SELF-MASTERY.
Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.
SHAKESPEARE.
Strength of character consists of two things,--power of will and power
of self-restraint. It requires two things, therefore, for its
existence,--strong feelings and strong command over them.--F. W.
ROBERTSON.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
The bravest trophy ever man obtained
Is that which o'er himself himself hath gained.
EARL OF STIRLING.
Real glory springs from the conquest of ourselves; and without that the
conqueror is naught but the veriest slave.--THOMSON.
Whatever day makes man a slave takes half his worth away.--ODYSSEY.
Chain up the unruly legion of thy breast. Lead thine own captivity
captive, and be Caesar within thyself.--THOMAS BROWNE.
He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears,
is more than a king.--MILTON.
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth
his spirit than he that taketh a city.--BIBLE.
Self-trust is of the essence of heroism.--EMERSON.
Man who man would be
Must rule the empire of himself.
P. B. SHELLEY.
"Ah! Diamond, you little know the mischief you have wrought," said Sir
Isaac Newton, returning from supper to find that his dog had upset a
lighted taper upon the laborious calculations of years, which lay in
ashes before him. Then he went calmly to work to reproduce them. The
man who thus excelled in self-mastery surpassed all his predecessors
and contemporaries in mastering the laws of nature.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL]
"We rise by the things that are under our feet;
By what we have mastered of good or gain:
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet."
* * * * * *
The sun was high in the heavens when a man called at the house of
Pericles to abuse him. The man's anger knew no bounds. He vented his
spite in violent language until he paused from sheer exhaustion, and
saw that it was quite dark without. He turned to go home, when
Pericles calmly called a servant, and said, "Bring a lamp and attend
this man home." Is any argument needed to show the superiority of
Pericles?
The gladiators who were trained to tight in the Coliseum were compelled
to practice the most graceful postures of falling and the finest
attitudes to assume in dying, in case they were vanquished. They were
obliged to eat food which would make the blood thick in order that they
should not die quickly when wounded, thus giving the spectators
prolonged gratification by the spectacle of their agonies. Each had to
take this oath: "We swear that we will suffer ourselves to be bound,
scourged, burned, or killed by the sword, or whatever Eumolpus ordains,
and thus, like freeborn gladiators, we religiously devote both our
souls and our bodies to our master." They were trained to exercise
sublime self-control even when dying a cruel death.
The American Minister at St. Petersburg was summoned one morning to
save a young, dissolute, reckless American youth, Poe, from the
penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. By the Minister's aid young
Poe returned to the United States. Not long after this the author of
the best story and poem competed for in the "Baltimore Visitor" was
sent for, and behold, the youth who had taken both prizes was that same
dissolute, reckless, penniless, orphan youth, who had been arrested in
St. Petersburg,--pale, ragged, with no stockings, and with his
threadbare but well brushed coat buttoned to the chin to conceal the
lack of a shirt. Young Poe took fresh courage and resolution, and for
a while showed that he was superior to the appetite which was striving
to drag him down. But, alas, that fatal bottle! his mind was stored
with riches, yet he died in moral poverty. This was a soldier's
epitaph:--
"Here lies a soldier whom all must applaud,
Who fought many battles at home and abroad!
But the hottest engagement he ever was in,
Was the conquest of self, in the battle of sin."
In 1860, when a committee visited Abraham Lincoln at his home in
Springfield, Ill., to notify him of his nomination as President, he
ordered a pitcher of water and glasses, "that they might drink each
other's health in the best beverage God ever gave to man." "Let us,"
he continued, "make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the
temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets in
church, and instances will be as rare in one case as the other."
Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but gave them the rein:--
"Thus thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name."
"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer
himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most
shameful and vile."
Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his
impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral
freedom.
"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter
Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."
Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness
he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a
firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his
success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he
could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give
in to the cold," he said. For a year, on account of dyspepsia, he
lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body
because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the
idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military
Institute. His doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no
matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on
the minute. He adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of
discipline. Such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great
power over others. It is equal to genius itself.
