aOl LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA %eceive$ y/lTiFzr. ■ i8q3 , ^rcessio!!S-Noj37jv > OF THB « 'UFI7BRSIT7] Fig YET I AM SURE THAT FROM OUT THE LATTICED WINDOW OF THAT LOFTY OCTAGONAL TOWER A BELL IS WARN- ING ME OF THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR. •V 0? THIS riVBRs: CHAPTER I. VOL' ARE ANCHORED TO EARTH BY YOUR BODY. You can net escape the conviction that you are not your body. Call yourself by whatsoever name pleaseth you — soul, spirit, mind, substance, arch-monad, pontifical cell, stream of thought — these and more are only vague attempts at formulating an expression for one and the same indefinable spiritual agent whom you are constantly recognizing as Yourself — the pure Ego. You know that your most intimate friend has never seen You. The sparkle of your eyes may be quite familiar to that friend; your rosy cheek ; your voice ; even your walk may discover you among a thousand; yet that friend has never seen You ; only the house in which You live. It will not destroy that friend's affection should your eyes lose their youthful luster, your cheek fade to the ashes of roses; your voice become faint and uncertain. Nay, though age or sickness or disaster should wither 2 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. that robust body to the merest shadow of its former self, yet your friend's regard for You will have grown only the stronger ; because true affection is between your Selves, not your bodies. But you have no way of studying your Self except through your body. You may have held a loved one in your arms when the balance was trembling be- tween life and death, watching with the whole intensity of your being to catch a glimpse of a Spirit separated from its earthly anchorage; but you failed. Sweetly it bade you good-bye, and silently, invisibly with- drew — and all was over. No tears of yours, nor prayers, could bring it back, for it is not the office of prayers nor tears to raise the dead. Hence two very interesting and important questions present themselves: Since You can not be catechised except through the body, how does the external world become known to You ? and, how do You become known to the external world? Imagine your Self within your body, with- out ever having had the ability to taste or smell or touch or hear or see. What a dungeon ! You can learn nothing of the external world, neither can your knocking against your prison walls in any way indicate that You are within. But a door opens to You — the sense of Taste, with its accom- panying nerves and nerve centers. When these nerves are properly stimulated, You become conscious of agreeable sensations, of not a very high order, but they do not help you to escape. Another door opens — the sense of Smell. The fragrance of a rose on a table near and of a distant flowery meadow come floating in, and You derive a confused sort of pleasure from them ; but for all that You can tell, the meadow might be on the table and the rose a thou- sand leagues away. What they have to give must be brought to You, and You can never know whence the gift comes. Now the sense of Touch, with its beautiful network of in -and -out -carrying nerves, suddenly wakes into activity. For the first time You realize that your prison walls have outer 4 SECRET OE CHARACTER BUILDING. boundaries, and You are permitted to take a little promenade as far as your finger-tips can reach. But hark ! your ears are unstopped. What a wealth of harmony delights You ! Yet all these are not to be compared with what now bursts in. The scales are lifted from your eyes, and "Behold, the distant and the near Stand forth in sunny outline clear." Marvelous transformations. Glorious pos- sessions. A prisoner no longer. Your very prison walls have become willing messengers to minister to your pleasure. They bring You tidings from mountain top and yonder twinkling star. Reclining at your ease, You revel in the shade and redolence of orange- groves, amid the warblings of bright-winged, sweet-voiced birds, and under the lace-like traceries of the shadowy clouds against a deep blue sky. FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA TO THE BODY. But how are all these things brought about ? The answer to this question involves some of the most splendid results of scien- tific research. FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA, 5 I begin with those transferences of energy which bring the outlying phenomena within reach of the senses. Sitting to-night with my window open towards one of the most extensive groups of educational buildings in all Germany, the University of Bonn, the rich, mellow voice of a bell is borne in on the fragrant night air. Why do I hear it? How do I know that in yonder ancient Minister there is a bell, and that it is now counting off the hours since midnight ? I have never been to the top of the wearisome stair over which it hangs, and no one has ever told me that it is there ; yet I am sure that from out the latticed window of that lofty octagonal tower a bell is warning me of the lateness of the hour. The bell has a front or rim which is prac- tically a circle. Receiving the energy of the hammer-stroke at A, figure 3, the rim yields slightly, assuming the form of an ellipse, its shorter diameter being along the line of the stroke and its longer diameter at right angles, along the line B. The four points where the lines C and D touch the 6 SECRET OE CHARACTER BUILDING. rim at equal distances from the above men- tioned points of greatest displacement, re- main fairly at rest. But the elasticity of bell-metal requires the rim to return from its present strained condition to its circular form — and more, the inertia of the moving segments carries them beyond the condition of equilibrium to that of an ellipse at right angles to the former one. These recurrent changes of place, or vibrations, continue until the energy is spent in doing work upon the film of air lying nearest the bell, or is dissipated into a live- lier kind of vibration called Heat. The film of air is likewise displaced, and possessing the same properties, elasticity and inertia, it, too, is set to vibrating, a large portion of its energy being transmitted to the film lying next to it — and so on, until, presently, a very small area of the series of concentric waves of condensation and rarefaction reaches my ear. The first wave may not attract my attention, but a very few vibra- tions are sufficient to give me a definite notion of the Pitch of the bell. This pitch Fig. 3. THE BELL HAS A FRONT OR RIM WHICH IS PRACTICALLY A CIRCLE. ^> OF THE*^^ 'VHIVBR3ITT! FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 9 will remain constant so long as the impulses continue to reach my ear at this Rate. But were I to rush towards the bell, it would ap- pear to have raised its tone, because more than the former number of vibrations would reach me in a given time; and my traveling in the opposite direction would have the contrary effect. You may remember the suddenness with which the locomotive bell seems to lower its pitch as an express train dashes past you. As long as the bell and you remain the same distance apart, its pitch is normal, because the sound waves reach you with the same frequency that they are produced. And as the locomotive ap- proaches at a definite rate, the pitch will be constant, but higher than normal, because now more than the normal number of waves reach your ear in a given time. But at the instant when the locomotive dashes past you, the pitch of the bell suddenly drops below the normal, because, the waves having now a greater distance to travel, fewer of them reach your ear in a given time. Should the receding locomotive come to rest, the pitch of the bell would rise to the normal again. 