Every man has a philosophy of life in thought, in word, or in deed,
worked out in himself unconsciously. In possession of the very best,
he may not know of its existence; with the very worst he may pride
himself as a paragon. As it grows with the growth it cannot be
taught to the young in formal lectures. What have bright eyes, red
blood, quick breath and taut muscles to do with philosophy? Did not
the great Stagirite say that young men were unfit students of
it?--they will hear as though they heard not, and to no profit. Why
then should I trouble you? Because I have a message that may be
helpful. It is not philosophical, nor is it strictly moral or
religious, one or other of which I was told my address should be, and
yet in a way it is all three. It is the oldest and the freshest, the
simplest and the most useful, so simple indeed is it that some of you
may turn away disappointed as was Naaman the Syrian when told to go
wash in Jordan and be clean. You know those composite tools, to be
bought for 50 cents, with one handle to fit a score or more of
instruments. The workmanship is usually bad, so bad, as a rule, that
you will not find an example in any good carpenter's shop; but the
boy has one, the chauffeur slips one into his box, and the sailor
into his kit, and there is one in the odds-and-ends drawer of the
pantry of every well-regulated family. It is simply a handy thing
about the house, to help over the many little difficulties of the
day. Of this sort of philosophy I wish to make you a present--a
handle to fit your life tools. Whether the workmanship is Sheffield
or shoddy, this helve will fit anything from a hatchet to a corkscrew.
My message is but a word, _a Way_, an easy expression of the
experience of a plain man whose life has never been worried by any
philosophy higher than that of the shepherd in _As You Like It_. I
wish to point out a path in which the wayfaring man, though a fool,
cannot err; not a system to be worked out painfully only to be
discarded, not a formal scheme, simply a habit as easy--or as
hard!--to adopt as any other habit, good or bad.
I
A few years ago a Xmas card went the rounds, with the legend "Life is
just one 'derned' thing after another," which, in more refined
language, is the same as saying "Life is a habit," a succession of
actions that become more or less automatic. This great truth, which
lies at the basis of all actions, muscular or psychic, is the
keystone of the teaching of Aristotle, to whom the formation of
habits was the basis of moral excellence. "In a word, habits of any
kind are the result of actions of the same kind; and so what we have
to do, is to give a certain character to these particular actions"
(_Ethics_). Lift a seven months old baby to his feet--see him tumble
on his nose. Do the same at twelve months--he walks. At two years
he runs. The muscles and the nervous system have acquired the habit.
One trial after another, one failure after another, has given him
power. Put your finger in a baby's mouth, and he sucks away in
blissful anticipation of a response to a mammalian habit millions of
years old. And we can deliberately train parts of our body to
perform complicated actions with unerring accuracy. Watch that
musician playing a difficult piece. Batteries, commutators,
multipliers, switches, wires innumerable control those nimble
fingers, the machinery of which may be set in motion as automatically
as in a pianola, the player all the time chatting as if he had
nothing to do in controlling the apparatus--habit again, the gradual
acquisition of power by long practice and at the expense of many
mistakes. The same great law reaches through mental and moral
states. "Character," which partakes of both, in Plutarch's words, is
"long-standing habit."
Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually
by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the
day only, and for the day's work, _Life in day-tight compartments_.
"Ah," I hear you say, "that is an easy matter, simple as Elisha's
advice!" Not as I shall urge it, in words which fail to express the
depth of my feelings as to its value. I started life in the best of
all environments--in a parsonage, one of nine children. A man who
has filled Chairs in four universities, has written a successful
book, and has been asked to lecture at Yale, is supposed popularly to
have brains of a special quality. A few of my intimate friends
really know the truth about me, as I know it! Mine, in good faith I
say it, are of the most mediocre character. But what about those
professorships, etc.? Just habit, a way of life, an outcome of the
day's work, the vital importance of which I wish to impress upon you
with all the force at my command.
Dr. Johnson remarked upon the trifling circumstances by which men's
lives are influenced, "not by an ascendant planet, a predominating
humour, but by the first book which they read, some early
conversation which they have heard, or some accident which excited
ardour and enthusiasm." This was my case in two particulars. I was
diverted to the Trinity College School, then at Weston, Ontario, by a
paragraph in the circular stating that the senior boys would go into
the drawing-room in the evenings, and learn to sing and dance--vocal
and pedal accomplishments for which I was never designed; but like
Saul seeking his asses, I found something more valuable, a man of the
White of Selborne type, who knew nature, and who knew how to get boys
interested in it.[1] The other happened in the summer of 1871, when
I was attending the Montreal General Hospital. Much worried as to
the future, partly about the final examination, partly as to what I
should do afterwards, I picked up a volume of Carlyle, and on the
page I opened there was the familiar sentence--"_Our main business is
not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly
at hand._" A commonplace sentiment enough, but it hit and stuck and
helped, and was the starting-point of a habit that has enabled me to
utilize to the full the single talent entrusted to me.
[1] The Rev. W. A. Johnson, the founder of the school.