WANTED--A MAN
"Wanted; men:
Not systems fit and wise,
Not faiths with rigid eyes,
Not wealth in mountain piles,
Not power with gracious smiles,
Not even the potent pen;
Wanted; men."
All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!
Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it
is you, it is I, it is each one of us! . . . How to constitute one's
self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing
easier, if one wills it.--ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
Diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient Athens for a
perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. In the market place he once
cried aloud, "Hear me, O men"; and, when a crowd collected around him,
he said scornfully: "I called for men, not pygmies."
Over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the
world has a standing advertisement: "Wanted--A Man."
Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who
has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
though all the world say "Yes."
Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not
permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to
stunt or paralyze his other faculties.
Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and
culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
A thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a
thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand
church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant
pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one
direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age,
and also of the crying need of good men.
Wanted, a man of courage who is not a coward in any part of his nature.
Wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little
defect of weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his
powers.
Wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development,
who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow
specialty and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and
die. Wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of
things; a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who does not
let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day life; a man
who prefers substance to show, and one who regards his good name as a
priceless treasure.
Wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a
tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of
nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as
himself."
The world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are
brought to their acutest sensibility; whose brain is cultured, keen,
incisive, broad; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive,
microscopic; whose heart is tender, magnanimous, true.
The whole world is looking for such a man. Although there are millions
out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right
man in almost any department of life, and yet everywhere we see the
advertisement: "Wanted--A Man."
Rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says; "According to the
order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the
profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the
duty of a man can not be badly prepared to fill any of those offices
that have a relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupil
be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. Nature has destined
us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination
concerning society. To live is the profession I would teach him. When
I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a
lawyer, nor a divine. _Let him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him
from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his
place."
A little, short doctor of divinity in a large Baptist convention stood
on a step and said he thanked God he was a Baptist. The audience could
not hear and called "Louder." "Get up higher," some one said. "I
can't," he replied. "To be a Baptist is as high as one can get." But
there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
_man_.
As Emerson says, Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he
rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty?
is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody?
does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all
that Talleyrand, all that the common sense of mankind asks.
When Garfield as a boy was asked what he meant to be he answered:
"First of all, I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I
can succeed in nothing."
Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a
body by itself alone, but to train a man.
One great need for the world to-day is for men and women who are good
animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
coming man and woman must have good bodies and an excess of animal
spirits.
What more glorious than a magnificent manhood, animated with the
bounding spirits of overflowing health?
It is a sad sight to see thousands of students graduated every year
from our grand institutions whose object is to make stalwart,
independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings
instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men,
helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak
instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "So many promising
youths, and never a finished man!"
The character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of
the body. A peevish, snarling, ailing man can not develop the vigor
and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust,
cheerful man. There is an inherent love in the human mind for
_wholeness_, a demand that man shall come up to the highest standard;
and there is an inherent protest or contempt for preventable
deficiency. Nature, too, demands that man be ever at the top of his
condition.
As we stand upon the seashore while the tide is coming in, one wave
reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes,
and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a
while the whole sea is there and beyond it. So now and then there
comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow men, showing that
Nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man
will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world.
Apelles hunted over Greece for many years, studying the fairest points
of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a
nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait
of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. So the coming man will
be a composite, many in one. He will absorb into himself not the
weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other
types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will
be a self-centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His
sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of Nature's
laws. His whole character will be impressionable, and will respond to
the most delicate touches of Nature.
The first requisite of all education and discipline should be
man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees.
Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or
an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and
patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline,
education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy
mental, moral, physical man-timber.
If the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every
statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he
makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be
kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other
men's time; if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure,
feel that the eyes of the world are upon him that he must not deviate a
hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a stand
at the outset, he would, like George Peabody, come to have almost
unlimited credit and the confidence of everybody who knows him.
What are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a
continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce; compared
with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the
accuser's voice, with a bosom that never throbs with fear of exposure,
with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no stain of
dishonor? To have done no man a wrong; to have put your signature to
no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not have been an
attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of
what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its
gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;--_this is to be a
man_.
Man is the only great thing in the universe. All the ages have been
trying to produce a perfect model. Only one complete man has yet
evolved. The best of us are but prophesies of what is to come.
What constitutes a state?
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No: men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,--
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
WILLIAM JONES.
God give us men. A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands:
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor--men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking.
ANON.