10 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. This principle is so well established that, knowing the normal pitch, you may readily calculate the speed of the train from the pitch of the approaching or receding bell; or, knowing the speed of the train, you may determine the normal pitch of the bell from the higher pitch that it seems to have when coming toward you, or from the lower pitch caused by its retreat. The Minister bell is sending out for its fundamental tone about two hundred and six- ty-five waves per second, which is four waves more than are produced by striking middle C of your piano. The heaviest string of a modern grand gives twenty-seven and a half, while its shortest string yields forty- two hundred waves per second. Between these two extremes are safely included all of the magnificent tone effects produced by full orchestra, chorus and grand organ, so far as fundamental tones are concerned. Some celebrated bass singers have been able to take B two octaves below the B adjacent to middle C, a little more than sixty-one vibrations per second; while it is claimed FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. I I that Patti can take, when in her most ex- alted moods, the B five octaves above the lowest limit of the best bass voice, about nineteen hundred and fifty-seven vibrations per second. But these figures are a full octave wider apart than are warranted by the extreme limits attained by the voices of even our best vocalists. But the Ego may receive impressions through the ear far beyond these limits. Sounds too acute to be musical can be heard by most persons all the way up to fifteen thousand vibrations per second, almost three octaves above the highest note ever taken by the human voice, and some persons claim to be able to hear more than a full octave higher still ; but perhaps the imagination assists in these extreme cases. In some experiments which the writer made recently, an ambitious young professor in a leading university was able to hear " quite distinctly" the ticking of my stop-watch six feet away, when the watch was not running. Professor A. M. Mayer states the case with great fair- ness when, after careful tests, he fixes the 12 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. limit of hearing in some distinguished persons as follows : * Vibrations per second. Prof. Joseph Henry, - - 12,300 Alfred M. Mayer, - 16,400 Chief Justice Waite, - - 20,500 Thus the external world speaks to us in a vast variety of keys, but the pitch of each of them depends solely upon so small a thing as the number of waves that are received by the ear in a given time. , Besides Pitch, the waves bring with them the notion of Intensity. If the hammer - strokes be uneven in their force, the air particles, by their greater or less displace- ment, will tell me so ; or, if I station myself nearer to or farther away from the Miinster, I may judge with fair accuracy of my position by the energy of the waves. As indicated in the diagram, figure 4, the total energy of the hammer -stroke, if con- fined to a small concentric sphere of air, will produce a greater displacement of air -particles than when that same energy has been passed out to a much larger *Appleton's Physics, p. 399. FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA, outlying layer of air. It must not be understood, however, that Intensity depends entirely upon the energy of the wave, for at a different Pitch a less energetic stroke Fig. 4. might send me an impression of a louder sound. The more difficult question remains, how do I know that it is a bell and not a whistle or a voice that is calling: off the hours? The 14 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. waves are most certainly able to tell me not only the Pitch and the Intensity of the sound, but its Timbre as well ; but how? If you touch lightly at its middle point any open string, a violin or guitar string for example, while sounding, you may detect a tone an octave higher than the open note. Touching at one -third the distance from Fig. 5. either end of the string, you get a fifth above the octave. Touching at one -fourth, you hear the second octave above the open string — and so on, as indicated in figure 5. But without the aid of your finger, the open string while sounding divides into halves, thirds, fourths, etc., sending out FROM THE OUTLYING 1'ITKNOMENA. 15 waves of two, three, four, etc., times the vibration frequency of the open string. They may be so slight that it will require great care to detect them, but their influence upon the form of this fundamental wave is so marked that you readily recognize the violin or guitar tone from that of any other musical instrument, although of the same pitch. A beautiful theory announced by Professor Helmholtz is to the effect that all differences in timbre are due to differences in the number and intensity of these upper partial waves. For example, a tuning fork on a resonant box gives a simple tone, which may be 1 6 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. represented by the first illustration of the open string, in figure 5, while the flute produces along with the fundamental the octave higher, represented singly by the second illustration figure 5; but these two waves combining, change the resultant wave to the form indicated by figure 6, where the dotted line shows the lower tone, and the continuous line the effect produced upon it by the octave. To produce the clarionet timbre when, for example, middle C is sounded, its simple waves are modified by the tones of the second G above, the E next higher, and a still higher note not in the ordinary scale. The form of the resultant waves from a violin is more complex, but the violin is not so rich in these upper partials as is the human voice. Professor Helmholtz's explanation was accepted at once and has been confi- dently taught and illustrated ever since ; but quite recently the wonderfully accurate compound wave siren of Professor Koenig, of Paris, has shown that no combination or csrr ^r-a.;^ OF THE 'tjhivbrsi FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 1 9 variation of intensity in these mathematically developed upper partial tones can furnish any such different qualities of tone as are produced by the instruments I have mentioned. That timbre is indicated to the ear by a modified form of the simple wave is beyond dispute, but it is very evident to any one who has had the delightful privilege of hearing Professor Koenig's siren under his own skillful touch, that the components of complex sound- waves are not of mathematical exactness and regularity of phase and intensity, but mixed and varying. The upper partials indicated by Professor Helmholtz do exist, but not purely nor alone. So the question, what constitutes timbre? remains an open one, but the following new experiments, especially the second, may sometime throw additional light upon it : The apparatus indicated in figure 7 con- sists of an oxy - hydrogen lantern, between the condensers and objective of which a perforated disk is placed so that when revolved the light is flashed out and cut off 20 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. at regular intervals. An electric motor conveniently secures regularity of rotation. A deep - toned organ pipe is set at some favorable position in the room, the best results depending upon a variety of condi - tions. Multiplex echoes are especially trying, while a single reflecting wall at proper distance to secure a series of strongly reinforced waves at right - angles to the path of the flashes is favorable. The organ - pipe gives out a steady tone of, say, seventy - two waves per second, and the light is flashed with the same frequency. The writer is indebted to Professor Nichols, of Cornell University, for the suggestion of an equal number of smaller siren holes, shown in the disk, to secure an exact measure of coincidence of sound - wave and flash, which occurs, as will be readily understood, when the pitch of the faint note caused by forcing air through a small tube against the siren holes is in unison with the organ pipe. The waves from the organ pipe are about fifteen feet long, the little siren note is j£^)S THE ^ FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 23 exactly in tune, the disk is making nine revolutions or seventy-two flashes per second, and upon the opposite wall of a very dark auditorium is caught the autograph of the invisible nodes and antinodes