USES OF OBSTACLES
Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.--EMERSON.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
difficulties.--SPURGEON.
The good are better made by ill,
As odors crushed are sweeter still.
ROGERS.
Though losses and crosses be lessons right severe,
There's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where.
BURNS.
"Adversity is the prosperity of the great."
"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
"Many and many a time since," said Harriet Martineau, referring to her
father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of
money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of
ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and growing narrower
every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own
resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation,
and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home; in
short, have truly lived instead of vegetating."
Two of the three greatest epic poets of the world were blind,--Homer
and Milton; while the third, Dante, was in his later years nearly, if
not altogether, blind. It almost seems as though some great characters
had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not
dissipate their energy, but concentrate it all in one direction.
A distinguished investigator in science said that when he encountered
an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon the
brink of some discovery.
"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a
man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant
purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn
disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand
which annoys it.
"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of
the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him
higher."
A kite would not fly unless it had a string tying it down. It is just
so in life. The man who is tied down by half a dozen blooming
responsibilities and their mother will make a higher and stronger
flight than the bachelor who, having nothing to keep him steady, is
always floundering in the mud.
When Napoleon's school companions made sport of him on account of his
humble origin and poverty he devoted himself entirely to books, and,
quickly rising above them in scholarship, commanded their respect.
Soon he was regarded as the brightest ornament of the class.
"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."
Thousands of men of great native ability have been lost to the world
because they have not had to wrestle with obstacles, and to struggle
under difficulties sufficient to stimulate into activity their dormant
powers. No effort is too dear which helps us along the line of our
proper career.
Poverty and obscurity of origin may impede our progress, but it is only
like the obstruction of ice or débris in the river temporarily forcing
the water into eddies, where it accumulates strength and a mighty
reserve which ultimately sweeps the obstruction impetuously to the sea.
Poverty and obscurity are not insurmountable obstacles, but they often
act as a stimulus to the naturally indolent, and develop a firmer fiber
of mind, a stronger muscle and stamina of body.
If the germ of the seed has to struggle to push its way up through the
stones and hard sod, to fight its way up to sunlight and air, and then
to wrestle with storm and tempest, with snow and frost, the fiber of
its timber will be all the tougher and stronger.
There is good philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for
they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth
when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are
mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and thrusts
are often spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler
endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out
to the light all our weaknesses without mercy. We dread these thrusts
and exposures as we do the surgeon's knife, but are the better for
them. They reach depths before untouched, and we are led to resolve to
redeem ourselves from scorn and inferiority.
We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the
very power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we
could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the
oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests.
Our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.
The man who has triumphed over difficulties bears the signs of victory
in his face. An air of triumph is seen in every movement.
John Calvin, who made a theology for the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, was tortured with disease for many years, and so was Robert
Hall. The great men who have lifted the world to a higher level were
not developed in easy circumstances, but were rocked in the cradle of
difficulties and pillowed on hardships.
"The gods look on no grander sight than an honest man struggling with
adversity."
"Then I must learn to sing better," said Anaximander, when told that
the very boys laughed at his singing.
Strong characters, like the palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most
abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years
are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the
spring out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races
accustomed to a vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves
until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of
those around them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the
threshold of their victory.
It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle
to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible; it is defeat that
has made those heroic natures that are now in the ascendency, and that
has given the sweet law of liberty instead of the bitter law of
oppression.
Difficulties call out great qualities, and make greatness possible.
How many centuries of peace would have developed a Grant? Few knew
Lincoln until the great weight of the war showed his character. A
century of peace would never have produced a Bismarck. Perhaps
Phillips and Garrison would never have been known to history had it not
been for slavery.
"Will he not make a great painter?" was asked in regard to an artist
fresh from his Italian tour. "No, never," replied Northcote. "Why
not?" "Because he has an income of six thousand pounds a year." In
the sunshine of wealth a man is, as a rule, warped too much to become
an artist of high merit. He should have some great thwarting
difficulty to struggle against. A drenching shower of adversity would
straighten his fibers out again.
The best tools receive their temper from fire, their edge from
grinding; the noblest characters are developed in a similar way. The
harder the diamond, the more brilliant the luster, and the greater the
friction necessary to bring it out. Only its own dust is hard enough
to make this most precious stone reveal its full beauty.
The spark in the flint would sleep forever but for friction; the fire
in man would never blaze but for antagonism.
Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a
standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an
opposite direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round
on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging
of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain,--until
the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the
heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a
very good thing," remarked a passenger.
The philosopher Kant observed that a dove, inasmuch as the only
obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose
that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater
rapidity and ease. Yet if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should
try to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground, unable
to fly at all. The very element that offers the opposition to flying
is at the same time the condition of any flight whatever.
