PERSEVERANCE.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
In the course of evolution from brute to man some of our organs have
been highly developed by constant use, while others have been stunted
by habitual disuse. In special adaptations of the sense of touch and
sight, for instance, man surpasses all his fellow-creatures, most of
whom, in turn, surpass him in the acuteness of their olfactory organs.
An analogous result seems to have been produced by the exercise or
neglect of certain mental faculties and dispositions. The instinct of
enterprise, for instance, has been developed from rather feeble germs
of the animal soul, while the instinct of perseverance appears to have
lost something of its pristine energy. The African termite ant rears
structures which, in proportion to the size of the builders, surpass
the pyramids as a mountain surpasses the monuments of the
mound-builders. By the persistent coöperation of countless generations
the tiny architect of the coral reefs has girt a continent with a
rampart of sea-walls. The prairie wolf will follow a trail for half a
week. The teeth of a mouse are thinner and more brittle than a darning
needle, yet by dint of perseverance gnawing mice manage to perforate
the stoutest planks. Captive prairie dogs have been known to tunnel
their way through forty feet of compact loam.
An instinct, which one might be tempted to call a love of perseverance
for its own sake, seems sometimes to influence the actions of young
children. There are boys whose energies seem to be roused by the
resistance of inanimate things. I have seen lads of eight or nine years
hew away for hours at knotty logs which even a veteran woodcutter would
have been pardoned for flinging aside. There are school boys, not
otherwise distinguished for love of books, who will forego their recess
sports to puzzle out an arithmetical problem of special intricacy.
Our desultory mode of education hardly tends to encourage that
disposition which, nevertheless, is now and then apt to develop into a
permanent character trait. There are young men who will act out a
self-determined programme of study or business with persistent
disregard of temporary hardships, and pursue even minor details of
their plan with a resolution only strengthened by difficulties. The
moral ideals of antiquity seem to have been more favorable to the
development of that type of character, which also manifests itself in
the national policy of several ancient republics, and the inflexible
consistency of their legal institutions.
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The advantages of perseverance are not too readily admitted by the
numberless victims of that facile disposition that loves to ascribe its
foibles to the “versatility of genius,” or a high-minded “aversion to
pedantic routine;” yet now, as in the days of yore, life reserves its
best rewards for the most persistent competitors. Singleness of
purpose, like a sharp wedge, forces its way through obstacles that
resist many-sided endeavors. The versatile poets and philosophers of
Athens have wreathed her memory with unrivaled laurels, yet in the
affairs of practical life her merchants were out-traded, her
politicians out-witted, and her generals beaten by men whose nations
had steadfastly followed a narrower but consistent policy. “Aut non
tentaris aut perfice,” “either try not, or persevere,” was a Roman
proverb that made Rome the mistress of three continents. In the Middle
Ages the dynasty of the Abbassides, as in modern times the house of the
Hohenzollern, attained supremacy by persistent adherence to an
established system of political tactics. Even questionable enterprises
have thus been crowned with triumph, as the ambitions of the Roman
pontiffs, and the projects of Ignatius Loyola. The chronicles of war,
of industry, and of commerce abound with analogous lessons. Patient
perseverance succeeds where fitful vehemence fails. In countless
battles the steadiness of British and North German troops has prevailed
against the enthusiasm of their bravest opponents. The quiet
perseverance of British colonists has prevailed against the bustling
activity of their Gallic rivals, on the Mississippi and St. Lawrence,
as well as on the Ganges and Indus. Steady-going business firms,
consistently-edited journals, hold their own, and ultimately absorb
their vacillating competitors. Dr. Winship, the Boston Hercules, held
that the chances of an athlete “depend on doggedness of purpose far
more than on hereditary physique.” Even the apparent caprices of
Fortune are biased by the habit of perseverance. “In the Stanislaus
mining-camp,” says Frederic Gerstaecker, “we had a number of experts
who seemed to find gold by a sort of sixth sense, and came across
‘indications’ wherever they stirred the gravel of the rocky ravines. We
called them ‘prospectors,’ and the brilliancy of their prospects was,
indeed, demonstrated by daily proofs. But at the first frown of Fortune
they would get discouraged, and remove their exploring outfit to
another ravine. Most of the actual work was done by the ‘squatters,’ as
we called the steady diggers, who would take up an abandoned claim and
stick to it for weeks. Bragging was not their forte, but at the end of
the season the squatter could squat down on a sackful of nuggets, while
the prospector had nothing but prospects.”
C.—PERVERSION.
The ambition of the ancients was encouraged by the conviction that life
is worth living, and that all its social and intellectual summits can
be reached by the persistent pursuit of a well-chosen road. But the
basis of that confidence was undermined by a doctrine which denied the
value of earthly existence, and made the renunciation of worldly
blessings the chief purpose of moral education. The pilgrim of life who
had been taught to spurn earth as a vale of tears, and turn his hopes
to the promises of another world, was not apt to trouble himself about
a consistent plan of secular pursuits, which, moreover, he had been
distinctly instructed to trust to the chances of the current day: “Take
no thought for the morrow;” “Take no thought for your life, nor yet for
your body ... for after all these things do the gentiles seek.”