in three stately pairs of columnar lights and shades. The second apparatus, figure 8, is more complicated, and promises some interesting results. It has grown out of a description by Professor Sedley Taylor of a much cruder instrument which he called the Phoneidoscope. Those who experimented with the Phoneidoscope were disappointed because of the bursting of films and their failure to produce figures of sufficient defi- niteness and regularity to indicate with any certainty the character of the tones producing them. But the fault was not in the principle, and all and more than Professor Taylor claimed can now be accomplished. Persistent films are usually made from oleate of soda, glycerin and water, in varying quantities. A single film under favorable circumstances should stand vigorous bom- bardment for half an hour. 24 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. Light from a lantern or the sun is reflected from the film at A through the objective B into a specially arranged photographic apparatus not shown in the figure. The value of the experiments consists in the analysis and comparison of the resultant waves caught in the photographs. Not only does each change of pitch in a given instrument produce a definite and constant change of figure, but instruments of different quality of tone at the same pitch produce characteristic and easily recogniza- ble figures. Distinctions in voice - quality are recorded with wonderful fidelity. The tube A in the figure is not a good contrivance for conducting the sound waves to the film. It reinforces some and destroys the quality of others. A better device is a plain plate with square aperture for holding the film in position. The film is then free, except at the edges, to absorb the wave - motion and toss it by means of the reflected ether waves against the photographic plate. It is not appropriate to the purpose of this book to enter into a discussion of these FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 25 figures. A few photographs of the simpler forms are introduced to illustrate the complexity of the waves of energy which bear us news from the external world through the sense of hearing. These figures must not be confounded with those from Kladni's plates and the Lissajous apparatus, which merely make visible the motions of the vibrating bodies producing the sound waves; nor with the figures from sand and lighter substances upon stretched membranes where the molecular motion of the membrane is exceedingly limited. In the apparatus above described the film is free, in two dimensions at least, to join with the air particles in their actual journeys. We have reached the upper limit of the sense of Hearing, but by no means the limit of vibration, nor of sensation. In fact, we are only fairly begun; and before following the vibrations of the bell on through the body to the Ego, it may be well to gather up and interpret these more rapid waves, which appeal to other senses, and bring us tidings of other out]^:itig.p.henomena. 26 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. Above Sound there is an unexplored region, full, perhaps, of waves that would be serviceable to us had we only some sense to receive them. Such a thing as inventing a new sense is quite possible. It has already been done — not a sense that is in direct nerve communication with the brain, but what for the purpose amounts to precisely the same thing, a sort of an interpreter of a new tongue to senses which we already possess. For years there had been a feeling among physicists that electrical energy is transferable by some kind of vibratory motion, but as the Rate is not such that the waves could affect any of our senses directly, the practical demonstration of their presence was almost despaired of. In 1889 Professor Henry Hertz, now professor of Physics in the University of Bonn, in a wonderfully ingenious way, hit upon a beautiful device which answers admirably to an electrical ear. It gathers up electrical waves as easily as the sense of Hearing does those to which we have already referred. By a splendid series of experiments with Fig. 9. KOENIG PIPE UT 3 , 256 VIBRATIONS PER SECOND, MIDDLE C. OF PHYSICAL PITCH. Fig, to. VOICE, G ABOVE MIDDLE C, 391.3 VIBRATIONS PER SECOND. 7 ^♦| » : f**fc w Jk 1 # / c*> 1 ^% jl k *S € ♦ * i *^ *** v \ ( «►. ■n ^j^ ; WHIP. ~- ' Fig. i 3 . WHISTLE, THREE OCTAVES ABOVE MIDDLE C, 2088 VIBRATIONS PER SECOND. FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 37 this new sense, it has been quite satisfac- torily demonstrated that electricity may manifest itself by vibrations which are very much more rapid than sound waves, but slower than heat waves, and still slower than light waves, and that these electrical waves are due to stresses or strains of this mar- velous, universal medium, Ether. The electric waves which have been oftenest measured are about one hundred millions to the second. Fig. 14. These experiments have aroused an un- usual interest and have been repeated under a great variety of conditions. The reader will readily understand that if A and B of the accompanying diagram, figure 14, were spheres connected by a tube having a check-valve in it, and that if A were filled with air to a high pressure and B made empty, a sudden opening of the valve would 38 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. cause the air to rush from A into B. But the flow would not cease when the pressure in the two spheres became the same. The inertia of the moving air would cause the rush to continue until the density in B was greater than in A. A backward flow would follow until A had become again over- charged. This oscillation would continue until, from various losses of energy, an equilibrium would finally become estab- lished. Now let us fill A (so to speak) with elec- tricity from one electrode of an induction coil, C, or from a plate-machine or dynamo, while B is connected with the opposite elec- trode, as shown in the figure. The spheres or plates are metal. Presently the ether strain becomes great enough to overcome the resistance of air between the two brightly polished metal balls at"s," and a rush occurs, an electric spark leaping across the open space. But now, just as in the case of the illustration with the compressed air, an ether oscillation is set up between A and B. It is quite evanescent, as much so FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 39 as are the vibrations of a lath one end of which is fastened in a vise. Instead of being constant and regular, it is more like this, figure 15, and with a duration of less than a millionth of a second. From the coil we push in more energy, and keep up the irregular oscillation between the condensers, as the hammer does with the bell. But how are we to take note of Fig. 15. the vibration? Our ears are too dull to catch so rapid a motion, and it is too slow for our eyes. Here is where Professor Hertz's electric ear comes into play. Tak- ing advantage of a well-known principle in Sound, called sympathetic vibration, he con- structed another pair of metal plates, or merely wires in the original experiment, which intensify the effect until it becomes 40 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. high enough to appeal to the eye, as a spark at F from one of the plates D to the other (E being an insulator). Figure 16. All that is now necessary is to carry the electric ear about to discover the presence of the ether waves caused by what we call electricity, whatever that may be. We may reflect them and refract them; spread them out on wires and observe nodes and anti- nodes by the beautiful electric glow, and even polarize them. As Professor Hertz Fig. i well says: "We see only waves crossing in space, separating, combining and reinforcing or destroying one another." While Professor Hertz's experiments are proving exceedingly fruitful of practical re- sults which ere long may revolutionize our present methods of producing heat and light, the vital interest that attaches to them in this writing is that they have extended the range of our senses. He has discovered waves FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 4 1 heretofore out of our reach. Who dare say that the future may not develop methods by which others of the billions of waves to which we are now senseless may be captured and harnessed to do us service? Air, which was quite the thing for trans- mitting sound waves at their average ve- locity of about eleven hundred feet per second, is wholly unfit for the transmission of impulses at a speed almost a million times as great; hence the necessity, all these years, of assuming the existence of a less sluggish medium; but by these experiments the existence of ether is no longer an as- sumption, it is fairly proved. But, because this beautiful arithmetical analogy exists between sound waves and electrical waves, it must not be inferred that a sound wave, if it were possible to quicken it up to a vibration frequency of a hun- dred millions per second, would become an electrical wave; nor that an electrical wave slowed down to within the range of sound waves, would be heard. The waves are not similar in other respects. 