Mentality and Freedom WILUAM ARMSTRONG FAIRBURN Class _Ki:_W Copight'N?_ COPYRIGHT DEFOSm MENTALITY AND FREEDOM ESSAYS BY WILLIAM ARMSTRONG FAIRBURN The Nation Press, Inc. New York Copyright 1917 By William Armstrong Fairburn DEC 22 1917 Oci.A481()8U To My Sons BILLY and BOBS Essays PAGE I 11 II ........ 33 III 59 IV 77 V 91 VI 113 VII 141 VIII 155 IX . 173 X 187 XI 203 XII 219 XIII 237 INTRODUCTION IN this series of essays, the dominant motif of Human Potentiahty has been sounded from many view-points. The continual repetition of the fundamental theme is by no means a novel method in the propounding of truth. Indeed, it is only by repetition and reiteration through many aspects of the same great truths that potent convic- tions, demanding action, are formed. It is not urdike the method used by the organist improvising upon his theme and placing it in different settings ; at one time he uses the simple motif with conspicu- ous clearness ; at another it is only a subtle sugges- tion; occasionally the fundamental chord is given, and through it all the dominant theme vibrates true. The great curse that blights and enfetters hu- man life — ^the world's besetting sin — ^is ignorance. It is the ignorance of mental lethargy, of arrested growth and of thoughtless acquiescence in the tenets of external domination. This ignorance is evident when human minds, instead of exercising reason, mechanically reflect the opinions of the crowd, when they accept without review the creeds of external authority and lose themselves in dwarf- ing mind-habits which are deeply rutted in tradi- tion. Thus individuality is deadened and Godhood is crucified. The indomitable foe of autocracy is not sociaHsm or anarchy; it is the free, unfettered mind that INTRODUCTION thinks as an individual and acts according to innate wisdom. Such a mind upholds government, law and order, and abhors anarchy, which is but chaos; its ideal of government is freedom, justice and brotherhood. True individuality is impregnated with social purpose in harmony with the Cosmic Spirit of hfe. It demands universal education and the development of each according to his natural endowment; it stands for universal suffrage and equality of opportunity, with encouragement for all. It is the happy mean between the slavery of the masses by hereditary privilege or selfish au- thority, on the one hand, and unrestrained license and anarchy on the other. It is the only hope for the ultimate realization of enlightened, social-demo- cratic government and universal tolerance. Ignorance is a condition of undevelopment. Every normal child is born essentially wise, with an appetency for knowledge and with mental power in embryo peculiar to his individuality and de- signed for effective service in the world. The de- velopment and use of one's mental power is virtue ; the disuse and resultant atrophy of such endowed power is ignorance and sin. Happiness, usefulness and human power depend upon the development of one's mentahty, not upon the highly specialized growth and vigor of one part, but upon the all- round development of the whole. The world cries out today for thinking men and women, for com- plete human beings, for individuals whose lives reflect their peculiar inherent power, which they will persistently apply with social purpose in their journey toward the great Cosmic Goal. INTRODUCTION The brain, like the physical body, can only be developed through usage; as every part must be exercised if one would have a natural, healthy body, so every part of the human brain needs exer- cise or it will lose its vital power. A reasoning judicial brain will retain its plasticity; but if exter- nal opinions are habitually accepted as one*s own and are not presented to the tribunal of one's mind, the brain becomes a mere grooved and hardened substance, recording soullessly and mechanically the opinions of others, with the result that one's mental life becomes more and more submerged in the deep ruts of thoughtlessness and automatism. Man is naturally an intelligent, social and spirit- ual being. Education should be the process of development to the full realization of oneself. When men grow to be what they were ordained to be and what they have the power within themselves to become, the evils of the world will disappear. The consort of all vice and error is ignorance, while wisdom, truth, love and happiness are synonymous terms, which can only be realized through complete- ness. To glimpse the ideal, one must develop one's faculties — all of one's faculties — to the utmost. There is no uniformity in nature, the law of variability is supreme. There can, therefore, be no such thing as uniform crowd education. Each must grow in harmony with his nature to the reali- zation of his peculiar individuality. The work of the world must be performed in multifarious chan- nels, and legions of men with the most variable mental endowments are created to fittingly perform this diversified work. True education is not the INTRODUCTION Academical forcing of child minds into one author- itatively-decreed, pedagogical mold, but it is the growth and development to power of diversities, the encouragement of initiative, the fertilizing of differences in human endowment ; and only through individuality intensified by social purpose can the world progress. Never in the history of the human family were there more glaring facts to substantiate the need of the individual to realize his innate power for creative good. The one ray of hope for this battle- scarred world is universal education in the truth that alone can make men free. It is time that the world ceased to reverence the Napoleons and Alex- anders of history, the enemies and destroyers of freedom, democracy and lasting progress. Our children must be taught the attributes of true man- hood and the dimensions of real heroes. Their receptive minds should by truth be kept free from prejudice, so that they will spontaneously respond to the Apostles of Beauty and Love, to the world's sages who are the real creative builders of human happiness and well-being, and thus will they grow in harmony with the great Cosmic Plan of Evolu- tion toward perfection. The author hopes to publish during the coming year a separate volume of essays on this same gen- eral subject, dealing more directly with education and the mental development and freedom of the young. W. A. F. Great Barrington, Mass. October 28, 1917. I THE average man has depths of possibilities that are never reached, inherent capabilities that are never utihzed and valuable poten- tiahties that forever he dormant, undeveloped and even undiscovered in the substratum of his person- ality. Few, even, of our so-called successful men could be truthfully termed "efficient" when the ex- ercise of all their innate powers and their actual achievements are compared with the great possi- bilities afforded by their wonderful and often diver- sified mental equipment, endowed for utilization and service in the world. On every hand there are men of five talents using but one and that indiffer- ently or aimlessly. The human mind is composed of many attributes or talents that, instead of being brought forth for use and service, are carefully wrapped in napkins and are hidden away in the archives of cerebral obhvion. "He that made us with such large discourse Looking before and after^ gave us not That capability and God-like reason To fust in us unused." There is a waste in the world today far greater than that which can be determined by any economic statistics, and is infinitely more serious than the most reckless extravagance occasioned by man's prodigality of nature's materialistic resources. The 11 12 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM greatest waste in the world, handicapping progress and marring happiness, is the waste of men's minds. Bacon said that man is of kin to the beasts, by his body, and if he be not of kin to the great Cosmic spirit by his mind and soul, "he is a base and igno- ble creature." The human mind is the harp upon which the soul sends forth its message and its ener- gized vibrations to the world. How many strings has our harp, how many of these strings are at- tuned and pitched to send forth true notes and how many strings are being actually used as we play in the great Orchestra of Life? Man instinctively expresses those mental at- tributes that are exhibited by the most intelligent forms of lower animal life, but much of the re- mainder of his wonderfully created and peculiarly human brain, instead of functioning as a world force, is atrophied by an "indolent vacuity of thought," with the possible exception of certain well-worn grooves of habitual and so-called higher mental processes, which have been proven necessary for survival and his economic success in life. The ordinary human brain is like a vast stretch of land with the greater part lying fallow and uncultivated; that which is neglected has neither seed time nor harvest. Moreover, most of the dominion of the brain is a great uncharted country whose wealth and possibihties are undreamed of. Like muscles of the body, mental powers must be exercised if they are to be brought to and maintained in a state of healthful vigor. Thought and feehng are to the brain what bodily exercise is to the muscles; they put it into activity, stimulate the circulation of blood MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 13 and cause an augmented elaboration of nervous energy. There is a fundamental law of nature that use develops and lack of use atrophies. Lamarck's theory of evolution, which can be absorbed in the larger and broader theory of natural selection, was based upon the principle of appetency plus the basic fact that use follows desire and disuse follows apathy or indifference; — by constant use living parts grow and by disuse they atrophy. This can be further described as the Law of Habit, — the function prompts the growth of the organ, and the development of organs and their force of action are constantly in ratio to the employment of these organs. To increase the strength and energy of any organ and function, it is necessary to exercise them regularly and judiciously according to the laws of their constitution. Talents utilized bring forth interest which compounds itself and tends to make the small grow to large; but talents ignored, corrode and disappear and men of possible great- ness degenerate into mediocrity solely because of neglect of inherent forces and the drifting into mental sluggishness. Life is thought and it is the mind alone that can make the body truly live. Thoughts are supreme and when in harmony with Cosmic truth, they syn- chronize with the great potent forces which rule the world. Strength of mind is the fruit of mental ex- ercise ; it is acquired by activity, not by rest. Idle- ness is emptiness. *'The tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless." A devastated city is a fearful sight. The ruins of 14 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Pompeii fill one with awe, but a deserted city, preg- nant with possibilities and haunted with ghost-like memories, is a horrible monument of unmeasurable calamity. It is expressive of a weird desolation, analogous to that of a human mind neglected and unused, with empty homes, streets and sections abandoned and the whole structure in tottering decay. The mind not only has to function to acquire, but has to be fittingly exercised with psychological effi- ciency in order to retain. Locke has said, "There seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas ; even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive, so that if they be not sometimes re- newed by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflec- tion on those kinds of objects which at first occa- sioned them, the print wears out and at last there remains nothing to be seen." Great virtues are never acquired by slight endeavors, and a healthy, vigorous, well-developed mind can only result from intelligent training, unwavering purpose and diver- sified exercise. Life is evolving with hysterical speed ; our age is one of extreme nervous tension. Man is living un- der tremendous pressure and the pace of life is ter- rific ; its very momentum tending toward the unnat- ural, the superficial and the materialistic. Men whirl in dizziness and rush bhndly in their orbits, their true selves nimibed and deadened, their sense of proportion lost, their vision of life and reality blurred and out of focus. The whirl of existence produces not even the hysterical asceticism of the fanatical whirhng and howling dervish, but rather MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 15 the empty-headedness and dizziness of an abused, neglected mentality in a puppet body, foolishly jerked about here and there in a mad endeavor to participate in the show of life. Merely to breathe, walk, eat and sleep does not mean that we live, and even if all our abdominal organs function well, such a fact is not of necessity indicative of robust health. Cicero fittingly said that "The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body." Even errone- ous thoughts are better than none at all, for, whereas error enslaves, disuse and inactivity kill; there is always hope of freedom for the enslaved — there is no hope of recovery for the dead. The modern world is enslaved and worships at the shrine of externals. Men are judged and grad- ed not by what they are but by what they appear to be ; they are classified by the world, not with stand- ards of mind and soul, but by faulty material meas- ures of worldly wealth and fame. When psycho- logical properties are acknowledged, they are weighed in the scales of popular belief by the crowd, which is always many long years behind the genius and the leaders of progressive thought. Two thou- sand years ago Seneca expounded a fundamental truth when he said, "If you hve according to na- ture you will never be poor; if according to the world's caprices, you will never be rich." Montaigne, in one of his essays, wrote "It is mar- velous that we ourselves are the only things not esteemed for their proper qualities. We commend a horse for his strength and speed, not for his trap- pings ; a greyhoimd for his swiftness, not his collar. 16 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Why do we not esteem a man for that which is liis own? He has a goodly train of followers, a stately palace, so much rent coming in, so much credit among men. Alas, all that is about him, not in him. If you buy a horse, you see him bare of saddle and clothes. When you judge a man, why consider his wrappings only ? In a sword it is the quality of the blade, not the value of the scabbard, to which you give heed. A man should be judged by what he is himself, not by his appurtenances. Let him lay aside his riches and external honors and show him- self in his shirt. Has he a sound body? What mind has he? Is it fair, capable and unpolluted and hap- pily equipped in all its parts? Is it a mind to be settled, equable, contented and courageous in any circumstances?" Epictetus said that cattle care only for fodder, and, in the great fair of the world, some men exhibit the same dwarfed and restricted materialistic sentiments. He classed all externals as mere fodder, saying, "To all of you, who busy yourselves about possessions and farms and domes- tics and public posts, these things are nothing else but mere fodder." The great question to be asked in determining the success or failure of any indi- vidual life is not "What did he acquire?" but "What did he think and what did he doV^ Or, in other words, "What kind of a mind did he have and how did he use it?" "Were I so tall to reach the Pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul: The mind's the standard of the man." Man's noblest ambition is to make the best of his MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 17 potentialities; to bear fruit from every seedling implanted in the hmnan brain by Cosmic creative power; to neglect or abuse none; to nurture and utilize all. Every person is responsible for the de- velopment and use of all the forces within the scope of his inherent abihties and no one can tell whose sphere will prove the largest. To do the best one can, is a worthy motive when it is apphed to all one's diversified capabilities and when each deed is performed thoughtfully and with the full exer- cise of one's marvelous God-Hke mind. The state- ment "He does the best he can" is usually suggestive of failure, coupled with a belitthng explanation and subtle criticism. The manly part is to do with might and main all that is possible, — no half-heart- ed devotion, no drifting in the current of events and opinions, but determined purpose, energy, enthusi- asm and achievement. He who does all his circum- stances allow, "does well, acts nobly; angels could do no more." In our civilization of artificialities, man is prone to neglect his wonderful birthright, follow blindly the common herd and mimic the sentiments of the hour with parrot glibness. In this twentieth cen- tury, the hardest task a man can give himself is to think, — to exercise his mental forces honestly and individually with the practice of reason and logic. Automatons with slothful minds and dwarfed souls flit aimlessly across the stage of life. Many men endowed with wonderful gifts — philosophers, scien- tists, artists in embryo — carry with them but the caskets symbohc of their failure to utilize those forces for whose expression they were created. 18 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM We are living in a self-satisfied age of dissatisfac- tion; as Deshouliere has said, "No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dissatisfied with his intellect.'* Would that every living man could be awakened like Saul of Tarsus and see vividly that truth which shows absolute and relative values and the end of each of the pathways traversed through Hfe. The more superficial a man is, the more self-satisfied he seems to become. It is well to recall the philo- sophical admonition of Quarles, "Be always dis- pleased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain what thou art not ; for when thou hast pleased thy- self, there thou abidest." Self-satisfaction is of all things most unprofitable ; rather than think, record or boast of our own achievements, time would be better spent in noting faults and reckoning up de- fects, — a formidable task for even the most worthy. We are told that this is the age of the specialist, but is this any legitimate argument why a man of five talents should use only one? A specialist with one narrow line of thought may contribute to the world's knowledge and advancement, but a man of concentrated mentahty, feeding and developing his mind through the exercise of all phases of his psy- chological endowment, is a far more potent speciahst in the line on which he chooses to concentrate his efforts, for his vision is of wide as well as deep focus and he sees not only the line, but the field that is more or less allied with it and the forces that con- verge into or radiate from it. A man with a great predominating talent is made greater and his use- fulness to the world is vastly intensified as he de- velops to the utmost not only the one great lumi- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 19 nous, conspicuous talent, but all his lesser, innate faculties and mental forces. Such all-round devel- opment makes a true genius of a crank and a world's leader out of an otherwise despised fanatic. **Every thought," wrote Emerson, "which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world," and Carlyle said, "In every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?" The average man drifts into a hne of work which makes peculiar and, at the same time, restricted demands upon him. He earns a competence, functions to make a believedly fitting return for the emolimient received, gravitates into a "position," settles into habitual Unes of thought, be- gins to operate with the subconscious mind as an automaton and meets unusual conditions with a mind becoming less and less exercised, and, there- fore, less and less vital and efficient. He is soon lulled into somnolence and as a mental force in the world, dies prematurely without contributing much, if anything, to the world's progress. Epictetus likens such a man to a traveler "who returning into his country and meeting on the way with a good Inn, should remain there. 'Have you forgotten your intentions, man? You were not traveling to this place, but only through it.' 'But this is a fine place.' *And how many other fine Inns are there and how many pleasant fields, yet they are simply as a means of passage.' " There are many men who stop just as this traveler did at the first seemingly good Inn; they "go no farther, but sit down and waste their lives shamefully there as if among the sirens." A waste of purpose, motive and direction in life is 20 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM what makes existence on this planet so uninterest- ing, dreary and monotonous ; and yet this very psy- chological attitude courts monotony and this nega- tive theory of life, or, shall we say, lack of any theory and sane reasoning, attracts gloom and en- velops the soul in a deadening pall of despair. A man may gain riches and power, be hailed as suc- cessful and yet be an automaton, a mere machine with money-making or power-grasping character- istics and with a mind woefully neglected and the nobler qualities and possibilities atrophied. Is there any comparison between the mental or spiritual life of man, on the one hand, and his materiahstic, sen- suous and animal existence on the other? "Better to fail in the high aim than Vulgarly in the low aim succeed." The human brain is like an apartment with many rooms. Some men live in one or two rooms of their brain, and seldom use or even enter other equally attractive and important rooms. Many men are mere warehouses with every available cubic inch of their personality stuffed with merchandise and worldly goods, with a price-tag attached. Beecher, describing this class said, "There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste and love and joy and worship, but they are all deserted now and the rooms are filled with earthy and ma- terial things." And again he said, "Many men build in life as cathedrals have been built ; the part nearest the ground seems finished but those parts which soar toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, lie forever incomplete." Fuller expressed the same MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 21 thought when he said, "Often the cock-loft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high." The human brain might be likened to a three- story house with basement in the rear. The biolog- ical evolution of man has progressed in a manner analogous to the building of a house and during man's ascent from the lower animals, two stories have been added to the original lower floor and base- ment. The cellar occupied in the rear is known as the cerebellum and science tells us that this part of the brain is primitive, brutish and sensual. The first floor or stratum of the brain performs func- tions in common with the higher forms of animal Hf e and can be fittingly designated as "animal" with its keen physical senses and its avarice, aggression, love of life, self-preservation and combativeness. The next floor, built through the ages as man by evolution became more and more a thinking and reasoning creature, can be termed the "human" or "material" stratum of the brain and it appears to house the meditative and critical faculties. The top floor, existing to some extent in all men, is the "ethical" stratum and this part of the brain has been created to naturally and fittingly house those psy- chological properties which have raised men above all other forms of life. On this floor are spaces designed to fittingly accommodate and nurture mo- rality, ethics, reverence, ideals, sympathies, benevo- lence, conscientiousness, aspirations, honor, justice, constancy and consistency. Many men, presented by nature with a three-story house to use and live in, refuse to spend any time up stairs and seldom visit the upper floor. 22 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Each floor of the house created to contain the brain is divided into rooms and there are front rooms and rear rooms. Scientists tell us that the room of Domesticity, like the kitchen of the average home, is in the rear ; and the distinctive intellectual faculties are in the front. As man has by evolution advanced farther and farther from the lower animals, the fore part of his brain has developed as well as the crown or upper part. There are old-fashioned and simple people hving in homes containing only a kitchen and a parlor, or, as the Scotch named them, "But" and "Ben," who keep the front and best room in the house closed up, using it only on Sundays and in extreme cases for parties, funerals and weddings. The frontal brain room is often used in a similar manner and wonderful, innate, intellectual faculties He unused, inert^ — dead. Epictetus has said that man is a rational being, distinguished from wild and domesticated animals by mind and reasoning faculties. "Take care, then, to do nothing like a wild beast, otherwise you have destroyed the man ; you have not fulfilled what your nature promises. Take care, too, to do nothing hke cattle; for thus likewise the man is destroyed. When we act gluttonously, lewdly, rashly, sor- didly, inconsiderately, into what are we sunk? Into cattle. What have we destroyed? The rational be- ing. When we behave contentiously, injuriously, passionately and violently, into what have we sunk? Into wild beasts. And further, some of us are wild beasts of a larger size ; others Httle mischievous ver- min. By means of this animal kindred, some of us, deviating toward it, become like wolves, faithless MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 23 and crafty; others like lions, wild, savage and un- tamed; but most of us like foxes, disgraceful even among brutes. For what else is a slanderous and ill- natured man but a fox or something yet more wretched and mean?" The brain is Hke a library with sections referring to different prime classifications of subjects and each section with its shelves and nimierous volimies. How many men spend their lives perusing the books on only one shelf or in one section, thus making it impossible to hve well-rounded lives! Reading is the great channel by which one can gain knowledge, broaden the vision and stimulate thought. Books have been written deahng with every field of human knowledge, research and endeavor, and a modern, well-stocked library has shelves Hberally suppHed with such books. "All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been, is lying in magic preserva- tion in the pages of books. The true University of these days is a collection of books" (Carlyle) . The human brain, like a modern library, should be the circulating abode of diversified knowledge with great breadth and depth of multiform interests and each well-rounded personality will see that the brain shelves of knowledge are not empty nor the books once placed therein dusty and disfigured with the cobwebs of disuse. The average man refuses not only to think but also to read, i. e., to read such books as are worth while, that stimulate thought, awaken dormant fac- ulties and spur onward to activity. "That book is good which puts me in a working mood." The perusal of newspapers, light novels and "kill time" 24 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM printed matter is not reading. A few minutes each day on current news is time well spent and neces- sary for one's development, but as a nation we are great time wasters in the reading of our newspapers, magazines and those "best sellers" whose relation to literature is what sensuous ragtime is to music. To read worth-while, thought-stimulating and ac- tion-provoking matter requires some effort, concen- tration and a little practice, but not one person in a hundred, even of those capable of digesting intel- lectual food, is willing to submit to dietetic rules and develop his mind to receive, retain and profit by real literature. We would not give a Kindergarten child calculus to study as a first lesson in mathematics, but would commence his instruction with simple additions and subtractions, to be followed later by multiplication and division, until after years of concentrated effort and persistent application, the difficulties of integral and differential calculus might be attacked with good prospects of being mastered. Similar judg- ment should be displayed in reading and in the choice of books, but all reading may be educational and, therefore, profitable. Epictetus most fittingly said, "Some who can scarce digest a crumb, will yet buy and swallow whole treatises ; and so they throw them up again or cannot digest them ; and then come colics, fluxes and fevers. Such persons ought to consider what they can bear. No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or figs. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I an- swer you, that there must be time. Let it first blos- som, then bear fruit, then ripen. Since, then, the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 25 fruit of a fig tree is not brought to perfection sud- denly or in an hour, do you think to possess instan- taneously and easily the fruit of the human mind? I warn you, expect it not." Books are storehouses of knowledge and reser- voirs of wisdom. They are the record of the thought, research and intuitions of the past. If impregnated with truth they live forever, defying time. The classics of the ancients are fountains of learning and philosophic wisdom, spreading eternal truth and freedom in a world prone to drift to error and slavery; they stimulate thought, invigorate the will and encourage the exercise of reason and logic as much today as they did thousands of years ago. An ancient Sage said that even in his day, what the world needed were men to apply the eternal prin- ciples found in books — ^men whose actions would bear indisputable testimony to their acceptance of truth. Reading and study are to the mind what exercise is to the body, and both the quality and the nature of the movements and the time or duration factor are essential to success. Mental as well as physical health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated by intelligent exercise and utilization of faculties. "Shall I show you the muscular training of a philos- opher?" asked Epictetus. "It is a wiU undisap- pointed, evils avoided, powers duly exerted, careful resolution, unerring decisions." The beginning of philosophy is a desire for education and mental de- velopment and a consciousness of our own weakness, inability, neglected faculties and stunted growth. The true purpose of education is to develop to the 26 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM fullest extent the capabilities of every kind with which we are endowed. The more mental food we assimilate, the more conspicuous and discouraging our ignorance appears. Education alone can con- duct us to that broad and satisfying enjoyment of life which can only be realized by the efficient utihza- tion of faculties expended in true service. Plato said that "It is better to be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune." It is sur- prising that ignorance seems with diabolical per- verseness to cohabit with conceit, most often ex- pressed to the world as vanity, arrogance and selfish pride. Ignorance is darkness, oblivion and the phantom of mental death. The "devil" in the world, the cause of war, discord, disease, poverty, inhuman- ity and all evil is ignorance. It is the negative of truth and stalks abroad a frightful, soulless spectre, fed by selfishness and clothed in egoism; its motive is avarice, its religion is superstition and in its wake are suffering and death. In the discourses of Epictetus we read, "Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by cor- respondent actions ; as the habit of walking, by walk- ing; of running, by running. If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write. After sitting still for ten days, get up and attempt to take a long walk and you will find how your legs are weakened. Upon the whole, then, whatever you would make habitual, practice it — all things are preserved and improved by exercising their proper functions." Man seems to revel in escaping mental stimuli, in avoiding intellectual exercise and in dodging those issues which would tend to develop his neglected, MEXTALITY AND FREEDOM 27 innate mental forces. There are men wallowing in the obstinacy of ignorance, who boast of their strength of mind, whereas in truth their reasoning faculties are paralyzed. "We all dread a bodily paralysis and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it ; but none of us is troubled about a paral- ysis of the mind." We speak of men of one idea; generally tfiey are men with one predominating hal- lucination, with what Crothers describes as "Too- muchness in one direction and not-enoughness in another," but even such men are better than the great majority of mankind who are void of individ- ualistic ideas, have no strictly personal thought and who are incapable of an original conclusion or men- tal initiative of any kind on any subject. Man's great task is to subordinate externals to the true inner man, to become free from enslaving, sor- did materialism and be emancipated from those en- fettering, soulless conventions which are but empty forms void of reason and logical purpose; to exer- cise and perfect the will and render it conformable to nature — noble, free, unrestrained, unhindered, faithful, humble. Thus would a hfe become a posi- tive dynamic, harmonious force for world service and in such a life there would be no room for lamen- tation, despair, error and the worship of externals or false gods. "What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; What's genuine, shall posterity inherit." — Goethe. The cry of the hour is for thinkers, for men who will exercise reason and logic, be analytical, sincere in self-examination and studious with purpose. 28 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM The well developed man who exercises all the compartments of his brain, no matter what his sta- tion in life may be, is a man of broad hmnan sympa- thies, — reachable and feelable. Such a man has a heart susceptible of pity and a mind cultured and capable of sober thought. The executive, with part of his brain over-developed and part atrophied through lack of use, cannot be just and humane in all his relations with men, no matter what his incli- nations may be. What such a leader of men cannot understand, he cannot weigh, and the same thought is applicable to workmen in every plane of life. "Minds that have nothing to confer, find Httle to perceive." Restriction of vision with egoism, the fruit which springs from lack of general mental de- velopment, is the cause of labor disputes on the part of both employers and employees and in the ma- jority of cases both are equally to blame. It is well to recall the thought expressed by Voltaire that they who are not just are severe and they who are not wise, become sad. The true education of workers and executives — learning with thought — ^is the only channel through which the world will obtain industrial peace and that efficiency which wiU react to the benefit of all. "Learning without thought is labor lost; Thought without learning is perilous." — Confucius. Politics and selfish ignorance will continue to un- settle the relation between employer and employee until the mental development of the masses reaches the plane where the majority of men see things in their true proportions. Government will ultimately MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 29 exist for the true and lasting benefit of the governed and each individual and interest will receive just protection and not the abuse and neglect so often experienced today. It takes a long time for the world to learn that what hurts one is apt to hurt all, and unreasonable wages — high or low — ^unreason- able returns from a legitimate industrial or com- mercial investment — high or low — a false economic or political system and inordinate, unnecessary power vested in a few individuals, as well as class privileges or any violation of absolute justice and rightness, react to the detriment of the state and of its citizens. The world abounds with men who bemoan their blocked avenues of progress, but these are the men who have never striven to improve their opportuni- ties and fit themselves for more important duties. The man at the bench who never reads, studies or thinks, remains at the bench. The foreman suppos- edly skilled in certain arts, who continues day after day supervising the doing of the same things in the same way and never studying or striving to improve processes or the efficiency of operations, will not re- tain his foremanship indefinitely; he drifts back after many years to the ranks — a self -condemned victim of the law of progress and the survival of the fittest. The manager in command of any operation or phase of work, who rests on his oars, is self-satis- fied, indolently indifferent to progress and ceases to strive for knowledge and a place in the van of pro- gressive thought, must, in turn, yield to the thinker and worker who uses his brain, exercises his mental faculties and who, in his climbing, is never content 30 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM with any rung which his feet reach in the ladder of achievement, but always sees ahead the fields of pos- sibility urging him forward to exploration and still further successes. No matter how faithful and zeal- ous a man may be in his work, unless he is putting his mind fully into his work and utilizing a reason- able proportion of his few hours of spare time to improve and develop himself, and thus endeavoring to make the most of his inherent endowment, he is not a valuable man to an organization. Education is the great uplifting force of the world. Mental development will remove all barriers between classes ; many of the poorest boys are hon- ored with the custodianship of the greatest brains in embryo, and will become leaders in the world's progress if they will but develop their potentialities. A man from his eyes down is worth, as a physical machine to perform work, $1.50 to $2.00 per day, but in the mart of labor from his eyes up his worth is immeasurable and, to a great extent, it is what he sees fit to make it. Many a man of one or two tal- ents and with a well exercised brain will outstrip, in the race of life, men of five or ten talents, who either are not cognizant of their innate possibilities or have taken no steps to develop them. We have heard that man is only 50 per cent, efficient because of physical impairment, but we would all be stag- gered if we could see vividly and graphically por- trayed on a chart our psychological efficiency, — our original endowment expressed in possibilities, com- pared with our actually realized or utilized mental powers. It is about time for us to get away from the old- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 31 fashioned and mistaken notion that our education was completed when we left school. It had barely commenced. School should train one to learn, but true education comes as life advances and never ceases while life lasts. The world may despise and reject for a time, but it ultimately does homage to the man of mind and soulj to the man with well de- veloped intellect who mentally is neither standing still nor drifting back, but who, battling and strug- gling against the current, uses his strength and time to make the most of himself, achieve some praise- worthy thing, no matter how Httle, in the battle of life and assist in the advance of the world one notch nearer the great goal of Cosmic perfection. **Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumphs and defeat." — Longfellow. II IN all animal life there is a close correspondence between the degree of development of any or- gan or part of the physical structure and its functional power or activity. Size is generally an index of strength, provided we are dealing with similar materials under similar conditions ; when the substances compared are the same and the quality of organism is uniform, size becomes an absolute measure of power. We cannot compare pine wood with cast iron, or cast iron with highly tempered steel, and in engineering work, even when specifying steel to fulfil a certain duty, we state its required ultimate tensile strength, elastic limit, ductility, gen- eral physical and, at times, chemical properties. We expect to find a blacksmith with a big arm, a wrest- ler with heavy shoulders, just as we may infer that the cranial capacity of man varies with his intellec- tual power. When we compare the brains of different birds and quadrupeds, we find that mental activity is evidenced in proportion to the size of the brain con- sidered in relation to the size of the body. Anthro- pologists tell us that a fox and a ground-hog have bodies of almost equal size but that the fox has a brain four times heavier than that of the ground- hog. A turkey's brain is one-third less in size than that of a crow whose body is not one-fourth as large ; 33 34 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM the stupidity of the former and the sagacity of the latter are proverbial. An eagle with one-half the body size of the goose has twice the brain capacity. Man has a brain very similar in form and appear- ance to that of the great anthropoid ape, but the brain of man is three or four times as large and con- sidering the body weight, man has five times the relative brain capacity of his nearest relative in the animal kingdom. The horse, with nine times the weight of man, has one- quarter his cerebral cavity volume; and although the elephant and the whale have brains much larger than man, they stand far below him in intelligence. This fact is explained when the relation of brain size to body is considered, the ratio being about 1 to 37 in man, 1 to 500 in the elephant and 1 to 3000 in the whale. Intellectual capacity in the lower animals appears to depend mainly upon the size of the cerebral cav- ity. Animals with larger brains and higher intelli- gence have supplanted those of a lower order and have been supplanted in turn, in harmony with the law of evolution, by still larger brained animals. The gigantic reptiles of the Secondary Period were gradually overcome and vanquished by the mam- mals of the Tertiary Period, and today man, the largest brained animal created, stands at the head of all animated nature, the undisputed peer of all forms of animal life. Research conducted with hu- man skulls found in geologic strata indicates that from period to period as man has developed, his brain capacity has increased and the earliest found human cranium much resembles that of the highest order of anthropoid ape. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 35 Whereas the relation of cranial capacity or brain weight to body weight is an index of expressed intel- ligence in the lower animals, it cannot be so con- sidered, except as coupled with other important factors, in determining the relative intelligence of man. Brain volume may be an index of inherited mental capabilities but it gives no data concerning how much of the endowed power is being used. Moreover, it ignores the important factor of quality of organization. A relatively small brain of superior structure may accomplish more creditable work and manifest greater talents than a large brain lacking such advantages; and a small brain efficiently util- ized, exercised and developed may have power far beyond that reahzed by a massive brain, sluggishly and indifferently used. In many men of great intellectual eminence the brain weight has been very large, but quite undis- tinguished people have also had large brains. Rus- tan, an unknown, uneducated laborer, is reported to have had the largest brain on record. He prob- ably had innate capabihties which, if developed, would have made him a great intellectual power even if the texture of the man was coarse and the quality of the organism low. It is not so much a question of how much brain capacity a man has, but how much he uses. All normal, healthy men have sufficient brain capacity to become factors in the world's progress, if the brain bequeathed to them by Mother Nature is developed and used. When size and weight are considered, the most ignorant races of men are not far below the Caucasian Race in brain capacity, and when given an opportunity 36 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM to acquire knowledge in a stimulating environment, the children of the lower human races have in late years been equalling and in Australasia have been outstripping the children of the white race, not- withstanding their handicap of quality of organiza- tion — the result of hereditary civihzation. Every man is born with certain inherent brain capabilities and general tendencies, texture and or- ganization. The use or disuse of the endowed ca- pacity or the differentiation of innate brain forces, the development or neglect of certain topographical brain areas and the tempering of his psychical mat- ter, determine his efficiency and power in the world as a thinking being, created to perform intelligent work in the universal flux, ever moving progres- sively toward perfection. Cold northern climates, the home of the aggres- sive and world-conquering blond Caucasians, have produced the largest brains. This is due to the fact that in the Northland, men have had to use their brains to live, to find food, to build homes and pro- tect themselves from the elements. They have had to fight intelligently and with initiative and aggres- sion, in order to survive, whereas the stimuh of the Tropics on the darker skinned man have been less acute and the demands less exacting. It has been argued that the size of a man's brain can be no index of intelligence, for many insane per- sons have had very large brains. Lunacy may come from over-stimulation of some part of the brain or violation of the fundamental laws of mental hygiene. A great mathematician lost his mind through sense- less concentration without relaxation or change of MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 37 thought. A great memorizer of facts collapsed men- tally, due to inordinate packing of ridiculous statis- tics into certain mental shelves, when all the other sections of his mental library were lying neglected and unused. Genius, it has been said, is not without a touch of madness, and the term "Eccentricity of Genius" is often used in reference to the actions of one who has certain mental faculties unusually de- veloped to the possible detriment of others. A brain must be uniformly developed in so far as the stress of life and economic considerations will permit. Insanity may be caused by the excessive keying-up and snapping of one string, by the un- reasonable and unstandable pressure or tension on one member. Large brained persons are more apt to be guilty of over- development of any one faculty in this era of specialization, than are people with small brains. Microcephalic idiots have, however, very small brains, weighing in some recorded in- stances as low as 10 or even 8^^ ounces. Scientists tell us that it is extremely doubtful whether normal intelligence, such as is expected in a human being, is possible with a brain weighing less than 32 ounces, — the average weight of a normal man's brain being 48 to 50 ounces. In making this state- ment, anthropologists admit that brain size must be more or less an index of mental capacity or capabili- ties, and it seems to have been well demonstrated that when brain substance exists in a normal condi- tion and is developed by use, intellectual phenomena are manifested with vigor proportionate to the amount of matter existing, the quality of the 38 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM thought or brain effort varying with the fineness of texture and quality of the nervous organization. In making comparisons of brain weights, the cere- brum, or main brain, should be primarily considered, but the practice has always been to weigh and meas- ure the whole mass contained in the cavity of the skull, cerebrum, cerebellum and basilar ganglia. By this method of comparison an equal value is given to all brain matter without regard to its character or function; for comparison of psychical powers, such a method is obviously inaccurate. The quality of a brain, as well as the quantity, is of prime im- portance and we should not consider as of equal value, heavy but crude and cormnon merchandise stored in the basement or even on the first floor, with the lighter but more highly prized and rarer sub- stances stored on the higher floors. The human cranium is like the structure of a warehouse. Some storehouses are filled to the ut- most capacity with merchandise of more or less com- mercial value. At times, material in storage degen- erates or decays and becomes valueless; at other times, commodities in storage, once of some value, because of market conditions and the working of the law of supply and demand, become of such low realizing value that it does not pay the owner to keep them stored any longer. In some warehouses substances may be stored unchanged year after year; they are not used and the materials are not placed in circulation ; expenses are paid, rental and fixed charges are met and the owner becomes a heavy loser because of his failure to realize the bene- fits which would have accrued to him had he, at the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 39 proper time and when conditions warranted, placed these goods where they would be used to supply a legitimate demand. What is the condition of our mental storehouse? The law of life demands that the warehouse be filled, but with what materials ? What is the value of the commodity stored and is it degenerating or being taken out of circulation? Is our brain warehouse kept in active use with valuable commodities, daily taken in and after recoopering and arranging to supply a definite demand, being again sent out into the world to perform useful and fitting service? It would be interesting to estimate at what value a skilled, experienced assessor would report the worth of our cranial warehouse and its contents. The brain of man is constituted for the most part, of two substances of vastly different character. There is (1) the cortical gray matter, made up chiefly of cells, and ( 2 ) the fibrous or white matter, firm, inelastic and tubular. The gray matter is the part that has a special relation to mental hf e and in it lies the source of nervous power. It is the ulti- mate seat of all processes connected with sensation and thought and forms on the surface of the brain sinuous folds called cerebral convolutions. Physi- ologists are generally agreed that the greater the surface of the cortex and, therefore, the more com- plex and frequent the convolutions and the larger the extent of brain surface, the greater becomes the seat of mental power, the quahty of organism re- maining constant. The convolutions of gray matter are most numer- ous in the brain of an intelligent man and they ap- 40 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM parently become less pronounced as we descend the scale of human mental forces and less and less marked as we consider the higher and lower animals until, in the most inferior orders, they disappear. The brains of weak-minded persons and idiots pre- sent very simple convolutions and, therefore, possess but a relatively small amount of gray matter, where- as the brains of distinguished scholars and men who have been in the van of world progress exhibit great complexity of certain convolutions of gray matter. Huxley said, "It is only in minor charac- teristics that the chimpanzee's or the orang's brain can be structurally distinguished from man's." The "minor" characteristics referred to by Huxley are apparently the convolutions of gray matter, for the anthropoid apes have brains which present simple convolutions, a sort of simplified diagram of the human brain, and such a brain resembles very closely that of a human idiot. Difference in quality of or- ganization, plasticity and total relative area are also important factors which should be considered in comparing the brain of an anthropoid ape with that of a man. Turner, the anatomist, has said that the convolu- tions of the sensory and motor centers of the brain do not present any great difference in the brain of a child, monkey, bushman and a European man of science ; what differentiates these brains is the degree of complexity of the convolutions concerned with association. Apparently it is not the total weight of the brain, but really the weight of the cortical layer of gray matter which should be compared if one is to intel- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 41 ligently judge of the amount of substance within the cranium devoted to the psychic functions; and as the thickness of the gray layer of matter is ap- proximately the same in all brains, it is evident that complexity in the structure of convolutions corre- sponds to an increase of gray matter and conse- quently of mental force. It is also said that brain cells are found in masses, chiefly in convolutions, — a fact which points at their relation to the conscious life of man. The brain is the seat of thought, of feeling and of consciousness. It is the center toward which all im- pressions made on the nerves distributed throughout the body are converged and from which the com- mands of the will are transmitted to put the various parts in motion. There is a part of the brain, to- gether with a highly organized nervous mass, lo- cated as sub-stations elsewhere in the body, which controls the organ functions, such as are evidenced in the circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems, the continual and efficient operation of which is essential to the continuance of life. It was indeed a wise Providence that, putting the himian will in general charge of the brain, decreed, that it should not have absolute control over certain parts of the brain and nervous system, on the main- tained and efficient use of which depends not only physical well-being but physical existence. If man had control of his entire brain plant, i. e., the central power house, and all sub-stations, even if he had the power to delegate certain duties to the sub-conscious brain during the hours that he devoted to recupera- tive sleep, human life would be very short and physi- 42 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM cal maturity never realized. If the average man, in the prime of Hfe, were given this absolute control over all parts of his brain, nerve cells and body, and if he treated all his brain and nervous matter as he does that part over which the human wiU has abso- lute control, his demise would very quickly follow his assumption of power and authority. The gray matter of the brain is the organ or the definite seat of the mind ; different parts of this gray matter manifest different faculties and the power of manifestation in regard to each is proportionate to the size and activity of that part devoted to the per- formance of the peculiar mental functions and the quality and texture of the organism. The brain was created to be used regularly and powerfully and it therefore receives an unusually large supply of invigorating blood from the circulatory system in comparison with the remainder of the body. It is also usually a highly organized mechanism of strict- ly specialized parts. Modern research has proved conclusively what popular, analytical observers have long believed, viz., that each part of the brain is devoted to a cer- tain mental process, peculiar to itself, — cerebral localization. W. Hanna Thomson has said that ex- perience has definitely and conclusively proved that if one particular area of the gray matter be de- stroyed, sight is totally lost, though the eye itself in all its parts, with the nervous tract leading there- from, be wholly intact. If another particular cor- tical area is similarly injured, hearing is abolished, even though the ear with all its apparatus be unin- jured. The consciousness of sight or of hearing is MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 43 not in the eye or ear, respectively, for these are mere instruments connected with special localities in the brain. Without the eye there would be no physical sight, and without the ear there would be no physi- cal hearing, yet it has been truly said that the eye is no more the seat or source of sight than is the tele- scope or microscope. "There can be no question that upon the integrity of gray matter depends the integrity of all mental processes, for these can be proportionately perverted by anything which inter- feres with the physical conditions of the gray tissue or by agents which derange its working. Thus me- chanical injuries of the brain in man often have been followed by peculiar mental disorder, some- times including change in disposition or in moral character." To still further prove cerebral localization. Prof. Hinshelwood of Glasgow University tells of a high- ly educated man suddenly afflicted with word blind- ness. This man could not read his native English but as he had been proficient in Greek, Latin and French he was tested on all and it was found that he could read Greek perfectly, Latin he handled far better than English, but not as well as Greek, whereas, in French he was very imperfect although he could read it with difficulty. In this case, the brain matter had been injured in the localized Eng- lish word sight section and the injury had somewhat damaged the French section, the Latin less and the Greek not at all. Hinshelwood also reports the case of a French- man living in Glasgow. After a stroke of apoplexy he became word-deaf in regard to French, whereas U MENTALITY AND FREEDOM the English "word-hearing" part of his brain was unaffected; it was necessary after his brain in jury- to speak to him entirely in English. Thomson tells of a patient at Bellevue Hospital who lost the power of speech by the point of an umbrella entering one of his eyes, the accident ruining the speech center which rests on only a thin plate in the bony roof of the orbit; no other faculties were impaired. There is a small patch of gray matter, which Rosenstein says is not larger than a hazel nut, in which is stored every word that can be spoken. "Let this remark- able piece of matter be separately destroyed, such as by a gush of blood from a ruptured artery, and the consciousness is utterly unable to find a word with which to express itself. It still may have its power to receive all words from others through the ear or eye, but not a word can it communicate in return.'* Prof. Edgren of Stockholm has published the records of persons who became music-note blind; through brain injury they lost the power of reading music but not the faculty of word-reading. Through some small localized brain defect, connoisseurs of music have been afflicted with "amusic" and could no longer recognize one theme from another or discrim- inate between the immortal master-pieces of Wag- ner and sensuous rag-time. A large number of cases could be cited showing how local brain derangement causes the loss of certain peculiar mental faculties or change in the individual disposition, character and attributes. The seat of all mental processes being in the gray matter which envelops the brain and which con- sists of a continuous layer whose average thickness MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 45 is only from l/l2 to 1/8 of an inch, it has been argued that cranial capacity and brain size or weight can- not be considered as an index of intelUgence or men- tal power. If a cube has each side increased one- quarter, the volume is increased 95 per cent, and the superficial enveloping area is increased over 56 per cent. If each side of the original cube is increased one-half, the volume becomes 3% times greater and the surface area 2^4 times larger. The superficial area is, therefore, very materially increased as the internal volimie is enlarged, and increase of brain volume carries with it a proportionate increase of brain surface, even if, as in the case of the most primitive animals, the order of increase is in one case as the third power, and in the other as the second. The surface of the human brain, however, is not smooth. This fact does not affect the argument that volume is an index of possible brain power but intensifies it, for in a box of given size a certain quantity of cloth could be folded up and stored, whereas in a larger box an increased quantity could be placed, and in this case the increased quantity, if the box is filled, would vary as the cubical contents of the box and not as the superficial area. There- fore, the more highly complex the convolutions of the human brain become, the more nearly does the extent and quantity of gray matter bear some defi- nite relation to cranial capacity. Men vary very materially in their mental endow- ment. No two men have similar brains as regards size, proportion, quality of nerve matter, etc., but every normal man is endowed with ample gray mat- ter to develop into individual mental power of merit 46 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and Cosmic use, if he so wills it. Thomson, in "Brain and Personality," says that "while it is doubtless true that all individuals of our race are not born with equally good brains, yet the fact re- mains that the special mental capabihties for which certain men have become so eminent, were all ac- quired and were not congenital. Hence, the ut- most which can be conceded is that the greater apti- tude for acquiring may be congenital but nothing more." Thomson is partly right. Brain folds be- come more complex as Mfe advances and as one ac- quires knowledge, but brains and certain parts of brains vary in their educable characteristics and in their possibihties for development. You cannot fold, press and squeeze ten yards of cloth into a space that will only hold five yards. If, however, a person is endowed with a fine, highly organized, delicate and sensitive textural nervous system, a comparison with a coarser brain organism might be made, just as silk can be compared with wool, and it would be quite possible to fold and press ten yards of silk cloth into a space of given size which would only hold a very much smaller quantity of woolen cloth. Moreover, every person is born with instinctive and congenital brain powers. Such mental tendencies may help or hinder the individual ; some suggest activities which lead to the demonstration of natural talents, others tend to obstruct the education of the brain and the development of brain forces especially fitted to cope with the new conditions of a rapidly advancing civ- ilization and changed order of hfe. It has been said that there are two series of brain mechanisms — instinctive and individually acquired — MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 47 and "to the educable animal, the less there is of spe- cialized mechanism transmitted by heredity, the bet- ter. The loss of instinct is what permits and neces- sitates the education of the receptive brain." The size and shape of a person's brain is not individually acquired, although investigations indicate that even this can be slightly modified, especially during the earlier part of life ; texture and quality of organiza- tion are not individually acquired for they are in- herited just as are the texture of the skin, fineness of the hair, and the general primary temperament. The will or personality in embryo comes at birth and it is this power dominating the mind and the brain which alone can make the brain efficient and great, on the one hand, or, through inertia and slug- gish indifference, drift into mediocrity. It has been well said that "A great personality (will power) may possibly make a great brain, but no brain (of itself) can make a great personahty." Whereas, inherent brain power can be measured by the qual- ity, quantity and size of the cells of gray matter, actual or demonstrated brain power is determined by cerebral activity, the use of the brain cells and the variety of the habitual contacts which are estab- lished as a result of the exercise, development and education of the cells. A novice, void of musical talent and experience, may sit at the piano and as a result of his activity, produce only a few dissimilar, unappealing sounds, whereas an artist promptly ehcits varied melodies and exquisite harmonies from the same set of 88 keys. So it is with the cells of the human brain. A man without the will to learn and achieve, and lacking in perseverance and con- 48 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM centration required for effective education, is able to extract only vague and rudimentary ideas from his cerebral cells, whereas a trained thinker, who has obeyed the promptings of a dominant will, will bring forth from the same number of cells, intellec- tual promptings and thoughts, which vibrate in syn- chronism with the great forces of Cosmic progress and tend to make the man a virile force in the world. Not merely a part, but the entire human brain should be used with all its area to receive impres- sions and to exercise its pecuhar faculty of increas- ing its superficial surface to conform to the require- ments brought forth by mental development. A man using part of his brain and neglecting to use other parts of equal or perhaps greater importance, is like a leader of an orchestra who endeavors to play a Beethoven Symphony, excluding from the score certain or all of the wood winds, or many of the strings, and possibly the most necessary brass in- struments. Is it not strange and inconsistent that a man who only uses one-quarter of his brain facul- ties should ridicule the idea of using only one leg or one arm and scorn to seriously consider and appre- ciate the analogy between the use and disuse of cer- tain parts of the body, the exercise of which is under the control of the human will? It has been stated that because man has two brains and can use only one, no matter how well ed- ucated he may be, he cannot be more than 50 per cent, mentally efficient. Man has been favored quite generally with a duality of organs, such as two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, two lungs, two kidneys ; his limbs are also in pairs and with the exception of MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 49 a few internal organs, man is a symmetrical crea- ture, which if divided through a central vertical axis, square with the front of the body, would pro- duce two parts generally similar. The prime reason for the creation of organs in pairs was probably to insure against emergencies and, to a certain extent, for convenience and effi-* ciency in practical use. It has never been claimed, however, that a man with two good ears is twice as perfect in hearing or can hear twice as much as the man with one. We do not say that a man with one eye is only half as efficient in regard to sight, or can only see half as much as the man who is favored with the vision of two eyes. A man may lose one kidney and yet if he lives sanely, the re- maining kidney grows to its responsibilities and functions effectively, doing the work of the two. It has been well demonstrated that, with the partial exception of the hands and feet, if it becomes neces- sary, either one of any pair of body organs can do the work of the original two. What one eye sees, both see and what one ear hears, both hear; one eye does not see the colors toward the violet end of the spectrum and the other eye all the colors to- waid the red end, neither does one ear hear all the sounds that vibrate in intensity below Middle C, and the other ear perceive all the sounds with higher ranges of vibration, or one ear hear noise and the other music, or one French and the other English. It is, therefore, evident that man with duality of certain organs is well insured against injury and possible loss, and the utilization of these working organs below the full power for which each might be 50 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM capable of functioning under stress, is no reflec- tion upon the efficiency of the human organism but must be viewed as a wise precautionary measure adopted by Mother Nature. It has been well said that an army is no stronger than its reserves. The division of the human brain into hemis- pheres, a right and a left, is an ordinance of nature that corresponds with the double constitution of other parts of the body, but whereas one of the body dual organs may do the work of both, this law only holds as regards the brain in respect to thought itself. The right hemisphere of the brain controls the voluntary movements of the left part of the body, and the left brain controls the right part of the body; if the right brain is injured the left half of the body becomes paralyzed, and vice versa. The human brain, which is a physical and material thing, was not made in two parts as a dual organ with the idea of increasing man's men- tal capacity. One hemisphere of our brain might be totally destroyed but if the surviving half re- mained absolutely perfect and intact, although our physical body would suffer and be paralyzed on one side, nevertheless, our mental processes would not be impaired. If one considers the brain as an organ secreting thought, as the liver secretes bile, and if we had two such organs that could not per- form more work than one, then one of the brain hemispheres being ample for our mental require- ments, the other would become somewhat super- fluous. The brain, however, does not secrete thought; gray matter is not constantly and auto- matically producing mental product, for the brain, MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 51 though the seat of the mind, is but the instrument of the will and the mechanism used by the Thinker, who, having two sets of apparati, chooses to use but one. Thomson says, "I have been informed by watch- makers that they grow so accustomed to the use of only one of their eyes at their work that in time they become unable to use the other eye for it. The human thinker likewise becomes so accustomed to use only one of his brain pair for thought that it is doubtful if he ever uses its fellow to formulate a single idea. With which one of the pair he will choose to do his thinking for Hfe depends upon a sort of accident, almost of the nature of a whim, during the days of childhood." No man, when educating the brain, can compound the task and train both brains at once. When a book is placed on the library shelf of the Right brain, a similar book is not placed on the corresponding shelf in the Left brain, although the space is there for it; if, however, the Right brain should become injured and unusable, the same effort expended under iden- tical conditions in placing the original book on the shelf in the Right brain, would place the same book in proper position in the surviving and still usable Left brain. Man is a creature of habit. In early childhood he either instinctively uses one hand far more than the other, or is taught to do so. A common admoni- tion to children is "Use the right hand." Grad- ually the left hand and arm lose their cunning and the majority of people become so one-sided in their physical upper limb development that they cannot 52 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM write at all with the opposite hand, and if of athletic bent and right-handed, would make a ludicrous picture endeavoring to play golf, tennis, or pitch or bat a baseball, left-handed. As we acquire a right or left-handed habit in childhood so we acquire a right or left-handed brain habit and as it takes years to acquire certain knowledge through the laborious process of education, so it will take long years to re- acquire the same knowledge by the same process of education, if such knowledge has been placed in our right-hand storehouse or hbrary and the right hemisphere of the brain should later become im- paired and its usefulness lost. As the brain is more plastic and educable in childhood and youth, what it takes months to learn in one's early days it may take years to acquire in after life, and if the mind is not a well-disciphned one, the task to a man in mature life, or to one Hving in his declining years, becomes formidable and generally insurmountable. It has been stated that as the centers for speech and other purely mental functions are located only in the brain hemisphere related to the most used hand in early life, the teaching of ambidexterity to children would be of great advantage. Owing to the crossing of main nerve leads from left to right and right to left at the base of the brain, the left brain controls the right half of the body, and vice versa; moreover, it is said that in right-handed per- sons the left brain is used for speech and other men- tal processes, and in left-handed persons, the right brain. Primitive man was probably ambidextrous, and many infants and young children exhibit the same tendency. Modern life and the tenets of our MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 53 civilization have decreed that to write with the right hand and to use the right hand whenever one hand is to be used, are proper and good form, hence man- kind is enslaved to capricious conventions. If children were trained to be ambidextrous it could do no harm and it could not shock the real human sensibihties, but it would result in a superior, all-round development and it is barely possible that the human brain might, as a result, be made more uniformly educable. It is ridiculous to suppose that an ambidextrous person would gain in mental capacity; there could be no doubling of mental faculties, for we hear no more with two effective and sensitive ears than we do with one, but it is within the range of possibility that the practice of ambidexterity, which tends to develop all parts uni- formly and normally, might influence the educable characteristics of the brain and tend to keep it in a more suitable physical condition to receive impres- sions in case it should have to be educated in later life, due to derangement of its fellow brain. It is extremely doubtful if the simultaneous edu- cation of both brain hemispheres is possible; if it were, ambidexterity would be of such great ad- vantage to the race that, as mental insurance, its practice would be demanded by all thinking per- sons. It is possible, however, that in the case of an ambidextrous person, some shelves would be used on one side of the brain for certain purposes and other shelves on the other side for different pur- poses, as there would be no side of natural prefer- ence or original pre-eminence; thus in the case of damage to one brain hemisphere, only part and not 54 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM all of the mental power obtained as a result of long years of absorption and education would be lost. This consideration of brain hemispheres and duality of organs does not, as has been claimed, affect the law of brain size in relation to mental power. All that has been said in regard to the brain, size, weight, surface, extent of gray matter, texture and organization refers to the used and active hemisphere just as completely as to the entire brain, and no one during life can tell with scientific exactness which half of his brain he is using. As the cranium is symmetrical in dimensions and in its proportions in relation to vertical central axes, it is fitting that we should continue to speak of the brain as a whole, and all arguments presented in regard to use and disuse are driven home with aug- mented force when we ponder on the thought that one-half of our brain is developed and educated and the other half is not and yet both halves occupy similar space. As before stated, it is not brain size, even with uniform texture and quality of or- ganization, that determines the brain power of an individual, but it is the relative degree of develop- ment and the use that he is making of his brain. Brain size tells us what his inherent powers and original endowments were, but it fails to tell us what he is doing with his mental equipment. The human brain is a plastic, receptive organ, capable of being fashioned and educated, which process produces modifications and changes in the physical brain matter. As is well known, this plas- ticity or power of educabihty generally diminishes progressively with age, especially in regard to the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 55 acquirement of languages and kindred mental ac- tivities. What is easily acquired, however, is usually easily lost, and as the plasticity of the brain is in- creased, its elasticity or tendency to return to its original condition is conspicuously noticeable. The brain is like a plastic, moldable, receiving surface upon which is impressed the record of what the will decrees it shall receive. It operates in a manner very similar to the production of talking-machine records and the brain receives the master and orig- inal impressions. In some cases, however, exercise and frequent identical impressions are necessary be- fore the brain records the impression so that it can be later used with definiteness and accuracy; in other cases one impression, one experience, or one thought seems to be so indelibly registered that it apparently defies the obliterating onslaught of time. The clearness and lasting properties of a brain impression are influenced by attention, concentra- tion and purpose. Interest, intensity of vibration and mental (not physical) nearness, appreciation of worth and importance, association, also violence of impression or mental shock are all factors in- fluencing the thoroughness and accuracy of its im- pressions and the retention of the record when once its vibrations are embedded in the plastic gray mat- ter of the brain. The will not only can command the receiving and recording of impressions, but it has the power to place any record, which may have been catalogued and filed in the cerebral archives, how and when it desires, upon the instrument of thought- production, and the needle that plays in its grooves 56 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM will bring back to the mind the thought, the word, the tune or the picture as it was originally impressed or photographed upon the plastic or sensitized brain. To be educated, the human mind must be exer- cised and disciplined. Knowledge is acquired by learning, and learning by effort. Attention plus work is a formula for success when attention con- sists of an awakened desire for knowledge, analyti- cal reflectiveness and the concentration of mental forces; and work signifies actual, efficient applica- tion and the intelligent utilization of energy. Ac- tivity is synonymous with life, indolent inertia with death. Discipline has been defined by Webster as "subjection to rule, submission to order and control by severe systematic training." Discipline does not repress activity but encourages and directs it; the disciplined mind is one that expends its efforts in the right direction; that can concentrate on a task and acquire knowledge by digging for truth and fact and persevere in the task until success is at- tained, instead of skipping lightly over the high points as a butterfly flits among the flowers. The human mind, if it is to learn any new sub- ject or branch of knowledge, must be willing to go through a long, laborious process and build from the bottom up. As one advances in years, one is not usually willing to commence with learning the alphabet of a subject but desires to form words and sentences with letters unlearned. We cannot learn by proxy nor travel by royal roads or reliable short- cuts to knowledge. The road as charted by the great Cosmic Mind must be traveled and it is in- variably up grade and rocky, but to the enthusiastic MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 57 seeker for truth, the outlook is not only satisfying but appealing, and the time consumed, well and happily spent. To the true seeker for knowledge, the soul expands as truths are acquired ; the mind is nurtured, developed and strengthened by mental food as the body is by physical food. The thinker will keep his feet upon the solid earth and his heart in touch with his fellow man, but his soul soars be- yond the sordidness of physical existence and, as Huxley said, "He stands as on a mountain top transfigured from his lower nature, by reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite source of truth." Brains are bequeathed to man at birth. A cham- ber filled with relatively highly organized nerve matter is presented to him with all its inherent possibilities, to fashion as he himself elects. It is true that he is limited in regard to the development of certain characteristics, and the plasticity, sensi- tiveness and texture of his brain may be very dif- ferent from those of his fellows. The amount of brain with which he is endowed may be more or less than that bequeathed to his neighbor, but after all man must develop his own mental power and, we might say, make his own brain. It is not the hereditary limitation of our brain matter and mental processes that should interest us, for no man ever achieves the absolute limit of his possibilities in any direction, but we should be con- cerned in what we are accomplishing with all of the gray matter entrusted to our care. With, say, one hundred zones of opportunity, how many are we using, and of the zones or areas of gray matter 58 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM actually being used, what efficiency is being realized with each and what would be our aggregate mental efficiency if it could be scientifically determined and revealed to us ? The finest brain mechanism in the world, lying dormant and fallow, is impotent and useless ; only a human will functioning in harmony with Cosmic Law can dominate such a nervous mass and by concentrated and persistent effort, attune it so that it can speak its message to the world as an important instrument in the great orchestra of life. Ill As a man molds and develops his gray matter, he creates himself. To a great extent, Hfe is just what we will it; happiness is recompense for work well done, and misery generally follows in the wake of irresponsibility, erroneous ideals, sloth- fulness and the violation of nature's laws. Life is motion, activity, work, and we accomplish and attain in life whatever we sincerely and earnest- ly want enough to strive and work for. Obstacles and resistance to progress and achievement develop mental power, stamina and the strength and cour- age of the will; a persistent and purposeful will admits of no defeat and is ever ready to pick up the gauntlet of fate in the battle for knowledge, truth and right. Sturgis IngersoU has aptly said that "there is no one so lucky as to get the prizes of life without a fight, and no one so unlucky as to be without the desire, no matter how deeply it may be buried in his nature, to make that fight." Success is reahzed by concentrated effort and hard work. The average man bemoans his luck, blames lack of opportunity for his failure or status of mediocrity and censures the Goddess Fate; the successful man makes his own opportunities, hurdles obstacles, overcomes barriers, ridicules the doctrine of chance, harnesses his innate forces and expends his efforts in achieving results, — not in de- 59 60 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM vising excuses. In one case, the will has no virility, it is spineless and flabby ; in the other, it is of finely tempered steel, bending but not breaking, undent- able and uncompromising, with power, suppleness and purpose. Many men with great inherent possibilities and wonderful mental endowment are not a success be- cause they do not will it so; they may pretend or even think they do, but in reality they do not even comprehend the meaning of the word. Success in life comes with whole-hearted, steady and persistent devotion to purpose and as a result of intelligent selection and elimination. Those things which are worth while, upbuilding and developing are courted; those negative, worthless and perverting qualities, which are often attractively garbed and enticingly presented, are shunned. The proper exercise of the will means persistent effort, at times great self-denial and, in early life, an abstinence from certain alluring pleasures for what may seem to be a somewhat chimerical joy of service; as life advances, however, realities become convincingly real to the philosophical mind and achievement the substantial satisfaction of the inner man. Life's battle is with oneself even more than with the world and the greatest fight to wage with oneself is not with what has been termed "inherent sin," but with a soul-destroying inertia, a lethargic indifference to the expenditure of mis- guided energy and to the appreciation of one's powers and possibihties for usefulness, service and achievement. The greatest blessing that could come to man would be a true inner vision which MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 61 would demand that he always see himself conspicu- ously and convincingly revealed in all his short- comings, and with all his unimproved opportunities lying before him, each with its peculiar possible achievement portrayed. Eliot has said, "Nobody has any right to find life uninteresting or unrewarding who sees within the sphere of his own activity anything which he can help to remedy, or within himself a deficiency which he can hope to overcome." The trouble with the average man is that he will not voluntarily look within himself and if he is influenced to look, his vision is so blurred by bias and self-satisfaction that he will not see ; at the same time he is quite willing to be critical of others and see much that is wrong in the world and in humanity about him. Looking at the shortcomings within himself, he is apt to look through the large lens of a telescope, but he reverses his position of vision quickly when he looks at others, and as a result, the errors of oneself are minimized and the errors of others are magni- fied. Confucius said, "The disease of men is this, — that they neglect their own fields and go to weed the fields of others and that what they require from others is great, while what they lay upon them- selves is light." Men engaged in commercial or industrial life frequently take a carefully prepared and checked inventory of their stock; raw and manufactured materials are carefully measured, counted and weighed, and values placed thereon. In a well con- ducted manufacturing business the condition of the inventory and the nature and quality of the ma- 62 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM terials in process are always known, and the mechan- ism of production is kept at a high degree of effi- ciency. Why should we not take a similar inven- tory of our gray matter, determine the efficiency of brain mechanism and study the output of our "Thought Factory"? The manufacturer or mer- chant knows whether he has ten or five cases of a commodity in his warehouse and he knows the grade and value of every item of his stock; the average man does not know whether his brain con- tains ten or one unit of a certain Thought Power and betrays no interest in regard to quality or value of the product of mental processes, or in the effi- ciency and scientific utilization of his apparatus for producing thought and acquiring knowledge. In a well organized factory there should be crea- tion, industry and power at work, with energy eif ec- tivel}^ expended in every department, all to produce a valuable product — a perfect whole. It is futile to run one department of a factory, or one small section of the human brain, with extreme efficiency, and to its designed output, if other necessary de- partments are lagging behind or are closed down because of lack of help, shortage of power, dearth of materials, inaccurate drawings, or absence of executive supervision. In a well conducted fac- tory, production proceeds as a cycle or a flux, and this with machine-like precision. Coordination and team work must be in evidence, but the prime essential to success is that every shop, every depart- ment, and every machine must economically turn out its full quota of work of a certain prescribed quahty within a predetermined time. If a man's MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 63 brain functioned as an efficient factory, operating under truly scientific management, with an organ- ization of workers in complete harmony and with a skilled executive of vision and sympathy, who could estimate what power such a dominant, virile mentahty would be in the world? The efficient or superior man knows the art of living and makes the most out of what nature has given him; every phase of hfe must be considered, no section of gray matter can be ignored, and he is, therefore, not only a worker, industrious and thor- ough, but also intensely human, manly in the high- est sense, sympathetic, reachable, lovable. Dresser has well said that "Efficiency is not a merely vocational idea but pertains to the whole of life. It is a human question." The efficient man must be adaptable and should not ignore any factor with- in or without himself. He is of necessity a man of thought, purpose and action. His brain was created for action, his gray matter is developed by action and his success lies in carrying the wisdom of the mental world into realization in the external world. Greatness is all-round development. A brain abnormally developed in any one or more isolated parts and neglected elsewhere, is not great. Such unnatural growth or unusual and conspicuous over- development of any one part or parts of the physi- cal body supply the freaks for the circus-shows and the doers of stunts on the vaudeville stage. A great money-maker is not necessarily a great man; he may have a marked faculty for making money but may have no faculty for enjoying or properly 64 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM utilizing it. If a man neglects and ignores impor- tant parts of his gray matter and devotes all his time and energy to the development and use of some other part, he becomes abnormal, unnatural, lop-sided, and may ultimately prove a menace to society. Even if his object is praiseworthy, he can never be efficient; he may do some good in the world but he is not doing the greatest possible good and one is constrained to ask, "What is he doing to himself?" If we saw a man spending days, weeks and months writing books, using a wonderful brain and hand, and sending splendid messages out into the world but refusing to walk and exercise his body, we would feel that his meritorious work was no justification for the abuse of nature; while, if he exercised sanely and complied with nature's laws, he would probably do even better and more in- spiring literary work. A man who refuses to use, and by use develop, any part of his brain is like a man who refuses to use a hand or a leg or even one or more of his prime physical senses. A man is readily cognizant of any physical defect which af- fects his sense organs, locomotion or bodily func- tions, for such imperfections are conspicuously detrimental to his physical activities and enjoy- ment, but why is he not equally cognizant of mental deficiency or incompleteness? Confucius said, "When a man's finger is deformed he knows enough to be dissatisfied, but if his mind be deformed he does not know that he should be dissatisfied. This is called 'Ignorance of the relative importance of things.' " MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 65 The world needs today human minds with psychi- cal beauty, analogous to the aesthetic perfection of the physical body of the ancient Greeks ; every part well molded and formed, every muscle supple, every detail, as well as the whole, the embodiment of effi- ciency, strength and grace. The Greeks believed in athletics — exercise — to develop and perfect the body, for tissues and muscles, like the gray matter of the brain, are educable. The great prizes of their later contests, however, did not go to the athletic specialist, the sprinter, the distance runner, the disc thrower, the jumper, the boxer, the chario- teer or the wrestler, all of whom might be expected to exhibit abnormal, but somewhat localized, physi- cal development; but it was awarded to the winner of the Pentathlon, who achieved glory and the highest possible recognition as an all-round, well- developed athlete, having been the victor, in aggre- gate points, in the five greatest and most diversified tests of skill. The ancient Greeks were great admirers of physi- cal perfection. They advocated and supported athletics in order that their ideals might be realized, well understanding the fundamental laws of nature pertaining to living matter. The Greeks of every social class and stratum were performers and actual participants themselves in their athletic games, and in this respect they differed from the Roman patricians who elected to be spectators. No man can develop either his body or his mind by watching the exertions and skill of others. Physical develop- ment — brain and muscle — is a decidedly personal matter with the individual, and attainment can only 66 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM come from the intelligent expenditure of one's own effort. In the consideration of mental attributes and brain development, it is hard to say which positive qualities are great and which are small; all are im- portant; all are necessary to completeness. Dr. Johnson said, "The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace, equally, great things and small." No positive virtue can be considered small in relative importance. A bolt or a machine pin is each relatively very small in physical size, but either may permit an engine to function and per- form useful work, while its absence would cause a suspension of operation. There are many human interests and psychological properties branded by the materialist as small, insignificant and unneces- sary, that unless attained and developed, prevent mental greatness and the realization of possible and complete success. To use one's gray matter, every available square inch of it, and to really hve sixty minutes to every hour — that is success and the result is happiness. No lasting, unsullied joy is attained in this world without some difficulty, and all true happiness pre- supposes some effort. Action is the whole expres- sion of man ; his worth and happiness depend on his wiU, which declares itself continually to the outside world by deeds. It was long ago said and accepted that in the world there is nothing great but man, and in man there is nothing great but his mind. As it is the prerogative of the mind to govern and direct the body so also is it the rightful prerogative of the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 67 will to direct the mind, for the human will is higher than the mortal mind. The will is a General who assumes absolute command over all the forces placed under his direction by Mother Nature. It is his business to inspect, drill and train his forces, ar- range them for action, be skilled in the use of sup- porting forces and reserves and keep each company up to the highest possible efficiency and the greatest permissible enrollment. A General in command of military forces would not care to engage in modern warfare, equipped with only a few brigades of infantry, or with only infantry and cavalry. He would insist upon in- fantry, cavalry, heavy artillery, light machine gun companies, engineers, aviators, signal men, trans- portation, commissary, ambulance. Red Cross rep- resentation, etc., and each in the required strength, in order to provide that proper harmony of forces which experience has proven to be essential to mod- ern army efficiency. When these forces are in the field they are controlled, regulated and directed by one strong central authority who, as a strategist, arranges the operation of the combat. The human will is the central authority of the mind ; and brain or intellectual discipline is as neces- sary for mental success as military disciphne is for achievement in warfare. The presence and effi- ciency of a strong central power are made manifest in the unity and proportion of the results in both military and commercial armies or organizations. When this authority is absent, confusion and chaos are in evidence; when the central and governing authority is not strong enough to efficiently control 68 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM the forces under command, too much energy is spent in one direction, too little in another or a vacillating policy is inaugurated which brings inevitable dis- aster and failure. The General of the human mind has a great diversity of forces to bring up to the battle line; much of his army may be like "Crom- well's raw clodhoppers" or "Kitchener's mob," — great fighters in embryo, and it will be his task to train them to become veritable "ironsides" and take their place later in the fight; but every section of the brain must first be trained and developed and then used to do its ordained work as must every department of an army. No part of a man's gray matter can do the work of another any more than one arm of the service, with its peculiar training and characteristics, is fitted to do the work of an- other department. Hamerton has said, "The origin of discipline is the desire to do not merely our best with the degree of power and knowledge which, at the time, we do actually happen to possess, but with that which we might possess if we submitted to the necessary train- ing." Whatever our ideas may be in regard to Military Preparedness, the advisability of advocat- ing and practicing Mental Preparedness is axio- matic and unquestionable. But are we wilhng to go through with the grind, the drill, and the hardships incidental to thorough training? Are we willing to make the necessary and unavoidable sacrifices? Mental Preparedness means work, persistent, ener- getic and concentrated work, with sometimes no re- ward in sight, — only the inner satisfaction of being true to ideals, of embracing and meeting squarely MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 69 life's opportunities for service, and of expressing in no uncertain way, our convictions and soul prin- ciples. Mental discipline is necessary before in- tellectual eminence can be achieved and whereas no will can, by the most concentrated and prodigious effort, make a genius out of a man endowed with but ordinary gray matter, — extent and texture, — nevertheless, a will that absolutely commands and controls all the mental faculties, and disciplines and trains the mind, will make not only for efficiency but for culture, happiness and success in the field for which the mind is fitted to effectively function. A worthy ambition for any will is the subjuga- tion and conquest of the mind. To break a per- son's will, particularly a child's, is a crime against nature, whereas to harness and control one's own mind and dominate it by the force of one's will is absolutely in harmony with nature. Alexander of Macedon, a soldier of conquest, wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds, and his friends asking him if any harm had befallen him, he replied, "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquered one?" Alexander was one of the most dominant physical characters in history; he con- quered a great part of the known world, but he could not conquer himself, and after only three de- cades of life, we are told that he died at Babylon as a result of a night and a day's continuous de- bauchery and depraved dissipation — part of his wonderful brain neglected and undeveloped and his 70 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM mind undisciplined by what men erroneously be- lieved to be an iron will. Physical appetites, uncontrolled by the human will, weakened and destroyed Hannibal, the Car- thaginian (247-183 B. C), another famous world conqueror. This powerful King, victorious in arms, and whom neither snow, distance nor geo- graphical mountainous barriers could vanquish, was conquered by sensuous pleasure, and although re- sisting the onslaughts of all armed foes, finally suc- cumbed to the subtle, enervating luxuries of Cam- pania. Hannibal was destined by his father to succeed him in the work of vengeance against Rome, and from his earliest youth he felt his great life's task to be the conquest and humiliation of Rome. He was the greatest military tactician of all time, a master of military science, and in the use of strategy and ambuscades, he surpassed not only all the Gen- erals of Antiquity but also the Military Command- ers of the entire historical period. The Romans were enraged with their Emperor, Fabius Maximus, the Delayer, because of his cau- tious military tactics in dealing with Hannibal and his army of Africans, Spaniards and Gauls; but whenever they departed from his policy, they were defeated. What the Roman legions failed to do by force, however, was ultimately accomplished in their behalf by sunny, sensuous Italy. Hannibal's army was decimated by disease, he himself lost the sight of one eye, and later, as a fugitive in Asia, closely pursued by the relentless bloodhounds of Imperial Rome, when capture and death seemed MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 71 inevitable, he hastened his end by self -administered poison. Mark Antony (83-30 B. C.) had great inherent ability, but not the will power to control his sen- suous appetite and direct his forces persistently along worth-while, constructive lines for the good of humanity and himself. In youth, he gave many exhibitions of profligacy; when Deputy Governor of Italy in 47 B. C, during the time Caesar was in Africa, he "seized the opportunity of indulging in the most extravagant excesses." After the murder of Caesar and the wars for supremacy, he became one of the three Joint Rulers of the Roman Trium- virate. In 41 B. C, he fell a victim to the allure- ments of Cleopatra, in whose company at Alexan- dria, he spent time and dissipated energies that should have been devoted to the interests of the Empire. In 39 B. C, at Athens, he showed that his will had been weakened by sensuality and disso- luteness by behaving in a most extravagant, vol- uptuous manner, assuming the attitude of the god Dionysus. He proved false to the Roman Em- pire, disposed of kingdoms and provinces in favor of Cleopatra and, in 32 B. C, the Senate deprived him of his power and declared war against Cleo- patra. When Cleopatra became convinced that her mili- tary forces had no hope of ultimate success, Oc- tavian suggested that she assassinate her lover. This degenerate woman had been the paramour of Julius Caesar in Rome up to the time of his assassin- ation. For her another Roman Ruler had banished ideals, stifled his conscience and numbed his soul. 72 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and she had previously killed one brother in war and poisoned another because they stood in the way of her ambitions. Accepting the proposal of Oc- tavian, she enticed Antony (32 B. C.) to join her in a mausoleum which she claimed to have built in order that they might die together. Antony was influenced to commit suicide in the mistaken belief that Cleopatra had already done so. He died a broken, defeated man, his life of great promise and opportunity a dire failure through weakness of will. Adversity and necessity stimulated Mark Antony's great inner powers in early life to great achievement, but in prosperity and success he yielded unresistingly to sensuous temptation and promptly succumbed to dissipation. Vitellius (15-69 A. D.) was Roman Emperor for one year; he was neither ambitious nor schem- ing, but he owed his elevation to the good-will of the soldiery with whom his outrageous prodigaUties and excessive good nature, although agreeable in its novelty and license, soon proved fatal to order and discipline. Vitellius was a man with deplor- ably weak will, whose sense of pleasure was grati- fication of appetite. He was lazy, self-indulgent, and, as is usual with men of this type whom destiny has bred or fickle fate has raised to positions of power, he was absolutely dominated by two of his military commanders, Csecina and Valens. These men engineered the Military Revolution which put their dissipated leader on the throne. VitelHus apparently tried to govern wisely, but he was de- plorably weak and completely under the control of Cgecina and Valens who, for their own selfish ends, encouraged him in vicious excesses. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 73 The army of Vitellius reached Rome as a licen- tious mob of ruffians and the Imperial City became the seat of riot, massacre, extravagant feasting, de- bauchery and inordinate sensuous vice. Retribu- tion — the inevitable — came when Vespasian, a man of himible origin but of great strength of character, was declared Emperor, and Vitellius was paraded through the streets, treated with contempt and derision; with a sword held beneath his chin, to make him keep up his head so that all could see the weak, dissipated and sensuous face of an Imperial monster, he reached the fatal Gemonian Stairs where he was mercilessly struck down; — thus per- ished the Emperor who was ruining the morals and power of his country in order that he and his com- panions might continue their unhcensed debauchery. The weak will of Alexander resulted in the death, in early manhood, of a life full of promise with great but unbridled power ; the weakness of Hannibal and his followers defeated the whole life purpose of an otherwise strong and brilliant man ; the will of An- tony was not powerful enough to withstand success and prosperity, subjugate sensuous appetites and subordinate worldly pleasure to duty and the ac- compHshment of his life's work; he proved a traitor to his country and became his own executioner. Vitelhus, through weakness of will and the subtle domination of associates, ruined himself and his country; he steeped a nation in vice and caused Imperial Rome to degenerate to a sensuous, un- principled and undisciplined mob, which blindly staggered in its drunkenness to the brink of the precipice of economic, patriotic and spiritual ruin. 74 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM A man's will functions as a continual expression of his individual freedom; without freedom of the will, morality becomes a meaningless, senseless term and the moral consciousness of every normal, thinking person accepts without hesitation the postulate of freedom. Will is expressed in the rendering of decisions affecting one's conduct, and the quality of one's will is reflected in one's thinking and in the motives which inspire action. The pre- dominating attributes of will are, therefore. Free Choice and Purpose. A strong will is not neces- sarily a good will, for it may be wrongly directed, but every weak will is of necessity an immoral, defective instrument, indicative of incomplete man- hood. The first essential of virtue is strength, and the second, of equal importance, is purpose, which energetically directs one toward the ideal. W. H. Thomson has said that it is the masterful, personal will which makes the brain human. A mind thinking according to will and not according to reflex action, constitutes a purposive life. The human endowment of a personal will constitutes the high privilege granted to every man to test how much the man will make of himself. It is clothed v^th powers which will enable him to obtain the greatest of all possessions — self-possession — which implies the capacity for self-restraint, self -compul- sion and self-direction. The complete life is one where the hand of the real inner self grasps firmly, at all times, the tiller which steers the human craft through the tempes- tuous seas of life toward the Cosmic Goal. To steer toward the wrong port or to alternately direct one's MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 75 course toward two destinations, geographically or ethically opposed, or to occasionally move with power and purpose toward a definite goal, while at other times one drifts aimlessly wherever the current of thoughtlessness, materialism and crowd movements take him, is to live a life of error and failure and to ultimately experience the retributive condemnation of an outraged Cosmos, whose fun- damental law is Cause and Effect — the immutable law of nature's just compensation. "There is no wrong by any one committed but will recoil, Its sure return, with double ill repeated, no skill can foil. As on the earth, the mist it yields to heaven descends in rain. So on his head who e'er has evil given, it falls again. It is the law of life, that retribution shall follow wrong; It never fails, although the execution may tarry long." IV EMERSON said, "There can be no driving force except through the conversion of the man into his will, making him the will, and the will him/' Man's driving power, which con- quers nature, harnesses her forces and lifts human- ity nearer to the great Cosmic Ideal, is the energy of the free himian will, unfettered by tradition or soulless convention, indifferent to mob opinions, but persistent and courageous in striving to perform that which is suggested by indwelling reason, stim- ulated by the universal spirit of creation and prog- ress. A strong and perfect will is master of the body, lord over all the mind-faculties and high priest of the moral self. The world's work which withstands the ravages of time and survives and grows to the eternal benefit of humanity, has been performed by strong wills with purpose, in harmony with the supreme Cosmic Will. The ideal, or im- aginative picture of the goal, can only be realized by purpose and will. These supply the motive power and that determined, persistent, unwavering energy which is ever needed in good measure, when new paths have to be opened up, obstructions over- come and pioneer work performed. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) had the pur- pose and the will. His father was a poor wool- comber of Genoa. When fourteen years of age the 77 78 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM lad was a roustabout, then a wharfinger, later a sailor, and at nineteen a weaver; but when twenty- eight years old we find him, as a result of self -in- struction, making maps and charts. He believed that the world was a sphere and conceived the idea of reaching Asia and the fabulously wealthy land of India by sailing west, thus opening up a water trade route which would be easier to negotiate and offer more freedom than the existing caravan route. After many discouragements, Columbus sailed west- ward in 1492, with three small vessels whose crews aggregated eighty-eight, recruited from "criminals and broken men." He fought the elements, super- stition, fear and the mutinous tendency of his bellig- erent crew and his dominant will finally triumphed over the hardships, discouragements and antago- nisms of the voyage, as it had previously prevailed over the heart-breaking, deterring opposition en- countered during the unfolding and development of his plans. Eventually Columbus reached the islands of the western world — the discoverer of a new continent and a wonderful land that was destined to mate- rially influence the unfolding history of all man- kind. He carried letters to the Emperor of China, and when he returned to Spain, he thought that he had been in Japan and had thus proved conclusive- ly by travel that the world was round. He jour- neyed to find a new trade route, but he found a new world, and mankind will forever be a debtor to the memory of the man of vision, with robust, powerful will, who saw and acted, undeterred and undis- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 79 mayed, when all mankind and the elements seemed to combine to challenge his progress. Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), the inventor of the spinning frame and the father of the modern factory, was the youngest of thirteen children ; born of very humble, illiterate EngMsh parents, he grew to manhood without education. As a youth he was apprenticed to a barber, and it has been well said that "Fate was in a jesting mood when she de- creed that the chief actor in that remarkable social drama, the Industrial Revolution, should be a half- penny barber." But Arkwright had imagination, even though he was barely able to read and write. He saw what a successful spinning machine would mean and decided that he would not indefinitely remain a journeyman barber, day after day "shav- ing the stolid faces of lower class Englishmen." He became absorbed in models of machines, worked sixteen hours a day and later added two more hours in which he strove to acquire an education. His wife, Margaret Biggins, "begged him to return to his razor," and when he refused, she smashed the first working model of the spinning machine and later burned other models. But Arkwright had will and purpose, tireless energy, enthusiasm, perseverance and self-confi- dence ; believing in himself, he ultimately compelled others to beheve in him. His health was not ro- bust, but he worked at his self-appointed task un- ceasingly. McAtherton refused to entertain or even seriously consider Arkwright 's machine "be- cause of the rags in which the inventor was dressed." His townspeople rose as a wrathy mob against him. 80 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM for his machine, they maintained, if successful, would shorten labor ; so the persecuted inventor had to flee for his life and seek refuge elsewhere, after seeing his few worldly possessions smashed and scattered to the four winds. But Arkwright per- sisted and ultimately won, and achieving the un- usual boon of recognition of his services to humanity before his death, he became wealthy and was knighted by the Crown. Carlyle, writing of Arkwright, said "In strop- ping razors, in lathering dusty beards, and the con- tradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his ; spindles, shuttles, wheels and contrivances plying ideally within the same, rather hopeless looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear, not without great difficulty. What a historical phenomenon is that boy-cheeked, pot-bellied, much-enduring, much-inventing barber!" It was this man, gawky, fat and unprepossessing, who gave the world the power of cotton and the modern factory system, and with his indomitable will, unwavering purpose and far-seeing vision, revolutionized industrial methods. A poor, unattractive boy, "plain, almost gross, with an air of painful reflection, yet also of copious free digestion," ignorant as regards mental gymnastics and reaching manhood before he could write a readable letter; such did fate select to lead in the world's great industrial revolution, because of his inherent practical ability to perfect mechanical inventions, his latent extraordinary executive ability and his underlying dominant, but nevertheless puissant, genius of organization. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 81 Arkwright dreamed but he also worked, and he lived to see his dreams come true because of his own indefatigable virile efforts. He was ridiculed be- cause of his unbounded confidence in his scheme. He was abused as a fanatic and unmercifully gibed when he said that "he would yet pay the British National debt," but he lived to make a nation rich and powerful and he contributed much — far more than was appreciated — to the welfare and prosper- ity of mankind. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a son of a Thuringian mine-laborer. He had to beg in order to go to school, singing for alms and bread from door to door. "Hardship, rigorous necessity, was the poor boy's companion — among things, not among the show of things, had he to grow." A rude plebeian with a repulsive, sensuous face, he was neither idealistic nor intensely spiritual, but he had a rugged will that having once taken a stand, no earthly power could budge. When Luther de- clared against Tetzel's sheepskin Indulgences and pen and ink Pardons, when he preached that these were a futility and sorrowful mockery, he had no thought of revolting against the Pope of Rome — the Holy Father of Christendom — but his act led to the Reformation and placed Protestantism on its feet. Luther had a common, coarse nature, and vulgar blood surged through his veins ; devils were real to him and alcoholic dissipation intensified, at times, his hallucinations, but he had persistency and cour- age. In matters of principle, affecting his religion, even though his superstitions were great, his animal 82 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM appetite real and his nature intolerant and fanatical, yet his will was strong and uncompromising and his purposeful courage sublime. On April 16, 1521, as Luther entered the Imperial City of Worms, the Elector's Chancellor entreated him, in the name of his Master, not to enter a town where his death had been decided upon. Luther replied, "Go tell your Master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles upon its roofs, I yet would enter." No mat- ter what our opinion of Luther and his life, or of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism may be, how truly noble and exalted are the last words of his defense impressively uttered to the Assembly at Worms, — "Confute me; I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I ; I can do no other ; God help me." These sublime words, expressive of a dominant will and noble purpose, recall the magnificent de- fense of Socrates — the greatest man of antiquity — a far greater man than Luther and one of the grand- est characters the world has ever seen. When false- ly accused, Socrates scorned to outline any defense designed to conciliate a hostile jury. His Ufe had been purposeful, his uncompromising will seemed to be of steel, his principles were fixed and unbending, but withal, he had a personality radiating love, sin- cerity, fervent piety, and soulful kindliness. It seemed to be decreed that his death should be in har- mony with his life, as was the death of The Christ of Nazareth. Socrates had the strong and well de- fined will that knows the truth and drives the mind forward in the paths of virtue and world usefulness, MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 83 expressing at the same time love for his fellow man and absolute tolerance toward all honest opinions which differed from his own. "Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you. Either acquit me or not, but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times." And after his condemnation he said, "No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. And now it is time to depart hence, I to die and you to live; but which of us goes to the better fate, no one know- eth save only God." Socrates could easily have escaped imprisonment and death but he remained unwaveringly true to his ideals and, under existing conditions, and with many centuries intervening, "few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended himself otherwise," or as an old man, compromised with his bigoted, unscrupulous, jealous and politically in- spired opponents. He died a martyr for truth and freedom, and what a wonderful reputation and his- toric memory he left behind to vibrate through the ages. "No one," said Xenophon, his pupil, "ever knew of his doing or saying anything profane or un- holy." He humbled himself to the level of those among whom his work lay that he might raise some few among them to his own level. His self-control, we are told by one of his contemporaries, was abso- lute; his power of endurance unfailing and he had so schooled himself to moderation that his extremely scanty means satisfied all his wants. "To want nothing," he said, "is divine, to want as little as pos- sible is the nearest approach to the divine life." A 84 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Sophist said to him, "A slave whose master made him hve as you Hve would run away," but Alcibiades paid this man of superior moral virtue, as well as brilliant intellectual attainments, a great tribute and expressed the belief of many of his followers when he said, "No one would think that I ever had any shame in me ; but I am ashamed of my weakness and uselessness when in the presence of Socrates." No one can fail to be inspired by the mental free- dom, reasoning powers, humihty, steadfastness of purpose and sturdiness of character of the grand old Democrat of the Fifth Century B. C, "So pious that he did nothing without taking counsel of the gods, so just that he never did an injury to any man, whilst he was the benefactor of all who associated with him, so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to right, so wise that in judging of good and evil he was never at fault — in a word, the best and happiest of men." Musonius Rufus, the Roman philosopher of the First Century of the Christian Era and the teacher of Epictetus, was a man of strong will and purpose, — a man of soul whose life expressed virtue and whose personality radiated kindliness and whole- someness ; his whole being commanded respect from both friends and enemies. He disdained applause, "If you have leisure to praise me then I am speak- ing to no purpose." One of his pupils wrote, "He used to speak in such a way that every one sitting there supposed that some one had accused him be- fore oNIusonius; he so touched upon what he was doing, he so placed before the eyes every man's shortcomings." Musonius was the Cato of his gen- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 85 eration, trusted by all for his absolute rectitude of character and respected for his fearlessness. When the armies of Vespasian and Vitellius were fighting in the suburbs of Rome, he addressed the common soldiers, expatiating on the blessings of peace, vir- tue and good-will. Such an attitude in defiance of military discipline speaks much for the courage of the philosopher and demonstrates beyond doubt the respect in which he was held. He continued to play an honorable and important part in public life dur- ing the reign of Vespasian and was so highly es- teemed that he retained the confidence of the Em- peror even when other philosophers were expelled from the Capitol. Musonius had a powerful, virile will with a tenacious, unwavering purpose. He stood for the brotherhood of man and peace for all men and maintained that virtue, which is not a thing of precept or theory but a practical living reality, is the only real aim of men. In more modern times, Ulysses S. Grant (1822- 1885) is a splendid example of will power, rightly applied, in mature life. To be sure, in his youth he was called "Useless Grant" by his mother; he re- signed his commission in the army in 1854, his repu- tation in the service having suffered from allega- tions of intemperate drinking. We are told that a short time before his father took him into his tan- nery at Galena, he was piling wood in the back- yards of St. Louis citizens. After some pottering in hides and leather, farming, real estate, and debt collecting, and after being branded by society and his relatives as a failure and a shiftless, broken and disappointed man, Grant discovered himself at 86 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Shiloh. Whether Grant was intemperate with alco- hol or not (and he was probably much maligned by- American Brahminists and self-elected, meddlesome uplifters of society), he certainly possessed the iron determination and energy along other lines which more than balanced his failings. Grant always "stuck to the thing in hand," so far as it was worth while. When war brought his awareness of self to the point of definite meaning, he mounted to a height of sober heroism that the nation can never forget, and he retained full power over himself after the immediate stimulus was gone. As Haddock says, "He found every detail and the largest cam-r paign eminently worth the while of a will which had, at last, uncovered its highway." There were soldiers more accomplished, more brilliant, more exact, but singleness of purpose and relentless vigor in the execution of well defined plans were Grant's incomparable quahties. He had courage, clear judgment and pugnacious tenacity, all tempered with the patience and tranquillity of self-confidence ; he had a massive, noble and lovable personality. "The great thing about him," said Lincoln, "is cool persistency of purpose. He is not easily excited and he has the grip of a bulldog. When he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off." After the first day's disaster at Shiloh, when the Confederate Army had all but driven the Union forces into the river. Grant sat under a tree with a cigar clinched between his teeth and calmly remarked with firm conviction, "Never mind, boys, we'll Hck them tomorrow." During the same bat- tle, when asked, "What shall we do now?" he re- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 87 plied laconically, "Keep on fighting." Grant was the savior of the Union of our States and his force- ful will cannot be better expressed than in his fa- mous "Hands Off" despatch, "I purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Washington's military career was a series of fail- ures — but he would not acknowledge reverses as de- feat. He persistently "hung on" to the enemy, he recrossed the icy Delaware at Trenton and snatched victory from the jaws of death. James A. Garfield had purpose and an energetic will. He lost his father when eighteen months old and was brought up, without school advantages, in what was then the backwoods of Ohio. As a boy, he did chores, chopped wood, drove a team, tilled the soil, and did everything he could to earn a few pen- nies to help his mother; he became determined to cultivate his mind and, by the development of his mentality, carve out a future for himself as a scholar and a teacher. At sixteen he was a driver of a canal boat, studying books whenever he could find an opportunity. Later he became a janitor at Hiram College ; he graduated from Williams College with high honors and realized his original ambition by being made a teacher and later, the head of Hiram College. But the world had higher spheres of opportunity and service to offer the young scholar from the log cabin of Ohio. At twenty-nine, he was made a State Senator; at thirty-two a Major General, and a year later he became a member of Congress. When forty-eight years old he was elected to the United States Senate, but before he could take his seat in 88 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM that body he became President of the United States. Twenty-seven years after the time that young Gar- field pleaded for a chance to gain a school education by ringing the bells, sweeping and dusting the halls and performing any necessary menial tasks at Hi- ram College, he was elevated to the highest position of honor and responsibility that his fellow-men could offer him. "The heights, by great men reached and kept. Were not attained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept. Were toiling upward in the night." Nathan Hale (1756-1776), the young Connecti- cut patriot and hero of the American War of In- dependence, had energy, enthusiasm and will, which, directed by the surging and overwhelming waves of patriotism and love for his oppressed countrymen, gave him purpose and led the boy schoolmaster to deeds of courage along paths of great danger. He was one of a small band which captured an Englisfi provision sloop from under the very guns of a Brit- ish man-of-war. He was later captured when endeavoring to obtain information within the Brit- ish lines and in September of our first year of Na- tional Independence, notwithstanding his youth and noble mien, he was abominably treated and hanged as a spy. His last words will continue to ring through the ages, "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Sydney Carton, an interesting life-like character in Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," lacked will power, dissipated his forces and though of a brilliant mind, failed in his battles with life. How nobly he re- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 89 deemed himself, however, when the opportunity to prove his love and sacrifice himself for others pre- sented itself! Giving his life in order that others might enjoy unrestrained happiness, he uttered these wonderfully beautiful and soulful words of resignation and hope, "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done ; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Thus is portrayed the true inner nobiUty — the God in man — and we obtain a glimpse of what Carton would have been capable of, if only his will throughout the daily trend of life had been strong enough to persis- tently direct his forces along paths of sobriety and virtue. The great will power, vision and purpose ex- pressed in the life of Columbus resulted in no ma- terial benefit to himself, but operated for the eco- nomic advantage, happiness, freedom and prosper- ity of unborn generations. The wonderful vision and dominant will of Arkwright functioned for the almost immediate profit of his country, himself, and later, for the world and all humanity. The stead- fast will and soulful courage of Socrates contrib- uted to the mental freedom of mankind and his in- fluence will live as long as man exists on this planet, even though the grand old exponent of truth and virtue died a martyr to the cause of individualistic freedom of thought. Luther fought for freedom from the errors, commercialism and oppression of religious authority, but the movement to which he gave impetus and definite direction went far beyond the man and his intentions. The will of Musonius was exerted to make men reason for themselves. 90 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM perfect themselves, love their kind and refuse to kill, at the dictates of external authority, their fellow men, toward whom personally they had no ill feeling. Young Garfield was determined to develop his mind and become capable of teaching others. His purposeful will and mental concentration achieved success and carried him far higher than his original ambition. Nathan Hale's will decreed that all his powers and resources should be given to the service of his oppressed land. His soul cried out for free- dom and he gave his all at the altar of his ideal, re- gretting only one thing — that he had not more to give. The will and bulldog tenacity of Grant abol- ished slavery in the United States and united a great people. The will, courage and unwavering purpose of Washington, "an imperial man," gave our coun- try its independence and estabhshed this great land of freedom and unprecedented opportunities. All these men had the energy to do, the mental grasp to appreciate a prophetic vision, the imaged goal and the ideal for which to strive, the wisdom to select and discriminate and the will to direct and hold them to their course through all discouragements, ob- structions, distractions and antagonisms. Such are the characteristics which, in combination with hu- man sympathy, human understanding, absolute honesty and tolerance, insure rare completeness of life, — the acme of human perfection, the ideal of individual attainment. V OVID somewhere said, "It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in our im- mortal soul." It is rather the will that makes the man, and the will is the personality ex- pressing that vigor which is an attribute of the soul. Cicero referred to the cultivation of the mind as the food for the soul of man; the soul grows in power and usefulness as the mind is disciplined, educated and developed for service under the domination of the soul's personality or individuality — the human will. Developed, well-trained and usable mental faculties are to the soul what the limbs and physical senses are to the brain; the greater the culture of man and the more complete and thorough his mental development, the greater power his soul becomes in the world. The himian brain is but the instrument that expresses the soul as it works in the world in harmony with the great Cosmic plan. "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same." The most cultivated men are the most moral ; the immorality of the geniuses of history may be prover- bial, but we are here referring to cultivated, en- lightened minds, with all-round development, and not to men of abnormal, but nevertheless, restricted mental powers. Cultivation of the mind and mental discipline result in self-control; excesses cause the 91 92 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM self-destruction of the intellectual forces and "weaken the springs of the mind." Plutarch tells us that there were two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic Oracle highly accommodated to the usage of man's life, "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much," and he adds, "upon them, all other precepts depend." The wisdom of knowing oneself is not subject to controversy. It is self-evident, yet its truth is generally accepted in an academical and not in a practical manner, in the abstract and not the concrete, and as applicable to mankind but not to the individual — the ego, whose tongue glibly slides over the words as the head wags approvingly. Mental self -analysis, as usually conducted by the individual, is a farce, a burlesque on scientific inquiry, a reflection upon human intelligence. It operates as a strong argument in favor of the de- pravity of the ego and its absolute dislike for truth and unadorned mind nakedness. Know thy present real self, by comparison with the ideal of thy yet better and truer self as seen from the divine point of view. To know oneself, man must needs follow the admonition of St. Augustine and "Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience and set thyself before thy- self." The soul becomes the judge, the will sym- bolizes the law, and the human mind, the prisoner at the bar. Protagoras and the subjectivistic Sophists be- lieved that if one would know the truth, he must de- rive it from a better source than his deceptive senses — "We must appeal to reflection and reason." They erred, however, in assuming that there are no uni- versal truth and reason, and in the belief that there MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 93 are as many measures of the true and the false as there are individuals. When Protagoras said that man is the measure of all things, he referred to a changeable individual and did not consider that un- changing spiritual element which is common to all. He falsely asserted that goodness, justice and truth depend upon individual taste; with this theory, in- dividualistic whims are apt to be the sole and final judge. The criticism or skepticism of Protagoras destroyed the mental foundation of Polytheism and prepared the way for the spiritual reasoning philo- sophy or religion of Socrates, Plato, the Cynics and the Stoics ; but Protagoras himself failed to see that himian reason is essentially the same in all indivi- duals. Weber truly said that "Men hindered him from seeing man.'' Socrates commences where Protagoras stops. He feels that he knows nothing but believes that there is something in the universe that can be known and that absolutely; this something is man as is indi- cated by the words inscribed on the Temple of Del- phi, — Know Thyself. "We can never know exactly what is the nature of the world, its origin and its end, but we can know what we ourselves ought to be, what are the meanings and aims of life, the high- est good for the soul; and this knowledge alone is real and useful because it is the only possible knowl- edge. Outside of ethics there can be no serious philosophy." Socrates attempted to separate the general from the particular; he advanced from the individual to the universal, and again discovered beneath the in- finite variety of men, the one unchangeable man. 94 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Beneath the confused mass of o pinions , held by a demoralized age, he finds the true and immutable opinion, the conscience of the human race, the law of minds. He brought mental order to a period of intellectual anarchy. He believed "that moral ideas are fundamental to humanity, that every human mind is big with truth, that education creates noth- ing that is not already there, but merely awakens and develops the latent germs of knowledge." As Weber says, the intimate relation which exists be- tween knowledge and will constitutes the funda- mental principle, and in a measure, the very soul of his philosophy. The essential thought is that the more a man thinks and knows, the better will he act ; that our moral value is directly proportioned to our light, that virtue is teachable, that no one is vol- untarily bad and that evil is the fruit of ignorance. He maintained that we can all attain to a knowl- edge of the highest good through the spirit within us, whose promptings function as an infallible inner sense. Socrates gave men an absolute, immutable and universal standard by which to judge and measure themselves, — one that must ever be unaffected by individual caprice. He vigorously protested against the popular, expressed view of the times, which af- firmed that good and evil are relative and that the rule for judging an act is not the "changing" law of conscience, but its success. Socrates stood for intellectual freedom and he urged men to reason, use and develop by exercise their divinely ordered brains ; analyze, weigh and measure themselves and MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 95 sit in judgment upon their thoughts, words, acts and motives. The Shinto Shrines of Japan are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, but a plain mirror, hung in the sanctuary, forms the essential part of its furnishings. When a person stands in front of the Shrine to worship, his own image is reflected on its shining surface and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunc- tion, — "Know Thyself." Self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Japanese or the early Greek teachings, knowledge of the physical part of man, his anatomy or psycho-physics; knowledge is to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral na- ture, — that which affects the real inner man. The Japanese tell us that their temple mirror typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity. After conforming with the tenet, "Know Thy- self," it would be fitting if the next command were, "Use Thyself," for no knowledge is worthy of the name if it is not potent enough to inspire action. Marcus Aurelius, writing his meditations in diary form and not intending that they should reach an- other's eyes, said, "Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art part, and of what administra- tion of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which, if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and it will never return." This 96 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM grand old Emperor, democratic, noble and peace- loving, who worked sixteen hours a day devoting himself to the just administration of a tremendous kingdom, also believed that a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and every- thing else; on frequent self-examination and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do, or do not do, that which he thinks and says and does. Wisdom does not only imply a correct apprecia- tion of the relative importance of things but it in- spires and demands action in harmony with such knowledge. Sir Thomas Browne said, "Every man truly lives so long as he acts his nature, or in some way makes good the faculties of himself/' An an- cient philosopher said, "If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it." We could, with profit, transpose this saying from the negative to the positive and substitute the admonition, "If a thing is right, do it ; if it is true, say it." To refram^ to excuse, to procrastinate and to abstain from ac- tion are, today, some of man's greatest psycholog- ical failings. What the world needs is not the re- fraining from evil and the avoiding of positive error, but the energetic, joyful and timely performance of good. Negative admonitions may have been highly esteemed ages ago, but what this generation needs is urging to constructive action: — Man, not only Know Thyself J but Use Thyself, The mind must be goaded by the will to have in- terest in a thing ; then mental application, persistent MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 97 attention and interest beget knowledge, which, in turn, appreciates a need or perceives an opportunity for service and thus furnishes the mind with motive for action. Knowledge and indolence cannot oc- cupy the same nest and it is only ignorance mas- querading as knowledge that is willing to consort with inactivity and thus become or remain sterile and inert. A man who habitually thinks according to purpose, will speak, act and live according to purpose — ^the embodiment of living power. The second admonition of the Delphic Oracle, "Nothing too much," is suggestive of all-round de- velopment, with no part or quality fertilized, stimu- lated and exercised abnormally at the expense of any other part or to the detriment of a harmonious whole. A natural development is, of all things, most greatly to be desired. Mental discipline, directed by forceful will, functioning in parallel with the Cosmic Forces of progressive life, will cause the mind to reflect sanity, balance, poise and natural goodness. Many forces are said to be evil because they are undisciplined. Psychological powers which are unharnessed and uncontrolled cause dissipation of mental energy and lead to mediocrity and error. A virtue carried to an extreme in either direction be- comes a vice, just as a normal rainfall benefits all life, but a prolonged drought or flood, kills. A moderate heat, as furnished by the sun in a Temper- ate Zone, sustains with comfort ; but an intense cold or an extreme heat, kills. We feed our bodies to maintain life, but if we eat and drink gluttonously, our systems are unduly stressed, harassed and poisoned, instead of being nourished and strength- 98 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM ened. Abstinence from food will cause death, but so will senseless gorging. Physical exercise is healthful ; an absolute lack of it results in the loss of the use of the parts of the body ignored; whereas exercise and muscular activity to excess and beyond the limit of body endurance, result in fatigue, col- lapse, and if carried to an extreme — death. Fear of disease with its psychological impairment and lowering of the bodily resistance, is an expres- sion of error. On the other hand, indifference to the laws of hygiene and sanitation and refusal to take precautions suggested by science to protect oneself and one's fellows, are also indicative of error; — virtue lies only in the middle course. Aristotle ex- pressed this same basic thought when he said that virtue is the mean between two extremes, each of which should be considered a bad quality, i e., cour- age between timidity and foolhardiness, truthful- ness between self -depreciation and boastfulness and liberality between avarice and prodigality. He also affirmed that "Virtue appears personified in the 'true gentleman' who ever avoids extremes." Pindar, the Greek poet of the fifth century B. C, praised Lampon of Aegina for "pursuing the mean with his thought and maintaining it in his acts," and, in so doing, recalled the principle laid down much earlier in Hesiod's verse, "Keep a middle course; the seasonable in all things is best." A fanatic in any hne of human interest and endeavor is an ex- ponent of over-stimulated virtue, devitalized and gone-to-seed ; a miser is a thrifty and frugal econo- mist and conservator, who has lost his bearing and his sense of proportion and relative values. A luna- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 99 tic is often a person with unanchored mind, who has expended energy in senseless and persistent wan- dering in an uncharted psychological country, a labyrinth of hopelessness, and has severed his con- nection with substantial and tenable verities, — such a mind has flown off tangent into space. Plato (427-347 B.C.), "the Homer of the Philos- ophers," was the ablest exponent of the true mind of Socrates and one of the most brilliant of Greek thinkers. He maintained that the four cardinal vir- tues are Wisdom (Reasoning Soul), Courage (Emotional Soul), Soberness (Appetitive Soul) and Justice — ^the supreme virtue which assigns to each its proper function. The high position assigned to Justice leads up to the practical doctrine of mod- eration, and as E. Vernon Arnold says, even the virtues are restricted both in their intensity and in their spheres of work, and if any virtue passes its proper limit it becomes changed into the vice that borders on it. "Thus the ideal of practical life is the moderate man, calm, considerate and self-re- specting, touched with a warm flow of feeling but never carried away into excitement; and even this ideal is strictly subordinate to that of the life of philosophic contemplation." Growth and development are vital processes. They are the expression of evolution and should show themselves, not in the defiance of Cosmic Law, but in the marshaling and harne§sing of unorgan- ized forces into definite forms of harmony and util- ity. An abnormal growth in one direction, if at- tained at the expense of other parts, may lead not only to lopsided ugliness but to defiance of nature 100 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM with retributive failure and death. Life itself is growth, but it is growth in conformity with Law, — an ever-changing, evolving movement attracted to and progressing toward an ideal. Wherever life exists there also is growth in some direction; the suspension of the process of growth heralds the commencement of decay and degeneration. It has been argued that virtue is always positive and vice negative, and to illustrate this conclusion it is affirmed that one cannot have too much good- ness. Ancient philosophers appreciated the virtue of the mean, i. e., the avoidance of the extreme, or, as the Delphic Oracle said, "Nothing too much," but today we are apt to see one well-trodden