There are four professions, callings or vocations, which are justly
styled “learned professions,” because they carry with them the highest
degree of intelligence, tact, and wisdom.
They are so common, however, in these modern times, that many of their
followers do not command the respect to which their calling is entitled,
and hence, the professions themselves have greatly fallen into
disrepute; particularly so when it comes to select one of them for a
life work.
Viewing the teacher, the doctor, the lawyer, and the clergyman from the
common standpoint, there is no money in the professions.
Here is where the trouble lies. To be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, or
a clergyman for the sake of what can be made out of either, is to insult
the noblest professions in the world. They are what have kept the world
together since the beginning, and we should take our hats off to them
out of respect.
The lawyer’s duty is to protect his client’s civil rights and keep
society within the law.
The doctor preserves the health of his patients while they are about
their business, and the clergyman points out the way to a hereafter that
may mean our eternal weal or woe.
In the chapter on “Opportunities,” we show that these professions are
within the reach of any one who possesses an aptitude and has the brains
to acquire proficiency.
As to brains, let it be understood that everybody possesses sufficient
brains for any avocation in life, but they must be properly fed or
trained to be of use. Most men’s brains are of the same weight and
measurement. But some very learned men have possessed very small brains,
while men of the most magnificent proportions, but as ignorant as men
can be and feed themselves, have been known to possess brains of double
the weight of the learned.
We give the manner of training brain in another place, but assume here
that the young man who desires to enter either one of the three
professions we are treating of, must have the aptitude and the brains.
The same general remarks may be applied to the lawyer and the clergyman.
The aptitude is the trend of the mind in the direction of the profession
chosen. It must be a “first and only love,” so to speak, for the brain
is an exacting master or mistress and easily changes if not cuddled and
humored.
Back of and aiding aptitude, is the humanity demanded of every man of
either of these professions. When life hangs in the balance the doctor
is called upon to display the tenderest humanity. If a man is to be sent
to poverty through loss of his liberty or property the lawyer must
exhibit all the refinements of skill and humanity without regard to his
fees. The human soul striving to reach the eternal goal of rest, peace,
and happiness, appeals to the highest heart throbs of the clergyman. If
you can not enter into this spirit, then do not choose either of these
learned professions for you will prove a failure.
The learning required to master either of these professions can be
acquired only after the most painstaking and arduous study. To learn the
essence of things, the meaning of life and death, the movements that
produce life and death, and the symptoms that proclaim disease, come
within the purview of the doctor. How can he tell what will be the
effect of his medicine unless he knows what the disease is and what
effect upon the human body will be his medicines? He must know
intimately the thousand and one essential parts of the human body, how
they operate and their effects. If in aiming at one part he affect
another, death may ensue.
Have you a steady hand, controllable nerves, and a cool brain? You need
them all to perfection to be a surgeon and apply the knife in order to
cure suffering humanity. The surgeon must stand in the presence of a
mortal enemy with his finger pressed to the trigger of his weapon and
watch for the exact instant when he shall press it to save life.
The lawyer must possess not only an intimate acquaintance with the laws
of the land, but must have delved deep into the underlying principles
that form the foundation of all law and government. Logic, tact,
patience, and verbal skill with ready wit on all occasions, are to him
what the electric spark is to a motor. It was said by a learned judge
that many cases were lost where justice should have prevailed to win,
because of a failure to properly present the matter to the court.
It is not a loud voice, a browbeating disposition, or a pompous bearing
that bring success, it is the careful close reasoner, the quiet mole
that undermines the solid earth foundation of his opponent, and topples
it down.
The clergyman is a man of sacrifices. His own opinions go for naught
because he is not the maker of justice and right, but their exponent. He
sees beyond the faint traces of what we humans call “love,” a powerful
love that rules the world—the love of God—and he puts the two together
so that the lesser will be absorbed in the greater.