42 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. The vibration of air particles in a sound wave, whether simple or complex, is known to be, in general, a to-ancl-fro motion along the line of direction which the sound is trav- eling. It is equally well known that ether, in transmitting electrical waves, of which light and heat are only special manifestations, does not so move. Above the electrical waves thus far meas- ured there is another unexplored region. The Bolometer and the Thermopile have found some heat waves, and the electrical ear some electrical waves, both above and below the region of their maximum intensity, but they are feeble — evidently a good way from home and not well acclimated. When the rate has increased to about one hundred and twenty-nine trillions per second, the sense of touch steps in, and we receive the effect as radiant heat. An- other unexplored region, and then that princely sense sight begins to bring us tidings. Waves whose vibration frequency is about three hundred and ninety-five trillions give us the first impression of vision, V£ L_ - FROM THE OUTLYING PHENOMENA. 45 painting all that we see in dull red hues. As the rate increases, the color passes through all the shades of red, merging into orange, then green, blue, indigo and finally violet, and fading into darkness again at about eight hundred and thirty-one trillions. Beyond these, and affecting principally the senses of Taste and Smell, are the maximum chemical waves having about double this last named rate. Besides doing many other useful things, they churn the carbonic acid gas gathered by the leaves, separating it into carbon for the plant structure, and oxygen to be re- turned to the atmosphere. If it were possi- ble to spread a beam of sunlight through one large prism, as is now done by using several of different sizes and material, we should get such results as these, the slowest waves being refracted least, and the differ- ence in effect upon the senses depending upon the length of the wave, or what amounts to the same thing, the vibration frequency, figure 17. Quite likely, higher yet, there are billions 46 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. and billions more, in regions where the senses are dumb and the imagination grows dizzy. THROUGH THE BODY TO THE BRAIN. But the old bell is counting off another hour. The energy of the hammer-stroke is pushing its message out through every par- ticle of the vast ocean of air, but neither bell nor air may speak. Every wave receives potentially a voice and is given much to say, yet all are mute. Sound waves are silent as death. We have taken only the first step towards sound; we are ready for the next. In the sense organs and their accompany- ing trains of nerves and nerve centres, to which we now turn our attention, there are most wonderful evidences of design. The external ear is useful in collecting the undu- lations, reinforcing the direct ones by reso- nance, changing the direction of oblique ones, and conducting those which have been ab- sorbed by its walls, so that all the waves, with more or less distinctness, may reach the ear drum. We have seen that the vibrations from the bell are not simply the two hundred •^ittm^'—^'- ' iiMiiiriii ,.*■ - ■iiiiiin'w Fig. 18. BUT THE OLD BELL IS COUNTING OFF ANOTHER HOUR. r U*IVERSITY] ;zfoV£^ THROUGH THE BODY TO THE BRAIN. 49 and sixty-five per second that determine the pitch of its fundamental tone, but that with these are many weaker ones which so modify the form of the waves as to give to the tone not only a bell quality, but a quality which may enable us to distinguish this particular Mtinster bell from every other bell ever cast. The ear drum is prepared to meet this com- plex condition of undulations. If it were an evenly-stretched membrane, while it would respond to waves corresponding, or nearly so, with its own very high rate of vibration, and communicate them to the real organ of hearing very much better than could be done from the air pulses direct, yet it could not repeat waves of any other lengths. There would be a painful monotony in the sounds heard, as if all the world were sawing upon a single instrument, and that of only a single string. But the ear drum is stretched in its different parts and weighted to a great num- ber of tensions, to enable it, perhaps, to respond to the vast variety of fundamental and character waves which make up our realm of sound. The ear bones, purposely 50 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. insulated from the bones of the head, and surrounded by air, which can not readily rob them of their motion, communicate these vibrations, through a second membrane, to a fluid, from which they are readily caught up by the basilar membrane, or the syn- chronal rods of about three thousand differ- ently tuned pairs, and repeated, by filaments of the auditory nerve, to the brain. Yet we have not answered our question, because the brain is matter, and matter cannot hear. But we must for the moment direct our attention to other and even more admirable avenues for the transmission of the still more rapid waves, to which we have re- ferred, through the body to the brain. Undulations too rapid to affect the ear, and beyond the reach of the electrical effects detected by the Hertz apparatus, when their vibration frequency has reached some trill- ions to the second, find the body again thoroughly equipped to receive them. Its entire surface is thickly set with delicate whirls of nerve fibre, which are the terminal stations of myriad lines of incarrying nerves. THROUGH THE BODY TO THE BRAIN. 5 1 Though usually not more than one ten- thousandth part of an inch in diameter and hundreds of millions in number, they are completely insulated from one another, by individual envelopes, and are strung unin- terruptedly from their terminals to the great central station, the brain, or to some group of nerve cells which may act as a re- peating station to the brain. Owing to the peculiar structure of the terminal stations, messages can be sent in only the one direc- tion. There can be no confusion of trans- mission; every terminal office with tidings from the external world has the right of way. But both terminal stations and nerves are as powerless to originate messages as are a system of telephones and the wires connecting them with a telephone exchange. In the present instance the stimuli are ether waves, from, perhaps, some lively coals on the grate, or, it may be, from the dancing surface of the sun, and as waves of stimula- tion, are forwarded on through the body to the brain. From them we derive the sensa- tion of warmth. 