It is a good plan to form the habit of ranking our various qualities,
marking our strongest point one hundred and all the others in
proportion, in order to make the lowest mark more apparent, and
enabling us to try to raise or strengthen it. A man's industry, for
example, may be his strongest point, one hundred, his physical courage
may be fifty; his moral courage, seventy-five; his temper, twenty-five;
with but ten for self-control,--which, if he has strong appetites and
passions, will be likely to be the rock on which he will split. He
should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest
qualities to one of the strongest. It would take but two or three
minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise
of each faculty for the day. If you have worked hard and faithfully,
mark industry one hundred. If you have lost your temper, and, in
consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself,
indicate it by a low mark. This will be an incentive to try to raise
it the next day. If you have been irritable, indicate it by a
corresponding mark, and redeem yourself on the morrow. If you have
been cowardly where you should have been brave, hesitating where you
should have shown decision, false where you should have been true,
foolish where you should have been wise, tardy where you should have
been prompt; if you have prevaricated where you should have told the
exact truth; if you have taken the advantage where you should have been
fair, have been unjust where you should have been just, impatient where
you should have been patient, cross where you should have been
cheerful, so indicate by your marks. You will find this a great aid to
character building.
It is a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the
Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds
to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic
oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts
herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness
of Nature and her terrors vanish.
The command by the ancient oracle at Delphos is of eternal
significance. Add to it its natural complement--Help thyself--and the
path to success is open to those who obey.
_Guard your weak point_. Moral contagion borrows fully half its
strength from the weakness of its victims. Have you a hot, passionate
temper? If so, a moment's outbreak, like a rat-hole in a dam, may
flood all the work of years. One angry word sometimes raises a storm
that time itself cannot allay. A single angry word has lost many a
friend.
A Quaker was asked by a merchant whom he had conquered by his patience
how he had been able to bear the other's abuse, and replied: "Friend, I
will tell thee. I was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. I
observed that men in a passion always speak loud, and I thought if I
could control my voice I should repress my passion. I have therefore
made it a rule never to let my voice rise above a certain key, and by a
careful observance of this rule, I have, by the blessing of God,
entirely mastered my natural tongue." Mr. Christmas of the Bank of
England explains that the secret of his self-control under very trying
circumstances was due to a rule learned from the great Pitt, never to
lose his temper during banking hours from nine to three.
When Socrates found in himself any disposition to anger, he would check
it by speaking low, in opposition to the motions of his displeasure.
If you are conscious of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, lest
you increase it. Many a person has dropped dead in a rage. Fits of
anger bring fits of disease. "Whom the gods would destroy they first
make mad." "Keep cool," says Webster, "anger is not argument." "Be
calm in arguing," says George Herbert, "for fierceness makes error a
fault, and truth discourtesy."
To be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong
yourself. "Anger," says Pythagoras, "begins with folly and ends with
repentance." You must measure the strength of a man by the power of
the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.
De Leon, a distinguished Spanish poet, after lying years in dungeons of
the Inquisition, dreary, and alone, without light, for translating part
of the Scriptures into his native tongue, was released and restored to
his professorship. A great crowd thronged to hear his first lecture,
out of curiosity to learn what he might say about his imprisonment.
But the great man merely resumed the lecture which had been so cruelly
broken off five years before, just where he left it, with the words
"Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this
remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to
jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in their minds!
Did you ever see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a
little pale, bite his quivering lip, and then reply quietly? Did you
ever see a man in anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock,
mastering himself? Have you not seen one bearing a hopeless daily
trial remain silent and never tell the world what cankered his home
peace? That is strength. "He who, with strong passions, remains
chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in
him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive,--these are
strong men, the spiritual heroes."
"You will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose," said young
Michael Angelo to the man Torrigiano, who struck him in anger. What
sublime self-control for a quick-tempered man!
"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said
Eardley Wilmot: "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it
would be Godlike to forgive it."
That man has conquered his tongue who can allow the ribald jest or
scurrilous word to die unspoken on his lips, and maintain an indignant
silence amid reproaches and accusations and sneers and scoffs. "He is
a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man who
will not."
Peter the Great made a law in 1722 that a nobleman who should beat his
slave should be regarded as insane, and a guardian appointed to look
after his property and person. This great monarch once struck his
gardener, who took to his bed and died. Peter, hearing of this,
exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "Alas! I have civilized my own
subjects; I have conquered other nations; yet have I not been able to
civilize or conquer myself." The same monarch, when drunk, rushed upon
Admiral Le Fort with a sword. Le Fort, with great self-possession,
bared his breast to receive the stroke. This sobered Peter, and
afterwards he asked the pardon of Le Fort. Peter said, "I am trying to
reform my country, and I am not yet able to reform myself."