The great trouble may seem to be the variety of different sects and the
difficulty to select the right one. Man, they are all aiming in the
right direction. They point toward the sky, and bring a man’s manhood in
line with the soul, his spiritual part, and the imperishable part. There
is no room for bigotry, no room for anything but charity, and loving
kindness.
THE ROAD TO SUCCESS
OR
EASY LESSONS FOR EVERY DAY LIFE
The way to success in anything is always an upward climb, the down grade
is always a flat failure.
In considering this matter, it will be well to remember and bear
constantly in mind, that it is easier to slide down hill than it is to
climb up.
We may say, therefore, that success is purely a question of exertion.
The road to and up the slope of the hill of life is roomy enough and to
spare for everybody, and there need not be any crowding. But the way is
strewn with wrecks, many submerged before beginning their journey,
others lodged in some cranny half way up, and others start up so bravely
and so rashly that they can not stop at the summit where the prize is
situated, but their momentum carries them over and down to the bottom on
the other side.
The steady, earnest worker plods along, sees that his footing is firmly
fixed before he takes a next step. He grabs at some retaining point and
never lets go of it until he has hold of another support.
When he reaches the top, he can stop and breathe, likewise flatter
himself that he has succeeded by hard work and steady perseverance.
The fact is, that unless a man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth,
that is, well provided by his ancestors with a goodly supply of this
world’s goods, there is no royal road to anything. No man can roll about
like a smooth pebble and hope to land into a mossy hollow.
When a man starts off on a voyage he generally has some definite
destination in view, some object to be attained when he reaches it.
Nobody can spend his life traveling about for the mere purpose of
keeping in motion. There is no advantage in this except to the
transportation companies.
Here is the keynote to success—character. We do not know what character
is, we know only that it accomplishes results.
Why do some men succeed and others fail, assuming that they all start
out on the same plane equally well equipped? The reason why can not be
told, it lies in the man himself, it is his character.
We are living in an age when new things are utilized; new ways of doing
business are demanded. We run to specialties more than we did in the
past. Even ten years make a difference in business methods.
If you have aspirations, are they up to the times?
Not so very long ago, one man made everything about a machine. If he had
a watch to make, he made the case, the wheels, the springs and all the
parts, and also put them together into a perfect instrument. Now, a
dozen or more men make, not the watch, but each of the several parts.
The cases are machine made by one man; another rolls the springs,
another turns the screws, another the wheels, and so on. Every thing is
done piecemeal, so to speak, and none of the workers is able to make a
perfect watch. So it is with clothing, with furniture, tin and iron
ware.
The doctor is a specialist. Something ails your eyes—you must go to an
eye specialist, the throat specialist knows nothing about the eyes. Have
you a fever? You go to a bacteriologist to find out what germ is
infecting you. Formerly you took a dose of salts and senna, or other
nauseating drug.
You have a case of collection, but your regular lawyer makes a specialty
of criminal cases and can not help you. Perhaps you have been injured in
an automobile accident and want damages from the owner, but your regular
lawyer does not know anything about damage cases, he is a corporation
lawyer, or a divorce lawyer, or a patent attorney, or takes admiralty
cases only.
A bookkeeper applies for employment. Do you know anything about cards?
This is the question. You know about playing cards, but the employer
keeps his accounts on loose cards, not in heavy books.
There is division of labor in every pursuit, and no man can become
learned in all of one thing. He may acquire a smattering, but there are
no more universal geniuses, the world of industry has become
complicated, unlimited, and special.
We see then, the futility of trying all of one thing or aspiring to
reach all of one thing. You can not succeed because you have a mere
smattering of many details, and not a perfect knowledge of any single
detail.
This however, makes the road to success much easier than in the old
days. You can become perfect in some one thing, and life is not too
short to learn it; it can be mastered.
It goes without saying, that in our intercourse with men we must put
them on an equality with us and place ourselves on an equality with
them. Are you an inferior man? Then go elsewhere for employment. “I want
skilled workmen,” says the employer. “I want a physician that will cure
me, not one to experiment upon me,” says the sick man. It is always man
to man now-a-days. No cringing, remember, and on the other hand, no
bluffing.
