it. But they
were too busy with their task. A genius never thinks about his powers,
any more than an eagle is concerned about the method of his royal
flight from the mountain crag. But for us, of the common mass of men,
only those methods of genius are applicable which are within our
reach. Mostly for us are the slow and toilsome--the sure, if
gradual--processes of patient labor and infinite pains.
So do not let the thought that you are a genius abide with you for a
moment--the main traveled roads for us ordinary mortals! The beaten
paths are not so far wrong, after all; and at their end is certain,
even perhaps distinguished, if not startling and historic, success.
And, besides, epoch-makers are not needed until an epoch needs to be
made.
Do not worry about greatness, therefore. If greatness is for you,
God's call will surely come to you. If it does not--well, the
archeologists uncovered Nippur the other day, with its palaces and
courts and abodes of those who were great and mighty more than 2,500
years before Abraham.
So consider Nippur, and be patient and humble. I instanced Rhodes in
naming some of the world's monarchs of mind and will. Very well!
Yesterday all Christendom was ringing with his imperial work. He was
developing a continent; establishing the reign of law, industry, and
peace where savagery and the wilderness had held sway for a million
years.
But it was _yesterday_ that he did this. He is dead now. Already you
have half forgotten him. You see we are living a century in a minute.
Besides, if Clotho has not spun greatness into your destiny, be sure
that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing
he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a
well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the
deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap
their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief
purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor--that
is what you are. Put it from you. Be a man.
Yes, consider Nippur, and be a man. One lesson these ancient ruins
teach--the nothingness of fame, and that the only things in life worth
while are love and duty. I cannot think of any blessing so great to an
ardent young American as to learn at the very threshold of his career
of activities that duty and affection are the only things really whose
value lasts and increases--the only things that pay increasing
dividends.
In a conversation in which the same view of reading given in this
paper was set forth, a very bright and earnest woman questioned the
propriety of such advice. "For," said she, "the result of that advice
is to quiet rather than excite the activities and ambitions; it is to
retard rather than hasten intellectual acquisition; it is to check
rather than advance a young man's career."
But, granting that this be true, the very objection is itself one of
the highest merits of the advice thus criticized. For the only grave
danger before capable young Americans, and, indeed, before our Nation,
is that of hastening too much, of sweeping on too rapidly, of
straining every nerve too tensely, of living our lives with an ardor
all too fierce and hot. Don't hurry--the world will last several
millions of years longer.
What most of the young men of this country need is restraint, not
stimulant; what this Nation needs is reserve. The only serious fear I
entertain for our future is that the great rapidity of our common
lives will make us neurotic. I prefer a young man to be a little less
scintillant, than that his brilliancy should be at the expense of
exhausted nerves and enfeebled vitality.
This paper is supposed to be advice which will be practically helpful
to young men in their struggle with the world. Very well, then! From
the low view-point of self-interest, I would advise every young man to
cultivate unselfishness. Do at least one thing every day which helps
somebody else, and from which you cannot possibly harvest any profit
and advantage. Do one thing every day that cannot in any way bring you
tangible reward, directly or indirectly, now or ever.
I know of no discipline of character equal to this. After a while a
subtle change will come over your nature. You will grow into an
understanding of the practical value of the Master's words: "It is
more blessed to give than to receive." There comes to you an
acquisition of power. Your influence, by a process which escapes any
human analysis, reaches out over your associates, and, in proportion
to the magnitude of your character, over humanity.
A man cannot select a surer road to character ruin than to have a
selfish motive back of every action. To do all of your deeds, or most
of them, with the thought of the advantage they will bring you, will
result in paralysis of soul as surely as certain drugs introduced into
the nerves for a long period of time will result in physical
paralysis. I do not think that there can be a more valuable suggestion
made to a young man facing the world and desiring to increase his
powers than to practise unselfishness.
What is it we say of certain men: "Oh, he is for himself." It is a
Cain-like label. Never let it be pinned on your coat. In politics,
note how the power of some leader dissolves when his followers find
out that it is all for him and none for them. And in business we are
all on our guard against the man who wants the whole thing, and will
take it if he is not watched. Even when selfishness succeeds, it never
satisfies. It is like the drunkard's thirst.