Indecision, inconsistency, fickleness of purpose, vitiated the politics
of the Christian nations through-out the long chaos of the Middle Ages,
and in their features of individual character there is a strange want
of that moral unity and harmony which the consciousness of an
attainable purpose gave to the national exemplars of an earlier age.
The Rationalistic reaction of the last two centuries has greatly
modified the moral ideals of the Caucasian nations; the legitimacy of
secular pursuits is more generally recognized, but still only in a
furtive, hesitating manner, and the glaring contrast of our daily
practice with the theories of a still prevalent system of ethics cannot
fail to involve contradictions incompatible with true consistency of
principles and action.
D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
For thirteen hundred years the importance of perseverance in the
pursuit of earthly aims was depreciated by the ethics of
Antinaturalism, and the word Failure is written in glaring letters over
the record of the physical, mental, and moral enterprises of all that
period. The nations of northern Europe, whom the prestige of Rome
surrendered to the power of popish priests, were giants in stature and
strength, and the love of physical health was too deeply rooted in the
hereditary constitution of those athletes to be at once eradicated by
the machinations of spiritual poison-mongers. Yet the poison did not
fail to assert its virulence. Athletic sports were still a favorite
pastime of all freemen; but the gospel of the Nature-hating Galilean
insisted on the antagonism of physical and moral welfare; penances and
the worship of cadaverous saints perverted the manlier ideals of the
masses, the encouragement of ascetic habits and the enforced inactivity
of convent life undermined the stamina of the noblest nations, and in
the course of a few orthodox generations the descendants of the
herculean hunter-tribes of northern Europe became a prey to a multitude
of malignant diseases.
The love of knowledge still fed on the literary treasures of antiquity;
the flame of philosophy was now and then rekindled at the still glowing
embers of pagan civilization; but the doctrine of other-worldliness
denounced the pursuit of worldly lore, and science degenerated into a
medley of nursery-legends and monkish fever-dreams. Men walked through
life as Sindbad walked through the perils of the spirit-vale, in
constant dread of spectral manifestations, in constant anticipation of
ghostly interference with their earthly concerns, the pursuit of which
all but the wisest undertook only in a desultory, tentative way,
haunted by the idea that success in worldly enterprises could be bought
only at the expense of the immortal soul.
And how many thousand wanderers of our latter-day world have thus been
diverted from the path of manful perseverance, and almost directly
encouraged in the habit of palliating inconstancy of purpose with that
“dissatisfaction and weariness of worldly vanities,” which the ethics
of their spiritual educators commend as a symptom of regeneration! The
voices of re-awakened Nature protest, but only with intermittent
success, and the penalty of vacillation is that discord of modern life
that will not cease till our system of ethics has been thoroughly
purged from the poison of Antinaturalism.
E.—REFORM.
That work of redemption should include an emphatic repudiation of the
natural depravity dogma. Our children should be taught that steadfast
loyalty to the counsels of their natural reason is sufficient to insure
the promotion of their welfare in the only world thus far revealed to
our knowledge. The traditional concomitance of perseverance and
mediocrity should be refuted by the explanation of its cause. For a
long series of centuries the predominance of insane dogmas had actually
made science a mere mockery, and application to the prescribed
curriculum of the monastic colleges a clear waste of time—clear to all
but the dullest minds. The neglect of such studies, of the disgusting
sophistry of the patristic and scholastic era, was, indeed, a proof of
common sense, since only dunces and hypocrites could muster the
patience required to wade through the dismal swamp of cant, pedantry,
and superstition which for thirteen centuries formed the mental pabulum
of the priest-ridden academics. During that era of pseudo-science and
pseudo-morality, of fulsome rant centered on a monstrous delusion, the
eccentricity of genius was more than pardonable, being, in fact, the
only alternative of mental prostitution. The ideas of waywardness and
mental superiority became thus associated in a way which in its results
has wrought almost as much mischief as in its cause. The delusions of
that idea have wrecked as many promising talents as indolence and
intemperance.
The pupils of Secularism should be instructed to observe the benefits
of perseverance in the pursuit of minor projects, and encouraged to
apply that experience to the higher problems of life. Perseverance
should be recognized as the indispensable ally of loftiest genius as
well as of the lowliest talent.
Failure in secular enterprises should cease to be regarded as a symptom
of divine favor; and for those who insist on claiming the protection of
supernatural agencies, Goethe’s grand apostrophe to the Genius of
Manhood [1] should be condensed in the motto that “Heroic perseverance
invokes the aid of the gods.”