THE MAN OF HOPE; THE MAN OF DESPAIR; AND THE MAN OF “DON’T CARE”
Optimism, Pessimism, Indifference
The people of the earth are made up generally of three classes:
optimists, pessimists, indifferents.
The radical optimist floats in a balmy spring air on a rosy cloud,
stringing his banjo and singing lullabies to the gorgeously feathered
songsters that surround him.
The pessimist is like a fly with its wings stuck on fly paper, and
bemoans his fate as that of every other fly.
The indifferent is a devil-may-care sort of a person who does not care
whether the sun shines, or whether it rains.
The extreme optimist is too happy to be of any use on earth; the
pessimist sends us all to perdition and is afraid to walk under a ladder
lest it fall on him, while the indifferent is of no use because he does
not take any interest in the things around him. He is usually a tramp,
or a free lunch fiend. He will offer to shovel the snow from your walks
in July, and gladly offer his services as a harvest hand in January.
Apart from indifference, which is the offspring of the other two,
optimism and pessimism, though extremes, meet among men, but possess
different working machinery. One is really the aid of the other.
The earth was created in an optimistic spirit. Of that there can be no
doubt in the mind of any man who believes in creation at all. But by the
extraordinary conduct of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, this
creation by the supreme Optimist, was changed into the most radical of
pessimistic ventures—judged from the human standpoint, of course. We
hear it from the most pious divines and it is probably correct.
A large gulf was dug in the original optimism and filled with the
darkness of pessimism, where, floundering in it, man looks back to the
joys lost to him forever by another’s folly, and then forward to the
forbidding cliffs that bar his entrance to the joys to come, unless he
engage in a mighty struggle and a hand-to-hand conflict with his animal
nature. He may and must scale the cliffs.
It is quite certain that the evils said to be afflicting the people of
the earth can never be cured by optimistic fancies, no more than can the
racking pains and galling sores of the bedridden be healed by their
concealment, or by covering them with a blanket of joy.
Financially, the man pressed by dire want, fancies the earth is ready to
come to an end, whereas, the man with substantial wealth treads in a
garden of flowers. The pangs of hunger find a lodging place in the
stomach of a pessimist, while a royal good dinner is the joy of an
optimist. The man in jail looks through a darkened glass, but his jailer
sees all things bright and clear.
Optimism is a comparative virtue; pessimism a relative vice. Love is the
destroyer of pessimism, while bankruptcy withers optimism at a touch.
The contest between the two is like a perpetual game of tenpins, in
which the pins are constantly overthrown to be as constantly re-set, and
the score of the game is always a tie.
Our modern extreme optimists bewilder us with vain ideals. They flatter
themselves with high sounding words and vague and dreamy utterances that
entangle many, but which mitigate no evils, redress no wrongs, soothe no
pain, cure no wounds.
“I am so sorry,” said a gentle optimist over a man who had just been run
over by an automobile and both legs broken, and she wrung her hands in
pity.
“I am sorry five dollars worth,” said a rough old heathen pessimist in
the crowd as he passed his hat for money to relieve the poor man’s
family.
Whenever a human wrong has been righted, an enslaved nation freed, a
sinner brought to salvation, there has always been a pessimist at the
beginning of the work, while the optimist came in later and realized the
profits from the work.
There is a philosophy practiced by the optimist to be found in the lines
of a great poet:
“One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.”
A philosophy that plunges men down into a gulf of despair, without hope
of relief, without power to defend himself and his against oppression
and injustice. It is a philosophy which, carried to its ultimate
optimistic length, leads to the depths in which are sunk all those who
bear upon their banner the legend:
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
There is less hope for those who climb to dizzy heights of optimistic
congratulation, than for those plunged in the dark gulf of pessimistic
woe, for to the latter there shall come a new heaven and a new earth,
and former things shall pass away. But the former have forestalled their
future abiding place by a creation out of their own presumption.