52 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. With all their wonderful delicacy, how- ever, the terminal stations of the sense of Touch can not respond to the yet more rapid waves of energy which are pushed off from the surface of the sun, and reflected to us from, say, a distant landscape. These vary, as we have seen, from less than four hun- dred trillions to more than eight hundred trillions per second. Very complex and minute is the terminal expansion of this most wonderful of all mechanisms, the eye. Here is work to be done. The curtains are drawn, the walls are darkened, and in its most sensitive part the many protecting layers are lifted for a space of about one twenty-fifth of an inch, so that the slender cones of nerve fibre may be untrammeled. How deftly do they pick up the flying waves! some strong for lights, others weak for shades; some comparatively long and slow for mellow, golden tints to yonder dreamy cloud; while more sprightly ones touch blade and leaf with the richest green, and others brisker yet brush in the distant mountain's blue, and in faintest out- lines the countless lovelier cerulean shades of the remoter sky. What a jargon of motions! And yet with what faultless order and pre- cision are they all repeated to the brain! So far as Science is yet aware, all that we know of the external world (if we add Taste and Smell, which are lower orders of sensation) must come to us through what I may, not inappropriately, call the Harp of the Senses. Thus our senses, their beautiful adapta- tions Divinely thought, their marvelous mechanisms Divinely wrought, are tuned, like a delicate ^Eolian Harp, to sympathetic vibration with some part at least of the throbbing universe. Now strong and slow, like the measured tread of heaven's storm battalions ; now swift and low, with the hur- rying step of the fleeing star as she touches the dome of the sky and is lost except for " The beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear. " FROM THE BRAIN TO THE EGO. We have followed the waves produced by the bell through the atmosphere to the ear 54 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. and through membrane, bone, fluid and nerve to the brain. We have seen that electric waves, heat waves and light waves are transmitted through ether to the appro- priate nerve terminal stations of the body, and that from them waves of stimulation are forwarded to the brain. But they are waves still — a mere transference of energy — not tone, nor warmth, nor color. We insist that back of and over all this material pantomime there is an immaterial, responsi- ble, presiding genius, the Ego, who possesses the key to its interpretation. What the key is we do not know. Many have sought long and diligently for it; some have believed it almost within their grasp ; but no sane person has ever claimed certainly to have found it. It is a God -given possession — we may never know, in this life, what it is. The lessons which follow in this book are based upon what the writer believes to be the sadly ignored fact, that in the forma- tion of those trains of enduring subjective qualities which constitute nobility of char- SOUND ELECTRICITY. HEAT. \ \ LIGHT, COLOR. \ \ \ ACTINISM. Fig. UNKNOWN. ETHER. Vibrations per Second. Maximum Chemical Effect, 650,000,000,000,000, Highest Limit of Vision, 831,000,000,000,000. Lowest Limit of Vision. 395,000,000,000,000. Maximum Radiant Heat. 129,000,000,000,000. Maximum Electric Waves, 100,000,000. IN AIR: Highest Limit of Hearing, 30,000. " Music, 4,000. " Human Voice, 1,500. Middle C, German Pitch, 261. •. Lowest Limit of Human Voice 61. " Music, 32. " " Hearing (?) ARP OF THE SENSES. ^A OF THE^>£ UHIVERSIT FROM BRAIN TO EGO. 57 acter, the Ego is not always the autocrat that enthusiasts picture him, but that he is subject to limitations and conditions set for him in the laws of his material environ- ment. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER HAS A PHYSICAL BASIS. "That young man is safe," said a minister to me recently, with more than ordinary satisfaction indicated in his voice and expression. The young man to whom he referred had been a great burden upon his soul for years, and had, only the week before, united with the Church. "What has been his character ?" I asked. "Wild, very reckless, even vicious; and yet he has great ability. We had almost despaired of reaching him ; but, thank God, at last he is safe." "I can not believe," I replied, "that any one under such circumstances is safe until he has built up a new physical basis for the changed life that he has promised to lead." The minister looked at me in blank astonishment. "Then," said he, almost hotly, "You limit God's power." Let us see. There are limitations for me everywhere in nature. I let go my pen ; it 58 A PHYSICAL BASIS. 5Q falls. Again ; again it falls. I try a knife, a book, anything; always the same result. I do not doubt that God could have made them go in the opposite direction, in any direction, in all directions at once ; but He has not. I do not limit His power; if there are limitations, He has set them. There are limitations of body. Step upon the platform of a lifting-machine, take hold of the handle and do your best. The index touches a certain figure. By careful training you may crowd your record up somewhat; but presently you reach a limit beyond which your body can not go. You do not fix that limit, it is fixed for you. There are limitations in mental endow- ment. Very near my window, here in Mtin- ster Platz, stands a beautiful statue of Beethoven, done by Hanel, and dedicated in the presence of Queen Victoria. How long would some of us need to hammer on a piano until admiring friends would do us in bronze and foreign crowned heads come across the seas to assist in the unveil- ing? There are mental limitations, differ- 60 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. ing widely often in the same family, which neither we nor our parents have consciously placed, and which no doctrine of evolution has explained. There are limitations in Christian charac- ter. Nothing is more certain than that there are character limitations in the Bible. With what consummate skill are the delinea- tions made. Are any two in all that book quite alike? Peter, James and John had the same teachings from the Savior, the same entrancing influence of His personal pres- ence; and all were eager to do His will: why did they not all become Peters or Jameses or Johns? And why was Paul pos- sessed of magnificent characteristics not found in any of the disciples? Where may you turn without finding that His seal has been set? The sea hath its thus far and no farther; the comet its path; the universe its boundaries; even the soul, at least while in the body, its limita- tions. W^hen I say that any person whose past life has been alien to Him, no matter how WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS? 6 1 sincere the repentance, or how complete the pardon, must build a new physical basis be- fore he can safely trust his steps in the new way, — it is not I who fix the limit. Our peril does not lie nearly so much in limiting Divine power as it does in relying on God to do for us, in some mysterious way, what He expects us, under His direc- tion, to do for ourselves. WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS? In the sense here intended, certainly not a strongly developed, robust body ; the largest ears do not always indicate the greatest sagacity. Nor do we mean, how- ever desirable, a body thoroughly reliable in the performance of the usual bodily func- tions; some of the grandest souls have lived in quite rickety tenements. We must get closer to the soul than these. The office of the splendid senses of Sight, Hearing, and one form of Touch has been explained in the preceding chapter. It is to gather and forward to the brain waves of fruitful energy concerning outlying phe- nomena. 62 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. The sense of Touch has, besides its ability to detect waves of radiant heat, another special nervous development, which by con- tact gives us very important knowledge of the form, size, surface and other properties of bodies; and closely allied to it are the nerves of common sensation, such as hunger, thirst, comfort, discomfort and many other general or localized feelings of pleasure or pain. Two other senses, Taste and Smell, though of a much inferior order, are useful in giving us some further knowledge of the external world. They are obviously intended to guard the digestive and respiratory organs against imposition; but, under the guidance of the Will, they are too often perverted, like other Custom House officials, to serving their own interests rather than those of their constituency. The general structure for receiving all stimuli and reflecting them out as uncon- scious or personally directed elements of character is as follows: First, Terminal nerve stations in all the sensory surfaces. WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS ? 