No, no, young man, put selfishness from you. It is not even the method
of business profit. After all, we are living for happiness, are we
not? Very well. Try to make some one else happy, and experience a
felicity more delicate and exalted than you ever imagined in your
fondest dreams of joy. By all means practise unselfishness. "Get the
habit," as our Americanism has it. Live for somebody or something
besides yourself. Really none of us amount to enough to live for
ourselves alone. Oh, no! that game is not worth the candle, believe
me.
Finally and especially, reverence age. Be deferential to maturity.
This is the one thing in which we Americans are yet deficient. The man
who has lived a single decade longer than you, deserves your
consideration and respect. Be in no haste to displace your seniors.
Time will do that all too quickly. The finest characteristic of the
Oriental is his profound regard for all age. Follow the Asiatic in
this one thing only. Heed venerable counsels; defer to maturity's
wisdoms. There is something majestic about advancing years. Be to all
men and women older than yourself what you would like other young men
to be to your father and mother.
Be a man; that's the sum of it all--be a man. Be all that we Americans
mean by those three words.
II
THE OLD HOME
Do we not pay so much attention to mere material success that we
exclude from mind and heart other things more precious? I am anxious
that every young American should win in all the conflicts of life--win
in college, win in business, etc.; but I am even more anxious that
through all of his triumphs he should grow ever broader, sweeter, and
more kindly. After all, we are human beings. We do not want to become
mere machines of success, do we?
That is carrying our mechanical age a little too far. We want to keep
that within us which makes our victory worth having after we have won
it. What matters your mountains of wealth, or your network of
political power, or those secrets which in your laboratory you have
wrung from Nature--what matters all and everything that the world
calls "success," if the human quality has been dried up in you?
Those are fine things that St. Paul says about a man not amounting to
anything, no matter how talented and powerful he may be, if he have
not charity: "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand
all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that
I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing"; and you
will recall the remainder of his admirable comments on this subject.
Everybody points out to you what you can get out of college, and how
to get it; what you can get out of a "career," and how to get that.
But lest all of your getting turns to bitter emptiness in the end, you
must pay attention to that elemental manhood exalted by those
beautiful moralities that you get at but one place and at but one
period in this world. That period is the early time of your young
manhood before you enter college; and that place is the old home where
influences angelic have been at work upon your character.
It could not be otherwise. Home--the home that you leave or the home
you make--is the spot where most of your life is to be spent. Home was
the place of your birth; and if the angel of death is kind to you,
home will be the place of your farewell. It is to the home that you
bring life's wages, whether those wages are opulence, glory, or merely
daily bread.
It is the home which interprets the whole universe for you. And it is
the home which not only furnishes a reason for your existence, but in
itself constitutes the motive for all manly effort. Quite naturally,
therefore, the home is concerned with character more than it is with
grosser things.
The instruction which the American mother gives her son is a training
in honor rather than in success. Her passion for righteousness creeps
into the commonplaces of her daily speech. "Be a good boy" is what she
says to the little fellow each day as he starts to school. "Be a good
boy" is what she says to the youth when he leaves for college. "Be a
good boy" is still her sacred charge when, standing at the gate, she
gives him her blessing as he goes out into the world.
And, finally, "Be a good boy" is what her lips murmur when in after
years, rich perchance in achievement, honor, power, or wealth, the man
of the world returns to the old home to again get her benediction, and
have his weary soul refreshed by the beauty of her almost holy
presence.
For you never cease to be a boy to her; and her supreme wish and most
passionate prayer for you is not that you shall be a strong man, or a
rich man, or an able man--she wants you to be all these, of course,
and everything else that is fine--but chiefly she cares that you
should be a good man.
And so it is that home is the temple of ideals, the sanctuary of the
true, the beautiful, and the good. Or put it in scientific phrase, and
say: Home is the laboratory of character. The home is the place where
you get what the common people so pithily call your "bringing up." It
is there where your conception of all human relationships is formed.
It is there where it is largely determined whether you will make your
life worth the living.