Here we have it—“presumption.” This is a worse condition than the
despair of the pessimist, for the latter is constantly striving to get
out of the slough of Despond, whereas the former is so puffed up with
pride at his own achievements, that he is hidebound in the thralls of
his own goodness and perfection.
The great fear of the extremes of optimism and pessimism is the danger
of falling into indifference. When a man refuses to take advantage of
the opportunities presented him, and says: “What’s the use?” his life is
ended so far as any activity is concerned, and he is a useless member of
society.
Be neither extreme, and remember that while there is life there is hope.
The quality of optimism must be strained through the sieve of common
sense.
_THE PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, and the PLEASURES OF THE MIND_
When a hungry man is seated before an appetizing meal, his mouth waters
in anticipation and he experiences the joys of anticipated satisfaction.
Every mouthful lingers on his palate with a delicious sensation and when
his hunger is satisfied, a feeling of intense comfort steals over him.
He is at peace with the world, and forgives his enemies. Any favor you
ask, if within his power to grant, will not be refused.
It is the same with a thirsty man. A delicious invigorating drink—and
there is none preferable to water—gurgles down his parched throat and he
smacks his lips with enjoyment.
All these matters together with other pleasurable sensations are purely
physical and passing. They must be renewed to be experienced, and when
the physical nature is out of order or does not respond, we are in a
very bad condition if we have nothing else to fall back upon.
Physical enjoyments are all sensual. The nerves thrill with excitement
and the world looks good to us and mighty pleasant. A few flies to
pester us are mere details and not to be considered.
But we have another being separate and apart from the physical body;
something much finer and more elevated. A being that is of a higher
order of appreciation and more enduring.
Every man knows without being told, that is, he knows from his own
feelings and sensations, that he has a spiritual nature, a mental body,
a mind.
Now, this mental body, this mind, is far above the physical, and its
pleasures and sensations, and its delights are as far above the physical
sensations as the spirit or mind is above the flesh.
Let us follow up this idea:
We said that a hungry man enjoys eating. This is true, but all hungry
men do not eat alike. Some men bolt their food to appease hunger, and
swill their drink to quench thirst. But others enjoy their food and
while satisfying hunger and thirst, gratify their taste and enjoy
certain foods more than others. These others have what is called
“educated” appetites, which is a mental acquisition above the purely
animal sensation of satisfying hunger or thirst. It is an art to be
cultivated.
This is the point sought to be reached—education and learning.
If the pleasures of the flesh are so enjoyable, then the pleasures of
the mind are still more enjoyable, because the mind is more appreciative
besides more enduring.
The food of the mind, the drink of the mind, means all the other
pleasures of the flesh resolved into the spiritual body through
education and learning, and the more education, the more learning, the
higher the enjoyment.
A great lawyer once said: “The pleasure of learning may be likened to a
bucket in a deep well of clear, cool water. It is easy to move the
bucket about if it is kept beneath the water, but when we attempt to
raise it above the surface, then comes a tug and a hard pull.” Whence he
derived the conclusion that the deeper we plunge into the clear, cool
depths of education and learning the more pleasure there is and the
easier it is to remain there.
One of our poets says:
“Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.”
In these modern days every man must have some sort of an education,
preferably that for the occupation or profession which he selects for
his life work.
If he goes in for a commercial business, then he must learn all about
the rules and laws governing his business or the branch of it he aspires
to learn. He must know all about the nature of the goods he purposes to
sell; the markets; the prices; the demand; the production; the
consumption, and other matters connected with the business.
If he does not learn these things he will fail in business, and if he
does not learn some of them he can not get a job in any business house.
The rule is the same in every trade and profession. The modern man is
exacting. He demands the best service, because his customers or clients
demand better goods, better qualities, and better treatment.
The time has gone by when a tradesman, for instance, could offer goods
to his customer with a “take it or leave it” air. Competition is too
keen to permit that, and prices are too liable to be cut to enable him
to say, “That’s my price,” for there are others who will say, “I will
knock off ten per cent.”