Self-conquest is man's last and greatest victory.
A medical authority of highest repute affirms that excessive labor,
exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of
necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth and
intemperance, are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none
of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passion,--that men and women
have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these, but that
instances are very rare where people of irascible tempers live to
extreme old age.
It was the self-discipline of a man who had never looked upon war until
he was forty that enabled Oliver Cromwell to create an army which never
fought without annihilating, yet which retired into the ranks of
industry as soon as the government was established, each soldier being
distinguished from his neighbors only by his superior diligence,
sobriety, and regularity in the pursuits of peace.
How sweet the serenity of habitual self-command! When does a man feel
more a master of himself than when he has passed through a sudden and
severe provocation in silence or in undisturbed good humor?
Whether teaching the rules of an exact morality, answering his corrupt
judges, receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, Socrates
was still calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid.
It is a great thing to have brains, but it is vastly greater to be able
to command them. The Duke of Wellington had great power over himself,
although his natural temper was extremely irritable. He remained at
the Duchess of Richmond's ball till about three o'clock on the morning
of the 16th of June, 1815, "showing himself very cheerful," although he
knew that a desperate battle was awaiting him. On the field of
Waterloo he gave his orders at the most critical moments without the
slightest excitement.
Napoleon, having made his arrangements for the terrible conflict of the
next day (Jena and Auerstadt), retired to his tent about midnight, and
calmly sat down to draw up a plan of study and discipline for Madame
Campan's female school. "Keep cool, and you command everybody," says
St. Just.
"He that would govern others first should be
The master of himself,"
says Massinger.
He who has mastered himself, who is his own Caesar, will be stronger
than his passion, superior to circumstances, higher than his calling,
greater than his speech. Self-control is the generalship which turns a
mob of raw recruits into a disciplined army. The rough man has become
the polished and dignified soldier, in other words, the man has got
control of himself, and knows how to use himself. The human race is
under constant drill. Our occupations, difficulties, obstacles,
disappointments, if used aright, are the great schoolmasters which help
us to possess ourselves. The man who is master of himself will not be
a slave to drudgery, but will keep in advance of his work. He will not
rob his family of that which is worth more than money or position; he
will not be the slave of his occupation, not at the mercy of
circumstances. His methods and system will enable him to accomplish
wonders, and yet give him leisure for self-culture. The man who
controls himself works to live rather than lives for work.
The man of great self-control, the man who thinks a great deal and says
little, who is self-centred, well balanced, carries a thousand times
more weight than the man of weak will, always wavering and undecided.
If a man lacks self-control he seems to lack everything. Without it he
can have no patience, no power to govern himself, he can have no
self-reliance, for he will always be at the mercy of his strongest
passion. If he lacks self-control, the very backbone, pith, and nerve
of character are lacking also.
The discipline which is the main end in education is simply control
acquired over one's mental faculties; without this discipline no man is
a strong and accurate thinker. "Prove to me," says Mrs. Oliphant,
"that you can control yourself, and I'll say you're an educated man;
and, without this, all other education is good for next to nothing."
The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades his friend, talking with him
about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
noise of carriages in the street."
How many men have in their chain of character one weak link. They may
be weak in the link of truthfulness, politeness, trustworthiness,
temper, chastity, temperance, courage, industry, or may have some other
weakness which wrecks their success and thwarts a life's endeavor. He
who would succeed must hold all his faculties under perfect control;
they must be disciplined, drilled, until they obey the will.
Think of a young man just starting out in life to conquer the world
being at the mercy of his own appetites and passions! He cannot stand
up and look the world in the face when he is the slave of what should
be his own servants. He cannot lead who is led. There is nothing
which gives certainty and direction to the life of a man who is not his
own master. If he has mastered all but one appetite, passion, or
weakness, he is still a slave; it is the weakest point that measures
the strength of character.
Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what
virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.
Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence. There is many a man
whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could only govern his
tongue. Anger, like too much wine, hides us from ourselves, but
exposes us to others.
General von Moltke, perhaps the greatest strategist of this century,
had, as a foundation for his other talents, the power to "hold his
tongue in seven languages." A young man went to Socrates to learn
oratory. On being introduced, he talked so incessantly that Socrates
asked for double fees. "Why charge me double?" asked the young fellow.