63 Second, In-carrying nerves connecting these terminal stations to, Third, The lower nerve centers of the Spinal Cord and the higher nerve centers of the Brain. Fourth, Out-carrying nerves from these centers to, Fifth, The terminal stations which act directly upon the muscles, causing contrac- tion, or otherwise influencing the activity of the parts in which they are distributed. You may purposely cause a wave of stimu- lation from an in-carrying nerve to produce a specified brain reaction, w T hich shall send a wave of stimulation along a specified out- carrying nerve, requiring a specified muscu- lar contraction toward the purpose in view. But having once plowed through this specified round, the same track is more easily followed a second time, still more a third — and so on, until a well worn path is established for the easy accomplishment of that particular purpose. It is not inappropriate to call such a well established route a Trunk Line. 64 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. By a Physical Basis, then, is meant the development of certain Trunk Lines along which, when the proper stimulus is flashed, the Soul is enabled to express the virtuous or vicious activities which constitute the external evidences of its character. The Physical Basis of a vicious life is a network of such Trunk Lines, in which the incarrying waves of stimulation waken in the soul a host of accustomed activities, such as vile memories, alluring imaginations, craving appetites, and their like, having well worn routes through the outcarrying nerves to whatever lines of conduct have been followed in their development. The Physical Basis of a virtuous life is a network of Trunk Lines, where the incoming waves of stimulation on reaching the cerebral hemispheres of the brain, find there well worn tracks, with switches already set, lead- ing to the God -given higher possessions of the Soul — holy memories, pure imagi- nations, consecrated ambitions, righteous judgments, and a Will, whose nerve connection with these higher faculties is WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS ? 65 so perfect that at once, unless the line of duty present complications requiring con- sideration, the commands, for right conduct are flashed out through the outgoing nerve tracks, and instantly obeyed. Here we stand face to face with a tremendous physical fact. Every voluntary act, whether of good or evil, beats its own path a little smoother, so to speak, for another of like character, and renders it just that much more difficult for one of opposite nature to get the right of way. Every day that we live deciding against the right we are voluntarily strengthening, with our own blood, meshes of our own physical organism which shall presently bind us, body and soul, wretched slaves to passions and appetites of our own nurturing. It can not be stated precisely how these Trunk Lines differ from others of an opposite' character that might have been established had we so willed. It would be unscientific to say that the time will never come when the laboratory will 66 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. reveal such differences — it would be an epoch-making revelation — but that time is certainly not yet. The superior sensitive- ness, however, of ready -formed trunk lines to their accustomed stimuli is a law beyond peradventure, and its power over us everywhere except in the areas of right and wrong is clearly recognized. Education and technical expertness are built upon it ; but in morals we ignore it, continuing our folly on the assumption that at some time, in some mysterious way, a miraculous interposition will turn the dross to pure gold. When Dr. Adam, that typical pedagogue of whom Sir Walter Scott in his boyhood was so fond, was upon his deathbed, as the shadows of the dark valley thickened around him he summoned sufficient strength to say, "It grows dark — the boys may dismiss," and expired. Mahomet says a mountain may change its base, but not a man his disposition. That old story of the retired English soldier is a good one, because we recog- WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS ? 67 nize in it a basis of possible truth. While walking home with a beefsteak in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, a wag yelled, " Halt ! attention!" In- stantly the old soldier came to a stand, and, as his arms assumed the position of " attention," meat and eggs went tumbling to the street. The Trunk Lines of obedience to orders were still there. It is quite as possible to cultivate a physical basis for obeying orders from an infinitely higher source — indeed, until we do, we are not trustworthy Christian soldiers. I do not intend by any means, to reduce the two kinds of service to the same area ; for there is in the Christian life a discriminat- ing element that does not obtain in any other service. We agree that any one who has spent his earlier years in one vocation can only with great difficulty, and rarely successfully, change to a different one later in life ; yet we expect him who has lived in sin to assume the character of the religious life with the ease that he might slip out of one coat into another. 68 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. This is a serious business. It is too much believed and too much preached, especially by some ambitious evangelists, when the soul of man is brought under conviction and he is running headlong to ruin, that heaven and hell are merely stations on opposite sides of us, and all we need to do if we are walking toward the one is to turn about and walk the other way. Once forgiven of the past and faced in the opposite direction, there is no need for further concern. Walking is walking, and it is just as easy to travel one way as another ; we have started, God will do the rest. Will he? I do not limit His power; if there are limitations He has set them — and there are limitations. It is difficult to exaggerate the unconcern that we too often feel, and the personal responsibility from which we too often shrink towards those who but lately have decided to cease to do evil and learn to do well. Once enrolled in due form, they are turned out among their old associations to receive WHAT IS A THYSICAL BASIS ? 69 over and over again the very same stimuli which have already worn broad Trunk Lines in their nervous mechanism, without ever having heard that they have before them a fearful hand to hand battle against the physical basis of that former life. Often have I seen young men brought into the Church with flying colors, but not a hint as to the fearful struggles ahead of them. They had been led to suppose that the New Life means not only a continuance of the present ecstasy, but instant release from all the past. They soon found that they had terrific battles to fight, and, being utterly unwarned and consequently unarmed, they were speedily overthrown and repossessed — and now are ready to declare that the Christian life is a tradition. That God will in every conflict give us the power to resist the demands and intrigues of that physical basis is gloriously true; but He does not fight the battles for us. It is an enervating philosophy, that when one feels the touch of Divine mercy in the forgiveness of his sins and the renewing of fern" 70 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. his spirit, from that moment the effect of those sins upon his bodily organism becomes nil and need give him no further concern. Prayerfully, painfully, persistently, step by step, must he break up the physical basis of his former life. No intelligent person will claim that conversion changes a single nerve fibre or nerve cell. The old ruts are there, and their office is painfully apparent to the most earnest convert. Do you not realize, over and over again, what it means to stand in the pillory of your past life ? 