Emergencies make giant men. But for our Civil War the names of its
grand heroes would not be written among the greatest of our time.
The effort or struggle to climb to a higher place in life has strength
and dignity in it, and cannot fail to leave us stronger, even though we
may never reach the position we desire, or secure the prize we seek.
From an aimless, idle, and useless brain, emergencies often call out
powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a
young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a
parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has
knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused
the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was
written in prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail,
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote "The History of the World" during his
imprisonment of thirteen years. Luther translated the Bible while
confined in the Castle of Wartburg. For twenty years Dante worked in
exile, and even under sentence of death.
Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant
one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch
them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its
roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing
deep into the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing
giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements.
Sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while
it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock
to gain a firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again,
prepared to defy the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with
its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still
further to toughen every minutest fiber from pith to bark.
The acorn planted in the deep forest, on the other hand, shoots up a
weak, slender sapling. Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of
spreading its roots far and wide for support.
Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country
away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only
the district school, the Sunday-school, and a few books. Remove wealth
and props of every kind; and, if he has the right sort of material in
him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for
the next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than
before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the
higher he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the
gymnasium in which the fibers of his manhood are developed. He compels
respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put
the other boy in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German
nurses; gratify his every wish. Place him under the tutelage of great
masters and send him to Harvard. Give him thousands a year for
spending money, and let him travel extensively.
The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The
plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner
of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of
the other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no
chance in life," and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a
cruel Providence that places such a wide gulf between them.
They meet again as men, but how changed! It is as easy to
distinguished the sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been
propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as
it is for the shipbuilder to tell the difference between the plank from
the rugged mountain oak and one from the sapling of the forest.
When God wants to educate a man, he does not send him to school to the
Graces, but to the Necessities. Through the pit and the dungeon Joseph
came to a throne. We are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our
half divine humanity; we are not aware of the God within us until some
chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our
affections forces us to become conscious of a need. St. Paul in his
Roman cell; John Huss led to the stake at Constance; Tyndale dying in
his prison at Amsterdam; Milton, amid the incipient earthquake throes
of revolution, teaching two little boys in Aldgate Street; David
Livingstone, worn to a shadow, dying in a negro hut in Central Africa,
alone--what failures they might all have seemed to themselves to be,
yet what mighty purposes was God working out by their apparent
humiliations!
Two highwaymen chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them exclaimed:
"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" "Tut,
you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for,
if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so
with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare
and keep out unworthy competitors.
"Success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties," says Smiles.
"If there were no difficulties there would be no success. In this
necessity for exertion we find the chief source of human
advancement,--the advancement of individuals as of nations. It has led
to most of the mechanical inventions and improvements of the age."
"Stick your claws into me," said Mendelssohn to his critics when
entering the Birmingham orchestra. "Don't tell me what you like, but
what you don't like."
John Hunter said that the art of surgery would never advance until
professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as
their successes.
"Young men need to be taught not to expect a perfectly smooth and easy
way to the objects of their endeavor or ambition," says Dr. Peabody.
"Seldom does one reach a position with which he has reason to be
satisfied without encountering difficulties and what might seem
discouragements. But if they are properly met, they are not what they
seem, and may prove to be helps, not hindrances. There is no more
helpful and profiting exercise than surmounting obstacles."
It was in the Madrid jail that Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote." He was
so poor that he could not even get paper during the last of his
writing, and had to write on scraps of leather. A rich Spaniard was
asked to help him, but replied: "Heaven forbid that his necessities
should be relieved; it is his poverty that makes the world rich."
"He has the stuff in him to make a good musician," said Beethoven of
Rossini, "if he had only been well flogged when a boy; but he is
spoiled by the ease with which he composes."
We do our best while fighting desperately to attain what the heart
covets.
Waters says that the struggle to obtain knowledge and to advance one's
self in the world strengthens the mind, disciplines the faculties,
matures the judgment, promotes self-reliance, and gives one
independence of thought and force of character.
Kossuth called himself "a tempest-tossed soul, whose eyes have been
sharpened by affliction."
As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear
the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience
of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and
expert in pursuing his prey.
Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out,"
while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to
"come out."
"It was not the victories but the defeats of my life which have
strengthened me," said the aged Sidenham Poyntz.
Almost from the dawn of history, oppression has been the lot of the
Hebrews, yet they have given the world its noblest songs, its wisest
proverbs, its sweetest music. With them persecution seems to bring
prosperity. They thrive where others would starve. They hold the
purse-strings of many nations. To them hardship has been "like spring
mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold of which will kill the vermin,
but will let the plant live."