"Because," said the orator, "I must teach you two sciences: the one how
to hold your tongue, the other how to speak." The first is the more
difficult.
Half the actual trouble of life would be saved if people would remember
that silence is golden, when they are irritated, vexed, or annoyed.
To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are
exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why
put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is
remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a
poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a
servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you
feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too
much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak
in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by,"
when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.
"Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? There is more hope of a
fool than of him."
"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the
contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."
In rhetoric, as Emerson truly says, this art of omission is the chief
secret of power. "Everything tells in favor of the man who talks but
little. The presumption is that he is a superior man; and if, in point
of fact, he is not a sheer blockhead, the presumption then is that he
is very superior indeed." Grant was master of the science of silence.
The self-controlled are self-possessed. "Sir, the house is on fire!"
shrieked a frightened servant, running into Dr. Lawson's study. "Go
and tell your mistress," said the preoccupied professor, without
looking up from the book he was reading; "you know I have no charge of
household matters." A woman whose house was on fire threw a
looking-glass out of the window, and carried a pair of andirons several
rods to a safe place beside a stone wall. "Presence of mind and
courage in distress are more than armies to procure success."
Xenophon tells us that at one time the Persian princes had for their
teachers the four best men in the kingdom. (1) The wisest man to teach
wisdom. (2) The bravest to teach courage. (3) The most just to train
the moral nature. (4) The most temperate to teach self-control. We
have them all in the Bible, and in Christ our teacher, an example. "If
it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine," said Samuel J.
May, "do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it
for your own sake." How many of nature's noblemen, who might be kings
if they could control themselves, drink away their honor, reputation,
and money in glasses of "wet damnation," more costly than the vinegar
in which Cleopatra dissolved her pearls.
Experience shows that, quicker than almost any other physical agency,
alcohol breaks down a man's power of self-control. But the physical
evils of intemperance, great as they are, are slight, compared with the
moral injury it produces. It is not simply that vices and crimes
almost inevitably follow the loss of rational self-direction, which is
the invariable accompaniment of intoxication; manhood is lowered and
finally lost by the sensual tyranny of appetite. The drunken man has
given up the reins of his nature to a fool or a fiend, and he is driven
fast to base or unutterably foolish ends.
With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into
the sunlight; but he had conquered the demon, which had almost killed
him. Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave
off using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the
end of it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew
camomile, gentian, toothpicks, but it was of no use. He bought another
plug of tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully,
but he looked at it and said, "You are a weed, and I am a _man_. I'll
master you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his
pocket daily.
Natural appetites, if given rein, will not only grow monstrous and
despotic, but artificial appetites will be created which, like a
ghastly Frankenstein, develop a kind of independent life and force, and
then turn on their creator to torment him without pity, and will mock
his efforts to free himself from this slavery. The victim of strong
drink is one of the most pitiable creatures on earth, he becomes half
beast, or half demon. Oh, the silent, suffering tongues that whisper
"Don't," but the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. What a
mute confession of degradation there is in the very appearance of a
confirmed sot. Behold a man no longer in possession of himself; the
flesh is master; the spiritual nature is sunk in the mire of
sensuality, and the mental faculties are a mere mob of enfeebled powers
under bondage to a bestial or mad tyrant. As Challis says:--
"Once the demon enters,
Stands within the door;
Peace and hope and gladness
Dwell there nevermore."
Many persons are intemperate in their feelings; they are emotionally
prodigal. Passion is intemperance; so is caprice. There is an
intemperance even in melancholy and mirth. The temperate man is not
mastered by his moods; he will not be driven or enticed into excess;
his steadfast will conquers despondency, and is not unbalanced by
transient exhilarations, for ecstasy is as fatal as despair. Temper is
subjected to reason and conscience. How many people excuse themselves
for doing wrong or foolish acts by the plea that they have a quick
temper. But he who is king of himself rules his temper, turning its
very heat and passion into energy that works good instead of evil.
Stephen Girard, when he heard of a clerk with a strong temper, was glad
to employ him. He believed that such persons, taught self-control,
were the best workers. Controlled temper is an element of strength;
wisely regulated, it expends itself as energy in work, just as heat in
an engine is transmuted into force that drives the wheels of industry.