'And you ought ; you built that pillory. When I hear a man, alas, some- times from the sacred desk, holding his former follies up for the amusement of the crowd, even jesting upon his wickedness, I feel that I would not trust him alone with my boys — scarcely with my property. There is nothing in sin of which to be proud. Do you not know what it is , years after you had supposed that every vestige of your former life had been choked out, to have some noxious weed of that former sowing spring up, aye, in the very midst of a garden WHAT IS A PHYSICAL BASIS? 7 1 of roses ? And it is natural ; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. To be sure, the weed sprang up unbidden — the stimuli had merely flashed over the old lines — and you may not now be held accounta- ble, except where in developing those lines, at present so hateful, you assisted in building similar physical bases for other souls now gone beyond the reach of your changed influence. Even if it could be shown, which is hazardous, that you are relieved from any further responsibility touching the doings of that former influence, its results are facts which must be faced by some one. It is not God who scatters these weeds among the roses, and it is cowardly to charge them upon Satan ; they are the legitimate results of our own evil doing. "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God can not be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man : but every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed." We have thus far seen that we are both spirit and body, and that the one must lean 72 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. heavily upon the other; for although the body is only matter and in no sense an entity, there exists between it and the soul an interdependence which can not be ex- plained and yet must not be ignored. The problem yet to be discussed is, how we may best require the body to be servant and not master ; for the soul that is slave to its body loses the best of life, and all of eternity. CHAPTER III. TWO LIVES IN ONE. Society is kind to her daughters; to her sons, cruel. She surrounds her girls with a thousand safeguards; she sets for her boys a thousand snares. What wonder then that her young maidens, day by day, are almost unconsciously growing purer, and that her young men must struggle for every foot of vantage ground that they obtain. Society chaperons her lassies; her lads she pushes out to learn the world alone. (See Frontis- piece.) But society is unwise. The brother is in greater need of a guardian than the sister. She may travel from London to San Francisco, unattended, and not see a dis- agreeable sight nor hear an offensive word. Should her brother undertake the same journey, he would be expected, aye, required to breathe an atmosphere of quite another sort. "But he must learn the world in order presently to be able to contend against it," 74 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. society explains. There is no justice in the plea, because it is based upon what is — not upon what should be. If you wish your son to do business in your warehouse and there are vipers there, do you send him abroad to get a blow from every venomous serpent that he can find, by way of inoculation? Here is where society makes her great, often her fatal, mistake. She attempts to inoculate vice with vice — it would be easier to quench flame with tinder. SOWING WILD OATS. Just before leaving the States a lady was telling me of her brother. He had been allowed a taste of evil, liked it, and was learning to live upon it. " But it will come out all right," she said, almost gaily; " my brother will turn about presently and be all the better for the experience. Boys must sow their wild oats, you know?' Why does society insist that boys must sow their wild oats? There is no legerde- main about life. There is no way to sow vice and reap virtue, any more than there is to sow tares and reap wheat. SOWING WILD OATS. 75 An eccentric old minister used to say with an air of evident pride, " My boys always go to the devil first before they come around to the Lord." This curious anomaly is so fre- quent that it has become commonplace. In- deed, we do not put it too strongly in saying that society expects her sons in their youth to sow the wind, assuming that God will sus- pend His laws so that they shall not reap the whirlwind. Rudyard Kipling, in the third of his " Plain Tales from the Hills," champions the view society takes thus: " Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath- room or chew a newly-blacked boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the un- wisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers, and goes abroad at six months a well-mannered little beast with a chastened appetite. If he had been kept away from boots and soap and big dogs till j6 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. he came to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, just consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be." This may be a very deep philosophy for puppies, but young men are not puppies. The attempted analogy is painfully mis- leading. If the early effects of sin were always as nauseating as the eating of black- ing and soap the wisdom of turning a boy loose to taste until he has developed a " chastened appetite" would remain ques- tionable, for it is possible to develop a craving for poison. But as everyone who has seen the world for himself too well knows, many, perhaps most of his youth- ful experiences with sin were delightfully exhilarating, possessing a snap and an abandon which come up to the high water mark in a boy's calendar of fun. Does society consider that a physical basis for vice once formed must be carried to the end of life? It may be repented of, aye, in sackcloth and ashes; the life that developed it may be forgiven.; and under Divine direc- tion — there is no other way — the physical SOWING WILD OATS. J 7 basis of a true life may be built; but that new life can never become what it would have been if those Trunk Lines of vice had never been formed. Somewhere I have heard, or seen, that the old life would be "buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness." Beautiful expression, isn't it? If it were true, the sowing of wild oats might be only a harmless diversion, and society might not be so unjust to her sons in encouraging it. But the young man who attempts to fling off that former life will find to his sorrow that there is no grave for nerve-fibre and cell until his soul has entirely cut loose from its bodily anchorage. My boyhood home was not far south of the great chain of North American Lakes. Our fuel was poles cut from a neighboring tamarac swamp. It was my business, after they had been brought to our yard, to saw them to proper length for the stoves. They were long and slick and hard to hold. One morning when I was in a hurry to be off fishing, they seemed to be especially aggravating. Getting the saw fast, I jerked yS SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. about until finally I plunged the teeth some distance into one of my feet, making an ugly gash. My father saw the exhibition of my temper, but wisely said nothing until I had finished my work and my passion had sub- sided. Then he called me to him. "John," said he, very kindly — he never spoke to me in any other way — " I wish you would get the hammer." "Yes, sir." " Now a nail and a piece of pine board from the woodshed." 