Man has two creators,—his God and himself. His first creator
furnishes him the raw material of his life and the laws in conformity
with which he can make that life what he will. His second
creator,—himself,—has marvellous powers he rarely realizes. It is what
a man makes of himself that counts.
When a man fails in life he usually says, “I am as God made me.” When he
succeeds he proudly proclaims himself a “self-made man.” Man is placed
into this world not as a finality,—but as a possibility. Man’s greatest
enemy is,—himself. Man in his weakness is the creature of
circumstances; man in his strength is the creator of circumstances.
Whether he be victim or victor depends largely on himself.
Man is never truly great merely for what he _is_, but ever for what he
may become. Until man be truly filled with the knowledge of the majesty
of his possibility, until there come to him the glow of realization of
his privilege to live the life committed to him, as an individual life
for which he is individually responsible, he is merely groping through
the years.
To see his life as he might make it, man must go up alone into the
mountains of spiritual thought as Christ went alone into the Garden,
leaving the world to get strength to live in the world. He must there
breathe the fresh, pure air of recognition of his divine importance as
an individual, and with mind purified and tingling with new strength he
must approach the problems of his daily living.
Man needs less of the “I am a feeble worm of the dust” idea in his
theology, and more of the conception “I am a great human soul with
marvellous possibilities” as a vital element in his daily working
religion. With this broadening, stimulating view of life, he sees how he
may attain his kingship through self-control. And the self-control that
is seen in the most spectacular instances in history, and in the
simplest phases of daily life, is precisely the same in kind and in
quality, differing only in degree. This control man can attain, if he
only will; it is but a matter of paying the price.
The power of self-control is one of the great qualities that
differentiates man from the lower animals. He is the only animal capable
of a moral struggle or a moral conquest.
Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control.” It has
been escaping from the tyranny of a fact, to the understanding and
mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning
flash; to-day he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he
has mastered and made his slave. The million phases of electrical
invention are but manifestations of our control over a great force. But
the greatest of all “control” is self-control.
At each moment of man’s life he is either a King or a slave. As he
surrenders to a wrong appetite, to any human weakness; as he falls
prostrate in hopeless subjection to any condition, to any environment,
to any failure, he is a slave. As he day by day crushes out human
weakness, masters opposing elements within him, and day by day
re-creates a new self from the sin and folly of his past,—then he is a
King. He is a King ruling with wisdom over himself. Alexander conquered
the whole world except,—Alexander. Emperor of the earth, he was the
servile slave of his own passions.
We look with envy upon the possessions of others and wish they were our
own. Sometimes we feel this in a vague, dreamy way with no thought of
real attainment, as when we wish we had Queen Victoria’s crown, or
Emperor William’s self-satisfaction. Sometimes, however, we grow bitter,
storm at the wrong distribution of the good things of life, and then
relapse into a hopeless fatalistic acceptance of our condition.
We envy the success of others, when we should emulate the process by
which that success came. We see the splendid physical development of
Sandow, yet we forget that as a babe and child he was so weak there was
little hope that his life might be spared.
We may sometimes envy the power and spiritual strength of a Paul,
without realizing the weak Saul of Tarsus from which he was transformed
through his self-control.
We shut our eyes to the thousands of instances of the world’s
successes,—mental, moral, physical, financial or spiritual,—wherein
the great final success came from a beginning far weaker and poorer than
our own.
Any man may attain self-control if he only will. He must not expect to
gain it save by long continued payment of price, in small progressive
expenditures of energy. Nature is a thorough believer in the installment
plan in her relations with the individual. No man is so poor that he
cannot _begin_ to pay for what he wants, and every small, individual
payment that he makes, Nature stores and accumulates for him as a
reserve fund in his hour of need.
The patience man expends in bearing the little trials of his daily life
Nature stores for him as a wondrous reserve in a crisis of life. With
Nature, the mental, the physical or the moral energy he expends daily in
right-doing is all stored for him and transmuted into strength. Nature
never accepts a cash payment in full for anything,—this would be an
injustice to the poor and to the weak.
It is only the progressive installment plan Nature recognizes. No man
can make a habit in a moment or break it in a moment. It is a matter of
development, of growth. But at any moment man may _begin_ to make or
begin to break any habit. This view of the growth of character should be
a mighty stimulus to the man who sincerely desires and determines to
live nearer to the limit of his possibilities.
Self-control may be developed in precisely the same manner as we tone up
a weak muscle,—by little exercises day by day. Let us each day do, as
mere exercises of discipline in moral gymnastics, a few acts that are
disagreeable to us, the doing of which will help us in instant action in
our hour of need. The exercises may be very simple—dropping for a time
an intensely interesting book at the most thrilling page of the story;
jumping out of bed at the first moment of waking; walking home when one
is perfectly able to do so, but when the temptation is to take a car;
talking to some disagreeable person and trying to make the conversation
pleasant. These daily exercises in moral discipline will have a wondrous
tonic effect on man’s whole moral nature.
The individual can attain self-control in great things only through
self-control in little things. He must study himself to discover what is
the weak point in his armor, what is the element within him that ever
keeps him from his fullest success. This is the characteristic upon
which he should begin his exercise in self-control. Is it selfishness,
vanity, cowardice, morbidness, temper, laziness, worry, mind-wandering,
lack of purpose?—whatever form human weakness assumes in the masquerade
of life he must discover. He must then live each day as if his whole
existence were telescoped down to the single day before him. With no
useless regret for the past, no useless worry for the future, he should
live that day as if it were his only day,—the only day left for him to
assert all that is best in him, the only day left for him to conquer all
that is worst in him. He should master the weak element within him at
each slight manifestation from moment to moment. Each moment then must
be a victory for it or for him. Will he be King, or will he be
slave?—the answer rests with him.