Of all the forces that drive human beings, the greatest is personal
influence.
By personal influence I mean that force that goes out from you, simply
by virtue of what you are. It has nothing to do with what you do or say
or try, except as these things express what you are.
Every person sends out what we might call dynamic rays or invisible
electric-like impulses which are of such nature as to affect other
persons. These rays from me can make other individuals gay or sad, good
or bad, and so forth.
This is the only power that pulls souls, the only wind that bends them,
the only fire that warms them, the only stream that bears them along.
Emerson said that “what you are preaches so loudly that I cannot hear
what you say”; which is a striking way of stating that one’s unconscious
influence far outreaches in effect one’s conscious effort.
It would be well if we would keep this in mind; it would save us a lot
of futile busying.
For instance, reformers bent on saving the world should not be so hot
and impatient seeing that there is no real saving that ever has been or
ever will be done that is not the result of the influence radiating from
good people.
Laws are dead and wooden, but when a man incarnates a law it begins to
work on other men. The “Word” is of no force until it is “made Flesh.”
It is the personal influence of a teacher that affects all the real
educating of the pupil. The wise man understood this who said that the
best university was “a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and me on the
other.”
I sometimes doubt if any real good has ever been done by didactic
teaching or preaching. All the moral maxims in the world are poor beside
one strong, sweet, normal life. And a good woman is worth, as a guide,
the most select list of “virtues and their opposite vices.”
To create such a character in fiction as “John Halifax” or “Jean
Valjean” or “Little Nellie” or the man in the “Third Floor Back,” is to
exert a lasting and potent uplift agency, better than a thousand
sermons.
It is fascinating to many minds, the idea of “doing good” and “working
for the Lord,” and devoting one’s time wholly to inducing people to
become better; but it is not practical. The only way to improve mankind
is to be something that inspires them; your argument and exhortation are
of small avail. Just as the only way to dispel darkness is to shine, and
the only way to electrify iron is to be a magnet.
Goodness is a contagion; we must “catch” it, we must have it and “give”
it.
When you say in your creed that you believe in God, your declaration is
of no help to you or to others unless what you mean is this: That you
believe in the inherent potency of goodness, that it will live down,
outwear, and destroy evil; that justice, cleanliness, honesty, and
kindness will win in the long run against fraud, dirt, lying, and
cruelty; and that persons who are upright and altruistic get more joy
out of every minute of their lives than idle, sporty, and self-coddling
folk; and that there is altogether a vast tidal or subterranean movement
in the human race toward health, strength, and beauty.
Therefore why worry over what you will say or do, since it makes no
matter? Simply BE right, and then say whatever comes to your mind, and
do whatever comes to your hand, and you cannot fail to do the most
possible toward helping along.