An education that does not fit in with a man’s occupation is a
relaxation, and aids him to rise in his business and profession, so that
nothing is lost by keeping up with the times, but there is everything to
be gained. This is refinement and a valuable asset. Everything that can
be learned is worth something sometime.
How to tell a fresh egg from a stale one is a matter of education, but
to give the reason why a stale egg is not so good as a fresh one is a
matter of learning.
You can distinguish one man from another by his facial differences. That
is education, but when you can tell a good man from a bad one by a study
of his characteristics, that is learning.
To learn how to do things is education, but to learn the nature of the
things you make or the reasons why involves learning.
The housewife in making bread sets the loaves of dough in a warm place
so that they will rise. This is education, and her education tells her
that if she puts the dough in a cold place the bread will not rise. If
she knew that the yeast plant requires heat to grow, and is easily
killed by cold, she is learned.
If you eat a cucumber or any green fruit in the hot summer time you are
liable to get the colic. You are educated up to that by experience,
perhaps. But if you know that nature always gives you a pain when you
eat something indigestible, as a warning to get rid of it, or not to do
so any more, you will be learned indeed, if you take a cathartic instead
of a pain killer to stop the pain or warning nature gives you.
We can not live among our fellow men without an education of some kind,
adaptable
First—to our life work whatever it may be.
Second—suitable and proper to the people with whom we associate or are
placed in contact in our daily round of business and pleasure.
We can live and get along through life without any learning, but
learning adds to education and enables us to apply what we learn.
Besides that, it puts us in a position to rise higher, the more learned
we become.
It is not intended, by these remarks, to advise any one to learn
everything there is to be learned, for the very good reason there are
too many things in these modern times for one man’s brain to hold. But
it may be taken as a truth, that a man should be learned along the line
of his trade, business, or profession, with a few enjoyments for good
measure.
It is easy to learn, in fact one thing brings another. Like some food we
eat—one mouthful makes us hungry for another. Our modern system is so
linked and connected together, that every thing that may or can be
learned is a link in the great entire chain. You begin pulling at the
educational chain and find that you can not stop. You feel impelled to
keep on taking up link after link, until before you are aware of it, you
have mastered some definite branch of learning through the force of
education.
One thing to be noted is, what one man knows another man can find out.
The only way, therefore, is to keep ahead of him and learn things he can
not find out, or will not find out until too long afterward to be of any
disadvantage to you.
_THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST_
_The Laws of Nature Determine Who Shall Live, and Who Shall Die_
The theory of the survival of the fittest is agitating the world more
than ever before. But it has changed its significant title to what is
known now as “Eugenics,” which means substantially “well born,” or good
birth.
Briefly speaking, it is claimed that it is a law of nature that the
weakest shall go to the wall, and that the strongest shall survive. In
carrying out this doctrine, the ancient nations, Sparta, for example,
put to death all the weak and decrepit children, permitting only the
strong and well-shaped physically to live.
In our day, the scientists, or rather those who claim to be scientific,
advocate the same practice in a different but equally as effective a
manner.
The doctrine of “selection,” as it is termed, has been invented to cover
up the Spartan tragedy of murdering the helpless, and by it, it is hoped
our admitted degeneracy will be stopped.
I do not apply the term “degeneracy” to the Colored people, because
degeneracy works back to a type and not away from it in the human
family. The average Colored American is too near the pure type of his
race to be in a very deep degeneracy, but the word must be applied to
the mixed races of the Aryan, Caucasian, of whom it would be vain to
find a pure type except among the Georgians of Asia.
In explaining the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, or eugenics,
to give it its modern name, it is said that those who fail in life, fail
because they are not fitted to succeed, that is they are not “fit.” This
is called a law of nature. It is purposed to overcome this law of
nature, by selecting the parents by a medical examination or other
process, and confine parentage to them exclusively.
In other words, to prevent humanity from becoming any worse than it is,
the people who are to marry and bear children shall be of the very best
and highest type, and then their children will be finely developed and
make perfect citizens and become parents to other children.