Your future sits at the old fireside. The fate of the Nation abides
beneath the roof-tree. And so it is that neither college, nor
market-place, nor forum, nor editor's sanctum, nor traffic of the high
seas, nor anything that you may do, nor any environment that may
hereafter surround you, is so important to you as the old home and
your early years. Yes, and not to you only, but to the Nation also.
Nothing means so much to the Republic as the influence of the
American home upon the young manhood of the Nation.
We are about to enter upon the serious problem of the regulation of
railway rates, which is a beginning in some sort of the national
control of transportation. It is a problem whose weight and
possibilities challenge and all but confound every thoughtful and
serious mind. Every step in its solution must be taken with both
wisdom and justice.
Our relations with the Orient daily increase, and the fixedness of our
position in the Far East hourly becomes more definite. The public man
wears a scarf about his eyes who does not see that our historic
statesmanship during this century will deal with our growing mastery
of the Pacific, and the weaving backward and forward across that ocean
of our ever-multiplying relations with the East.
This paper might be entirely taken up with a statement of tangled
situations and deep problems which will require the combined
intelligence of the whole American people to solve.
Yet, for the purpose of this life, what are they all, compared with
the character of individual Americans, and therefore with the
influence of the American home upon American men in the making; for
men in the making is what the youth of our land are. Gladstone stated
a truth, wide and vital as English institutions, when he said that the
relation of the Church to the youth of Great Britain is a matter of
more concern than all the problems of the Empire put together.
All this is commonplace, you say. I say so too. Yet it is the
commonplaces, and those things alone, by which we live and move and
have our being. For example, sunlight is commonplace, and so is air.
Who was it that spoke about the damnable iteration of the seasons?
A storm is not commonplace, but how long could any of us live--how
long would any of us choose to live--were each day and night a
succession of thunder, lightning, and downpour? Good citizenship is
commonplace, whereas a murder mystery excites us thrillingly. Yet none
of us on that account would choose the society of criminals.
It is to the elemental commonplaces that I am now going to direct your
attention. The world is kept alive by its monotonies. The trouble is
that the indispensable things are so inevitable and persistent that
we take them for granted, and yield them neither gratitude nor even
attention.
Take the beauty of daylight as our illustration once more. We had it
yesterday, have it to-day, have had it ever since we were born, and
will have it until we die. Note, too, the eternal stability of the
heavens, which change not at all; and the endless pour of ocean's
currents, warming certain coasts and leaving others chill. It is the
same with the life intellectual and the life spiritual.
"What is the grandest thing in the universe?" asks Hugo. "A storm at
sea," he answers, and continues, "And what is grander than a storm at
sea?" "The unclouded heavens on a starry and moonless night." "And
what is grander than these midnight skies?" "The soul of man!" A
spectacular climax such as Hugo loved; and still, with all its
dramatic effect, the picturesque statement of a vast and mighty truth!
Very well. The home is the place where character is to be formed, and
therefore its influences on "the soul of man" are like those of the
sun on the body of man. Let us get to those commonplaces, therefore,
at which the cynic lifts his lip, but which are worth a good deal
more to you, young man, than all your achievings will be.
As to the moralities, then, yield yourself utterly to the mother. She
has an instinctive perception of righteousness as affecting your
character that no other intelligence under heaven has, and that she
does not have for any one else, not even for herself. She has her own
way, too, of getting this nourishment of the verities into your
character. It is done not so much by preaching to you, or lecturing
you, as it is by her very presence.
She carries about with her an atmosphere of sweetness and light. The
mother gives to her boy a kind of unspoken counsel. It is a very
subtle thing, like electricity in the material world, and equally as
powerful as that mysterious fluid. You get its effects by putting
yourself eagerly and lovingly under its soothing yet ennobling and
tonic influence. It is a matter hard to describe, but more real than
any other human force I know of.
So the first thing for you to do is to resolve to be "mother's own
boy," as the sneering tongue of shallowness puts it, just as long as
you possibly can. It will be the greatest luck you will ever have, if
you are able to be "mother's own boy" as long as she lives. Don't be
afraid that that will make you effeminate and soft; don't think for a
moment that it will paralyze the force and power of your growing
manhood.