Cromwell, William the Silent, Wordsworth, Faraday, Washington, and
Wellington were men of prodigious tempers, but they were also men whose
self-control was nearly perfect.
George Washington's faculties were so well balanced and combined that
his constitution was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity,
and his mind resembled a well organized commonwealth. His passions,
which had the intensest vigor, owed allegiance to reason; and with all
the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was
held in check by consummate judgment. He had in his composition a calm
which was a balance-wheel, and which gave him in moments of highest
excitement the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in
patience, even when he had most cause for disgust.
It was said by an enemy of William the Silent that an arrogant or
indiscreet word never fell from his lips.
How brilliantly could Carlyle write of heroism, courage, self-control,
and yet fly into a rage at a rooster crowing in a neighbor's yard.
A self-controlled mind is a free mind, and freedom is power.
"I call that mind free," says Channing, "which jealously guards its
intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does
not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens
itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as
an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still
more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad,
not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call
that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances,
which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the
creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own
improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles
which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which
protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not
cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher
tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which
respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the
few. I call that mind free which through confidence in God and in the
power of virtue has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no
menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults,
and possesses itself though all else be lost. I call that mind free
which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat
itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which
does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is
behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and
rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. I call
that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself
from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as
nobler than the empire of the world."
Be free--not chiefly from the iron chain
But from the one which passion forges--be
The master of thyself. If lost, regain
The rule o'er chance, sense, circumstance. Be free.
EPHRAIM PEABODY.
"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we
should also have the management of them." No man can call himself
educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.
Every human being is conscious of two natures. One is ever reaching up
after the good, the true, and the noble,--is aspiring after all that
uplifts, elevates, and purifies. It is the God-side of man, the image
of the Creator, the immortal side, the spiritual side. It is the
gravitation of the soul faculties toward their Maker. The other is the
bestial side which gravitates downward. It does not aspire, it
grovels; it wallows in the mire of sensualism. Like the beast, it
knows but one law, and is led by only one motive, self-indulgence,
self-gratification. When neither hungry nor thirsty, or when gorged
and sated by over-indulgence, it lies quiet and peaceful as a lamb, and
we sometimes think it subdued. But when its imperious passion
accumulates, it clamors for satisfaction. You cannot reason with it,
for it has no reason, only an imperious instinct for gratification.
You cannot appeal to its self-respect, for it has none. It cares
nothing for character, for manliness, for the spiritual.
These two natures are ever at war, one pulling heavenward, the other,
earthward. Nor do they ever become reconciled. Either may conquer,
but the vanquished never submits. The higher nature may be compelled
to grovel, to wallow in the mire of sensual indulgence, but it always
rebels and enters its protest. It can never forget that it bears the
image of its Maker, even when dragged through the slough of sensualism.
The still small voice which bids man look up is never quite hushed. If
the victim of the lower nature could only forget that he was born to
look upward, if he could only erase the image of his Maker, if he could
only hush the voice which haunts him and condemns him when he is bound
in slavery, if he could only enjoy his indulgences without the mockery
of remorse, he thinks he would be content to remain a brute. But the
ghost of his better self rises as he is about to partake of his
delight, and robs him of the expected pleasure. He has sold his better
self for pleasure which is poison, and he cannot lose the consciousness
of the fearful sacrifice he has made. The banquet may be ready, but
the hand on the wall is writing his doom.
Give me that soul, superior power,
That conquest over fate,
Which sways the weakness of the hour,
Rules little things as great:
That lulls the human waves of strife
With words and feelings kind,
And makes the trials of our life
The triumphs of our mind.
CHARLES SWAIN.
Reader, attend--whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights above the pole,
Or darkly grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuits:
Know prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root.
BURNS.
The king is the man who can.--CARLYLE.
I have only one counsel for you--Be master.--NAPOLEON.
Ah, silly man, who dream'st thy honor stands
In ruling others, not thyself. Thy slaves
Serve thee, and thou thy slave: in iron bands
Thy servile spirit, pressed with wild passions, raves.
Wouldst thou live honored?--clip ambition's wing:
To reason's yoke thy furious passions bring:
Thrice noble is the man who of himself is king.
PHINEAS FLETCHER.
"Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves are triumph and defeat."
End of Project Gutenberg's Architects of Fate, by Orison Swett Marden