side of a question and ignore the other. What is "goodness"? We speak of a good machinist, a good father, a good violinist, but we also speak of a good dog, and even refer to inanimate things, as good food, good tools, good materials. Goodness is apparently being or acting according to nature. Each has a peculiar function and goodness means that it is to be per- formed well, i. e., in harmony with Cosmic Law, evolution, or natural growth. This force is what the ancient Greeks termed "Phusis." It was to them a power present throughout all the world which con- tinually expressed itself in making things grow to- ward the fulfilment of their utmost capacity. As Gilbert Murray has said in his lecture on the Stoic Philosophy, "Phusis gradually shapes, or tries to shape, every living thing into a more perfect form. It shapes the seed, by infinite and exact graduation, into the oak ; the blind puppy into the good hunting dog; the savage tribe into the civilized city." This MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 101 power, call it what you will, Phusis, Evolution, or God, strives to make one live according to his na- ture, not primitively or necessarily simply, but in harmony with the spirit which makes the world grow and progress. Goodness is expressed by living and working with Cosmic Forces in their eternal effort toward achieve- ment and perfection. To be good, man must use his faculties and perform his functions well. It is, therefore, immoral to ignore inherent mental capa- bilities, to dechne to exercise and develop endowed forces ; — the mentally lazy and indolent cannot pos- sibly be "good." To unduly stimulate growth in one direction to the detriment of other equally im- portant parts of the brain, must also be immoral, for disuse and atrophy of nature's creations and instru- ments of service are antagonistic to Cosmic Law. "Goodness" is the efficient and thorough use of one's faculties for the benefit of mankind and civilization ; it requires a knowledge or inventory of relative values and of Universal Law. The world advances to perfection by law. Hu- manity will progress to perfection and to ideal man- hood, and every cause throughout life produces an effect as an absolute and unerring reaction. Success is the measure of goodness, and morality is only sat- isfied with success. The good farmer is not the one who raises poor crops. The good engineer is not the one who builds structures which promptly col- lapse. The good navigator does not run his vessel on well-charted rocks. The good doctor is not the one who kills his patients. The good cook does not prepare indigestible food; neither is the good man 102 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM the one who misses living the good hf e. Henderson has said that "Failure is only another name for im- morality, and human failure means human immor- ahty." He also affirms that "the absence of health, wisdom, accomphshment and lovableness is a moral delinquency." In dealing, however, directly with an individual rather than with the individual plus his ancestry, we must admit that there are phases of health and physical limitations which are congenital. Mental capabilities, talents and tendencies vary with defin- ite restrictions in every man, yet after all, the indi- vidual is generally to blame for most of his iUness and resultant physical shortcomings, and is directly responsible for the non-development or non-use of his mental faculties. A man is immoral if he has stifled or deadened that inherent and natural im- pulse toward perfection which alone makes human life significant and divine. A physically perfect man is not moral if he has neglected his mind, soul and social instincts. A wonderful scholar is not moral if he has starved his nature so that love and sympathy are foreign to him. There is no such thing as attainment to perfected morality, for a moral life demands motion and activity, the exercise of mind, the making of decisions, the overcoming of resistance and the accomplishment of new and hard things. God is not an arbitrary, vacillating creature, up- setting natural order, but the will of God is un- changing, immutable law — "What a man sows that shall he also reap." Goodness is realized by making good the faculties within oneself; by Hving, grow- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 103 ing, developing according to nature; by traversing the straight line towards the goal, refusing to wan- der off to the left or the right, no matter how allur- ing the attractions, and no matter how an ignorant world, dominated by mortal mind, may decree that goodness or virtue exists on the right and badness or evil abounds on the left. The opinions of the world constantly change. What the world brands as good and moral today, may be denounced as bad and evil several centuries hence, and much that was considered virtue cen- turies ago, is now scathingly condemned. The Law of Nature, i. e., the Law of God, never changes or varies one iota — it exists for eternity — the one fixed power in life. The law of man is no law at all but is simply a blind scrambling for a vestige of truth, that can be dogmatized and temporarily used, until he can appreciate and use something better. Noth- ing tends so much to disgust men with the world's standard of goodness as the hoUowness and artifici- ality of what is palmed off on them for goodness. Rochefoucauld said, "We are so much accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that at length we disguise ourselves to ourselves — our virtues are gen- erally only disguised vices." Reasoning and analyt- ical men are so repeatedly disappointed in their search for reality and so accustomed to see mean and debased principles masquerading as virtue and goodness that they are often led to doubt the exist- ence of moral goodness. It is this feeling and these most regrettable and erroneous conclusions, often evidenced by philosophical minds of our day, that are embodied in the bitter exclamation of an old 104 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Roman, — "Virtue, I have worshipped thee as a real God, but at length I find thee an empty name." Virtue can only spring from inherent goodness and truth. It is not like a chemical of a relatively low degree of purity, which has to be repeatedly sent back into the process to be further and further purified, until, after the elimination of its dross, it can be justly branded as "chemically pure;" but vir- tue springs full grown to light, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. An act is either good or it is not good. If it conforms to Cosmic Law and one's higher nature, for the expression of which man was created, then it must be good. "Let us never grow tired of repeating that good and great things are only born of a good and great purpose." To consti- tute a virtuous action, a virtuous motive is abso- lutely essential, and unfortunately, much that may bear an external resemblance to virtue, upon an examination of the motive behind the act, becomes deserving of censure rather than commendation. Any insincere, unreal, unsocial, inconsiderate, ego- tistic or pernicious act cannot be inspired by good- ness, and "Nothing depreciates a sound coinage more than the existence of well-executed counter- feits." To be sound is to be good. The world needs the whole man, all there is of the real man, and wants him always at his best. Haddock has well said, "The nature of things makes it law that a man shall endeavor to make the most of himself in every way which is not inimical to soundness. This is the first principle of holiness — wholeness — soundness," and such a fundamental principle expressed in conduct becomes that service MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 105 for which the world has an ever crying need. The world is ruled by its servants. The successful ser- vant is king. Goodness, according to man's stand- ards and human judgment, may be pronounced er- ror, but goodness, according to Cosmic Law, is a virtue, incontrovertible and unchanging. It is evi- dent, therefore, that goodness is the full and free use within oneself of the self -evolving power planted therein by nature. Mental development is, therefore, a moral as well as an economic force, and the happiness which comes from achievement and the efficient utiHzation of one's forces is the just fruit and the reward for work. The true worker and brain user works for the joy of work and to fulfil his destiny. He knows not what the soul will encounter in the great space beyond, he cares not for the promised "reward of the faithful." He knows that if he hves according to nature, utilizes all his talents and gives a good ac- count of his stewardship in this life, the reaction will give him happiness here and it cannot grow less in the life beyond. The efficient brain user does not speculate for a high rate of interest to be paid at a later date ; he is not working to accumulate a fund which will be paid back to him as an annuity throughout eternity, but he receives his recompense here in functioning according to nature and he knows that in the life beyond happiness will exist, and true happiness is dependent for its very exist- ence upon activity and the accomplishment of some meritorious thing or other. "The essence of good- ness," said Murray, "is to do something, to labor, to achieve some end," and if goodness and happiness 106 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM are to exist throughout eternity, the world processes must continue or be replaced with other processes, in complexity probably far beyond human ken. Life is like the game of chess and the business of our will is to play the game in the right way and in accordance with the rules, using the pieces, many or few, with which the board is originally set ; discern- ing the quality, value and possible moves of each piece, King, Queen, Knight, Bishop, Rook and Pawns, and using them according to their nature in order that the greatest results may be achieved. The great creative power of all Hfe may have given us many pieces, or few ; we may have valuable pieces or almost all pawns; probably none of us is fur- nished with the complete sixteen pieces, but our duty is to make the most of what we have and play the game. When our initial equipment is so varia- ble, we surely cannot be judged in life by our rela- tive and apparent failure or success. "Life is not the holding of a good hand but the playing of a poor hand well." Whether we win or lose by worldly standards, what does it matter, provided we have played the game every minute to win and made the most of our hereditary endowment? It is our play that tells and not the score that we happen to make. Victory is with the man who fights best and not necessarily with him who happens to win the world's laurel wreath ; no one is the worse for being beaten if his faith remains firm and his courage undaunted. "To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize." The successful man is he who expresses himself, and all his innate powers and possibihties, most MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 107 fully and completely to the world. Fate may seem to clear the board and stun the player, but if the game is played fairly, earnestly and enthusiastic- ally, our souls are developed. Our three score years and ten are but as a flash in the sky compared with the eternity of Cosmic Effort and the progress of the spirit of man. "Suppose," said Huxley, "it were perfectly cer- tain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces ? Do you not think that we should look with disapproba- tion, amounting to scorn, upon the one who allowed himself to grow up without knowing a Pawn from a Knight? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune and the happiness of every one of us, and more or less of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Uni- verse, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hid- den from us. We know that His play is always fair, just and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that He never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that 108 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM sort of overflowing generosity which, with the strong, shows delight in strength. And the one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse." Are we playing the game of life or is it playing us? If a man's mind continually wanders to the reward of the game, and if he works merely for money here and a heaven beyond, then life is play- ing him, but if he works for love and the joy of do- ing, he plays the game well. Playing the game for its own sake — that is happiness. All other rewards are but pleasant by-products. Emerson said, "The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it." A man who dodges work and not only neglects but de- clines to see opportunities, who functions with his spinal cord instead of his brain, is a Pawn upon the board in the great game of life. Such a man does no more than he has to and never all that he can; he, therefore, automatically functions and bhndly participates in the nothingness of a sterile occupa- tion. He voluntarily brands himself as a Pawn, the world takes him at his own valuation, and a Pawn he remains until he is swept as a failure into oblivion. Life can be likened to any game that requires skiU and encounters resistance. James Tvson, the Australian Bushman Milhonaire, when asked about his remarkable career and accumulation of wealth, said that his life had been a game with the great desert for his adversary. "I have been fighting the desert all my life and I have won. Water has been put where there was no water, beef where there was no beef, fences where there were no fences, and MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 109 roads where there were no roads. Nothing can undo what has been done and miUions of people will be happier for it after I am long dead and for- gotten." Epictetus said that if a man enters into the game of life, he should train for the resistance which will be inevitably experienced in the encounter and be prepared for all events and set-backs. If a man does not bear adversity and opposition philosophic- ally, he is "like an athlete who, after receiving a blow, should quit the combat cold, exhibiting cow- ardice," instead of redoubling his efforts to retrieve his position and again become aggressive. What he should say upon such an occasion is, "It was for this I exercised; it was for this that I trained myself." And in regard to the life of a reasoning being, an individual, a philosopher, he likened it to participa- tion in the Olympic Games, saying, "Consider what precedes and what follows. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from enervating lux- uries, exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat or cold — ^in a word, you must give yourself up to your trainer as to a physi- cian. Then in the combat you may be thrown into a ditch, dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swal- low an abundance of dust, and, after all, lose the victory. Do you think that you can act as you do and be a philosopher ; that you can eat and drink in- temperately, be angry, be discontented, as you now are? You must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain appetites — you must part with much if you have a mind to purchase serenity, freedom and tranquillity." 110 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Life is a game with oneself, with one's fellows, and with the world. It is a game of individuals and a game between teams, all in harmony with Cosmic Purpose and nature's plan to stimulate achievement. In contests between individuals, it is a test of mental forces — not one quality or inherent faculty, but the many. A golfer goes over the course in 90, and strives to do it in 88, then in 86 ; he works to improve himself with his own record of achievement as the set goal. In a match at golf, or tennis singles, the object is to do better than your adversary. In foot- ball, or baseball, we fight for the team, every man doing his utmost, but self is subordinated for the good of the side on which one plays. Each type of game has its counterpart in hf e, and every man with red blood in his veins has the desire to succeed, to excel, to win. Confucius covered the prime thought of a desire for superiority, and particularly the praiseworthy and easily realizable desire to improve oneself, when he said, "The central idea is that every normal human being cherishes the aspiration to be- come a superior man — superior to his fellows, if possible, but surely superior to his own past and present self" If Confucius had lived in this century he would have had to admit that normal beings are a woefully small part of mankind, for in these days the average man is ambitious for power and wealth, but not necessarily for inner and true superiority; he cares httle for growth, improvement or achievement un- less it increases his salary check, gives him more time to waste and an opportunity to acquire and worship more artificialities and those externals to MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 111 which his fellows begrudgingly, but nevertheless re- ligiously, do homage. Speaking further of superi- ority and the real predominance of mind and the inner man over all externals, Confucius said, "What the superior man seeks is within himself; what the ordinary man seeks is in others. The progress of the superior man is upward; the progress of the ordinary man is downward. When one cultivates to the utmost the capabilities of his nature and exer- cises them on the principles of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. From the highest to the lowest, self-development must be deemed the root of all by every man. When the root is neglected it cannot be that what springs from it will be well ordered." Intellectual achievement, cultivation, and that superiority which comes from knowledge and good- ness and is expressive of the highest attributes of man, can be likened to a long wedge. The thin end is entered at our birth, under that part of the world we are destined to have the opportunity of trying to move, and throughout our life we are expected to keep continually and persistently hammering en- ergetically at the wedge, forcing it further and further into the world, to raise the mass a trifle and bring more and more of our own selves in contact with the forces of life. The deeper we drive the wedge, the greater our power, the greater our in- fluence, and the greater our work ; the depth of the bearing wedge is a fitting index of our growth and our attainment in the great school and workshop of hfe. VI THE cry of man vibrating through the ages has been for freedom. In the early era of tradi- tion it was for freedom from the physical domination of others; but even then he enjoyed greater freedom of thought and more distinct men- tal individuality than his successors who lived in the early Christian and mediaeval days. Before sacer- dotalism became dominant, the Medicine Man and Pagan Priest had great influence, and superstition was rampant, but still a man might enjoy freedom of thought and freedom of speech in a measure far beyond that of our later forefathers of the Middle Ages, and if he so willed it, he could enjoy mental freedom in its fullness. True mental freedom really dates from the period when philosophers, such as Thales, Xenophanes, and Pythagoras, whom Aristotle termed "Physi- cians" (in distinction from their predecessors, the "Theologians"), relegated the traditional gods and their functions to the domain of fable and explained nature by principles and causes. Could there be more real freedom of individualistic thought in the midst of a self-satisfied, intractable and unthinking humanity than was enjoyed by the ancient philoso- phers of Greece, Rome and the East.* *Zoroaster, of antiquity, Xenophanes (580-488 B.C.), Buddha (568-488 B. C), Confucius (552-479 B. C), Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.), Democritus (465-375 B.C.), Plato (427-347 B.C.), Diogenes, the Cynic (412-323 B. C), Aristotle (384-322 B. C), Zeno (350-260 B. C), Cleanthes (331-232 B.C.), Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.), Epictetus (50-130 A.D.), Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.), etc. 113 114 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM In those days, social position with worldly power had little, if any, influence upon a man's freedom and expression of thought, for Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor, while Epictetus was a lame Phrygian Greek slave, "maimed in body, an Irus in poverty, '* the property of an unworthy master. This philosopher-slave knew full well what physical torture was, — his leg was broken by his master in an exhibition of unwarranted cruelty, but he en- joyed that sublime freedom of mind and soul which caused him to say, "Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a servant ; I sleep on the ground ; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but only the earth and the heavens and one shabby cloak. And what do I want? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not with- out fear? Am I not free? When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire or even fall- ing into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?" Although bound in body and the despised chattel of a despicable freedman, surrounded by every de- pressing, ignoble and pitiable circumstance of life, Epictetus was free in soul, mind, thought and speech. He denounced materialism and the wor- ship of externals and never hesitated at any time to express the opinions and workings of his wonderful, free and unfettered mind. "There is only one thing," he said, "which is fully our ovm, — that is our will and no man can rob us of our free will." On another occasion he said, "You may put my body into prison, but my mind not even Zeus himself can MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 115 overpower." The philosophy of Epictetus is in- tensely practical and exhibits a high idealistic type of morality. He was an earnest advocate of right- eousness and mental freedom, despising the oppres- sions of soulless custom and the subtleties of an ab- struse logic. When Imperial Rome held sway, many men of servile origin rose to positions of eminence and leadership. In the great slave households, we are told that unequalled opportunities lay open to tal- ent, and the educational ladder was everywhere set up to encourage the youth to make the most of his inherent capabiUties and rise to greater responsibili- ties. Plato said that we cannot find a king who is not descended from a slave, or a slave who is not de- scended from a king, and an ancient writer attrib- uted to a discriminating philosopher the remark that many a Roman slave was far better educated than his master. The Emperor Claudius chose his ministers among his freedmen, "provoking thereby the sneers of the Roman aristocracy, but greatly advancing the good government of the Roman Empire." Vespasian, the Roman Emperor from 70 to 79 A. D., and father of the Emperors Titus and Domitian, was born 9 A. D. in the Sabine Country near Reate, the son of a plebeian tax collector. By his personal ex- ample of simphcity of life, he put to shame the lux- ury and extravagance of the Roman Nobles and initiated a marked improvement in the general tone of society. Vespasian was a plain, blunt soldier with great ability, steady purpose and strong character. He worked with success to establish good order in 116 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM a morally decadent empire, and his prime thought was to secure the highest welfare and prosperity of his subjects. He did not object to criticism, saying, "I will not kill a dog because he barks at me.'* Cornutus, the African (20-66 A. D.) , author and philosopher, and the teacher of the poets Persius and Lucan, entered the house of Annaei as a slave. Phaedrus, the Roman fabuhst, and a contemporary of Christ, was a slave, freed later by Augustine. Epictetus, in days of physical slavery, rose to prom- inence and, in mature years, to freedom. The cele- brated playwright, Terence, was brought to Rome as a Carthaginian slave. He was emancipated by his master, Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, because he showed literary and philosophical skill. Terence, the slave, was admitted, because of his tal- ent in writing, to the intimacy of learned patricians, such as Scipio, Laelius, and Furius Pilus. It has been said of Terence, "No writer in any literature who has contented himself with so limited a func- tion, has gained so great a reputation." The limita- tion here mentioned probably refers to a short period of life, presumably ended by shipwreck, as we have no authentic record of him after he was about twenty-five years of age. Marcus Porcius Cato, "the Elder", or the Censor (234-149 B. C.) , came of a plebeian family and was bred to agriculture, an occupation despised in those days. He became a great statesman, philosopher, and soldier and, notwithstanding his prosperity and power, was always the foe of luxury and lived con- sistently, the advocate of the Simple Life. When asked, during a period when boastfulness and self- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 117 praise were being commonly expressed in the erec- tion of monmnents, why so many Romans had stat- ues raised to their honor, whereas he, much more worthy, had none, Cato rephed, "I would much rather men should wonder and ask why Cato had no statue than why he had a statue." In the earlier days of Greek pre-eminence, Persa- cus, of Citium (300-243 B. C), noted Philosopher and General in command of the Acropolis at Cor- inth, was a personal servant of Zeno, but later rose to be his intimate companion and fellow lodger, prior to entering the service of Antigonus Gonatas, King of Macedonia. Cleanthes (331-232 B. C), the successor of Zeno as head of the Stoic School, was of very humble origin. He was the poet and theologian of the Stoics, and in his "Hymn to Zeus" wrote, "From ignorance deliver us, that leads The Sons of Men to sorrow and to shame. WTierefore dispel it, Father, from the soul And grant that Wisdom may our life control." Iphicrates, the great Athenian General who flourished in the early part of the fourth century B. C, was a learned man and the son of a poor and very humble shoemaker. He was a genius in devis- ing fighting equipment and accoutrements and his mihtary successes were remarkable. When Har- modius, who boasted of direct descent from the an- cient Harmodius of fame, reviled Iphicrates for his mean birth, the latter replied, "My nobility, it ap- pears by worldly standards, seems to begin in me, but yours has ended before or in you." Solon (638-558 B. C), Athenian Statesman and 118 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM great Law-giver, born a poor boy, was compelled to maintain himself from early childhood. The prod- igality and habits of his father drove the boy, at times, to dire distress, yet his genius trimnphed over great discouragements and overwhelming odds. In his early youth he wrote poems, and in later life became one of the world's most learned and honored men. Solon has been known through the ages as one of the Seven Sages. Hesiod (8th Century B. C.) , the father of Greek didactic poetry, was a humble shepherd. Cyrus the Great was of lowly and humble origin; from a soldier and statesman he rose to be the founder of the great Persian Empire and was crowned, in 538 B. C, King of Babylon and of the countries of the world. One ancient writer said that he was the son of Atradates, a poor Mardian bandit ; another main- tains that he was the son of a poor Persian shepherd, and all authorities agree that he rose from a mem- ber of an obscure Nomadic Persian tribe to be the founder of a great world Empire. Diogenes was the son of an unscrupulous swin- dler ; he was sold as a slave in Crete to Xeniades, a Corinthian. Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men and that he wished to be sold to a man who needed a master. Diogenes preached the doctrine of virtuous self-control. Virtue for him counted in the pursuit of that which is good and lasting and in the avoid- ance of so-called physical pleasures. He maintained that all the artificial growths of society appeared to be incompatible with truth and goodness, and that morahzation implies a return to nature, reality and MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 119 simplicity. Diogenes, the virtuous philosopher, pos- sessed a God-like will and complete mastery over bodily appetites; by a strange coincidence, he died in his ninetieth year, on the same day that Alexan- der, in his thirty-third year, died as a result of dis- sipation. At one of the Isthmian Games, it is said that Diogenes craved from Alexander the single boon that he, with his military triumphs, would not stand between him and the sun, to which Alexander re- plied, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Dioge- nes." Which was the greater, the Emperor or the slave; the soldier or the philosopher; the brilliant mind, poisoned by bacchanalian excesses of the de- bauchee, or the still grander mind that controlled the appetites of the lower nature and regulated the utilization of inherent forces for the highest ultimate good of the individual and society; the man who murdered in passion or the man who loved all his fellow men ; the man who conquered and ruled most of the world, but never himself, or the slave who absolutely ruled himself? After Alexander's death, his Kingdom, founded on the sword, soon lost its glory and power ; it was split up and passed away ; its existence, the fruit of ambition and avarice, had caused much suffering and given the world no semblance of lasting bene- fit. Diogenes influenced for eternity the thought of the world ; he was a man of lofty ethical ideals, keen human sympathies and a persistent, honest searcher after truth. Four hundred and sixty years later, and at a period when the records of great men were quickly lost, Epictetus said of him, "Diogenes was 120 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM so kind and so much a lover of all, that for mankind in general he willingly undertook much labor and bodily suffering. All the earth was his country, and not one particular place; when he was taken pris- oner he did not regret Athens nor his associates and friends there, but he even became familiar with the pirates and tried to improve them ; being sold after- wards, he lived in Corinth as before at Athens. Thus is freedom acquired." Diogenes, the slave, and not the arrogant Alexander, truly conquered the world. If, in the days of slavery, when men owned their kind and were owned by their fellows, youths, by sheer perseverance, work and ambition, utilizing their innate forces, rose from the humblest ranks to positions of intellectual eminence as dominant men- tal powers, and sometimes attained positions of au- thority with great worldly power, how can one say in these days of freedom that any door to progress and achievement is barred against him, if he has the talent or embryonic power to develop his forces with energy and purpose and use them with persistent and earnest determination? The life of the noblest so-called Pagan Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, closely followed that of Epictetus, the noblest of Pagan slaves, and he is our last great authority and example of Roman stoicism and an- cient philosophy. Epictetus proved that a slave, because of mental freedom, could live a life of the loftiest exaltation amidst the most sordid surround- ings ; Marcus Aurelius, commonly spoken of as "the Philosopher upon the Throne," demonstrated that an Emperor, enjoying the same freedom from tra- ditional and conventional thought, though born to MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 121 the purple, could live a life of simplicity, virtue, service and humility, expressing continually in his daily life the most admirable justice, tempered with mercy and tenderness, "What is that which is able to conduct a man?" said Marcus Aurelius. "One thing and only one — philosophy (the love of and search after truth). This consists in keeping the spirit within a man free; of doing nothing without a purpose, yet not falsely and with hypocrisy and not feehng the need of another man's doing or not doing anything. If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately ; if thou boldest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity, according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt be happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this/' Xenophanes, of Colophon, born 580 B. C, has been called the "Voltaire of Greece," and like Vol- taire, this ancient free thinker lived to a great age. Rather than submit to the Persians, after the fall of Ionia, he adopted the life of a wandering min- strel, and finally settled in Elea, in Lower Italy. Xenophanes poured forth a multitude of controver- sial works, attacked the Homeric gods, and force- fully and persistently declared that the truth should be made known to all. "There is one God, the great- est among Gods and men, not like mortal man in bodily shape or in mind." Xenophanes boldly 122 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM taught what was generally considered heresy and, as Winwood Reade says, "His views were, no doubt, distasteful to the vulgar crowd by whom he was surrounded ; and even to cultivated and imaginative minds which were sunk in sentimental idolatry, blinded by the splendour of the Homeric poems. He was, however, in no way interfered with, re- ligious persecution being unknown in the Greek world, except at Athens." The Athenians objected to the expression of untrammeled thought and the searching for truth by absolute freedom in discussion and argumenta- tion, for such was the practice outside of Athens, and Athens was too proud and self-satisfied to follow where others led. They objected to the loni- ans calling their sun a mass of red-hot iron and their gods mere creatures of a poet's fancy, so when one of their prophets, a man of strong imaginative powers which had not been calmed and guided by education, — a compound of self -ordained prophet and politician, shrilly uttered condemnatory oracles, they passed a decree that "All who denied the reli- gion of the city or who philosophized in matters appertaining to the gods, should be indicted as state criminals." Damon and Anaxagoras were banished, the tears of the great Pericles were neces- sary to save Aspasia; Socrates was put to death; Plato, his pupil, had at times to be politic in his utterances; and Aristotle, the greatest of Plato's followers, preferred unchartered freedom out of Athens to partial restraint within. And yet, throughout the Hellenic world, toleration was the universal rule and an Oracle at Delphi had ex- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 123 pressed the opinion of the Greeks when it declared that "the proper religion for each man was the reli- gion of his fatherland," and analysis, freedom of thought and toleration were advocated as virtues. Socrates (born 4*69 B. C.) taught that all popu- lar beUefs should be brought before the bar of reason; that every inquiry should be approached with a free and open mind and no decision rendered by the individual should be blindly formed by the popular opinions of the majority or influenced by the dictates of authority external to his own mind. He possessed the art of persuasive reasoning which stimulated his followers to be not only wiser, but better men. He advocated definition and the prac- tice of induction, which make larger the outlook of the mind and lead to truth. He maintained that if a man would accustom himself to think with delib- eration, to look upon the httle in its relation to the great, and attune himself to the divine will, he would go out into the world strengthened in self-restraint, in argumentative and constructive power and in active good-will to his fellow men. Socrates has given the world an example of a life of activity, geniality, kindly tolerance and self-con- trol ; and by his character, as well as by his specula- tions, he has exercised a wholesome, inspiring influ- ence that has not only reached us, who have followed him over twenty-three centuries later, — but will continue to affect for good the generations yet un- born. Cicero says that "Socrates called philosophj^ down from the heavens to earth and introduced it into the houses and cities of men, compelhng men to enquire concerning life and morals and things good 124 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and evil," and Seneca wrote that he "recalled the whole of philosophy to moral questions and said that the supreme wisdom was to distinguish between good and evil." Socrates set his fellow citizens an example of the vigorous performance of duty. As a soldier, he was brave and took part in three campaigns. As a magistrate, he discharged his duty unflinchingly, refusing on one momentous occasion and under great stress, to yield to the demands of the mob. When Athens was under the rule of the Thirty, Socrates again stood boldly against the wishes of the Rulers and the majority, and firmly refused to obey unjust orders. When condemned to death, a fate he might so easily have avoided that it seemed almost to be self-chosen, he refused to embrace an opportunity for flight which was given him, for this, he said, "would be to disobey the laws of his coun- try." After seventy years of useful living, Socrates died, drinking the State's poison cup of hemlock rather than compromise with politics. He scorned the exercise of diplomacy and would not bend his stately will, knowingly, to any error. Socrates was not an unwilling martyr to freedom of thought, but he undoubtedly was a victim of the depravity of politics and jealousy; the charges against him were that he disbelieved in the Athenian gods, that he introduced new deities and that he corrupted the youth of the city. Of his three accusers, one was a poet, another an orator and all were members of the so-called Patriot Party. At his trial, Socrates said, "If you purpose to acquit me on condition that MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 125 I abandon my search for truth, I will say, *I thank you, O Athenians, but I will obey God, who, as I believe, set me this task, rather than you, and so long as I have breath and strength I will never cease from my occupation with philosophy. I know not what death is, — it may be a good thing and I am not afraid of it. But I do know that it is a bad thing to desert one's post and I prefer what may he good to what I know to he had/ " Socrates not only advocated the indefeasible right of the conscience of the individual, but absolute mental freedom and the importance of untram- meled discussion and criticism in the search for truth. "In me you have a stimulating critic, per- sistently urging you with persuasions and re- proaches, persistently testing your opinions and try- ing to show you that you are really ignorant of what you suppose you know. Daily discussion of the matter about which you hear me conversing is the highest good for man. Life that is not tested by such discussion is not worth living." Zeno, the controversialist of the Eleatic School of Philosophy, was the inventor of the process of dem- onstration called reductio ad absurdum, and the father of dialectics and sophistry ; he was born on the Island of Cyprus in 336 B. C, the same year in which Alexander became King of Macedon. Zeno was influenced in early youth by the reading of "Socratic books," and he journeyed to Athens to seek out and be taught by a man who best repre- sented the character of the old master. Zeno was referred to Crates of Thebes and from him absorbed the fundamentals of philosophy which he afterwards 126 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM developed. He founded the School of Stoicism, which embodied the fundamental dogmas of what was known as Cynicism — that the individual alone is really existent, that virtue is the supreme good, and that the wise man, though a beggar, is truly a king. Zeno maintained that the ideal state must embrace the whole world and he built, not upon the changing tide of opinion, but upon the rock of knowledge and inmiutable truth. He beheved that the ideal would ultimately be reahzed by the exer- cise of individualistic, human reason and the practice of philosophy; he maintained that virtue, the su- preme good, is knowledge, and knowledge is within the reach of man. Alexander had proven for all time the absolute impossibihty of ever procuring unity and harmony of interests by physical external force, symbolized by conquest and the sword. When the ideal state of Zeno is established, no man shall say, "I am of Athens or of Sidon," but "I am a citizen of the world." The Stoic State was to be world-wide, a cosmopolis, and we are told that when Socrates or Diogenes was asked, "Of what city are you?" he replied, "Of the universe," and affirmed that he was a member, not of a class or city, but of a world-wide society in which all distinctions of race, caste and class were subordinated to the sense of kinship and brotherhood. Its laws, said Zeno, must be those which are prescribed by nature, not by convention; it will have no images or temples, for these are un- ^ worthy of the nature of Deity ; no sacrifices, because God cannot be pleased, appeased or bribed by costly gifts; no law courts, for its citizens will be just and MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 127 do one another no harm; no statues, for the virtue of its inhabitants will be its adornment. The world- state would not be held together either by force or by state-craft, but by good-will. Love, he affirmed, shall be master throughout the state, being, as it were, a God cooperating for the good of the whole. He believed that the coming of the perfect state was hindered by the narrow-mindedness of the peo- ple and the zealous egoism and dogmatization of be- liefs on the part of philosophers and those in au- thority. Zeno was eager to learn from all sources and strove to be perpetually receptive to truth. He journeyed to the abode of Stilpo, and we are told that Crates tried to drag him back by force to his own School, to which attitude Zeno retorted that argument would be more powerful. "The best handle of philosophers is that by the ear; persuade me if you can, and lead me that way ; if you use vio- lence, my body will stay with you, but my soul will be with Stilpo." Zeno taught with the Cynics that "Example is more potent than precept," and "Virtue is the only good," but he enthroned "reason" and affirmed that as the Logos or divine mind rules in the universe, so should it also in the individual. Those who live by a single and harmonious principle possess divine favor and an even flow of life; those who follow conflicting practices are ill-starred. In consistency of purpose, in harmony with law and the Cosmic Ideal, there is found virtue, and virtue is sufficient for happiness, not needing any external support. Life, therefore, should be lived "consist- ently with nature." 128 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM The Academy had been founded in Athens, by Plato, in 380 B. C. Zeno founded his School about 300 B. C, and his followers were first known as Zenonians, then as Stoics from the "Picture Porch," in which he delivered his lectures and which was dec- orated with paintings by Polygnotus. At the very time that Zeno was elaborating the doctrines of the Porch, another School of eminence was established by Epicurus (341-207 B. C), in his gardens at Athens. Epicurus maintained that pleasure is the end of life and with this belief he combined the atomistic philosophy of Democritus. His teaching was materialistic and absolutely opposed to that of Zeno ; naturally the Schools were in sharp and con- tinual conflict. About 270 B. C, Arcesilaus, an old school fellow of Zeno, became the head of the Aca- demic School, and promptly directed his teaching against that of Zeno and Epicurus. Considering the attitude of the Athenians in the days of Socrates, it is interesting to note that the conflict between the Academy, Porch and Garden Schools of Philosophy, which greatly surpassed all others in importance, did not embitter the political life of Athens. We are told that the citizens watched with amusement the competition of the Schools for numbers and influence and drew their profits from the crowd of foreigners who were drawn to Athens by its growing fame as a center of adult education. To the heads of the Schools they were ready to pay every mark of respect. To Zeno they gave the keys of the city and presented him with a gold crown and a bronze statue, although he, with Cleanthes, the religious poet-philosopher, de- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 129 clined the citizenship of Athens lest they should be thought to hold cheap the places of their birth. Zeno died in the year 264 B. C. when 72 years of age, and the resolution which the Athenians passed in his honor, just prior to his death, deserves record because of its contrast with that by which their pred- ecessors had condemned the noble Socrates only one hundred and thirty-five years before : — "Whereas, Zeno, the son of Mnaseas from Citium, has spent many years in the city in the pursuit of philosophy; and has been throughout a good man in all respects; and has encour- aged the young men, who resorted to him, in virtue and tem- perance, and has sped them on the right path; and has made his own life an example to all men, for it has been consistent with the teachings he has set forth: Now, it seems good to the people of Athens to commend Zeno, the son of Mnaseas from Citium, and to crown him with a golden crown (in accord- ance with law) for his virtue and temperance, and to build him a tomb on the Ceramicus at the public expense. And the people shall elect five Athenian citizens to provide for the making of the crown and the building of the tomb. And the City Clerk shall engrave this vote on two pillars, and shall set one up in the Academy and one in the Lyceum. And the Treasurer shall make due allotment of the expense, that all men may see that the people of Athens honor good men both in their lifetime and after their death." All the technical charges brought against Socrates hold far more forcibly against Zeno, but the advan- tages of the philosophical schools to the city had become clearer, and it has been well said, "Who will may also read in the decree a belated mark of respect to the memory of Socrates." The same condition of mental and religious tolerance evidenced in Athens and elsewhere in the days of Zeno and conspicuous in the whole known world outside of Athens during 130 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and prior to the lifetime of Socrates, was later reflected in the Roman Empire. In 155 B. C, we find that the heads of three of the world's greatest philosophical schools, with many followers, were in Rome vigorously expounding their respective theo- ries before enormous, interested and tolerant audi- ences. Diogenes, of Salucia, represented the Stoics, Critolaus, the Peripatetic School founded by Aris- totle, and Carneades, the Academy. All forcefully lectured, extolling the reasonableness and logic of the principles which their Schools had accepted; and their profound depth of mental enquiry, with abun- dant, untrammeled thought and individualistic freedom of expression, made quite an impression on the leading minds of Rome which were inclined to be receptive, notwithstanding the professed alle- giance to mythical pagan gods. Philosophical dis- cussion and argument have always pointed the way to truth; superstition, dogmatized theology and acknowledgment of external authority have, from time immemorial, been deep shadows in the world, a veritable night of darkness and slumber for con- structive reason and the exercise of God-given men- tality with its upbuilding power. Cieanthes, of Assos (331-232 B. C), who suc- ceeded Zeno as head of the School of Stoicism, was a "Man of the people," trained in hardship and will- ing endurance; in personal character he was a worthy successor to Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno. We are told that "he drew water by night that he might study philosophy by day." Cieanthes often used verse "to express clearly his meaning and win access to men's ears." He affirmed that we should MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 131 "look not at common opinion and be not eager to be wise of a sudden ; fear not the chatter of the many, in which there is no judgment and no modesty; for the crowd does not possess shrewd, just and fair judgment, but amongst the few you may, per- chance, find this." Chrysippus (280-206 B. C.) , who followed Clean- thes as head of the Porch School, expressed the same contempt for mass opinions and paid tribute to the individualistic reasoning power and freedom of thought ; in answer to the question as to why he had not studied with the popular Aristo, he said, "Had I followed the many, I should never 'have become a philosopher." The Stoic philosopher was well dis- ciphned, intellectually and morally, and the world has great need of such men today. Under all cir- cumstances he must speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Arnold says, "He could hold back nothing from his audience, even though his words might be offensive to their religious opin- ions, their patriotic feelings or their sense of decency; he could add no word which would touch their sympathies or kindle their indignation in the direction he himself might wish. He had always before his eyes the example of Socrates' defence before the Athenian jury." The Stoic appeared before his audience as a well-balanced, brave and honest speaker, void of all artifices, scorning emo- tionalism and the cheap tricks of suggestion — refus- ing to take advantage of the power of mob psy- chology. Gellius tells us that Diogenes, who had himself probably done the most to elaborate the 132 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Stoic theory of style, was noted "as a quiet and self- restrained speaker." The Stoics maintained that philosophy conflicted with common opinion, but as Cleanthes said, it was not contrary to reason. Cicero tells us that they taught 1. That only what is honorable is good, 2. That virtue is sufficient for happiness, 3. That right actions and offenses are equal, 4. That all foolish men are mad, 5. That the wise man alone is free and every foolish man a slave, 6. That the wise man alone is rich. The Stoic philosophy, before it became contami- nated with theology and confined by dogmatism, was, in its essence, the rehgion of mental freedom. When the great Chinese teacher, Confucius, died in his 73rd year (479 B. C), his last words were regrets that none of the rulers then living possessed the sagacity requisite to a proper appreciation of true ethical philosophy. He died a natural, peace- ful death, unhonored but convinced that his pleas for mental freedom, truth, justice, industry, self- denial, moderation and public duty would yet stir humanity to its very depths. Emperor Tsin Shi- hwang made desperate efforts to destroy by fire the writings of Confucius, but they live today, exhort- ing men to be free and superior beings. Confucius has set forth, probably more lucidly than any other thinker, ancient or modern, the essentials of true morality, mental honesty, mental freedom, mental integrity — the only true philosophical attitude, for MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 133 it never seeks to close the door of the mind to truth. "When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to acknowledge that you do not know it — this is knowledge." Confucius preached the freedom and domination of the human mind, he recognized the evils of unre- strained animal passion, ministered to instead of controlled by a human mind, which accordingly be- comes a slave instead of master. ''That whereby man differs from the lower animals is little. Most people throw it away, the superior man preserves it." Confucius was unhampered by customs, popu- lar opinions or traditions. "He had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary predeterminations, no obstinacy and no egoism." He taught that there is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity upon honest and searching self-examination. Con- fucius resigned from a political office, under the Duke of Lu, because he would not be associated with any man whose mind was so enslaved to his body that he became guilty of immoral dissipation. Guatama, the Buddha, "the awakened," or "the enlightened one," was a young Indian Prince named Sakya Muni, who preached obedience to reason and universal benevolence. His teachings have been termed the Rehgion of Pessimism, but Buddhism was a revolt against national rivalries, ritualistic observances and polytheistic beliefs. Buddha preached his so-called heterodox doctrines without molestation and with no conspicuous restraint affecting his freedom of thought and expressions of his individualistic beliefs. Buddhism owed its suc- cess to its CathoHc spirit and its beautiful morality. 