In one of the battles of the Crimea a cannon-ball struck inside the
fort, crashing through a beautiful garden. But from the ugly chasm
there burst forth a spring of water which ever afterward flowed a
living fountain. From the ugly gashes which misfortunes and sorrows
make in our hearts, perennial fountains of rich experience and new joys
often spring.
Don't lament and grieve over lost wealth. The Creator may see
something grand and mighty which even He can not bring out as long as
your wealth stands in the way. You must throw away the crutches of
riches and stand upon your own feet, and develop the long unused
muscles of manhood. God may see a rough diamond in you which only the
hard hits of poverty can polish.
God knows where the richest melodies of our lives are, and what drill
and what discipline are necessary to bring them out. The frost, the
snows, the tempests, the lightnings are the rough teachers that bring
the tiny acorn to the sturdy oak. Fierce winters are as necessary to
it as long summers. It is its half-century's struggle with the
elements for existence, wrestling with the storm, fighting for its life
from the moment that it leaves the acorn until it goes into the ship,
that gives it value. Without this struggle it would have been
characterless, staminaless, nerveless, and its grain would have never
been susceptible of high polish. The most beautiful as well as the
strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in severe
climates, where they have to fight the frosts and the winter's cold.
Many a man has never found himself until he has lost his all.
Adversity stripped him only to discover him. Obstacles, hardships, are
the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty. The
rough ledge on the hillside complains of the drill, of the blasting
which disturbs its peace of centuries: it is not pleasant to be rent
with powder, to be hammered and squared by the quarryman. But look
again: behold the magnificent statue, the monument, chiseled into grace
and beauty, telling its grand story of valor in the public square for
centuries.
The statue would have slept in the marble forever but for the blasting,
the chiseling, and the polishing. The angel of our higher and nobler
selves would remain forever unknown in the rough quarries of our lives
but for the blastings of affliction, the chiseling of obstacles, and
the sand-papering of a thousand annoyances.
Who has not observed the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet
loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune
or by some terrible affliction?
How many business men have made their greatest strides toward manhood,
and developed their greatest virtues when reverses of fortune have
swept away everything they had in the world; when disease had robbed
them of all they held dear in life! Often we can not see the angel in
the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the blasts of
misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and obstacles have
squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and beauty.
Many a man has been ruined into salvation. The lightning which smote
his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him
glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen. The grave
buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered in his nature possibilities of
patience, endurance, and hope which he never before dreamed he
possessed.
"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better
too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our
skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty
makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in
all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."
Men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their
personality and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances. You
can not keep them down. Every obstacle seems only to add to their
ability to get on.
The greatest men will ever be those who have risen from the ranks. It
is said that there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent,
and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace.
Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, but draws out the
faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity
of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle
industrious. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse
the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude
of the voyager. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the
earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained.
Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness.
Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he
produced his greatest works. Schiller wrote his best books in great
bodily suffering. He was not free from pain for fifteen years. Milton
wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "Who best
can suffer," said he, "best can do." Bunyan said that, if it were
lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater
comfort's sake.
Not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand
lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked London,
did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and
mighty city.
True salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution.
Many of our best poets
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
And learn in suffering what they teach in song."
Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing
criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was
but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance
in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron
reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott,
Southey, and Campbell, and died at thirty-seven, that age so fatal to
genius. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or "Orator Mum,"
as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and
abuse.
This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere.
We have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries,
newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are
all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often
tutored through college with very little study. "Short roads" and
"abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious
methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college
course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion.
Self-help and self-reliance are getting old-fashioned. Nature, as if
conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her
wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and
emancipate him from Eden's curse.
But do not misinterpret her edict. She emancipates from the lower only
to call to the higher. She does not bid the world go and play while
she does the work. She emancipates the muscles only to employ the
brain and heart.
The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not
developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on
trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying
climate and on a stubborn soil. It is not chance that returns to the
Hindoo ryot a penny and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily
toil; that makes Mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and New England
with its granite and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the
struggle to obtain; it is poverty, the priceless spur, that develops
the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism.
Intelligent labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden.
As the sculptor thinks only of the angel imprisoned in the marble
block, so Nature cares only for the man or woman shut up in the human
being. The sculptor cares nothing for the block as such; Nature has
little regard for the mere lump of breathing clay. The sculptor will
chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will
chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. She
will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let
us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways,
if she can develop a little character. Everything must give way to
that.
"The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails."
Then welcome each rebuff,
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but go.
BROWNING.