But where shall we begin and what is the type aimed to reach as the
standard? It is important to the Colored man to know the meaning of this
movement to better the race, and also to discover what race is to be the
standard of excellence.
An effort will be made to explain as clearly as possible.
Who are the strongest that shall be permitted to survive, and who are
the weakest whose death knell is sounded?
It must be borne in mind in the outset, that all this controversy is
among the Caucasian, or as it is called in other places of this book,
the “Aryan” race, or division of the human family. It has not yet
reached the Colored race, nor has it been applied to them particularly.
Hence, let the Colored man stand outside and look on with interest, and
also watch that the theory does not spread to his race.
A man who lives in the slums is unfit to live anywhere else, so it is
said. A man who has made a million by a turn in the stock market, lives
in a palace, but can only write his name to a check, and can not tell a
spade from a rake. J. Pierpont Morgan possessed boundless wealth and
tremendous power in the financial world. Walt Whitman, the humane poet,
had a small competence and no power at all except to touch the hearts of
mankind. Burns was a plowman; Bunyan a tinker; a writer of slang and
jokesmith, makes a million; Brigham Young was a prophet and a ruler,
wealthy and honored; Stevenson was in the last stages of tuberculosis;
Byron was a cripple; Johnson was a glutton, and the composer of a silly
ragtime waltz owns an automobile and keeps a valet and a chauffeur.
Which of these shall we select as the type, and how are we going to tell
whether the offspring of our selections will come up to the type?
Modern medical scientists declare in the most positive terms, that every
child is born free from infectious diseases, and at the moment of its
birth is a perfect type. That the first breath it draws fills it with
the germs of future diseases that tend to make it a weak and diseased
abortion of humanity. All its troubles come from its surroundings or
environments, which are the conditions it must meet and with which it
must struggle to live at all.
It may avoid future disease from the infecting germs it breathes at the
moment of birth, by making its environments better, purer and altering
the bad conditions under which it lives.
We know, because we can see it every day, that of two plants or animals,
that one will survive which is the fittest to endure the conditions in
which both exist. He, the man, or it, the plant, can be afforded
opportunities in the way of good food, care, and proper training, to
resist the encroachments of disease and degenerate conditions.
Hence, we may say, that the question of which man shall survive, depends
upon the conditions under which he shall struggle for survival.
There is no law of nature here, it is the law of common sense and good
government. We are surrounded by conditions best suited for strength and
survival, and the conditions which promote weakness, disease and
degeneracy are removed or beyond our reach.
In a nation of marauders or robbers, those who live by spoliation and
the sword, would be the fittest to survive, and they would be a
different type of men from those who get first place in a nation of
traders, where fierceness and strength are less called for than tenacity
of purpose and clearness of head.
When a man says he is poor, somebody says, that man is poor because he
is not fitted to gain wealth. But we say, he is not fitted to gain
wealth under the conditions of his life. Take him out of those
conditions, put opportunities in his way and he becomes “fit” because he
gains wealth. It is done every day.
One condition of society enables one kind of a man to succeed, another
condition of society enables another kind of man to succeed. And so on
all along the long line of different conditions.
The great mistake made by many so-called scientific purifiers of the
human race, is in not being able to separate man with reason from
animals or beasts without reasoning powers. There is such a thing as
intellectual progress and the betterment of the reasoning faculties, but
so long as we limit survivorship to the physical and not to the mental
powers, we are betraying man into degeneracy instead of helping him out
of it.
There is one great teacher whose lessons are to be learned and deeply
pondered. They lead to an uplift that no money, and no medical
examination, or selection, can possibly attain. He was poor and
forsaken; rejected by his own, but he was and is the type to be
attained. In establishing the highest type possible to man with
reasoning powers, he ran counter to the doctrine of the survival of the
fittest as men saw it in his day, so they crucified Him but too late to
efface the type which we must follow or fall into degeneracy.