134 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM It taught that the happiness of men depended not upon their birth but upon their actions and their thought. Buddhism ridiculed and combated the prevaihng Indian behef that the Brahmins were the aristocracy of heaven and it became the rehgion of justice, morahty and freedom for all. In the ser- mon of Benares, after the famous discussion of sor- row, Buddha said, "This is the holy truth of the Path to the Removing of Sorrow; it is the Holy Path of Eight Branches, which are called Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Word, Right Act, Right Life, Right Effort, Right Meditation and Right Subjection or Annihilation of Self." We also read in the Dhammapada, precepts that, if followed by professing worshippers of God, would put an absolute end to wars and the kindred evils of modern life. "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time ; hatred ceases by love ; this is an old rule. Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good ; let him overcome the greedy by liber- ality and the liar by truth." The Gymnosophists, who taught philosophy to the people of India, were generally Buddhist Monks, of great courage, sympathy, gentleness, humility and high ethical standards. Plutarch tells us that Alexander the Great captured ten of these Indian philosophers who, it was claimed, had been instru- mental in causing S abbas to revolt. He decided to torment them, put different questions to all and "put to death the man who answered him the worst and so the rest in order." The first was asked whether he thought the living or the dead to be the most numerous. He answered, "The living, for the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 135 dead are not" The second was asked, "Which breeds the largest animals, the sea or the land?" The answer was, "The land, for the sea is only part of it." The third was asked, "Which is the cleverest of animals?" He answered, "That which man has not yet discovered." The fourth was asked why he made Sabbas rebel. He replied, "Because I wish him to either live or to die with honor." The fifth was asked which he thought was first, the day or the night. He answered, "The day was first by one day." Alexander now asked the sixth how he could make himself most beloved. He answered, "By being powerful and yet not feared by his subjects." Of the remaining three, the first was asked how a man could become a god. He answered, "By doing that which it is impossible for a man to do." The next was asked which was the stronger, hf e or death. He answered, "Life, because it endures such terrible suffering." The last being asked how long it was honorable for a man to live answered, "As long as he thinks it better for him to live than to die." We are told that the free, untrammeled thought and quick responses of the humble but courageous Gym- nosophists amazed Alexander and he let them go unharmed. They valued as dross the external things in hfe which Alexander worshipped, and although poor as regards wealth, almost naked and declining not only the luxuries but even the conveniences of life, they were powerful and most influential leaders of the people solely because they used their endowed intellectual faculties. Thus, in pagan days, individ- ualistic reasoning saved the lives of men and mental originality was honored. Later, in the Christian 136 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Era, an opinion contrary to that established by- authority meant persecution, suffering and death. Christ died a martyr to truth four hundred and thirty-two years after Socrates; He was murdered by religious fanatics after the Law had found "in Him, no fault at all." Christ was a carpenter by trade and was urged by prophetic call to leave His workshop and go forth into the world preaching the gospel which He had received. He was a man of the people who had received but little scholastic training, but His wisdom came from indwelhng knowledge that was of the spirit rather than devel- oped from the operation of the physical senses. After the death of this greatest prophet and sim- plest philosopher of all time, an era of Mental Re- pression was inaugurated; mankind gradually per- mitted their minds to be dogmatized and their souls fettered. History shows that knowledge grew in ancient days when speculation was perfectly free; and in modern times, since restrictions on enquiry have been removed, knowledge has advanced with relatively astounding velocity. From the sixteenth century to this day, nearly all important historical and epoch-making events bear some relation to the strug- gle of man for freedom of thought and rehef from early Christian and mediasval mental thralldom. As Bury has said, "A long time was needed to arrive at the conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mis- take and only a part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far as I can judge, is the most important ever reached by man." The Christian era has seen a continual struggle between arbitrary MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 137 authority and reason. Authority has employed physical and moral violence, legal coercion, ostra- cism and social displeasure, whereas reason's only weapon has been argument. Reason cannot recog- nize arbitrary prohibition and barriers without being untrue to herself. She refuses to submit to dwarf- ing bondage and mental serfdom, but boldly asserts her absolute rights throughout the whole domain of thought and the universe of experience. The greatest and most valuable achievement of modern civilization is the estabhshment of liberty for thought and discussion, and although this priv- ilege may be and is at times abused by unanchored minds and fanatical enthusiasts, nevertheless, as a condition making for social progress and the devel- opment of humanity, it is essential and should be deemed fundamental. It is well to note, however, that many men have fanatically and bhndly fought for what they were pleased to term freedom of thought, whereas they could peaceably have at- tained and enjoyed real mental freedom, had they willed it so and not been so stubbornly engrossed in the pursuit of what, in reality, was a mere chimera — a hallucination of an uneducated and prejudiced mind. During the Christian era, it seems as if every freedom gained by man has been obtained with a reaction of some form of slavery ; and history is full of acts of enslaving intolerance on the part of those who have successfully fought for tolerance. Mental slavery exists today, more blighting in many of its phases than the curse of physical slavery. At every period during the so-called Age of Culture, the 138 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM people who have really cared about reason and indi- viduality of thought have been a woefully small minority. Spencer said, "It really seems as if the aim of the great majority was to get through life with the least possible outlay of thought." If we do not use our endowed faculties and de- velop our mental powers, exercise our brains and practice reason, we become puppets on Hfe's stage, the sport of circumstance, of suggestion and errone- ous beliefs. We accept the opinions of others with- out weighing or dissecting them; we believe that which is told us without making any attempt at veri- fication and without using our innate faculties to peer into its reasonableness ; such mental inertia and somnolence of mind mar our development and give it a direction which does violence to our fun- damental tendencies. There is a great difference between real freedom of thought and arbitrary compulsion tending to compel every one else to beheve another's beliefs. It is also desirable to draw the hne of distinction between freedom of thought and freedom of action ; the former affects oneself, the latter may affect the freedom and happiness of others and must, at times, be regulated for the good of society. The free man is the true individual who uses his cerebral gray matter under the direction of his personal and domi- nating will ; who thinks and reasons for himself and who forms individual opinions on all matters per- taining to life. "The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom." Freedom is to be found in persistent seeking for truth and in the expression of it, in harmony with nature and Cosmic MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 139 Law. Payot has well said that it is in this that free- dom consists — in the infusion of one's personal atti- tude into the realities of life. "To be free means, therefore, that one realizes the laws which register the exterior and interior realities of life, and that one realizes oneself. If these two conditions are not ful- filled, the complete and harmonious development of personality is impossible." VII ALEXANDER III (356-323 B. C), sur- named the Great, is usually pictured as a man of superhuman force, indomitable wiU and unprecedented ability; but he was really an unstable man of great but unharnessed and uncon- trolled power. He was cursed with a vanity which amounted to madness and his egotistical assumption of the honors of a god could not fail but prove odious to the simple and natural Macedonians. He could not endure any form of criticism or even tol- erate candidness, and under the influence of wine or contradiction, was subject to fits of ungovernable rage. His character reminds one of Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde;" — a man of extremes and irreconcilable contrasts — sublime in strength, pitiful in weakness ; his virtues and vices were great ; his magnanimity and his cruelty were both without bounds. Alexander had a powerful but unregulated men- tality that was continually flying off tangent into space ; his will was not strong enough to control and discipline his mind and by so doing, create a person- ality stable, poised, positive and virtuous. If Alex- ander, with his unequalled opportunities, had devel- oped a strong will to control his life and actions, he might have lived an average span of fruitful years and completely changed the features of the world 141 142 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and the course of history; Italy would not have become united under the power of Rome, Carthage would have been Greek, the Roman Empire would never have been born and Latin would probably have remained a "mere rustic dialect," finally pass- ing away with the establishment of Greek as the reigning language. Alexander's success, which consisted of the con- quest of Persia, was made possible by his father, Philip II, a pre-eminently practical genius, who, by bribery and intrigue combined with some force, had made himself President of the Greek Confed- eration, prepared and disciplined to perfection a tremendous army of natural fighters and skillfully worked out a plan of campaign "to avenge the ancient wrongs of Greece." Alexander inherited his father's throne, army, purpose and program for the subjugation of Persia, but history tells us that the young man, consumed with a most unnatural, unfilial ambition, fretted during his murdered father's last years, fearful that Philip would have the glory of working out the well-laid plans and that he, Alexander, would be left no opportunity for great achievement and the impress of his own name upon the world. Moreover, because Alex- ander was somewhat estranged from his father and his succession to the throne imperiled, due to his father's second marriage and the ascendency of Cleopatra's kinsmen, suspicion for the responsibility of the foul deed at Aegae naturally fell upon Alex- ander himself. Alexander was not the only claim- ant to the vacant throne and before the crown was attained, he traveled through much blood, putting MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 143 to death an innocent, helpless infant brother and cousin. Alexander made one historic journey of conquest and his great cause for alarm, during his Persian campaign, was the fact that he could not control his own countrymen and soldiers. The nearer men lived to him and the closer they came in contact with his own unstable, erratic personality and saw at close hand the workings of his dissolute passions and nauseating egoism, the more dissatisfied and mentally discontented they became. Grote has said, "He had none of that sense of correlative right and obligation which characterized the free Greek." Alexander was very sensitive about the fact that he had only reaped the harvest planned by other minds and had not passed the frontiers fixed by the Persians and their great Kings, Cyrus the Great and Darius; — he attempted once, and dismally failed. The commonly repeated story that he con- quered one world and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, is warped and untrue. Arabia Felix, at the mouth of the Red Sea; Ethi- opia, the reputed land of gold ; Carthage, the great Republic of the West; Spain, the land of silver; Sicily, which Athens could not conquer ; Rome and the Italian cities, which Alexander's uncle had endeavored in vain to subjugate, not to mention Northern Europe, China, India, the Steppes of Tartary and the deserts of Africa, were all still out- side the domain of Alexander's Empire; many of them were defiant and unawed by the man who had sworn to blot out the word "barbarian" from the vocabulary of the Greeks, but whose prime instru- 144 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM merit for achievement was a fighting force of virile Macedonian barbarians "with the strength and sinews of wild and courageous mountaineers." In his youth, Alexander being nimble and light- footed, his father Philip encouraged him to run in the Oljonpic Race. His scornful reply was, "I would if there were kings to race with me." In the campaign against Darius, he replied to Darius' offer of arbitration in the interest of peace, by say- ing, "The earth could not bear two suns, neither can it tolerate two kings." Alexander was not a patriot but an egoist. He was too ignorantly selfish and vainglorious to be truly great. He expressed, at times, admirable qualities and a magnificent spirit, but he fought for Alexander, not for Greece. One historian has well said that his ambition was to make Greece Persian and not Persia Greek; hence his magnanimity to the conquered Persians, an attitude necessary for their personal allegiance to himself, for the maintenance of the Empire and the further reahzation of his ambitions. The natural subservi- ence of the Persians appealed to the arrogant Alex- ander, as it always does to a weak and shallow man. He ordered that the ceremony of prostration should be performed by all in his presence and proclaimed himself the Son of Jove, giving the Oracle of Jupi- ter Ammon of the Sahara as his authority for this staggering pretext. When Alexander's uncle invaded Italy and was beaten back, we are told that he sarcastically de- clared that "Alexander had fallen upon the cham- bers of the women but he on the chambers of the men." The statement, idly quoted by Alexander's MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 145 bosom friend and companion, Clitus, during a drunken revel at Samarcand, resulted in a violent upheaval of uncontrollable passion and the murder by Alexander of his most trusted friend and one to whom he had previously owed his life. Alexander murdered not only his closest associate in passion, accentuated by inebriation, but he destroyed him- self — his uncontrolled mind and unlicensed appetite running riot with a weak and vacillating will, thus undermining his constitution and causing his un- timely death. The self-proclaimed god was not sufficiently im- mortal to withstand the intoxication and constitu- tional ravages of alcohol. He was embalmed, placed in a golden casket, and buried with pomp in his own city of Alexandria, but is it not a travesty on human greatness and Alexander's assumption of God-like worth, that a Ptolemy ( descendant of one of his own Generals) later removed the body from its golden coffin, used the precious metal for his own degen- erate ends and re-entombed the royal body in a sim- ple casket? As Marcus Aurelius truly said, "Death put Alexander of Macedon and his stable boy on a par." The story of Alexander, this outwardly great but inwardly lamentably unstable man, is the greatest lesson in history of the workings of a weak will, unable to control and regulate for good, nature's mental endowment of great dominant human forces; tremendous power pregnant with possibili- ties for world's service. Here is high pressure steam, intense draft, raging inner fires, but without a steady hand on the throttle operating with cool and 146 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM definite purpose. Safety valves persistently pop with passion ; the springs through constant use lose their resilience ; the inner pressure becomes greater than the body or boiler shell can house or withstand, and then comes the catastrophe, — that death and sudden himian extinction caused by the very forces which were designed to be creative and intended to be utilized in driving the world nearer to the goal of Cosmic perfection. Napoleon has been called the Alexander of mod- ern times, but Napoleon had a far stronger will than Alexander, although he relentlessly struggled to achieve his goal through blood and in arrogant defi- ance of all virtues. Napoleon's ideal was a strong delusion founded on error and contemptuous self- ishness, and the falseness of his heart impregnated all his dealings with others. "False as a bulletin" became a proverb in Napoleon's time, and whatever goodness and truth there was in the "Petit Cap- oral" had been supplanted by error and vicious, supercilious charlatanry by the time he gained Em- perorship. He bridled the power that had been expressed in that horrible but great French Revolu- tion and used it for his own aggrandizement. He was determined to found "his dynasty." Self and false ambition were his gods. He degenerated to self-deception and, as Carlyle says, wrapt his per- verted self in "a paltry patchwork of theatrical paper mantles, tinsel and mummery, thinking to make it more real thereby." With his soul steeped in blood and blackened with error, he demanded of democracy a ceremonial coronation and as Augereau said, there was "wanting nothing to complete the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 147 pomp of it — nothing but the half milhon of men who had died to put an end to all that." Napoleon believed that with his indomitable will draped in worldly grandeur, a commanding embodi- ment of authority and power, he could dupe all men, crucify truth, and live glorified and unrivaled on the clouds of falseness. But such a career is by the very nature of things doomed to be brief and transitory, "a flash as of gun powder wide-spread; a blazing up of dry heath. For an hour, the whole Universe seems wrapped in smoke and flame ; but only for an hour. It goes out, the Universe with its old moun- tains and streams, the stars above, and kind soil beneath is still there." As Alexander fought for Alexander and not for Greece or Macedonia, so Napoleon thought not of France but of Napoleon. France was great, "but was not he France?" The career of Alexander typifies the horrors of duality and instabihty of personality due to a vacil- lating, weak and undirected will; that of Napoleon symbolizes the sufferings and evils which follow in the wake of a powerful mind, wrongly and persist- ently directed in the course of error, by an ambi- tious, selfish, unscrupulous and dominant will. "Be of courage," said the Duke of Weimar to his friends and followers, "this Napoleonism cannot last, for it is founded on injustice and falsehood." Carlyle truly said that injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest ; the heavier such diabolical pow- ers as Napoleonism and militarism bear tyran- nously down upon this world, stifling that which is noble and God-like in man and haughtily trampling a heart-racked, bleeding and suffering humanity 148 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM under foot, the fiercer will always be the world's recoil and the reaction against oppression and soul- dwarfing error. Napoleon experienced St. Helena instead of the realization of his dream of Emperor of the World. His legacy to Europe was militarism, the greatest curse that a viperous vindictiveness could have con- ceived. Until militarism is banished to oblivion, as was Napoleon, Europe and the whole world will continue to be cursed by the deviHsh fermentation of avarice and falseness which emanated from one human mind, forced into and maintained in the path- way of depravity and calamitous error by a power- ful and diabolical will. We speak today of the Napoleons of Finance and Industry, ignorantly using the term in praise rather than censure. Men who achieve conspicuous success due to indomitable will power, concentration, main- tained purpose and hard work, are great in so far as their purpose is great or their work of lasting good. If the world is a gainer by their work and if human- ity will ultimately benefit by their efforts, then it is an insult to brand such men "Napoleons." If, how- ever, their true ambition in life is selfish; if they have builded on hes and falseness; if they strive to dupe, oppress, cheat and tyrannize within and with- out the law ; if might to them makes right ; if Mam- mon is their God (whether they worship money for the power it gives or for the gratification of appe- tite) ; if their will is driving them relentlessly along the road of error, then they may be fittingly stigma- tized as "Napoleons," and the world would be better MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 149 off if St. Helenas of banishment and isolation could be found to receive them. There are many more Alexanders than Napo- leons in the world, for few wills are sufficiently- depraved to persist in driving a human mind ruth- lessly forward against a man's higher nature. Irres- olute wills and fluctuating minds are met with in every walk of hf e ; and passion, temper and explo- siveness are common in the peasant and unskilled laborer, as well as in rulers and world leaders. The more mental a man's occupation, the stronger his intellect should become and the more purposeful and strengthened his will. The more unnatural a man's mode of living — and undue exercise of brain at the expense of bodily muscles and organs is unnatural, even if required by the artificial conditions sur- rounding the modern life — the more nervous his temperament, the greater becomes the tendency to instability, high tension and the snapping of unduly keyed-up strings. An exhibition of temper is a temporary relapse from a human personality gov- erned by will to the condition of a brute of a lower order, a sort of atavism or reversion to an ancient, ancestral characteristic ; it is also insanity, mind un- soundness, a defiance of mental, rational and uni- versal law. Fortunately for humanity, the mental life not only keys up the nerves to high tension, but it tends to develop the will to control the nerves. A truly great man is one with a strong will, rightly directed, that controls his mind, regulating the steam pressure and throttle valve so that the safety valves never pop ; and thus the energy is con- served and the inner power is used in the perform- 150 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM ance of useful work. Temper is weakness, passion is brutish, explosiveness of personality is stupid, irrational and inefficient. Much that is excused un- der the designation of "righteous indignation" is corroding and injurious. Any habit or tendency that detrimentally affects the constitution and the inner life is founded on error; true indignation is expressed by calmness, determination and work to overcome a cause, and not by the useless and often dramatic blowing off of steam into the surrounding atmosphere. Passion is error, depreciating and en- feebling, whether it be falsely glorified by expres- sion in the interest of virtue, or condemned as an attribute of inherent vice. The suppression of the outward explosive expression of inner intensity of feeling is the first step toward elimination of the useless expenditure of power ; the next step is to be inwardly poised and with sanity see things in their proper perspective, refusing to be consumed by wrath that can only weaken and lessen one's effec- tiveness. The first real step toward reform comes when one learns to expend all his energy and force outward, to control as well as eradicate, working with sympathy and effective purpose to overcome error in actual combat, rather than to expend one's energy in fruitless turmoil with the weakening of one's forces, either dramatically on life's open stage or behind the scenes in the sanctity of the human mind. A strong, efficient and purposeful will de- rides passion and explosions of every kind. The wiU directing the human mind toward the goal of Cosmic Truth needs all its power for prog- ress and it, therefore, screws down the springs of the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 151 safety valve and scientifically manages as well as directs and utilizes its forces. Alexanders of pas- sion, duality and vacillation are hard to get along with in the fields and workshops of life, but Alexan- ders in executive chairs are the curse of modern industrial and commercial life. An Alexander ever seeks to inflict his own whimsical mind upon his col- leagues and subordinates. There is only one way to do a thing and that is his way, notwithstanding the fact that Alexander's way on Tuesday is not the Alexandrian way dictated on Monday. Alexanders love the limelight, but it must be exclusively focused and kept shining on themselves. Like Nero of Rome, they tighten and slacken the strings of gov- ernment to suit their humor of the moment; and their bestowal of praise or censure, approbation or disapproval, a smile or a frown, depends not upon one's conformity to truth and rightness, but upon the Alexandrian capricious egoism, its selfish, re- stricted and warped view of a situation or the untu- tored propensities of the moment. Truth, goodness and rightness are definite, posi- tive, eternal and yet tractable, and, to a great extent, reachable, but the will of an Alexander is so fickle, whimsical and capricious that what is heralded as the goal today, is rejected tomorrow. An Alexan- drian mind demands the subservience of all his fol- lowers and subordinates, for is he not infallible — the Son of Jove ? Such a man in executive power insists upon the subjection and serfdom of every will that comes under his domination ; and in this way, great mental forces designed to contribute to the world's 152 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM progress are enslaved and enchained in deplorable and humiliating bondage. A truly great leader encourages the growth and strives to develop all the latent as well as the appar- ent forces of his colleagues, assistants and working staff, down the line to the humblest toiler. His will is firm and strong in direction as well as power ; the goal is in harmony with Cosmic Truth; egoism is subordinated to an idealism of achievement which demands the highest ultimate good. He is not fanat- ical, but sane and balanced — not a faddist, but a sound, rational, but expanding conservative; his decisions are based on justice, not on hysterical emo- tion, passion, or caprice ; his honor is not built upon the shifting sands of policy, but upon the rock of eternal, immutable truth. His attitude is never hypercritical, captious or sophistical, but he seeks to express himself by logic and explainable calm reason, tempered with tolerance and human sym- pathy. Such a leader is never perfect but is per- fecting; he knows his own limitations and is satis- fied if he is pointing right and is using all his capa- bilities and inherent power to drive or lift himself, his followers and co-workers upward into larger truth and world usefulness. Napoleon fought for democracy and demanded a crown for his reward. Cromwell fought for free- dom from oppression, for deliverance from the idol- atry of externals and the worship of hollow shams, for Puritanism and democracy with free represen- tation of the people. Being "commander-in-chief of all the forces raised and to be raised," he later used his army of Ironsides to make himself virtually MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 153 King of England, opposed free suffrage and numer- ical majority and dismissed the parliaments of the people. Cromwell fought, deposed and murdered a wretched, weak, depraved King for democracy's sake, only in victory to reign as a despotic autocrat and absolute dictator, with drawn sword as well as open Bible. Thus do strong men at times build towers of arrogance on foundations of error, while blinding their followers with pictures of truth and lulling their own brains to lethargy and somnolence with fine sounding words. The human will, vacillating and chameleon-hued, is in continual combat between truth and error, virtue and vice, life and death. The strong will directed in the channel of error is opposed to all that is noble, uplifting and eternal in life. The well directed human will that, compass-like, points to the heavenly star and strives, encourages and grows to attain, is an attribute of the divine in man. The human soul with such a will, be its material mind great and complex, or small and relatively simple, is worthy to be called "A Son of Jove," if such an eminently inspiring and glorious designation may be given to mortal man. VIII THE world of opportunity is free to all. Past every man surges the stream of life, giving him at some time or other an opportunity to utilize at least a part of his endowed mental equip- ment, and in its exercise and expenditure he con- tributes little or much to the worth-while work of humanity. Every man in some way, at some time, can use to advantage all of his inherent faculties; the Goddess Fate, however, does not advertise ap- proach of opportunities but seems rather to find diaboHcal enjoyment in weaving the net of des- tiny around the anchored feet of blinded men. To a very few, opportunity is ushered in with a blare of trumpets, but the vast majority of men have to hunt out and learn to quickly discern their chance, embrace it and cHng to it as it rushes by, phantom- like or enveloped in haze. Sometimes, as in the chamber of our minds we attend to our daily duties, a gray-haired man named Opportunity, resembling Father Time and as old as Mars, bangs at the door and vociferously announces the passing of the vehicle which he drives toward the goal of worth- while achievement; but more often he flits by, shadow-like, a mere spectre, and without any an- nouncement of his passage, is gone. "Opportunity comes," said the old proverb, "with feet of wool, treading soft." One must have the instinct of an 165 156 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM artist to feel and understand the approach of this good genius. Opportunities are not labeled and never present themselves stamped with their relative values. The same opportunity to obtain and achieve is never ex- actly duplicated. Each chance rejected, either volitionally or through indifference, never returns — it has gone for all time. The opportunities pre- sented in youth do not recur in mature life or old age; possibihties for achievement do not revolve in cycles, for time in the aggregate works very dif- ferently from the clock, the moon's phases, the earth's rotation and its yearly orbit journey, the harvest and the tides. Achievements of youth form a foundation upon which to build the glories of age. The Japanese have always appreciated the fact that honor early won grows with advancing years and that "an op- portunity presented and unimproved in youth, re- turns not in age." In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of lyeyasu, in spite of his earn- est entreaties to be put in the vanguard of the at- tacking force, was placed, because of his youth, in the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept so bitterly that an old coun- selor tried to console him with all the resources at his command. "Take comfort, Sire," he said, "at the thought of the long future before you. In the many years that you may live there will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself." The boy fixed his indignant gaze upon the man and said, "How foolishly you talk! Can ever my fourteenth year come 'round again?" MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 157 To embrace every opportunity and take full ad- vantage of circumstances as they unfold themselves, the mind's vision must be perpetually centered on the chambers where "insight" dwells. We should live life with all our creative power in the present, but with our psychical vision ever peering as a searchlight into the haze ahead. Eternal watchful- ness, coupled with the insight which understands and the energy eager to perform, is the essential of true and lasting success. The average man must carve out his own future and this can only be done by preparation, diligence and the prompt embrac- ing of opportunities. Rochefoucauld said that we ought not so much to apply ourselves to create op- portunities as to make use of those which present themselves. An individual cannot create oppor- tunities, but he can struggle to find them and in clutching threads, invisible to others, and grasping leads to usefulness out of the surrounding ether, that others do not see or value rightly, he will prove to be a wise and successful man. Opportunities of some type or other are ever around us ; they whisper or thunder in every man's ear and pass in some way and at some time every man's door. The alert and energetic respond and become successful ; the deaf and irresolute remain in- active and gravitate from passiveness to failure. Saint Beuve said of Joseph Joubert, the French moralist (1754-1824), who though wonderfully talented has left little to posterity, that he lived in the region between "The time has not come yet," and "The time has passed." Opportunities came and passed by unimproved, as the spirit to do and the 158 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM time to do, warred with each other. Coleridge was a man of genius and gigantic intellectual capacity, but Charles Lamb, mourning his death, wrote to a friend and said that Coleridge "left about forty- thousand treatises on Metaphysics and Divinity and not one of them complete." No man should grieve over lost opportunities to such a degree that his usefulness is lessened in the present; no man should minimize present oppor- tunities looking for still greater ones in the future. The past may be a good teacher, but to live either in the past or in the future is dangerous. Small or apparently insignificant opportunities for service, accepted in the present, prepare one to successfully improve greater opportunities in the future. Many men believe that an opportunity comes only as a revelation, such as the angel appearing to Paul and the voices heard by Joan of Arc. The imagination may produce such revelations, but opportunities of moment to our souls lie in the life path of every man — of the king and the humble peasant, the scholar and the so-called uneducated, the rich and the poor. There is an old Italian proverb, "If all cannot live on the piazza, every one may feel the sun." There are degrees of happiness, also degrees of service and attainment, but it is possible for all to realize absolute efficiency commensurate with one's innate forces, no matter what their relative value to the world may be. There is metal in every man, which, as Ulysses said, should not rest unburnished but rather shine in use ; — the shining of the metals of talents comes from the embracing of oppor- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 159 tunities demanding usage and the burnishing of in- nate powers in world service. Homer ridiculed the idea of inactivity, maintain- ing that life consists in doings not in mere breath- ing. Life is motion. We are constantly passing from the past into the future ; and to each of us, as we pass through the door of the present, is given an opportunity in some degree or other, and an in- spiring challenge "to make our lives count for something in the scheme of things; and each is given his share of time which is his chance." The past is forever gone, its opportunities will never re- turn, but the past never dies ; it is the living womb of the future. Indifference and somnolence in the past tend to germinate indolence and indifference in the present, for negative habits quickly grow and enslave. Eternal wakefulness, heedful vigilance and joyful, timely enterprise are essential to suc- cess and praiseworthy achievement. Taylor said that "the retrospect of hfe swarms with lost op- portunities," but it is equally true that contempla- tion of the present and the future offers wonderful opportunities to the one who can see and has the determination to do. Jules Payot said that there are some people who allow opportunities for usefulness and real pleas- ure to slip through their fingers because it is too much trouble to close their hands. Such people in- flict upon themselves the emptiest lives imaginable. St. Jerome facetiously compares them to wooden soldiers who always have their swords raised with- out ever striking a blow. It is a law of life that the expenditure of effort in some form or other is 160 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM necessary if results are to be achieved. Work is synonymous with true development and lasting suc- cess. When Polycrates asked of the Delphic Ora- cle the best means of finding the treasures buried by Xerxes' General, Mardonius, on the field of Platoea, the response was "Turn every stone." When Newton was asked how he had learned to see so clearly into the problems of physical science, he rephed, "By persistent thought and work." A more modern scientist, asked if he believed that his inventions were largely the result of inspiration, re- plied that they must be, if concentration and per- spiration could be considered as inspiration. "Dili- gence," said Cervantes, "is the mother of good for- tune." It does not take much ability to commence a line of work, or much foresight to embrace some oppor- tunities; but it often does take intelligent energy, persistency and manhood to creditably finish the work. "No real man," said Plutarch, "ever wetted clay, then left it as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune." Generally it is good to com- mit the beginning of all worthy actions to Argus with a hundred eyes; and the ends of them to Briareus with a hundred hands; the first to watch and search for opportunities for service, the latter to speed forward the work with energy and dili- gence. We cannot estimate a man's usefulness by the number of things he commences or the number of opportunities he embraces, but by the things that he performs to completeness. It is said that the telephone was made commercially practical by Bell's giving a screw the last quarter turn. The MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 161 world has crying need of finishers, — of men who can give the last finishing twist to whatever they undertake. It is also comparatively easy to do what we feel compelled to do, and go when we feel driven, but the real test of a man is not so much the discharge of obligatory as of voluntary self- appointed tasks. Goss has said that "a man is not half a man who does not do some things with his teeth clenched and his face set." Achievement worth while comes from the overcoming of resis- tance. A life of power and service cannot be spent like a summer holiday ; it requires the taking up of tasks, the strength of will to overcome, the soul struggle to conquer. There is an old true saying that "Men are like salmon, the Hve ones travel up- stream, while the dead ones all float down." Man, when successful, is prone to burn incense to his own greatness and blame destiny and the gods when his misdirected efforts or indifference to op- portunity result in failure. One of the most evi- dent qualities inherited from our progenitors is the desire, almost amounting to mania, to endeavor to unload the responsibility for troubles and errors upon some person, circumstance, influence, or con- dition outside of ourselves. "Adam blamed Eve for his trouble. Eve blamed the serpent." Homer tells us how vainly mortal men do blame the gods when their own perverseness is the cause of their shortcomings and non-success. "For of us, men say, come evil," said the gods, "whereas they even of themselves through the blindness of their own hearts have sorrows beyond that which is ordained." The cause of failure in life lies not in the stars but 162 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM in ourselves; and Emerson has said that at every moment of a man's life, it is himself and nobody- else who fixes his position. "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven; the fatal sky Gives us free scope, and only backward pulls Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull." Alexander the Great believed in a favoring fate and died a premature death, due to the violation of nature's laws. Cicero beheved in luck and was slain near Formiae, a victim of Mark Antony's re- venge. Cgesar told the frightened pilot in a storm, "Have no fear for you carry Caesar and his good fortune;" yet Csesar's star could not protect him from the blades of his assassins. Napoleon was al- ways talking about destiny but he never dreamed that he would die a discredited, broken-hearted man, in exile. His conqueror, WelHngton, on the other hand, never believed in luck and he never lost a battle. He exercised intelligent industry in pre- paring to meet any possible surprise, and arranging to cope with any emergency; at Waterloo, at the height of the battle he did not talk of stars or for- tune but said, "This is hard pounding, gentlemen — but let us show them who pounds the hardest and will pound the longest." Madison C. Peters, re- ferring to the influences which seem to form the destiny of man, said, "Bad luck is a man with his hands in his pockets, Micawber-like, waiting to see how things will turn out. Good luck is a man with his sleeves rolled up, hard at work, making things go- Those who plead that they have had no chance in MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 163 life are usually those who feel that they have not enjoyed any advantage over the remainder of the field. Chance and advantage are two entirely dif- ferent propositions; and chances for true success, mental growth, culture and manly development do not necessarily presuppose the proverbial "silver spoon." It has been well said that the walls of the temple of immortals are bright with the names of those who, in the eyes of the world, as regards birth and fate, "had no chance." The men of history who have achieved the greatest and most vital evo- lutionary and revolutionary victories in the struggle for progress, were poor men who had to work, fight and force the world to hear them and their message. The odds against them only increased their aggres- siveness and persistency and sharpened their mental forces; the exercise of their faculties against the deadening resistance of the world made of them heroes with Spartan courage, although they often became martyrs to prejudice in order to perform their world-appointed tasks and gain their immor- tality. If it were not for the thinkers and courageous workers of the past, for the individuals of the world who have used their gray matter in the spirit of freedom and stood bravely alone, unfettered by tra- dition, we should today be where man stood in pre- historic times, "wearing short pelisse made of sheep skins and beating each other to death with stone hanmiers." We may not have advanced as far from this stage of barbarity as the civilized world in the spring of 1914 believed, nevertheless, as far as we have advanced beyond savagery and brutishness, 164 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM such progress is entirely due to the development and utilization of our psychological forces and the resultant acceptance of some part of Cosmic Truth. The faults and shortcomings of our present, much-vaunted civilization are solely the results of error, the lack of true freedom, the worship of ex- ternals and the crucifixion of the inner man. The bigotry of tradition and the falseness of dwarfing and lethargic mind-habits have caused men to de- generate into geese in thought, parrots in talk and sheep in action. War and violence in every form are the fruits of ignorance, the sterilizer of the germs of progress, the banisher of the soul from the world and the destroyer of all that is noble, cul- tivated and immortal in man. Every man has ample opportunities for the de- velopment and use of innate faculties — if he so wills it. The path to immortal success and true himian greatness is blazed by the Hves and work of men who "had no chance" in the eyes of an indolent and thoughtless public. Shakespeare (1564-1616), the greatest of poets, was a poor boy and held horses for gentlemen in London. Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), the great German painter and engraver, was one of eighteen children and his parents were in very straightened circumstances. Andrea del Sarto (1487-1531), one of the greatest of Italian painters, was the son of a poor tailor and was put to work and made to shift for himself at the early age of seven. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the famous Scotch- German philosopher, was the son of a saddler and throughout his childhood and youth suffered from MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 165 poverty. Furthermore, he was physically feeble, concave-chested and emaciated; he suffered con- stantly from a deformed right shoulder, and later even became blind; nevertheless, at thirty-one we find him a student in the university, and later living a life of strict regimen, with mechanical regularity. In spite of the handicaps of poverty and ill health, he developed himself into a powerful mental force that made itself felt throughout the world. Kant never traveled more than forty miles from Konigs- berg, the place of his birth, but his work has in- fluenced thought in every land of the globe. He banded all his weak physical forces and utilized his bodily energy with maximum efficiency under the domination of his great intellect and powerful will. William Murdock (1754-1839), the British in- ventor and engineer, was the son of a millwright in poor circumstances; he "had no chance" yet he was the first to make coal gas commercially ; he invented the long D slide valve and was the first to devise an oscillating engine. Mozart (1756-1791) was born of very poor parents and although for a time, as a youthful prodigy, he was petted in Courts, he was buried in a pauper's grave, "his funeral being a dis- grace to the Court, Emperor, public and society itself." Mozart's contributions to the realm of music cannot be overestimated. Beethoven (1770- 1827) , the greatest musician of his day, if not of all time, and the founder of modern orchestral music, was born in dire poverty, the son of a dissipated man of violent passions. His physical disorders, including deafness, were caused or aggravated by lack of care and food in childhood. Verdi (1813- 166 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 1901), the Italian musician, was born of peasant shopkeepers, yet he became the greatest of Italian Opera composers. Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the famous English chemist, was the eldest son of a widow with five children, left in embarrassed circumstances. At sixteen he was working for an apothecary and "set out to work on a systematic and remarkably wide course of self -instruction. He made many wonder- ful discoveries and developed into a man of wide interests and sympathies. Coleridge declared that if Davy "had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age." George Stephenson (1781-1848), the father of the steam locomotive, was the son of a miner and as a boy was employed as a cow-herd and later drove a gin horse at a colliery. At seventeen, he could not read or write. Stephenson made his "chance" by sheer hard work; he prepared himself for "op- portunities." He began to attend a night school in his eighteenth year and study developed his innate forces and talents, until he became one of the great- est powers in the industrial history of the world. Engineering and physical science became his voca- tion and farming and horticulture his avocation, giving his mind that rich diversity that had much to do with his wonderful life success. James Hargreaves, who perfected the original spinning jenny, was an ignorant weaver of Black- burn, England. He was attacked by a mob of his fellow workmen who destroyed his models and drove him from his home. Like Arkwright, he was born and lived for years in poverty and ignorance; but MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 167 he, as well as the "pot-bellied Lancashire barber," made his chance, and the entire world became his debtor. John Dalton (1766-1844), the English chemist and physician and the father of the Atomic Theory, was the son of a poor weaver; the boy ex- perienced the dregs and limitations of poverty and yet by the exercise of sheer will-power and that courage which revels in overcoming obstacles, rose to be one of the greatest powers in the realm of science. Ehas Howe (1819-1867), the inventor of the sewing machine, was born in Spencer, Mass- achusetts. At sixteen, he left his work as a farm- hand and journeyed to Lowell to work in a factory. During his years of research and experimentation, he experienced the harrowing effects of poverty and repeated, persistent, almost heart-breaking discour- agements ; but he finally won, and it is said that his wife played no small part in Howe's ultimate vic- tory and great achievement. Michael Farraday (1791-1867) , English chemist and physicist, famous for his electrical discoveries, was self-taught. He was the sickly son of a poor blacksmith, and when a small boy was apprenticed to a bookbinder. Farra- day had "no chance" but he fought fate, circum- stance and environment and did glorious work in understanding and harnessing the forces of nature for the perpetual good of mankind. Robert Fulton (1765-1815), the famous Ameri- can engineer, was born of very poor Irish parents, and in his youth worked for a Philadelphia jeweler. By handling fate with a strong hand and develop- ing the faith within himself, he became a great en- 168 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM gineer. Fulton built the first successful steam ves- sels in this country ; he also experimented with sub- marines and invented important machines for spin- ning flax, making ropes, sawing and polishing marble, etc. He was a man of diversified talents and among his many avocations was that of land- scape and portrait painting. Charles Goodyear struggled for years to make rubber of practical use. He and his family suffered the pangs of hunger, his neighbors abused him and called him insane but he persisted and won. "I will take the lightning," said Morse, "that Franklin bottled up and harness it to a wire and send it careering the world around." Everybody laughed and his telegraph was considered the crazy scheme of a "crank." A Congressman in Washing- ton remarked, "That old fool, Morse, wants me to help put a Bill through Congress to stretch a wire from Baltimore to Washington, so that one fool in Baltimore can talk to some other fool here in Wash- ington, forty miles away." The world was amused and ridiculed the inventor, but Morse "put a girdle around the globe and made thought omnipresent." Bell, in 1876, had to encounter the same kind of ridicule and badgering, when he suggested the tele- phone. Chauncey M. Depew declined to have any- thing to do with it, remarking, "It will never be more than a plaything for children." The Ameri- can sleeping car, when first suggested, was treated with contemptuous merriment and branded as "Pullman's Folly," just as the railway system be- fore had been derided; one so-called authority say- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 169 ing, "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of a locomotive traveling twice as fast as a stage coach?" It would be interesting in these days of heavy, fast trains and railroad mechanical efficiency to see the wiseacres who badgered George Stephenson in the British House of Parhament make a tour of inspection of a modern railway system, the origina- tor of which was the genius whom they persecuted for their egoistic amusement. "Suppose a locomo- tive were going along a railway at the rate of nine miles an hour and suppose a cow should get on the track, would not that, think you, be an extremely awkward circumstance?" asked one of Stephenson's cynical interrogators. "Yes, it would be very awk- ward," replied the Father of Railroads — "for the cow." Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the British essayist and historian-philosopher, was the son of a poor mason and was brought up in strict frugality by parents of a very large family with such narrow means that they were unable to give him assistance. Jean Fran9ois Millet (1814-1875), the great French painter, was born of a poor peasant family. As a boy he had to work hard and long in the fields, but his nearness to nature and an inborn apprecia- tion of her beauty had expression in later years through his wonderful brush. Millet said that the sight of engravings in an old illustrated Bible stim- ulated his desire to portray, while others slept, what he saw in the fields during the day. John Tyndall (1820-1893), the British natural philosopher and scientist, was born in poverty and 170 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM had no early advantage save an indomitable, innate eagerness to do something worth while, which he encouraged by rare devotion to study, under most discouraging circumstances. He was a teacher of power and an engineer of marked originality and ability. With Darwin, Wallace and Huxley, his name is inseparably connected with the battle which began in the middle of the nineteenth century for making the new standpoint of modern science part of the accepted philosophy in general Ufe. Handel learned music on an old clavichord, hidden in an attic, with the strings muffled with cloth; he dared not make any sound that would reach the occupants of the house and he found that he could only absent himself, without their detec- tion, during the hours of the night. The immortal Handel, according to world opinion, "had no chance to learn his art," but even a persistent illness, cul- minating in bUndness, did not prevent his exercising it in its fullness. America is a land of opportunity and volumes could be written of poor boys who have become fa- mous by hard work, intelligently applied, in this favorable and responsive environment of democracy and freedom. Success is not measured by wealth but by the doing of something worth while and last- ing for the world and one's fellows. Some of the best known names of America's "successful" men will not appear on Time's Great Roll of Honor, for notoriety is not success and the grabbing of wealth is not an expression of the creative and hfting spirit of life. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was a great MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 171 American, born with apparently "no chance" for leaving his imprint on the world. His father was a shiftless carpenter-farmer, who could not read or write. Abe was brought up in a rude log cabin in the then wilderness of Spencer County, Indiana; he endured many hardships and knew only the primitive manners, conversations and ambitions of sparsely settled, back- woods communities. How typical of the spirit of mental preparedness for use- fulness in life is the picture of the ungainly Lincoln youth sprawling on the cabin floor, with the log fire illuminating the pages of his book and saying, "I will study and prepare myself and then some day my chance will come." When nineteen years of age Lincoln was a hired hand on a flat boat running to New Orleans. When twenty-two he operated a little country store and began to study law. A year later he was defeated as a candidate for the Legis- lature, and his country store failed. In 1833 he did odd jobs and had to struggle hard to "procure bread to keep body and soul together." Lincoln had no "opportunity" offered to him on a silver platter by the Goddess Fate, but this simple, tender-hearted, patient, cheery, unaffected man, logical, analytical and tolerant, with a wonderful judicial mind, rose under times of great stress to be the "man of the hour," and in his death of martyrdom was mourned as America's greatest citizen. Lincoln was never academically wise but he had wonderful intuitive wisdom. He said that his "education was picked up from time to time under the pressure of neces- sity." His wisdom was that of the spirit of life — it flowed from the universal mind and could not be 172 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM measured by worldly pedagogical standards. It bred conviction, decision, action and with "Malice toward none; with charity for all," he suffered as did the intuitive God-like Christ eighteen centuries be- fore him. Wisdom, void of the Cosmic Spirit of the universe, is impossible; knowledge is the result of worldly authority presented and absorbed in some form or other, but wisdom is of the soul and prompts acts which contribute to the true benefit and advance of mankind toward the Cosmic Goal of perfection. Kipling tells us of "the naked soul of Tomlinson" before the gate "where Peter holds the keys," when conconanded to tell of the "good that he had done for the sake of men:" "This I have read in a book/' he said, "and that was told to me And this I have thought that another man thought of a prince in Moscovy." And Peter twirled his jangling keys in weariness and wrath, "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought" he said, "and the tale is yet to run; By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer — what ha' ye done?" Emerson has said, "Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, *Is he rich?' *Has he this or that faculty?' *Is he of the establishment?' but, *Is he anybody?' 'Does he stand for something?' " Lin- coln stood for something; he was elected to the Presidency because of his character, his solid worth ; he won success honestly, but what is far greater, he used it nobly. IX MANY of the world's greatest inventions have been accredited to accidents; but is it acci- dental that a natural occurrence assumes special significance to a mind that has been de- veloped by hard, persistent work to reason and seek to explain the phenomena of nature? It is said that the idea of gravitation came to Newton be- cause an apple fell on his head. Perhaps. But apples had been falling ever since there were apple trees, and had probably been falling on men's heads, or about them, ever since men had acquired the habit of walking or sitting under apple trees. The idea of gravitation came to Newton's mind not so much from the knock on his head from the falling apple, as from the keenly trained observation, and ability to see beyond the fact to its cause and effect. This power of observation was not due to any over- training of the senses, but rather to a finely de- veloped connecting system between the senses and the judgment seat, that region where intelligence dwells. The idea of the steam engine is said to have oc- curred to Watt while watching a tea-kettle simmer- ing on the fire, but how many hundreds of thou- sands of men before him had seen steam coming out of kettles ? The idea of the pendulum for regulat- ing time occurred to Galileo from observing a 173 174 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM swinging lantern in the cathedral at Pisa, but great numbers of other people had seen other lanterns, or the identical same lantern, swinging for ages past. In all these cases, certain minds had been prepared to note the slight unusual occurrence and carry a mental investigation of the matter forward, until a law was discovered and an idea or initial notion made complete. Most of the great discoveries of the world have resulted from the attentive observation and intelli- gent consideration of little things. We are told that the art of printing owes its origin to rude im- pressions from the carved bark of beech trees, made to amuse little children. Galileo conceived the idea of the telescope by observing the children of a Dutch spectacle-maker at play, placing glasses be- fore each other and looking through the set at some distant object. Galvani's observance of the twitch- ing of a frog's leg, when in proximity to certain metals, led to elaborate research, which culminated in the production of the electric telegraph. Young's discovery of the diffraction of light is traceable to his observation of the colors of soap bubbles which a child blew from a clay pipe. Samuel Brown said that the idea of a suspension bridge was suggested to him by observing a spider's web covered with dew, thrown across his garden path. A young boy discovered a method of automatic- ally operating the valves of a steam engine in order to gratify his desire for more time to play. The primitive steam engine, as Newcomen conceived it, required the presence of a person exclusively em- ployed to manipulate the taps by which the steam MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 175 was let into the cylinder and by which the cold spray was injected to condense the steam. The boy, tending one of these engines, and desiring to earn his wages and at the same time be released from a sort of monotonous occupation, conceived the idea of tying the handles of the taps by cords to the beam of the engine, thus harnessing up the engine to work itself by opening and closing the taps. Many wonderful discoveries have been made when investigators were engaged in endeavoring to discover other believedly desirable things. In their search for gold, the old alchemists discovered, among other things, gunpowder, china, medicines, and many laws of nature. Goethe has also pointed out that many now world-famous men have been like Saul, who found a kingdom while looking for his father's asses. Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, went to Savan- nah, Georgia, to secure a position as school teacher, but meeting Mr. Greene, the owner of a large plan- tation and becoming interested in the need of a machine to separate the short staple upland cotton from its small black seeds, he invented with Yankee ingenuity, his famous saw-gin, which tore out the seeds with its iron teeth and did fifty men's work per day; and under King Cotton, the South com- menced a new era of wealth, vigor and prosperity. No invention has more profoundly influenced American industrial, economic and social history than that of young Whitney, who could not find the job he wanted as school teacher. Michael Angelo saw a man modeling in clay in the gardens of Lorenzo and became fired with en- 176 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM thusiasm and determination to become a sculptor. Roger Bacon (1214-1294), trained for the church, perceived that "everywhere there was a show of knowledge concealing fundamental ignorance." He studied the scientific works of Arab writers and ridiculed modern experimental research and physi- cal science in Christianized Europe, for it had de- generated to arguments deduced from false prem- ises resting on authority or custom. He was ac- cused by the church of dealing in the Black Art, was kept under supervision for ten years and suf- fered great privation. Later, his books were con- demned and he was thrown into prison for fourteen years. He was a keen and systematic thinker, with a clear conception of science and although a failure in his original calling, he lived to be the world's greatest experimental scientist, chemist and optician of the Middle Ages. Socrates, like his father Sophroniscus, was an artisan, then a soldier and a statesman, but he found himself as a teacher in the market-place at Athens, the greatest and the noblest of all the ancient phi- losophers. Emerson has called him the "Aesop of the mob," and Xenophon said, "You might find him wherever the most people were congregated." It is very foolish for men to think that they are fitted by nature for only one vocation. If such should be the case, the laws of destiny must be won- derfully effective, for unless one could get into the one occupation for which he was fitted and that early in life, his entire existence would be a failure. Is it not a fact, however, that a job, a position, or a profession, i. e., a vocation in life, when decided MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 177 upon, and when one has become fairly accompHshed and automatically efficient in it, results very gener- ally in the closing up of almost all parts of the brain not directly used in this "bread and butter" occupation, with the result that an adult man can only do one line of work mentally, as an average artisan or skilled mechanic can only do the work required by one trade? Henry Sherin has said, "Thousands are existing upon charity today or depending upon their fami- lies because they were compelled to give up their vocations on account of ill health or of business de- pression. I have seen college professors, clergy- men, physicians and lawyers, who were highly ed- ucated men, unable to earn a living outside of their regular professions and the reason was that they had given attention to one subject to the exclusion of all others. They stepped into a rut early in life and remained in it, mentally and physically, un- til they became incapacitated for any other em- ployment." Many a man may not be able to start life in the business or profession which he seems to desire, or he may find by experience that the vocation which he imagined suited him, is neither congenial nor fitting to his peculiar temperament and mental faculties. Carnegie was a weaver boy; Lincoln, a rail-splitter, and, later, a country storekeeper; Rockefeller, a commission clerk at four dollars a week ; Andrew Johnson, a tailor ; Sir WilHam Mac- Kenzie ran a village sawmill ; Lord Strathcona was an Indian trader ; Edison was a newsboy on a train. Roger Williams was first a good cobbler, and later a 178 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM powerful preacher, statesman and champion of free- dom. Moliere was not a success as a lawyer, but became immortal in literature; Goldsmith was a mediocre physician, but he became a great writer, winning undying fame with the "Vicar of Wake- field." Henry Clay, famous for his passionate ap- peals and fervid oratorical abihty, who would "rather be right than be President," was "the mill-boy of the slashes," and the son of a widowed mother so poor that she could not send him to school. Ben- jamin Franklin was destined for the ministry, but never entered it. He became a soap-maker, and then a printer ; later, when he drew electricity from the clouds with kites, people sneeringly asked, "What use is it?" FrankUn repUed, "What's the use of a boy? He may grow into a man." Great men have never been discouraged by fail- ure, nor by being apparently placed by fate in lines of work for which they were not by nature adapted, or in which there was but little oppor- tunity to achieve great and world-important success. Macaulay said, "The world generally gives its ad- miration, not to the man who does what nobody else attempts to do, but to the man who does best what the multitudes do well." Failure in life results from not being true to the best one knows and can know. Madison C. Peters has said, "Get your am- bition fired up. Make things happen, instead of waiting for things to turn up. If you sit down and wait to be appreciated, you will find yourself un- called-for baggage after the Twentieth Century Limited has gone by." The spirit that does not strive to soar is, by the MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 179 very nature of things, fated to grovel. Lofty ideals and a purpose in life, if backed by an indomitable will and whole-hearted energy, will carry one from hemmed-in fields of routine nothingness to heights of world-service and success. "The divine insanity of noble minds. That never falters nor abates. But labors and endures and waits. Till all that it foresees it finds. Or what it cannot find, creates." — Longfellow. Genius surmounts difficulties and makes of ap- parently closed, impenetrable barricades, inviting gates of opportunity. Lincoln had "no chance" to study law, but he walked forty-four miles in one day to borrow four large volumes of "Blackstone's Commentaries," and walking home he read one hun- dred pages. Bunyan wrote his immortal work, "Pilgrim's Progress," on the untwisted papers used to cork the bottles of milk brought to him in prison. Cervantes, imprisoned for debt, wrote part of Don Quixote on scraps of leather. Lord Eldon, Eng- land's great Chief Justice, was so poor that he could not buy law books, so he borrowed and copied sev- eral large volumes. Fawcett, England's Postmas- ter General and Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge; Herreshoif, the designer of world- famous yachts; Handel, the great composer; and Milton, an immortal writer, were blind. Robert Louis Stevenson, Mozart, Beethoven, Carlyle, Farraday, Darwin, Spencer and Heine all suffered from ill-health, but they left an indelible imprint on the world. 180 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Most men who achieve success in life begin to show their "class" by embracing the first reason- able opportunity that presents itself to them and by putting their utmost into whatever job may be given them to do. The experience of every man is a part of his education that can be capitalized, for no employment is so menial or association so barren and stupid as not to offer food to a receptive young mind with ideas. Moreover, one can learn from the "not to do's" of life fully as much at times as from the "what to do's," and wherever men are employed there are facilities for profitable study. Sherin writes, "Very few bank presidents have started life in financial institutions and railway magnates have often come up from the ordinary laboring classes. When young, they all attended the school of honest, hard toil, which developed their bodies, trained their minds and established their characters on good, healthy foundations, which fitted them for the greater future duties they were to assume." Doing things well will result in a measure of suc- cess; doing things better assures a greater degree of success; but doing things best, no matter how relatively trivial the importance of the work may seem to be, commands positive success. Emerson says that the man who makes nothing more than rat-traps, but makes a better rat-trap than anybody else, will find a beaten path to his door. And again he says, "The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employ- ment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad-swords, or canals, or statues, or songs." If a man is not engaged in any line of work which MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 181 "finds him in employment and happiness," 'tis not the stars or fate that can be blamed if he refuses to bestir himself and find a field in which his talents, few or many, may be better used; or else rub the mist from his eyes and shake the cobwebs from his brain and seek to find in his setting and environ- ment an opportunity for growth and service. Bee- thoven's favorite maxim was, "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and in- dustry, 'thus far and no farther.' " Many a man's life has been a failure, due to blind- ness to perceive opportunities at hand, his days be- ing spent in wandering over the earth looking for "big" things, which, if found, would have proven to be small compared with the great fields waiting nearer home. A Cahfornia farmer sold his farm for a song to journey north, to his death, in the quest of gold; whereas his httle cabin stood on the banks of a stream which, by placer mining, has pro- duced more gold than his imagination could ever have conceived. A Pennsylvania farmer sold his farm to enter the oil business in Canada; the scum on the creek of his farm, which his cows refused to drink, and which he believed ruined his property, was, in reahty, oil from flowing wells, that he went far afield to seek. He failed to make his fortune in the far-away Northland, but his old farm is today one of the richest oil-producing lands in the country. The Wanderlust, when controlled, is necessary in the production of pioneers to explore and develop the resources of a new country, but it is just as apt in these days to be the siren's call, responsible for failures which ultimately become allied with aim- 182 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM lessness, lack of concentration and indefiniteness — a rolling stone gathering no moss. On the other hand, as Lowell has said, "Every man is born with his business or profession in him," and one should have the personality, moral courage and decision to change one's occupation, or even one's setting, if necessary, in order that one's life work may be performed. "To business that we love, we rise be- times to go to it with dehght." To do work that we know we can do well, and to do that which our souls desire to do, is to be happy and taste the fruits of success. No power on earth can keep a real man and his work apart, and "Nobody can cheat you out of ul- timate success but yourself." Daniel Webster's father insisted that his son become a farmer, but the future expounder and defender of our Consti- tution hung up his scythe on a tree in disgust. He was determined to obtain schooHng and become a lawyer. When remonstrated vdth and told that the legal profession was overcrowded, he retorted, "That may be in numbers, but there's always room at the top." He succeeded in his ambition, but was so poor during the years of sacrifice necessary for the realization of his dreams, that when at Dart- mouth College a friend sent him some grease for his boots, he laughingly thanked his donor, but added, "My boots need other doctoring than grease to make them water-tight — they admit even gravel stones." The father of John Adams was determined to make his son a shoemaker. Ole Bull was beaten by his father for playing the violin, but still he played. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 183 Genius within a child cannot be stifled by being branded as "perversion," and cannot be either last- ingly suppressed or forced out by blows or ostra- cism. Schiller loved poetry with all his heart, but was forced by his father to practice surgery. Sen- sitive and unfitted for the work, Schiller suffered in- tensely, and until he abandoned surgery and turned to literature, his nature was starved. To use Schiller as a surgeon, it has been well said, "was like using a razor as a chisel." Joshua Reynolds, one of the founders of the Brit- ish Royal Academy, incurred parental displeasure of the most positive kind, because he would not do with good grace what his father insisted upon as necessary for Joshua's success in life. Finding his son making a sketch one day, the father in wrath severely censured the boy and badly scribbled on the drawing, "Done by Joshua, out of pure idle- ness." Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great believer in the power and achievements of purposeful in- dustry and even held that "excellence in art, how- ever expressed by genius, may be acquired." What some people consider "idleness" may be true work, and much that passes for work in the world today might rather be branded as idleness or worse than idleness. Industry is as necessary for success in the world as genius, and who can separate, in the aggregate of achievement, enthusiastic work and energetic, self-sacrificing effort from inspiration? The very spirit of real work — enthusiasm — signifies the God within. George Eliot, who, according to Cross' biography, "had a great genius for taking pains," 184 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM is said to have read a thousand volumes and spent many years of hard, exacting work in the produc- tion of "Daniel Deronda." Prof. Maria Mitchell, the famous astronomer, said, as she reached the end of a marvelous career, "I was born with only ordi- nary capacity, but with extraordinary persistency." Goethe, most industrious and wise, said of one of his ballads, "Years of reflection are comprised in it, and I made four trials before I could bring it to its present shape." Leonardo da Vinci, the world's greatest univer- sal genius, is said to have devoted ten years to the model of an equestrian statue, in order that he might perfect his knowledge of the anatomy of a horse; we are also told that the painting of Mona Lisa, with its wonderful head, occupied four years. Michael Angelo studied human anatomy for twelve years, and spent seven years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his wonderful mural paintings. Dur- ing this time he refused to meet any people socially, saying, "art is a jealous mistress, she requires the whole man." Giardine said that it required "twelve hours' work a day for twenty years" before he felt that he could play the violin. Gibbon worked twenty years on his great book, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Macaulay wrote his best essays three times. Hume labored hard, amidst great discouragements, thir- teen hours a day for thirteen years to write his "History of England." Adam Smith required seventeen years to produce his "Wealth of Nations," and Webster spent thirty-six years on his diction- ary. It is said that Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis" MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 185 about a hundred times and Plato wrote part of his "Republic" nine times before he was satisfied with it. Dickens, when asked on one occasion to read from certain of his writings in public, said that he was compelled to dechne, as he had not sufficient time to prepare himself, for to read a piece satis- factorily, he had found by experience, required two readings a day for six months before he could de- liver it in public. Determination and industry will overcome ap- parently insurmountable barriers. Demosthenes, of old, hissed and hooted as a stutterer, went to the beach, placed pebbles in his mouth, and practised shouting to the rocks and talking before a mirror until he was acclaimed the greatest orator of his day. It is a worthy ambition to do one's best, to per- form each important task as if it were one's master- piece. An old sculptor was praised for an ex- quisitely finished work, with the minutest details apparently perfect, as a result of long and earnest work and study. His comment was, "the gods will see." Edward Everett Hale well said, "The safe path to excellence and success in every calling is that of appropriate preliminary education, diligent application to learn the art, and assiduity in prac- tising it." Work, Industry, Apphcation, Concen- tration, Thoroughness and Energetic Enthusiasm defy failure and assure success in every field of legitimate endeavor. X 1IFE is a struggle to achieve one's self and one's J mission ; a successful life utilizes one's forces and improves one's opportunities in har- mony with the great Cosmic purpose. "Life," said Hippocrates, "is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain and judgment diffi- cult." To make a living is not necessarily to live; making a living is only a means to living, while the most important thing in life is to learn how to live. Life is really at an end when growth of mind and spirit ceases, even if physical existence continues. To live, it has been aptly said, is not "simply stay- ing above the ground." Life is not merely breath- ing, or even moving, for one can breathe, enjoy circulation, locomotion and the functions of the prime physical senses and yet, with tired and trem- bling limbs, leaning wearily upon a staff, keep mov- ing steadily and tapping, tapping upon the cold brown earth, that, in the words of Chaucer, it may the sooner open to receive us. A man may live a busy, persistently strenuous business life, or be an active mechanic in a shop, yet the narrow vision and automatic existence of both, untouched by the spirit- ual forces and humanities of life, may cause his steps to be mere "tapping, tapping upon the cold brown earth." Life is what we make it and our usefulness to the 187 188 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM world is gauged by the measure of soul, social pur- pose and energetic effort, rightly directed, that we put into it. If we have no imagination, no vision, no ideal, no Cosmic goal, no hope, no guiding intui- tion, we are dead. If we labor with only sordid purpose, if we struggle to grasp only materialistic rewards, we are slaves and receive as compensation for our physical labor merely the wherewithal to continue our existence, in order that we may per- form more toil. If we work, we become allied with God in purpose and in spirit, for a worker must needs have imagination and a soul in contact with the great Cosmic Forces of progress and world- achievement. Life should mean to us far more than food, clothes and shelter; it should suggest the develop- ment of psychical powers, the expansion of the true inner self to the greatest possible degree of world usefulness and the steady, persistent moving toward some central aim. Every man should have a voca- tion in life, in which he contributes relatively much or little to world progress. A vocation is a man's business, his trade, a necessary economic activity which, when faithfully pursued, supplies, as recom- pense for work performed, the wherewithal neces- sary for life, food, clothes, shelter, etc. A vocation should, however, mean far more than this and no work well done can be performed animal-like or machine-like. Many men function at their vocations like ma- chines : they are cranked up in the morning and run down at night ; they are given to action rather than thought. Holmes has hkened a man's brain to a MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 189 70-year clock, with the wheels of thought producing a monotonous tick-tock through life. Life, to such men, if they would but turn the search-light of honest inquiry upon themselves, would reveal a con- dition well expressed by Mantalini at the wash-tub mangier, in Dickens* Nicholas Nickleby, "I am turning, I am perpetually turning, like a demned old horse in a demnition mill. My life is one demned horrid grind." Life is commonplace and will always remain commonplace to human automa- tons and commonplace people, but life is not a judg- ment to drudgery and soulless, meaningless monot- ony. It is a glory, a dignity, an opportunity. Man, in reality, cannot be a machine, for no machine is responsible, whereas man is a free and responsible agent and can do as he pleases or wills. Unless a man feels that his work is worth while, he cannot truly live. The most prosaic vocation can be glorified by vision and ennobled by the spirit of service. Charles Ferguson has said, "It is the note of man as distinguished from the beasts, that he can, by conscious effort, better his standing in the material world. Characteristically, a man is a worker, a creator of values, a world-maker; he, alone, of all living things, can conceive, design and execute them, can imagine conditions that do not exist, and then, by patience, bring them to pass. To take the world wholly as one finds it and leave it so, is brutal. A man is a man only because he is a wealth producer and enricher of existence." True culture, mental balance and sanity, which place things in their proper relation, come from work performed in the true spirit of service. Griggs 190 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM has said that "Work is worth just the measure of manhood and womanhood expressed in it — never more and, we may be thankful, never less;" and again, referring to the difference in the spirit with which men apply themselves to their vocations, he says, "One man wiU settle down into the routine of his calling, digging the ruts deeper each day until he quite loses power to see out from them; another, in the same vocation, shows an ability to make each day's work a source of new growth in power and in appreciation." A man's efforts and usefulness in life are not limited to achievements in his vocation, whether it be voluntarily selected or apparently forced upon him by circumstances over which he believes or im- agines he has no control. Every man may have avocations aside from his business or vocation in life. Avocations are self-selected interests and call upon one's "margin of time" or one's "leisure." It has been well said that "the use of the margin goes far in determining the ultimate success or failure in the business of life." It is surprising to find that the most useless lives are those automatic, spinal- cord actuated existences which profess to have no margin of time, no period for the acquisition and exercise of avocations. The routine toiler, void of vision, claims that he has no leisure or margin of time to improve himself, broaden his interests, de- velop innate talents and by so doing, increase his usefulness in the world. The true worker has time; he feels the need of time, and even if he works at his vocation much longer hours than the mechanistic toiler, he finds MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 191 time to do the things his nature demands and seeks to express. The panacea for a life overburdened with routine is more work, i. e., different, interesting and appealing, worth-while work, and the stress of the enlarged mental life will be far less than that of the narrower, restricted and irksome existence. There is an old legend that a man once went up among the high mountains and asked of the gods what reward there might be for all the pain, dis- appointments, perplexities and the labor of life. A great voice threw back to him the Cosmic answer, "The Labor of Life;" but the man, thinking that it was only an echo, descended again to the valleys, sorrowing, unenlightened and unsatisfied. Whittier says, "Take from our lives the strain and stress." Should not man cast from his mind those conditions which make for weariness, defeat and failure and acquire or develop interests which open the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and permit unrestricted flow of Cosmic Forces to the intuitive and spiritual senses of the soul? The Puritan fore- fathers and the old ascetics held that a duty must be hard to perform and repugnant to the doer be- cause it ought to be done. Disagreeableness, to their minds, seemed to make the act virtuous, just as the bitterer the herb, the greater its supposed efficacy in overcoming disease. Duty is not the doing of that which is hard and hateful; it is more apt to be the doing of that which is hard, but which one loves. There is a universal law of individuality as well as a law of growth and achievement. The real man knows himself and understands his innate powers; \ 192 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM he forms purposes of his own in harmony with his forces and pursues them steadily to the goal. His great duty in life is to express his distinctive per- sonality to the world and in the development and expression of one's real, inner self lies happiness. True success lies in steadily and persistently aiming at the bull's-eye of one's purpose, refusing to drift into the narrow routine of life. The strug- gle must be directed toward attaining the true art of living and obtaining the inner wisdom of true values and worthy purposes. "To smother care with joy, and grief with laughter. To hold the present close, not questioning the hereafter. To see the sun sink in the west, without regretting. To hail its advent in the east — ^the night forgetting, To have enough to spare — to know the joy of giving. To thrill response to every good of life, — that's living." The great thing in life is man's mental attitude toward his work. Unless he is an artist and per- forms his work in the world, no matter how humble it may be, in a spirit of devotion and earnestness, he fails to fulfil his destiny. Ruskin said that it does not matter whether a man "paint the petal of a rose or the chasm of a precipice, so that love and admira- tion attend on him as he labors and waits forever on his work. It does not matter whether he toils for months on a few inches of his canvas or covers a palace front with color in a day, so only that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with patience or urged his hand to haste." The great thing in work is reverence for the appointed task and the consecration of one's whole being in the determination to do the work, not only fittingly MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 193 and well, but in the best and most complete manner that is hmnanly possible. Genius is the art of taking infinite pleasure in one's work. Genius is immortality and man be- comes immortal through his work; but only that work in which a man takes infinite pleasure may hope to retain its identity and continue as an entity throughout eternity. Man's mission in life is not to attempt impossible tasks and waste his time in futile efforts to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he can do and then do that thing well ; to develop himself by education to the utmost and express his personality and individualistic pow- ers within the limits of his comprehension and en- dowment. Happiness comes to every man who finds his work, and religion fills the soul of every man who loves his work. A man's duty to the world, his God and his fellow man is to vitalize his environment, use all the powers and skill that have been given him and carve his message and his per- sonality with all his enthusiasm and might into the heart of the world about him. Michael Angelo wrote, four centuries ago: "The stone, unhewn and cold Becomes a living mold. The more the marble wastes. The more the statue grows." The soul in man, if given full and free oppor- tunity for expression, will vitalize and glorify any work and the more of one's self, the more of devotion and energy one puts into the work, the greater be- comes the development, happiness and gratification 194 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM of the inner man. A real worker is a Pygmalion to whose work the gods give the breath of hf e. Man was made not only to be active and useful, but to cultivate all of his faculties in harmony with the Cosmic Spirit of progress. He was meant to grow, never to stand still. To succeed requires method, perseverance and concentration, but one must learn when to remove as well as apply mental pressure. Griggs has said, "Ceaseless effort is mediocrity, evaded effort is self-deception, rightly balanced effort is the key to genius. To drive one- self with relentless will, then let go and respond with open, care-free mind and heart — these together are great living; either, alone, means hopeless de- terioration." The mind, during the day's period of wakeful- ness, should be active, for such is its nature; there- fore, it should be utilized and directed. A change of thought is rest and in such rest or apparent re- laxation, productivity is quite possible. The men- tal power required by avocations may and should completely rest the parts of the brain that have been concentrated for hours upon one's vocation. The mind should, however, be free at times for reflec- tion and contemplation, if there be mental capacity; for "such resource," it has been well said, "is a mark of the highest cultivation." It is, however, dan- gerous for any mind to browse upon itself unless the windows of the soul are opened to the sunshine of Cosmic Truth and the mind has direct contact with the realities of life and the totality of things. A brain wandering in a labyrinth of darkness be- comes as blind as a mole grubbing in the ground. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 195 Men have become brilliant writers and poets, learned scientists and philosophers, gifted artists, great chemists, engineers and inventors by using to advantage their "margin of time," or so-called spare and leisure moments, turning "the hours that might have been wasted into coins for future use." William Cullen Bryant, one of the earliest of our American poets, paid running expenses in the busi- ness of life by working at his newspaper desk day after day in New York, but the poetry by which he will always be remembered was written in those spare moments of time that most people waste. John Stuart Mill, English philosopher and econ- omist, earned money to sustain life by working six days per week for thirty-five years at clerical work, confined at a desk in the office of the East India Company, in London. All the great liter- ary work of this man, which can scarcely be over- estimated in its effect upon the world, was per- formed in those spare or leisure moments which most people waste and many deliberately try to kill. Matthew Arnold, the great English poet and liter- ary critic, was, from 1851 to 1886, employed in the Education Department of the British Government as a school inspector and his literary work repre- sents an avocation pursued in such intervals of "leisure" as could be spared from most exacting public service. Sir Thomas Brown lived an active life as a Brit- ish provincial practitioner. In his spare time he turned to literature. His first book was printed without his consent, yet it has been said that "there is no writer of English prose whose name has 196 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM greater assurance of that immortality of fame he mocked at." Charles Lamb, the essayist, spent his days in a South Sea Counting House, transferring figures from one ledger to another, but in his "mar- gin of time," during evening hours, the great man's magnetic personality and deep humanity asserted themselves and were fittingly expressed to the world. This is the man who may have instinctively dishked a person whom he had never met, but who had such a faculty of obtaining points of contact with men that his words, "I can't hate a fellow I know," have become famous, as well as indicative of real human- ism. Wordsworth was a Government employee, and, with his sister, lived for many years on a salary of $7.50 per week; the great poet often said that this period of relative poverty, when the strictest econ- omy had to be exercised in order that the necessities of life could be obtained, was one of the happiest and most wholesome periods of his life. Haw- thorne was a Custom House inspector; Balzac, an unsuccessful publisher and Oliver Wendell Holmes, a doctor. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the son of a poor baker, was a Polish physician, devoted to his profession and subject to call day and night; yet he found time to elaborate a system of astronomy, by the adaptation of which man's outlook upon the universe was fundamentally changed. He "per- forated the walls of his humble dwelling that he might note the stars in their passage, keeping for years the momentous secret in his bosom, lest the stake be his destiny." Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776), the inventor of cast steel, was a poor MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 197 English watch-maker. John Locke (1632-1704), the founder of English Sensationalism and the Philosophy of Relativity, was a student of medicine and a layman. Heinrich Schlieman, the foremost archaeologist of his day, sold sauerkraut and herring in a small German village, but so improved the spare moments which his business offered, that at forty years of age he was a noted linguist, and, re- tiring from a trade in which he had been quite suc- cessful, he was enabled to devote his energies to scientific research and the free development of his wonderful talents. Sir John Lubbock became one of the world's highest authorities on pre-historic archaeology by the use of his "leisure time" when freed from his arduous mercantile responsibilities. Most of the great generalizations in Physics have been made by men whose time was well occupied by the demands of their vocation, yet in their margin of time they found opportunities for doing immortal work for the world. Robert Mayer, the discoverer of the law of the conservation of energy, was a physician ; Carnot, the founder of thermo-dynamics, an engineer; Joule, who first gave the mechanical equivalent of heat, was a brewer, and it was Joseph Priestley, a theologian and philosopher, who dis- covered oxygen. Photography has been developed far more by the dabblings and interest of ama- teurs than by the research efforts of skilled pro- fessionals and specialists. As we study the lives of the men responsible for the industrial revolution of Great Britain, we find that most of the great in- ventions were made by men utilizing to its fulness, with enthusiasm and vision, their "margin of time." 198 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Herbert Spencer has truly said that the education which made England what she has been during the past century, "got itself taught in nooks and cor- ners," and he might fittingly have added "in spare moments and by candle-light." To kill time is to murder opportunity. In one respect, we each have a definite and uniform income where all mankind is placed upon a level plane of absolute equality; twenty- four hours per day in- come is granted to each of us by the Law of the Uni- verse. Time is the raw material of all life. Its full value, like the full value of money, is realized, not by hoarding it, but by spending it for what will bring the greatest return. How are we spending it? We can save it only by using it, and proper use brings dividends which give satisfaction and real pleasure as well as benefits to the world. The way one uses the margin of time, it has been well said, shows the line of movement of the mind and soul and reveals the ideal. He who lives most, thinks most clearly. His life is gauged by thoughts and his usefulness by the transference of his thoughts into deeds. Life must be measured by depth, rather than length, by intensity and completeness, thought and action, rather than by time; by hours, days and years utilized rather than by periods passed. Dante said, "For he who knows most, him the loss of time most grieves." A life is noble or ignoble, depending upon the spirit which actuates it and not upon the vocation adopted; upon its appreciation and the fullest use of its faculties and opportunities and not upon its bank-book, worldly notoriety and emulation. Time MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 199 is precious; neglect of opportunities for service is as serious as neglect and atrophy of innate powers. "Life is too short to waste. *Twill soon be dark; Up! Mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!" — Emerson. We really make ourselves what we wish to be, and a life without a worth-while work, useful in- terests and time well spent is useless. Ruskin says that such a life is guilt that brings its own punishment. Yet the vast majority of men dream contentedly on ; mere automatons, spending certain hours to acquire money, while they waste the golden opportunities for world service and mind develop- ment in their "leisure" moments. Moreover, in their vocation, time might be immeasurably inten- sified and glorified by imagination, ideals and worthy purpose. There is no limit to the oppor- tunities that can be discovered by the growing, wide- awake man of keen thought and vision, but to the average salary or wage-earner, life is a monotonous journey of routine and drudgery, with the days dropping one by one into oblivion. Seneca, the Roman philosopher and statesman, said, "We all complain of the shortness of time, and yet we have more than we know what to do with. Our lives are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few and acting as though there would be no end to them." Some men live, others exist ; to live with twice the 200 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM significance is worth as much or more to the world than living twice as long. Some of the greatest lives in history have been short in years. A modern educator has well said that to spend two hours on a lesson means nothing — the important matter is, "How much intelligent, concentrated energy did you spend upon it?" Men vary from each other in their length of days, but they also differ immensely with respect to intensity of living; and the latter, in its effect upon the world, is probably far more important, in regard to worth-while progress and achievement, than the former. A real man would rather live a year than vegetate for a century. Each man born into the world has peculiar indi- vidualistic faculties ; they are his initial capital, and with these he must do business in hf e. The river of time flows steadily but inexorably by, whether we work or are idle, see or are blind, struggle to achieve or with indolence fall into letharg^^ or degenerate into hopeless despair. "It is only while the water of the river of time flows over the mill-wheel of to- day's life that we can utihze it. Once it is past, it is in the great unreturning sea of eternity." Each day, each hour, presents opportunity, great or small, for the use of our individualistic capital, for its growth, and for the development of one's power, talents and character. Goethe has well said, "Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions, but make use of common situations. A long continued walk is better than a short flight." And Gladstone said, "Thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profits beyond your most optimistic dreams; while the waste of it will MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 201 make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond your darkest reckonings." Nature abhors uniformity as she does a vacuum. She crowns the individual and refuses to reduce all mankind to a common level. Progress is realized by differences encouraged by the forces of life to greater differences. Innate powers, intelligent effort and the utilization of time are all important factors in world achievement. If two men are equal in mental endowment and energy and one works twelve hours a day and the other eight, equal- ity of the men as world forces ceases. If each works ten hours a day at similar vocations and one spends two or three hours a day engaged in interesting avocations, his power will grow with leaps and bounds; his value to the world wiU be far greater than that of his fellow, and his mental work in diver- sified avocational fields will increase his vocational ability; thus he will outstrip his colleague who be- lieves in work and rest, i. e., ten hours' work and the balance of the day, aside from enjoyment of family and desirable social life, occupied in the usual kill- time fashion which is mental rust — not rest. The proper distinguishing, grading and relative placing of duties and opportunities that occur in a day are a fine art, and man can with profit study to know how to distinguish that which is important from that which is relatively unimportant ; and that which should take precedence from that which is subordinate to a well-balanced, effective life. We rightly criticise Pietro Medici for employing the immortal genius of Michael Angelo to make a statue out of frozen snow, yet we refuse to see that 202 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM if Angelo's time was precious to the world, our time is as precious to ourselves and was ordained to be of some use to the world. Are we spending our time chiselling in solid granite or are we utilizing our forces merely to make statues of snow or idols of mire? XI GOETHE said that life lies before us as a huge quarry lies before the architect. He de- serves not the name of architect except when, out of this fortuitous mass, he can combine with the greatest economy, fitness and durabihty, some forms, the patterns of which originated in his spirit. All things without and about us are mere elements — externals, but deep within us lies the creative force which out of these can produce what they were meant to be. Thomas has said that "The force that drives a man to any goal he has before him, is personal power. It is the divine part of man that gives him domination over the earth and over himself. It is something more than intelli- gence, because it makes a man use his intelligence in the right way. It is something more than char- acter, for it creates character. It is something more than personahty, because a man's personality is but an expression of the mind." Environment does not make a man, but it may tend to retard or stimulate his growth. A man's capacity for worth-while thought and intelligent effort is almost always inversely proportionate to the amount of stimulus furnished by his environ- ment, which, however, is greatly affected by the man's relation and general attitude to his environ- ment. Environment is to life what wind, tide and 203 204 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM weather are to the saihng craft. Adverse winds do not stop progress, but they demand that the real guiding power within the boat utihze his power and skill in tacking against head winds, as well as in running free before fair winds and hold- ing up and pointing well with wind abeam. The environment tends to regulate, but man alone strives, selects and adapts. To be successful is to utihze personal power in its fulness. Did not Aristotle have this in mind when he said, "To be happy, means to be self-sufficient" — not self-satis- fied, but one in whom dwells part of the great Cosmic Spirit of life which we designate as God? The happiest people in the world are the busiest, — engaged in worth-while pursuits. Bishop Cum- berland (1632-1718) , defending his incessant appli- cation to mental activity, made famous the saying, "It is better to wear out than to rust out." Great achievement may be reahzed by constant applica- tion, but the mind is benefited, strengthened and refreshed by change of thought, by the turning from one line of activity to another without wasteful friction; thus inertia is not necessary for rest; and avocations which interest and stimulate are refresh- ing for a mind working for hours in a deep brain rut of routine. One of the industrious Goethe's maxims was, "Work without haste and without rest," but our word "rest" does not exactly express his idea. Ameri- cans, more than any other people on earth, need to heed and reflect upon Goethe's advice to work hard and efficiently without nervous and wearing hurry; without fuss and undue anxiety; without that MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 205 strenuosity in the wake of which follow the waste of rest, dissipation and time lost in the recuperation of physical powers. "Haste notj let no thoughtless deed Mar for aye the spirit's speed; Ponder well, and know the right, Onward then, and know thy might; Haste not, years can ne'er atone For one reckless action done. "Rest not. Life is sweeping by. Go and dare, before you die; Something mighty and sublime Leave behind to conquer time; Glorious 'tis to live for aye. When these forms have pass'd away.'* Mental idleness is not rest. It is apt to develop mental laziness and prove more tiring than work. The old Romans had a proverb, "It is difficult to rest if you are doing nothing." The miserable peo- ple in the world are never the busy workers; they are not the active, up-struggling poor, but rather the blase, world-weary, down-gravitating people who, ignoring opportunities and courting idleness, spend their useless lives "going over the face of the earth vainly seeking to escape the shadow of their own disgust." Griggs has said that "he who fails to contribute in some form to society as much as he takes from it, has failed of ordinary honesty and is to be regarded as a pauper or a thief, whatever his wealth may be." The pessimists of the world are the sick, the im- mature, the unbalanced and the ignorant. The first class should be considered pathologically, although 206 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM their ailments may be caused or augmented by men- tal derangement, hallucination and lopsidedness. The youthful pessimist, if he keeps his health and lives a normal span of years, will become better poised and regain vision and sanity, for such is a law of life. All the world's pessimists gifted with brains have either died young or outgrown their pessimism. The busy and the poor are generally optimistic; the idle rich find life boresome and de- generate to pessimism and despair. There has never been a great pessimist in all the ages who, at any time in his life, had to earn his living by the work of his own hands. "Work brings one so close to the hard, beneficent laws of nature that one does not doubt the sanity of the universe at the heart." John Wesley constantly admonished his hearers in the interest of their highest welfare, "Never be un- employed, never be triflingly employed, never while away time." Work creates a true aristocracy in life. We have heard much of the "dignity of labor" from capital- istic platforms of patronage and exploitation. There is no dignity in labor; it has to be raised to the plane of worth-while work with the exercise of men- tal faculties before it gains dignity and respect and enters the domain of Cosmic usefulness. William Gray, who achieved a position of wealth, influence and usefulness, on one occasion reproved a work- man for poor work; smarting under the deserved censure, the man retorted, "You needn't put on airs to me; I can remember when you were only Billy Gray, a poor fiddler." "You both tell the truth and lie," replied Gray. "It is true that I was a MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 207 fiddler, and poor, but did I not fiddle well? I was never a poor workman with my fiddle, hence I have greater responsibilities today and my whole being loathes poor work of any kind." Here was a man raised to an aristocracy of work by doing every menial duty well and in the spirit of a true artist. Doing work well commands respect and wins suc- cess. Work performed grudgingly is never well done and becomes dishonest labor, fraudulently sub- stituted for honest work. Dishonest labor is steal- ing, and shirkers are thieves, doomed by their own ignorance to failure and the harrowing treadmill of drudgery. Cervantes well said, "Every man is the son of his own works." Resistance to the down-currents of useless living and up-struggle against the surging obstructions to progress, develop character and make for success. It takes a Siegfried to triumph over the flames sur- rounding a Brunhilda ; it takes the courage and en- thusiasm of a hero to overcome the subtle and ap- parently insurmountable hindrances decreed by what we term Fate. The world advances by up- struggle on the part of the individual and not by uplift on the part of a self-appointed few. Every man must develop himself and work out his own salvation. Opportunity gives a man his chance, but opportunity is seldom an open road ahead; it is rather an opportune or seasonable time to fight, hurdle an obstruction and courageously encounter resistance, with the possibility of overcoming if the fight is well fought. No hf e that is worth the living and is of service to the world can be likened to a locomotive on level railway trackage, where unseen 208 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM hands manipulate switches and direct which steel pathway of the many shall be traversed. Life re- quires for us far more than sitting in a locomotive cab, or merely attending to the required expenditure and utilization of fuel, water and steam ; it demands more than the mere watching and automatic obedi- ence to signals. Each individual is an ego from which radiates a vast multiplicity of possible roads; the up-grade ones lead to useful service, the level ones to the relative nothingness of mediocrity, and the down- grade ones to oblivion. The great achievements in life are usually found at the end of a laborious, heart-breaking pathway of up-struggle, to reach which has necessitated the elimination of all useless, dead-load, enslaving habits and superfluous ac- coutrements. Resistance makes the man. Ignatius well said, "It is the part of a good athlete to be flayed with pounding and yet to conquer." Our young men should be taught that life will only give them in reaction what they put into it. Nathaniel Haw- thorne, disgusted with the "slackers," the indolent, scheming parasites and the stupidly content, said, "It is my creed that a man has no claim upon his fellow-creatures beyond bread and water and a grave, unless he can win it by his strength or skill." Without the overcoming of resistance, there could be no manhood ; by the properties of resistance, na- ture's laws become operative and forces are bal- anced, thus making existence possible. Withdraw all the resistance in life and we remove character, mentahty and Godhood from man. Man was MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 209 created, not to exist as a universal nonentity, but to struggle to achieve, to overcome resistance, wrest secrets from Mother Nature and hft the world, by- means of his God-like mind and courage, nearer the Cosmic Ideal. Kant has said that inasmuch as a dove in flight has only one obstacle to overcome, and that the resistance of the air, one might suppose that if the air could be removed out of its way, the bird could fly with greater rapidity and ease. But if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should attempt to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly, unable to fly at all. The very element that offers the opposition to flying is at the same time the condition that makes flight possible. That which resists the onward and upward journey of man, makes the man; his char- acter grows and develops in the reaction, his power is intensified in order to overcome ; and as he strug- gles to triumph over the resistances of life, he be- comes more God-like, for God is Supreme Courage as well as Supreme Mind. The world needs men of high voltage, who can fittingly carry Cosmic Power; brave men, who "count it death to falter, not to die;" knowing men who at times can see in defeat a far greater triumph than a staged world-victory could offer, and who know that it oft-times requires more courage and strength to decide on what to do than is required in the mere doing of it. Our schools should seek to develop ambitious, earnest youths, fired with energy and purpose, who, when placed on the race-course of life, show their breeding and training. The world is weary of 210 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM young egoists, of self-satisfied, complacent and un- natural ignoramuses, academically wise, but de- plorably foolish. Calm and self-possessed in de- bilitating "knowledge," they are the product of a perverted educational system and of an apostasy of universal Tightness, which confuse civilization, luxury and degeneracy with cultivation and world progress. Young men should enter the field as trained colts, chafing at the bit, stamping the ground, eager to enter the race, impatient to get away and determined to use their energy to drive them to the front when the starting barrier goes up. Individual preparedness, individual striving and individual achievement carry the world nearer to perfection. Discouragements and obstructions draw from a man that energetic force necessary to promote greatness. One learns more from the fight of life than from the contentment of life. "Never mind the ridicule," wrote Emerson, "never mind the defeat; up again, old heart, it seems to say — there is vic- tory yet for all justice." The true joy of the soul often lies in combat rather than in victory. "What will you gain," said Seneca, "if you do your duty bravely and generously? You wiU gain the doing of it — the deed itself is the gain." The only way to attain one's ideals is to endlessly struggle to realize them. Anything worth while can only be achieved by effort, by struggling with difficulties persistently and intelligently. Many a world leader would have remained in obscurity had he not been goaded into a fighting spirit by necessity and resistance. "What do you MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 211 think," says Epictetus, "that Hercules would have been if there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and boar, and certain unjust and bestial men whom Hercules used to drive away and clean out? And what would he have been if there had been nothing of the kind? Is it not plain that he would have wrapped himself up and slept? In the first place, then, he would not have been a Hercules when he was dreaming away his life in such luxury and ease ; and, even if he had been one, what would have been the use of him, and what the use of his arms, and of the strength of the other parts of his body, and of his endurance and noble spirit if such circumstances and occasions had not roused and exercised him ?" Poverty has been at times a great stimulus to activity and such activity has often led to concen- trated, intelhgent effort and been crowned by genius. A stimulus of some sort is necessary if one is to achieve anything worth while. There must be felt the great need, — the need for oneself, or the need for humanity. If a boy is born in poverty, he may be favored by the gods in this gift of neces- sity for work, in order to honorably live. If a boy is born of wealthy parents, his soul must be strong and true if he is to be individually successful, for his stimulus must come from a desire to be of ser- vice to others; he must battle for the pure love of achievement and not to keep his head above the materialistic waters of physical needs. Great men have occasionally been born in the palace and the mansion and have been great even though nur- tured in the lap of luxury, but by far the greater 212 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM percentage and an overwhelming proportion of the great men of the ages, who have left an ineffaceable imprint on the world, were born in the hut and the cottage and have experienced in full measure the dregs, oppression and resistance of the up-struggle of life. Goethe has said that "it is not a matter of in- difference by which door we enter hfe." This is true, but the door referred to is not that of the hut or the palace, but rather of ancestral worthiness, i. e., character, bodily and mental vigor and purity. Wealth, social caste, external and ghttering super- ficialities of nothingness are essentially unreal. A man's inheritance is his endowed mind and heart, his individualism, personahty, his sympathetic Teachableness and his social nature, together with his physical self, either strong and virile, through ancestral virtue and conformity with nature's laws, or else weak and faltering through hereditary short- comings and violations — deliberate or through ignorance — of these same uncompromising Univer- sal Laws. The struggles of men and women to live, to sur- vive and bring up their progeny, have produced splendid, wholesome, well exercised and healthy physical bodies, with substantial, strong nervous systems, and, therefore, splendid brains, ready for world service and awaiting only the touch of a master hand to bring forth mentality whose very vigor and freedom will astound the world. On the other hand, the easy, placid existence of an aristoc- racy and the non-activity of moneyed drones, tor- mented by ennui, result in either physical inac- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 213 tivity, which atrophies, or physical degeneration through dissipation; the nervous force is ruined by indolence, forced excitement, vicious indulgence or listless weariness. The offspring of such unnatural parents are nervously sub-normal, and no brain created with diseased nerve tissue can be truly great, any more than a deformed, weak and sickly body could vie with an Apollo at Olympic Games, which call forth supreme physical strength, endurance and skill. Our existence on this planet is no lottery, where success or failure depends upon a chance ticket and where Fate decrees whether we shall win or lose a prize. "Success," declared Choate, "cannot be ac- cidental. You might as well let drop a Greek alphabet and expect to pick up the Iliad." For- tuitous birth gives individuahstic advantages, ac- companied, however, by compensating disadvan- tages ; it also results in the diversity in quality and extent of one's inherent capabilities, but this is for the good of humanity and in order that the world's work may be acceptably performed by those well fitted by nature to do it. Through diversity of talents and aptitudes alone can mankind continue its upward march. Oppor- tunity to express in fulness one's peculiar inherent forces comes sooner or later to all who work and aspire. To be thrown upon one's own resources is, as Franklin said, "to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a develop- ment and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible." If it were impossible for a man to achieve success or to experience the 214 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM bitterness of failure, to rise or to fall, then all in- dustry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, progress would be unknown and the world would sleep until individualism, with its opportuni- ties and its corresponding responsibilities, was re- stored to mankind. The goal of mental effort is the uplift into full consciousness of all one's innate powers, with the control and complete utilization of these forces by the individual will. Man grows from within. The advantages derived from so-called opportunity or a favoring environment are uncertain and preca- rious, but the benefits obtained from whole-hearted, individual efforts are efficacious and lasting. To succeed, one must resolutely make up one's mind to accept a life of work and reject a life of indolence. When Dionysius the Elder was asked whether he was at leisure, he feehngly replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me." Life is a serious business and nothing worth while, lasting and satisfying will come to any of us except through hard, indefatigable work persistently ex- pressed through the days and years. We do not truly possess anything which we have not earned by the expenditure of effort. "The gods sell us all good things for hard work." Spinoza said, "All noble things are as difficult as they are rare," and Griggs has aptly added, "They are rare because they are difficult." There is no royal road on earth to anything worth while. To gain knowl- edge of the world and to subjugate nature and use her forces for the good of humanity, the king and the serf must conform to the same Cosmic rules. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 215 The road to knowledge and achievement is the road of intelligent human effort and persistent hard work and it has been well said that it is a "highway with no toll-gate upon it." Euclid, we are told, was re- quested by Ptolemy, King of Egypt, to teach him his wonderful new science of geometry. Euclid began with the necessary definitions, axioms and propositions, but was soon impatiently halted by the restless and indignant King, who, with effrontery and the annoyance of an offended kingly egoism,, asked, "Must a Pharaoh learn like a common slave?" Euclid, with that rare dignity and wisdom of the truly great, rephed, "There is no Royal Road to geometry." No man inherits knowledge; he must gain it by effort. No man at birth is endowed with character; he must win it in his fight with the world. The State of Kansas has a splendid motto which is inspiring to the true worker: "Through diffi- culty to the stars." Madison Peters tells us of an ancient crest, with the symbol of a pickax, and the appropriate words, "Either I will find a way or make one." The world calls for men who are re- solved as individuals to give their lives a meaning and who are brave enough to stand firm in their convictions, vote with the minority, and dare to be out of fashion with political and social crowd opin- ions. "The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail, A feeble dwarf dauntlessly resolved will turn the tide of battle And rally, to a nobler strife, the giants that had fled." The real poverty of life is not always to be found 216 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM in the slums and huts of the so-called poor, but it is often far more prevalent in the luxurious homes of the worldly rich. They who have no vision, no faith, no imagination, no infinite hopes, no glad- some good- will surging through their hearts, no true feelings of humanity and no contact with the Cosmic Spirit of life are the destitute and the poor of this world. To such, the inspired touch of true genius never stoops, no matter how hard they may work, concentrate their mental forces and struggle for success. Worldly success may and should in a measure accompany true success and lasting achievement in the interests of mankind and uni- versal progress, but what is often branded as world- ly success is but a soulless icy pinnacle of selfish avarice — anti-human — the consummation of a life of error. Life must be met in a fighting spirit. Human excellence, be it mental or moral, is seldom made easy of attainment, but we may achieve much, if we will only pay for it with its equivalent in whole- some, persistent ejffort. Non-resistance means mediocrity. Struggles to survive, to overcome ob- stacles and attain, develop character and that men- tal poise and tone of soul demanded by the true spirit of life. Wordsworth well depicts as a happy warrior the character of the successful world's worker, gifted with enthusiasm, poise, self-knowl- edge and well exercised faculties of reason : *'It is the generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought; Whose high endeavors are an inward light MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 217 That makes the path before him always bright — Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there But makes his moral being his prime care. * * * He labors good on good to fix, and owes To virtue every triumph that he knows; Who if he rise to station of command Rises by open means; and there will stand On honorable terms, or else retire. And in himself possess his own desire ; Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; * * * Who, not content that former worth stand fast. Looks forward, persevering to the last. From well to better, daily self-surpast." XII THE era in which we live has been called the Machine Age; it has also been described as the Age of Human Speciahzation. That phase of the Machine Age in which men have been enslaved to mechanism, as the tools of a money- grabbing and wealth-worshipping class, is rapidly- passing; but the age of the machine is progressing and expanding. Workers are being elevated from the dead line of automatic mental function and stagnant brains, to duties of a more human kind, where the workers operate the machines — not ma- chines the workers — and where vocational functions, with mind activity, are brought into play. Machines dominated, tended, nursed and driven by workers are like horses ridden by jockeys, where human skill plays an important part in the race to the goal; but machines which dominate toilers are juggernauts which ride mercilessly over brutalized unfortunates and, with monotonous grind, make for drudgery which robs man of all initiative, interest and hope. The record of the first part of the Machine Age in Great Britain, and in many sections of our own land, is one of horror and per- sistent crimes against humanity. Machines were monsters, tended by human slaves and it is only in comparatively recent years that the worker has be- come master of the machine and obtained his free- dom. 219 220 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Craftsmen have existed since the days when men of peculiar abihty were deputized to do special work for the good of the tribe, such as the making of arrows, plows, utensils and the forging of swords. During the ages, the agricultural and fighting forces have predominated, the former to sustain life by obtaining food, the latter to defend the tribe or nation and its property, and for offensive extension as its military power developed. The stronger warriors became rulers, while the men of more men- tality capitalized their learning and imagination, preyed upon their fellows and, by intimidating brawn by brain, became priests, soothsayers, oracles, physicians and prophets. The artisan was con- sidered of little importance, and the merchant did not stand very high in the social scale. The last few centuries have seen a mad scramble for recognition by commercial and dominating in- dustrial interests. Through the power of machines and gold, priests, nobility and kings have been tumbled from their high places, armies have been controlled, countries subjugated, dynasties over- thrown or subsidized; and today industrialism and commercialism are enthroned Molochs, demanding worship and, at times, human sacrifice. Our modern civilization rests upon wealth, for wealth is the busi- ness of the world. When war consumed all that man captured or made, nothing permanent could be built and there was no reserve to draw upon. Specialization was the first offshoot of individualism and as it became profitable for the tribes to have men apply them- selves to specific work, it gradually became profit- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 221 able for the individual. Commodities of value to others were made by men and women of talent ; ex- change and barter were originated and later, money- sprang into existence as a basis of exchange. Adam Smith has said that the wealth of a nation is the creation of labor and labor is the measure of the exchangeable value of commodities. This was true in prehistoric times but is not true today, for the greatest increase of any single department in wealth has arisen from increased value of land; the increase of population and location of industries raise land values, as do also minerals, timber, geo- graphical, topographical, or climatic advantages, which respond to the demands required by new in- ventions. Nevertheless, individualism, with the use and development of peculiar talents, has made pos- sible the useful, mechanical and industrial arts and later, the fine arts and liberal arts — the doing of some one thing well. Machines and inventions battled for a time with art and, as the latter seemed defeated, all that is soulless, sordid, avaricious and mean in life was apparently victorious. Marx predicted that the machine would extend the hours of labor, which were already as much as human endurance could stand, and depress wages, which were then but a mere pittance, whereas the reverse has come to pass through evolution — the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age. Art is triumphing over the machine as mechanism is becoming subordinate to the human mind. The capacity of the world to do work has increased tremendously by the use of the machine, but the art 222 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM of living has required that the machine be made the serf and man the master. In their infancy, ma- chines were broken by frenzied mobs; and much mechanism devised by individualistic human minds was believed to be conceived by devils. The won- ders of mental achievement were veiled in mysticism and magic, when they were not denounced by an infuriated populace, oppressed and driven by igno- rance to rebellion against changes and progress. The Machine Age took much of the poetry out of life, but the industrial era, with its printing press, telegraphs, railroads, steamships, factories and great human conveniences, has taken the world from a few and given it to many and has multiplied opportunities for worth-while service to an extent that a century ago was undreamed of and two cen- turies ago would have been considered absolutely impossible. The Machine Age brought with it improved facilities for education, and as education increased, even if it was deplorably dogmatized and censored, freedom became more generally possible. The ex- ploiter of labor in the early industrial era cared nothing for labor except to demand long hours and low pay, just as Kings and Barons have cared naught for their soldiers' lives and the well-being of the "common herd." The printing press, a mere machine of the Machine Age, has sounded the death-knell of oppression, whether autocratic, eccle- siastical, educational, political, or industrial ; and the speed of transit of men and messages has been an important factor in determining the rapidity in the attainment of liberty. The warfare of humanity MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 223 against "divine right" potentates, self -usurped au- thorities, spiritual and temporal powers, is still be- ing fought, and the battle will continue until the masses become individual, reasoning, thinking en- tities; until they scorn to be dominated by tradi- tions, external authorities and the manipulators or exploiters of any kind of machines, no matter what their nature or sphere of activity may be. Man was created to be free, an individual, a util- izer of the forces of nature, an inventor, user and dominator of mechanical apparati, an organizer or member of a group of individual men, working in concert, with machine-like precision. We have jour- neyed beyond the Machine Age, with its material- ism, its worship of Mammon, its greed, oppression and serfdom, and we are now emerging through the age of the machine to what will ultimately be an era of true liberty. Just as the "Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," so the machine, society, state, Constitution, church and Bible were made for man, and not man for them. Diderot cried out in France to the church of his day, which was stifling truth and binding it fast with fetters, "Release your God," and the cry of our age is, — Release your false gods — your dogmatic behefs, temporal, spiritual, political, social, industrial, commercial and educa- tional. Worship truth, exercise reason, be individ- ual; follow that which is within yourself, the true inner man, and banish externals, with their false- ness, artificiality, mental passiveness and spiritual blindness, to the hell from which they sprang. Specialization of individualistic effort has alone 224 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM advanced the world nearer to the Cosmic Goal of perfection ; but specialization often means persistent effort and periods of intense concentration, rather than the use of one faculty to the detriment and resultant atrophy of others. William James has said that the total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of all his faculties. "He is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any one of them does have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and pas- sion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning pow- er, inventiveness, excellence of the senses — all are subsidiary to this. No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields of consciousness may be, if he really cares for a subject, he will re- turn to it incessantly from his mental wanderings and, first and last, do more with it and get more results from it, than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more lan- guid and less permanent sort." Specialization, to be effective, presupposes peri- ods of deep concentration, such as breed mental initiative, originality and invention and are pursued with keen enthusiasm and absorbing interest. Great inventions are always the product of minds which are capable of earnest, well- focused effort, energized by a passion to master and achieve ; but these minds do not necessarily specialize to the extent that they play persistently on one string. Such speciaHzation leads to mental degeneracy, over-developed local- ism and atrophied areas of great innate power. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 225 The brainy man, the world leader, the great indi- vidualistic mental force in the world, is he who has the power of a specialist in many of the multitudi- nous avenues of thought and has developed, to a relatively high degree of intelligence, whatever in- herent faculties were bequeathed to him at birth. Every faculty exercised strengthens in some meas- ure other faculties of the same mind. The story of genius is, to some extent, the story of work and per- sistent industry, expressed courageously in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. George Eliot laughed at the idea of writing by inspiration and a famous educator once remarked that genius is but the glorious output of a mind that had learned how to make effort effectively, free from restraint of any kind — in harmony with Infinite Truth. The great inventions of the world have not been made by men who isolated themselves from their fellows and for months and years worked unceas- ingly to solve a great problem. As a rule, such pro- cedure would be an effective way not to solve a problem, notwithstanding the admirable qualities exhibited, such as concentration, determination, ap- preciation of importance and self-sacrifice. All virtues must be controlled and life must be natural, or else harm becomes the inevitable reaction of the abuse of that which, within the limits of reason and the confines of "the mean," is good. It has been said that the world advances on two legs — "Invention" and "Imitation;" the former is generally admitted, the latter questioned. Inven- tion must build upon something and the structure upon which it raises its superstructure is the knowl- 226 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM edge and practice of the past. To be prepared to truly invent, one must be capable of first imitating the good work of one's predecessors and contempo- raries. Winwood Reade has said, "Paradoxical as it may appear, it is only the imitative mind that can attain originahty; the artist must learn to copy be- fore he can create." The true originator strives to attain complete historical and coeval knowledge concerning any problem in which he has become in- terested and endeavors to learn all there is to know about the matter, before he feels competent to freely utilize his inventive powers in an effort to improve upon what the world has already achieved in that pecuhar line of accomplishment. Some "inventors" work intuitively, but they never know where their work stands in the field of original production — whether they have produced anything new or not. They do not know the prior, or even the present state of the art ; indeed, the world is full of long-haired, eccentric, self-satisfied inventors who produce today something which, in their ignorance, they honestly beheve to be original, but which has been known, used and probably abandoned many years, decades, or even centuries before. Intuition is an invaluable power when harnessed for work with common sense, education, research and industry. Genius may be, to a great degree, intuitive, but the more strings upon which it can play its message to the world, the greater will be its power and Cosmic usefulness. Hence study and work to acquire knowledge, with the exercise of the imitative in- stinct, are absolutely necessary as a grounding be- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 227 fore the initiative and originating mind can do itself justice and perform real work with power. A genius is not a freak, but rather a well edu- cated and well rounded, knowing man; one who profits by the mental victories as well as the defects of his fellows and of preceding generations and ages. Most of the world's greatest artists, as well as inventors, have been, first of all, good imitators. Mozart began his musical career by imitating Bach ; Beethoven by copying Mozart. Moliere mimicked the Greek dramatists before he learned, as a dis- tinctive personality, to draw from the world about him. It has been well said that the many-sided char- acter of Goethe's mind, which made him a marvel among men, was based primarily upon his imitative instincts ; he has been likened to a chameleon, taking the hue of the ground on which he fed ; but, with his rare genius, he elaborated and glorified all that he touched. Emulation is, in fact, but a noble form of imita- tion. The greatest painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, chemists, scientists and philosophers of the Renaissance and modern times have imitated first and then later struggled to improve, clarify and perfect. Most of these immortal men have served a sort of apprenticeship with the greatest of the older masters, before venturing to carry the staff of progress a little nearer the Cosmic Goal. One of the great modern nations is a wonderful imitator and has risen to tremendous power; being young in years, measured from the time of the aboli- tion of the Feudal System, its citizens have not as yet reached the inventive stage of progress, but by a 228 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM perfected system of imitation, the nation is already- great in achievement. Another modern power makes claim to wonderful epoch-making inventions that are, in reality, the result of imitation plus in- dustry and research ; the results achieved cannot be considered the fruits of genius or mental originality. The knowledge of the world is absorbed by this people, the avenues of possible further accomplish- ment defined; and research work is industriously and almost blindly performed by unscientific meth- ods, so that, by sheer persistency and power of will, some new formulas and processes are bound to be discovered. There are men who build for themselves reputa- tions as inventors and geniuses of wonderful origin- ality, who probably never had a clean-cut, absolutely original, world-moving thought in their heads, and whose entire power in the world has been due to imi- tation and blundering, rather than to intelligent research. Real inventors are broad-gauged men, with the rare gift of conmion sense ; today, as in the past, nothing astonishes mankind so much as com- mon sense, real, hard, individualistic thinking and plain deahng. The greatest inventors of the indus- trial era have all claimed that their accomplishments were merely due to hard and persistent effort coupled with common sense, which might be more truly called "uncommon" sense. To produce com- mon sense, a man's brain and mentality will have to be unshackled from lethargy and harnessed to will- power. The world, however, is so mentally enslaved and somnolent that the proper use of a human mind, which ordinarily should be classified as "common MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 229 sense," has to be hailed today as something kindred to revelation and we call it genius — a divine power exhibited by man. This same power, in a greater or lesser degree, is waiting to utilize, for universal gain, every human brain. Yoritomo said, "Common sense is a central sense toward which all impressions converge and unite in one sentiment — the desire for truth." If any man desires the truth hard enough, he will seek for it ; and seeking with unwavering purpose and persistency, he will find it. What is a genius other than one who brings immutable truth to mankind; truth which can be used in some form or other to hft the world nearer to the great Universal Ideal? The real successes of the human mind follow obedience to the laws of nature, which demand the education, growth and development of the mind in totality as well as in relation to certain peculiar fac- ulties. Our American newspapers and magazines are fuU of stories of "successful" Americans who have devoted their lives to one thing. That one thing J lauded as meritorious, is found, upon analysis, to be one of the many ways of making money ; the "successful" man, when weighed in the scales of true success, is nothing but an abnormality, with acquisi- tiveness and possibly combativeness, wonderfully developed, while the idealistic and finer, humane, reverent and spiritual parts of his brain are hard- ened and dead. "What does it matter though a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Spe- cialization in the business fields of life, with success measured by gold, hardens the human heart, stifles sympathy, kills brotherhood, enthrones the ego and 230 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM makes a man into a lifeless machine — a mere cash register. All-round development of mental and spiritual faculties is his only salvation. We hear of men so engrossed in their business that they work fifteen and eighteen hours per day; these men can be divided into three classes : (1) Those who have the avarice for wealth or who have stifled everything truly noble within them and who, having no background and no real sub- stance to their lives, have to fill the vacuity of their minds with a continuous grind, or else be miserable, lonesome, nervously perplexed and discontented, until they find some way to "kill time" or return to work. (2) Men who lose their balance temporarily and honestly strive to achieve success by abusing nature, to their detriment. Efficiency of mental effort de- creases when certain brain sections are not given time to recuperate and take on renewed vigor by rest. Gray matter needs occasional and regular periods for rest, re-creation and rebuilding, just as the muscles of the body demand rest and the whole body needs sleep. The story of a modern inventor working eighteen or twenty hours a day, makes good advertising, but can scarcely be credited. He may fuss and potter and be too nervous to sleep; but real productive brain work could not be pursued for any such period of time — it would be inhuman and impossible. The "eighteen or twenty hours a day" sounds suspici- ously like the work of a good press agent. The modern inventor, with a large corps of well organized assistants, must accomplish much. Many MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 231 problems have been solved by prolific "trial and error" experiments; by work of crews, rather than by the inventor's own initiative; by weight of re- search facilities and expenditures of time and money, rather than by inventiveness. The truly great achievements of science, consid- ered from a meritorious standpoint, are not those where thousands of experiments are made on a tremendous scale, in the blind hope of solving a problem, but where an idea in a human mind is developed theoretically, by persistent reasoning and thought, until nature's barriers are overcome. In the search for a new process, one type of inventor says, "Such and such a chemical, in combination with certain matter, treated in a certain way, will produce the required results ;" he uses the scientific knowledge of the past and intelligently adds to it; he is an individualist, an originator — a pusher of the world toward Cosmic Perfection. Another type of inventor says, "Buy every chemical costing under, say, one dollar per pound and try them in combina- tion and treat such combinations with all available matter fulfilling a certain specification and see what you can get — possibly one or more will give us the results desired." This is not the procedure of a true scientist — ^^in fact, the only quality which keeps him in the field is his financial ability to maintain a Re- search Laboratory and an occasional streak of luck in stumbling on a process which will bring glory to his name and ducats to his pocket. (3) There is a third class of men, known as hard workers, who have a vocation in life, usually ardu- ous and exacting, and yet, in their margin of time, 232 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM have avocations and enjoy most diversified interests, useful to themselves and the world. Men of this class are mentally balanced and poised, with wide human sympathies ; they are philosophic and imagi- native and, being individualistic and reasoning be- ings, are almost invariably spiritually minded and opposed to all dogmatism and the worship of sense- less conventions and the externals of life. Such men in their avocations have done epoch-making work in the world and today they are the real leaven of society. How true is the saying that the world is a thing that man must learn to despise and even neglect before he can work in it and for it ; as Carlyle says, "Every noble crown is, and on earth ever vidll be, a crown of thorns." The great advance that the world has made has been principally due to busy, prac- tical men who have been obliged to work hard, but in the working have kept their minds active and their souls alive and in whose scanty leisure, great ideas have been born and developed to usefulness. Think of the great men of the past century who have risen from obscurity amid the jeers and scoffs of the world and bequeathed to a sneering humanity, startling inventions and ideas that have revolution- ized living. The individualistic imagination is the father of all the really great discoveries and inven- tions ; and no man can be great who has not a culti- vated imagination. Work in the world with one's fellows, steady and persistent contact with the prac- tical problems of life, develop the great man, deepen his sympathies, teach relative values, together with MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 233 the essence of the humanities, the horrors of mental serfdom and the preeminence of soul. "I go forth among men, armored in a pure intent^ Great work is to be done, and whether I stand or crownless fall. It matters not, so God's work be done. ( For I have learned to prize the lightning's deed Nor heed the thmider following after which men call fame." The great man struggling in the world perceives the need of culture and service. He feels the surg- ing passion of humanity and his hand touches the beating pulse of real life. He is of the world and no power that affects mankind, whether dogmas that enslave, or chains that enfetter, can be mean- ingless or unimportant to him. Yet he is not of the world, for his deep spirituality and individuahstic imagination will save him from sordid materialism. Life is a growth process. It is dynamic, not static ; for while man hves, he grows, and in the growth itself is life. Plato said, "Nothing ever is, but is always becoming." If life should become statical and settle into bhnd routine, the result would be death. Apparent equilibrium of hfe can only be attained by motion ; if we lose this equilibrium, then, as Grigg says, will "result a destructive riot of dis- ordered forces." We cannot have life and inac- tivity. Our world of motion can never degenerate to mere chaos or a Sahara of dead routine. We must progress, grow, develop and move upward and onward according to Universal Law. The aim of life is the art of life; it must be lived well. The problem of life is man's attitude toward the world 234 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and it demands the full and complete use of all his faculties — his mental and physical equipment. "When I was born From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice Saying, This be thy portion, child." It is man's duty and mission to take the portion allotted by the gods, utilize it and develop it to its fulness and, in so doing, to Hve. A worth-while life must be a useful life, and man perfects himself by working. An English clergyman much im- pressed Paul Dubois when, after several weeks of companionship, in which he had heard neither preaching nor moralizing, the Minister earnestly said in parting, "Remember there are two duties to be fulfilled in this world ; the first is to give to your personahty all the worth it is capable of possessing ; and the second is to put it at the service of others." Pascal has said that a man's usefulness in the world is marred by his idleness, his passions, his pride and self-love, which really mean his egoism and laziness ; but this is true only of those who know not, though they pretend to know and who are frail, though boastful of strength. There are also those men in the world whose great inherent power lies dormant through lack of con- fidence in themselves, the world and their God. They hang in space away from the solid earth and are fearful of being cut adrift lest failure disgrace them. They remind one of Don Quixote, hanging by his wrist from the stable window and imagining himself over a terrible abyss ; yet, when Maritornes MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 235 cut him down, he discovered that he had been all the time only a few inches above the solid ground. Every positive power with which a man is en- dowed was given to him to use, and only a moral coward will avoid contact and battle with realities by continuing to delay his entry into the fight; a protracted delay means a steadily increasing lack of desire and, ultimately, a condition of passive indiffer- ence. There are men who build castles in the air, dream of what they will do, yet let opportunities for accomplishment pass them by, because of lack of confidence or power to overcome inertia, or, per- haps, a preference for imagination, rather than actual work and achievement. Thoreau said in sub- stance to such: "ReaUze your dream and put the foundations to solid earth under your castles of the air." The world calls for workers, not dreamers. We must strive not to see what lies dimly in the dis- tance, to the exclusion of what lies clearly at hand. The true worker has imagination, an ideal, a vision, a hope ; and he strives to realize his ideal by energetic and enthusiastic effort, which is work. Real work is creative work in some form or other, and creative work is self -fulfilment. To accomplish that which is at hand helps us to realize opportuni- ties further afield. Emerson said, "Hitch your wagon to a star," and a wagon is a rather substan- tial and not by any means ethereal conveyance. Emerson appreciated the existence of the wagon and the need of the star. The hand can never exe- cute anything higher than the spirit can see and the personahty aspire to. The reward of work well done is in the ideal be- 236 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM coming real and the imaginative dream an accom- plished definite fact; the creative must necessarily always follow the discerning intellect. There is a great difference between a day dream and a pur- pose; the former is passive, the latter active. The dreamer is content ; the planner, hungry for attain- ment. When we dream, hope, or wish, we are apt to wait for the desired thing to come to us ; when we purpose, we perform the task necessary to realize the desired end. The doing of a thing means the overcoming of all resistance in its environment, the overthrow of all passiveness and the mastery of all negative forces within oneself. Doing a thing causes power to flow in reaction to the doer, thus permit- ting the mobilization of greater power for future effort. Every mind, to be great, must have a great plan and noble purpose, but great minds must have vision and conviction, energized into performance. Great- ness comes with accomplishment and not with aspir- ations alone. It is far better, however, to be a doer and earnest worker on a small scale in a field of useful service, than a dreamer of vast schemes, handicapped by indolent faculties for realizing the dreams. In one of Thoreau's manuscripts we read, "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man (with much of his life wasted) concludes to build a woodshed with them." Emerson aptly added, "Bet- ter honest woodsheds than nothing but impossible dreams." XIII VERSATILITY, in its modern rather than literal sense, means to be capable of turning with ease from one subject to another. This admirable quality does not indicate so much a lack of speciahzation in one line as a mental equipment of many pronounced characteristics and faculties, each of which can be so developed as to compete with specialized mental attributes in other people. One man, spending an hour a day with concentrated, intelligent thought on a certain subject, may become more of an authority on that subject after one year than another man who makes it the basis of his voca- tion and has worked on the matter ten hours a day for ten years. Intelligence, concentration, thor- oughness and individuality of thought, together with reasoning and reflective powers, draw the lines of demarcation between the mentally wise and the mentally foolish. The speciahst, with but one thought in life, is only partially cultured; he has restricted vision and an inhuman and boresome personality. He is mentally lopsided, unnatural and unendurable. The brain is not like a Wernicke book-case, with each book read or lesson taught making an added section. Unless the book read has stimulated thought and been a mental tonic, whipping one's mind into positive indi- vidualistic thought, it has added nothing to one's 237 238 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM mind and possibly nothing to one's brain, other than a few memorized but unaccepted and undigested words. Unless a lesson taught has opened up new avenues in the brain, new visions to inspire, and sug- gested new fields to conquer and the necessary equipment for worth-while exploration, the lesson has been merely a waste of time, rebelliously sub- mitted to or idly gratifying. Great minds have many interests ; they are many selves in one self. Hippias, the Greek Sophist of the fifth century B. C, was a famous master of rhetoric, eloquent and learned, and ready to answer any man's questions on astronomy, geometry, math- ematics, language, music, genealogic antiquities and philosophy. He was a man of great versatility, and even made with his own hands all his clothes and shoes. He wrote some excellent works on Homer and was a collector of Greek and foreign literature and archaeological treatises. Pythagoras was a traveler, mathematician, astronomer, teacher and organizer. Melissus, of Samos, was a philoso- pher, a most clever politician, an executive and a brave general. To Flavins Arrianus, the eminent Stoic philosopher, we owe much ; he was a wise ad- ministrator and successful general. He was also a lecturer and held high public offices under Hadrian. In 130 A. D. he received the consulship, later filled a priesthood and still later we find him devoting himself to the production of works on history and military tactics. In the midst of his strenuous ca- reer, this eminently worthy and versatile genius wrote and pubHshed the discourses of his teacher Epictetus. 1 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 239 Some little time ago, a modern writer, attempting to prove by history the old saying, "Jack of all trades, master of none," had the poor judgment to write disparagingly of the greatest genius of the Renaissance — Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), say- ing that had Leonardo Hved today he would have been a third or fourth-rate engineer. Versatility does not make "Jacks" or "scatter-brains," any more than specialization makes "Masters." One man with developed brain and well-rounded personahty, with vision, ideals and purpose energetically ex- pressed, may be a genius in many fields of human endeavor, or, at least, worthy of being considered a specialist, or an acknowledged authority. To do much does not mean to do it badly. To do many things does not indicate that any one of them need be done badly. The old cry of "Let the shoemaker stick to his last" has been overdone; it savors too much of protective restriction for decaying, selfish interests. A Paderewski need not attempt blacksmithing, but after all, if a man of Paderewski's temperament could do the work of a smith, without detrimentally affecting his purely physical self, i. e., fingers, hands, arms and shoulders, the mental work of smithing would do a Paderewski good; and it is mental and not physical work that we are discussing. Leonardo could never have done any work like a "Jack." He brought back to the mind of the world the wonders of science that had slept for many long centuries. He was an inheritor and a perfecter, yet in science he seemed to be a pioneer, working wholly for the fu- ture and, in great part, alone and against tremen- 240 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM dous odds. This wonderful genius was one of the greatest painters of the greatest era of painters that the world has ever known. He was also a talented sculptor, a skilled architect, a brilliant engineer, as well as a noted physician, mechanician and natural philosopher. We are told that "no man gifted in the same degree was at once for art and science." It is doubtful if this age could produce a Leo- nardo da Vinci ; appreciation of art has lowered, our minds are too sordid and the authority of the usurp- ing specialist and dogmatist too complete. This age is habitually shamefaced or absent-minded before the ideal, i. e., before the real nature of things. This is an era of hurry, bustle and motion ; of crowds and mass ; of specialists to think out all our thoughts and serve conclusions, duly censored and peptonized in tabloid form. It is a rushing, trashy age, teeming with excitement, thrills and so-called "big" things; midget men propping up the universe and hurrahing about civilization, with real cultivation ignored and undergoing decay. It is an hysterical age of brass bands, waving banners and senseless noise ; the wor- ship of externals of life, of Mammon, the authority of inane dogmatism and an unreal, unspiritual God, a burlesque of the religion of Christ and of the real soul. Men today are like the sailors of Ulysses and mistake bags of wind for bags of treasures. The hectic character of imaginative literature and many theatrical plays of the day are indicative of the wild state of our psychic life, the substitution of ragtime for real music, and the sensuous dance for the rhythm of wholesome happiness. Anything abnor- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 241 mal must be feasted upon, notwithstanding that such diet blotches and indelibly disfigures life. The average man of this age brags about our civ- ilization and advancement, speaks contemptuously of the ancient Romans and Greeks and ridicules the marvelous versatile minds of the Renaissance, which, in reality, seemed to reclaim to the world by atavism or reversion a wonderful type of mentality seldom permitted to grow and manifest itself during the mind oppression and mental slavery of the greater part of the Christian Era. It has been said that if one wants to find a barbarian, or even a savage, it is only necessary to scratch the very thin veneer which covers the average man nearest you, and the remark was famous long before the hideous war broke out in civilized. Christianized Europe. Is it not time that we paid attention to the admonition of Marcus Aurelius, "Cease to be whirled around"? Such men are "Triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct their movements and their thought. Give thyself time to learn something good." The world, we say, has made tremendous progress dur- ing the last few decades. Has it been progress, or merely an hallucination of speed and sensuous real- ization of luxuries, falsely considered as necessities ? Have we really progressed, is our civilization cul- ture, and have advancing years and decades of mar- velous apparent achievement brought peace and happiness to this poor world? In his mental make-up, Michael Angelo (1475- 1564) was many-sided. He always averred that painting was not his business, yet his art on the walls 242 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at Rome, tremen- dous in area and conception, and brilliant in execu- tion, will continue to live through the ages as the world's greatest specimens of mural art. Angelo, by nature and predilection, turned to sculpture, where he did magnificent work, but as an engineer he had no superior in his day; much of the noble edifice of St. Peter's at Rome is due to his versatile and well-developed mind. He was also a bronze founder, architect, soldier, philosopher and poet, and his work in each of these lines of endeavor was most meritorious and worthy of being set as a goal to be reached by our specialists of today. Angelo, a big man, engaged in big things, an artist by temper- ament and always a striving perfectionist, demand- ed perfection in detail. Although constantly har- assed and living in troublesome times, a sensitive, reticent man, amidst most unsympathetic people, he worked to do to the very best of his ability every- thing which he undertook, for, said he, "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Angelo and many of his contemporaries, together with most of the artists of the two centuries of Ital- ian mediaeval glory, worked for future generations ^ and time has not yet effaced their living works. What a difference between the substantiality of mediaeval builders and artists and the superficiality and shoddiness of our era of whimsical unrest, hys- terical and changing emotionalism, the worship of the immediate present and our indifference to the future ! Mind cultivation alone will save our coun- try from tremendous failure following our period of unprecedented prosperity and apparent greatness. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 243 Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English phi- losopher, scientist, statesman and essayist. This most learned litterateur wrote masterpieces and virtually ruled England and yet his great work was in the reorganization of the sciences and the restoration of man to the command over nature. In Bacon we see the connoisseur, the creative artist, and the produc- tive worker, the laudable three-fold thread of Hfe. Philosophy is not the mere science of things, di- vine and human; it is the search after truth and is the parent of all sciences. Great thinkers and states- men, such as Bacon, who reformed modern science, share with Descartes the honor of inaugurating modern philosophy. The world owes much to Ba- con for his stand against the tyranny of authority and his arguments against the vagaries of unfettered imagination and the academic aims of unpractical dialectics. Descartes (1596-1650), the great French philos- opher, was a man of very feeble health, but with a brilliant mind, well cultivated and developed — a specialist in many fields. He did meritorious work in anatomy, mathematics, optics and many divi- sions of science and had a rare appreciation of music and nature. Each morning he had to spend in bed because of physical weakness; thus he developed a habit of reflective thinking. In early youth he dis- trusted the authority of tradition and teachers and nurtured his mind to grow free and unfettered. Descartes and the philosophers of the schools that he has done much to found or inspire, never refused to submit to laws and government for the good of the many and the well-being of the state. 244 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM Philosophical individuality is a philosophy of ethical beauty; it believes in law and order — for is not the universe the expression of law? — and it is diametrically opposed to anarchy, which is but chaos and the absence of law. Descartes rejected mental authority and the dogmatism of truth. He em- bodied his rules for practical life in four maxims: one, to submit himself to the laws in which he was brought up; another, to act, on all those occasions which called for action, promptly and according to the best of his judgment, and to abide by the result without repining; the third, to seek happiness in limiting the desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them; while the last was to make the search after truth the business of his life. Descartes, with his brilliant, all-round mind, loved to think and feel his mind grow. Although physi- cally weak, small and emaciated in appearance, he studied his ailments as a true scientist, took care of his body, diet and habits of life ; and by the exercise and development of his mind he lived to be fifty- four years of age. His enjoyment came in knowing and in the striving to know. It has been said that all men may enjoy, though few can achieve to the degree of Descartes. All minds can be made to grow to the maximum limit of their innate capabili- ties and in the growing bear fruit; but all minds cannot give the harvest that Descartes gave the world ; and there are very few men with a Descartes mind and physical handicaps that would go through the life of discipline and thoughtful care that he did, in order to give to the world the full measure of his mental power. 1 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 245 Men are prone, when acknowledging the output of a great mind, to speak of his hereditary talents, his opportunities, his ease in obtaining wonderful results ; they seldom think of the work, the tremen- dous self-sacrifices, the devotion to the Cosmic Call, the abstinence from so-called worldly pleasure and the sublime unselfishness and energetic enthusiasm that have been necessary to make powerful the men- tal output of such a man. The man playing cards or dancing at night and sleeping late, Hves a Hfe which, in his opinion, is filled to the brim with duties ; the man who works an equal number of hours at his vocation, adores his family and loves his fellow men, yet makes time to read and study in the evenings and early mornings, has plenty of time to prepare for opportunities and do things in life that his col- leagues attribute to luck; whereas it is entirely due to work, efficient planning and the nurturing and growth of mental faculties. Stagnant brains will always lead to dissatisfaction with oneself and with the world. Phable, elastic brains, which have been called "flowing brains," see life whole, its opportuni- ties and worth-while ideals. James Watt (1736-1819), the inventor of the modern condensing steam engine, had a versatile, well-developed mind. Here is another genius who was extremely delicate and in early life was thrown on his own resources. He became proficient as a surveyor and civil engineer, mechanic, instrument- maker and famous as an inventor, mechanical en- gineer and scientist. He was also a noted linguist and had multitudinous interests. Sir Walter Scott speaks of him as "the alert, kind, benevolent old 246 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM man, his talents and fancies overflowing on every subject, with his attention alive to every one's ques- tion, his information at every one's command." A genius is not a crank, a boresome specialist, an ego- istic, unsocial, inhuman prig, but a man in whom re- poses, in great measure, universal creative forces, which, in their very essence, are humane and God- like. Specialization, carried to the utmost hmit of human power, results in insanity; mind develop- ment, carried to the highest possible degree, mirrors the God in man. One of the finest and most pathetic characters of the Renaissance was Galilei Gahleo (1564-1642), the Italian astronomer and experimental philoso- pher. Galileo, like most of the brainy men of his time, in contrast with the so-called successful men of our era, was extremely versatile ; and throughout his life was noted for his broad intellectual achieve- ments, as well as for his diversified mechanical in- ventions. He was a Latin and Greek scholar, logi- cian, musician, optician, writer, physician and an authority in medicine ; he was also a mathematician and possessed much talent as a painter. His father tried, without success, to curb his talents and field of inquiry and usefulness. He became known as "the Archimedes of his day," and his search for truth was so displeasing to the church that he was menaced with torture, persecuted by the Inquisi- tion, incarcerated and condemned as "vehemently suspected of heresy." His last days were spent in strict seclusion — virtually a prisoner — but his pro- digious mental activity continued undiminished to the last. MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 247 Galileo lived to be seventy-eight years of age ; his best work was written when he was seventy-two, and his last telescopic discovery, — that of the moon's diurnal and monthly librations — was made one year later, and only a few months before his eyes were forever closed in hopeless blindness. Though bhnd, he worked incessantly until his death; he thought out the apphcation of the pendulum to clock work and was engaged in dictating to his disciples, Viviani and Torricelli, his ideas on the theories of impact, when he was seized with the fever that brought him to the grave. Man's body reaches its prime in early life and degeneration soon sets in; but man's mind, if nur- tured, developed and exercised, never grows old; although those parts of it that are abused by neg- lect, atrophy early in life. The "second childhood" mind is an unused, undeveloped mind that has not been properly strengthened by usage. Much of the truly great and immortal mental work of the world has been performed by middle-aged and old men, just as the great physical records, requiring mus- cle, endurance and brawn, have been generally made by young men in their third decade of life. But all the brilliant mental efforts that have left their imprint on the world have not been the product of experienced minds developed by age. The modern creed that no man should write until he is forty is absurd. This is as preposterous as the Osier statement that a man at forty is useless to the world and could profitably be dispensed with. There is a great deal of truth in the old adage, "Young men for action, old men for counsel," yet 248 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM it is interesting to note that Berkeley ^vrote his great work when only twenty-five years of age; Hume's masterpiece was written when he was twenty-seven; Shelling received the ^Master's De- gree from the University of Tubingen when seven- teen years old and at twenty-three was Professor of Philosophy at Jena. The brilliant Keats died at twenty-five ; Novalis, the great mystic, at twenty- eight; Marlowe at twenty-seven; Shelley at thirty and Christ at thirty-three. Youth should be naturally spontaneous, instinc- tive, ebullient, craving freedom and action. "Reflec- tion whispers to the grov^dng man," and expe- rience generally tends to soften, subdue and give deeper and more universal social vision. Youth is apt to be impetuous, extreme and, in conflict with error, grow easily discouraged and pessimistic. Age gives deeper thought and understanding; it is more indulgent, more tolerant, but grows T\dth all its mello^vness more alHed with the world forces of truth and love. Men with brains formed of normal nervous mat- ter and of average physical "goodness," should never mentally degenerate even in extreme old age. IMany men have done brilliant work when eighty and ninety years of age — splendid brains in weak- ened bodies ; but the brain of the average man and woman weakens as age advances; the atrophy that has been steadily occurring through disuse since childhood becoming painfully evident at a period of life when the brain should be developing to its great- est power. Thoreau, discussing this tragic fact, said, "We are accustomed to say in New England MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 249 that fewer and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no masts for them. So it would seem fewer and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste — sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on." The timber of the average mature man's brain has not been merchan- dised, however ; it has become dead through dry rot. Education and mind development should cover the whole of life and we should be as active in mind culture in ripe old age as we are in our youth. We speak pityingly of a man whose early education has been neglected, but we ignore the fact that we are neglecting the far greater and, in some respects, more important opportunities of what should be our later and more mature education. Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, who shares with Darwin in the discovery of the law of natural selec- tion and the survival of the fittest, wrote his great book, "Social Environment and Moral Progress," in his ninety-first year. Wallace was a born natur- alist and he has put humanity and soul into mater- iahstic conceptions of nature — a kindly old man, scientific, yet loving and lovable; a true reformer, working for his fellow men with a mind great enough to encompass all that lies between the hori- zons of human thought and activity. Surely the mind of a good man, if well developed, does not decay and shrivel up with the body tissues. "He has been inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling, not a mean and groveling thing that 250 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, hved to be eighty- four years of age and it has been said that "a summary of so versatile a genius is impossible." His intellect was enormously energetic, with a most diversified field, directed generally to practical ends. He was a diplomat, statesman, writer, scientist and economist. In politics, religion, science, ethics, agriculture, navigation, hygiene, journalism, print- ing, publishing, mechanical arts, music and educa- tion, he seemed almost equally at home; and every subject seemed to come from under his touch, sim- plified and enlarged. It is said that "He renewed everything he touched," and that "He had, per- haps, the most clarifying and renovating intellect of his keenly alert age, and to know his writings is to be familiar with half of the activities of the eighteenth century." Like his contemporary, the brilHant mental free-lance, Voltaire, his personaHty was greater than any separate production of his brain. These were great men in supreme versatihty of mind, in dominion over the world and in power of expression, but in the case of Franklin the ex- pressive power was the more practical and his achievements were epoch-making in Hnes of accom- plishment for the immediate benefit of mankind. As a scientist and inventor, Franklin was decried by his contemporaries as an amateur and a dabbler. The age of "specialists" was at hand and this ver- satile man, with a developed, active brain, who de- voted some of his "leisure" hours to scientific re- search, was too great to be a specialist; yet his fa- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 251 mous experiments with the kite proved Hghtning to be an electrical phenomenon. He overthrew en- tirely the "friction" theory of electricity and upset, one by one, the theories of the "specialists" of his day. His last public act was in the interest of the abolition of slavery and, to the end, his mind re- mained brilliant and his personality was marked by a fine serenity and calm. Goethe, "a clear and universal man," was a poet, philosopher, statesman, scientist, man of letters and, in wisdom, was like Shakespeare, an epitome of the world. Carlyle said that Goethe was an artist in the high and ancient meaning of the term, and "we trace in the creations of this man touches of that old divine spirit." He was, it has been said, "what philosophy can truly call a man." Kings and peas- ants, "the callow dilettante and inamorato to the grave transcendental philosopher," have studied Goethe's writings with affection and with a faith which, "where it cannot unriddle, learns to trust." Goethe was thorough and industrious. Novalis said of him that the grand law of his being was his determination to conclude whatever he undertook; "let him engage in any task, no matter what its diffi- culties or how small its worth, he cannot quit it until he has mastered its whole secret, finished it, and made the result of it his own." Goethe's life was a life of effort. He said of himself that he had "struggled toughly." He is a splendid illustration of the theory that much which is admitted as genius is born of effort and untiring, persistent industry. Goethe was a true poet, a master of humanity and, therefore, a citizen, not 252 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM only of his own country, but of the world ; not only of his own time, but of all time. He had the wis- dom of experience obtained by observation, atten- tion, reason and reflection, the whole being leavened by intuition. His brilliant mind raised him from youthful pessimism, denial and despair to "that better vision, not tolerable only, but full of solem- nity and loveliness." Goethe was analytical, scientific, versatile, logical and shrewd, yet human, devout, joyous and sympa- thetic. When he passed away, one of the famous critical writers of his day wrote, "That worthy prince, exemplary in whatever concerned hterature and the arts, has been called suddenly away." Ver- satility is generally the condition of genius. In Goethe, we find an all-roundness, allied with super- human industry, clear vision, clean-cut ideals and extraordinary common sense. The biography of achievement is most often the biography of men thoroughly alive on many sides of their nature and of men taking an active part and expressing unusual versatility in the drama of the world. The German Philosopher Leibnitz was so ver- satile that his contemporaries referred to him as the man "with a universal mind." This great optimist was an historian, naturalist, diplomatist, theologian, mathematician, politician, scholar and philosopher. Immanuel Kant was not only the greatest phi- losopher of his time, but he lived a life devoted to science and taught logic, ethics, metaphysics, mathe- matics, cosmography and geography at the Uni- versity of Konigsberg. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was the son of a MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 253 French tanner ; he had difficulty in acquiring learn- ing, and in chemistry was considered very mediocre and even stupid at school. Yet this man worked to be of service in the world along specific lines which he mapped out for himself and for which edu- cational authorities said he was not fitted. He rescued the milk industry from an epidemic of fatal character, made many foods and beverages safe for consumption after long periods of storage — an in- evitable condition in those days of slow transit. He discovered the process which we now know as Pas- teurization, which saves hundreds of thousands of young lives each year; he revolutionized surgical practice and conquered incurable diseases. Madison C. Peters has said, "Our country is full of persons who can do many things fairly well, but too few who know how to do one thing supremely well." If he had said that the world contains many people who can do one thing fairly well, and but few who can do anything supremely well, he would have been right. Again he says, "Every man who would be successful must specialize, know one thing clear through. The day of universal knowledge is past. The true measure of a successful man's learning today is the number of studies which he elects to let alone ; — to keep a gun from scattering, put in a single shot. No man can know one thing, or anything, clear through." The day of universal knowledge cannot be past; it has not arrived, and it is so far in the future that we cannot see it, but we are working toward it. It is the goal of a work- ing, struggling humanity, and when we reach it, we shall all be gods. 254 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM The true measure of a man's success is his breadth of interests, his nearness to Godhood. A single shot is used in a well educated man's gun as well as in that of the modern speciahst's, but whereas the lat- ter keeps aiming at a single point on a single target, the former has a wide and deep angle of fire and, with rapid and intelligent manipulation, may score ten times as many real hits in the battle of life as the speciaHst with the fixed gun and generally deadened universal interests. A man who works solely to make money is a speciaUst; a man who works solely for fame or notoriety is a specialist, just as much as a man who builds gas engines and indignantly refuses to become interested in any other phase of engineering or of life, affirming that "absolute concentration of both mind and energy in one chosen pursuit is essential for success." Peters has referred to Lord Brougham's versatile career and said that this wonderful man, in a career of upwards of sixty years, covered law, hterature, pohtics and science, in all of which he achieved dis- tinction. One of Brougham's friends, when re- quested to undertake some new work, excused him- self on the ground that he "had no time," but added, "Go with it to that fellow Brougham; he has time for everything." Peters admires Brougham's in- defatigable industry and says that the man knew how to work and never left a moment unemployed ; "no amount of application was too great for him, and it was said of him that if his life station had been only that of a shoe-black, he would never have rested satisfied until he had become the best shoe- black in England." Peters denounces versatility MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 255 and greatly esteems industry; but industry in the case of Brougham, and in the majority of world- famous geniuses, resulted in versatility. One can- not consistently praise and advocate the road and denounce the goal. Industry, coupled with humanity and expanding into universahsm, will make good specialists with wide interests and sympathies ; and if a man is fa- vored by nature with many talents, he may become more of a specialist in many other branches of knowledge than a so-called trained specialist, who, by applying himself to his one vocation to make money, does not put half as much intelligence, energy, and love into the subject as a versatile genius who considers it merely one of a large num- ber of subjects in which he is intensely interested. Gerald Stanley Lee has well said, "It is as good a principle in industry and in mechanics as it is in law, medicine, the arts, and biology, that specializa- tion is a source of weakness as well as strength." The real work of the world is done by men who would generally be considered to "have no time," but who are so efficient in the planning and using of their time that they seem, in some miraculous way, to obtain ample time to do that which their heart desires. In the business world, the "big" man of great and diversified interests, going through a staggering amount of work each day, has time to speak with an unimportant caller; but the "little" man, who is not actuated by an industrious genius, makes ten times as much fuss as the "big" man and does a tenth as much work; he keeps everybody around 256 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM him inefficient and in a turmoil and he can only be seen by "important" business visitors. It is a well- known fact that the busiest people have the most time and the reason is that they have clear and definite aims which they constantly serve; they are efficient in the utihzation of time and in the ex- penditure of energy. If a man is industrious, with human sympathies and understanding, he will be versatile, and the degree of his versatility will be an index of his completeness. Schiller believed that to be able and successful, one should "man his own heart," or use every part of his brain and express his humanity and talents in their fullness. Wagner (1813-1883) is typical of the geniuses who grew to immortality by work, suffering and antagonism. He developed into a versatile artist, a musician, dramatic composer, poet, writer and Hnguist. The man who works is the one who achieves. The spur of necessity has often forced men to do their best and accomplish much when their deepest interests were aroused; but the joy of work has made many, whose vocations have given them a comfortable living, struggle to know more of the universe in their "margin of time." And thus searchers after truth have appeared in the world who have worked, not only for food, shelter and raiment, but for the very joy of the working and the inner satisfaction which blooms from mental growth. Carlyle said that for suffering and endur- ing there is no remedy but striving and doing. Franklin was right when he proclaimed that "The highest worship of God lies in service to man." To be of service to man, however, one must know one- MENTALITY AND FREEDOM 257 self intimately ; this brings more than knowledge — when realized, it is wisdom. "I sought for God, But God eluded me. I sought my brother, But I found him not. I found myself. And, finding, found all three." To have much purpose and energetic enthusiasm, to achieve with little inherent talent, is far better than much talent and little purpose; but energy commensurate with talent, enthusiastically urging the growth and development of every useful attri- bute, expresses mental life, sanity and individualis- tic efficiency. More nervous energy than gray matter is like a powerful engine in a full bowed boat — the power expends itself in idly churning the water instead of driving the boat ahead. Our duty is to develop and shape our minds to the absolute limit of hereditary power and thus put to useful work the human energy and power which our physical bodies generate. Specialization is admirable and generally necessary for further prog- ress. As knowledge increases and becomes more complex, human minds are compelled to make deeper studies of certain subjects to reach the ap- proximate limit of human knowledge ; but we make a great mistake today in believing that in being a speciahst one must be an exclusionist. To give pri- ority to a subject does not require the ignoring of other fields of human inquiry ; and the man w4io can work and be intensely interested in more than one field, generally makes the best legitimate specialist, 2,58 MENTALITY AND FREEDOM leading his colleagues along the road to greater and still greater achievement. Every man should cultivate all his faculties. He must either use them or lose them. Every day and every hour brings opportunities for self -develop- ment and world-service. Carlyle has told us that every day born into the world comes like a burst of music and sings itself all day through, and we will make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march. Every situation occupied by man has its ideal, its duty. "Yes, here in this poor, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is the ideal! Work it out therefrom and, working, believe, live, and be free!" "The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, commu- nicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all." — Voltaire. To the writers of all time, from whose works I have drawn in the preparation of this volume, I acknowledge my indebtedness. W. A. F. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111