11 Here they are." "Will you drive the nail into the board?" It was done. " Please pull it out again." " That's easy." " Now, John," and my father's voice dropped to a lower, sadder key, " pull out the nail hole." While, of course, I saw the application to my fit of anger, I did not then understand as I do now how every wrong act leaves a scar. There is no power to pull the nail holes out. Even if the board were a living FALLEN BY THE WAY. 7Q tree, yea, a living soul, the scars remain — the old nerve tracks, the physical basis of the former sins. FALLEN BY THE WAY. But there are results more serious than scars. Early in the lives of all of us there come the drawings of the Spirit, whisperings of a better life that may be ours if we will put our trust in Him. But with so much of precept and example on the other side, it is not surprising that many a boy concludes that no harm can come of shutting his ears to that gentle Voice until he has dipped a little way into what are termed, apologeti- cally, the follies of youth. If the Spirit continue to strive and he should yield to the yearnings from the kingdom within be- fore any very definite combinations of nerve tracks for vice are formed, he may find him- self less physically handicapped ; but the law of the sinful development which he has thus deliberately begun is that he shall grow more and more unwilling to listen to that still small voice and less and less able, cSo SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. should he once more attend, to hold himself under its influence until new nerve tracks are worn as a physical embodiment of the changed life. I can not expect all my readers to agree with me in this statement ; but the test of its truth or falsity must rest in experience. I ask any candid objector to apply it among young men who have begun the Christian life under these conditions, and discover for himself whether or not it be true. Why does even Paul cry out, "I find then the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man : but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bring me unto captivity unto the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death ?" Many expressions, heard over and over from young Christians, yes, even from those who are much older in the religious life, find their explanation here. GOOD SAINT, GOOD SINNER. 8 1 This law is especially applicable to those who have fallen by the way ; and one is appalled when he considers how many such there are. , We just here reach the point where I can but feel that most Christian workers make a serious mistake. It would not be wise to attempt to say in how far the responsibility for those who have fallen by the way can be laid at the door of the Church ; but it is certainly a fact that the physical basis already formed by the young convert's previous life is not taken enough into con- sideration. True, the work is God's, but we must fulfill the conditions. GOOD SAINT, GOOD SINNER. No one can be better than his best thoughts, and good thoughts, as well as bad ones, must have a physical basis. That both combinations do exist to a certain extent in the same individual is a matter of common experience ; but the good can not become ingrained while there is any voluntary ten- dency to the evil. Among those who are counted as not having fallen by the way are 82 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. many — more than one at first glance is willing to allow — who are trying to hold to some of their inherent or acquired tastes for stimuli of a more or less sinful nature and at the same time reap the benefits of Christian culture. They are in form and sentiment in sympathy with the Church, but are destitute of spiritual power, for the Spirit will not abide where there is a lurking willingness in the soul to be fed through the old channels. They are in almost every congregation — sometimes in a majority. They seem to enjoy the service while en- gaging in it, but it takes no abiding hold on them because they have no prayerfully formed combinations of nerve tracks to em- body it. Preaching to them is like flinging pebbles into a placid pool for the pleasure of watching the answering waves form, fade and die. Christianity does not consist in the observance of forms, nor in certificates of membership — it must be embodied. Neither does one leap into the physical basis of a well rounded Christian character, nor out of it, hastily. Sometimes society GOOD SAINT, GOOD SINNER. 83 holds her breath at the recital of the sudden fall of a favorite, and exclaims, "How is it possible ? Yesterday so good, to-day so vile!" It is not possible. Either the good- ness was assumed or the vileness is a slander. The history of such instances when true will invariably indicate months, possibly years, of development shrewdly concealed from the public ear. It is merely a reaping of one's own sowing. 1 You can count numbers of your personal friends from whom such villainy would be impossible. They have learned to be com- pletely led of Him. They are established. It is often claimed by conscientious persons that there are no time limits with God, that he can change the vilest sinner into the most perfect saint in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. That God could do so is beyond question. If there are limitations, He has placed them. Suppose a confirmed inebriate, with all the Trunk Lines trained to inflame and obey his passion for drink, is genuinely converted. Do you send him back to 84 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. his favorite dens with the same confidence in his stability that you would have in a staid member of your Church? The odor of a single saturated cork may set that poor fellow's brain on fire. It takes time to build character, because it takes time to build new channels through which that forgiven soul may hear and see and feel and act. We do not fix the limits, but they are fixed. One who has had the opportunity of an intimate acquaintance with the same Christian people for a quarter of a century can not fail to have noticed how their growth has been like the blade, then the ear, then the ""full corn in the ear. Many times they are themselves unconscious of it and insist otherwise, but a careful observer will find abundant evidence that it has been so. ''Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." Did you ever notice that the words "he is" are inserted? and that the best author- ities agree in reading "let him be?" nOW LONG MAY YOU BE MASTER? 85 Therefore if any man be in Christ, let him be a new creature." HOW LONG MAY YOU BE MASTER ? Back in the literature of childhood is a story which runs somewhat as follows : A prince who was a great trencherman was one day seated at his sumptuously loaded dinner-table, when a little fly came leisurely in through an open window of the palace. He could easily have destroyed it, but delighted with the iridescence of its wings, he called his courtiers to see it as it daintily sipped at the wine. The next day it came again, but was now as large as a butterfly, and it drank quite heavily. "Do not disturb it. Its wings are more beautiful," said the Prince, "there is wine enough for both of us;" and it zig-zagged its way out of the window and was forgotten. On the following day it came, now quite as large as a bat, and drank all of the wine. "This will not do; I shall die of thirst;'' and the Prince ordered the palace windows closed and all of the doors shut. 86 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. But at the same hour on the fourth day there was a shattering of glass and a great fluttering of wings, and the fly, now grown to be as large as a hawk, not only emptied the wine goblets, but greedily snapped up all of the feast that had been set. "What shall I do?" cried the starving Prince. "Make fast the windows, place the iron shutters, and fix the iron bars, so that I may eat and drink and not die." When all was done and dinner was again made ready, there was heard the twisting of iron bars, the slamming of iron shutters, the crashing of glass, and screams of terror and of pain from the Prince ; but when the attendants rushed in they found him prone upon the floor; there were marks about his throat of beak and talons as of a vulture, and the Prince was dead. At first he was independent, at last he was helpless. He could have killed the little fly, but weakened by hunger and thirst, he was an easy victim when, from his own HOW LONG MAY YOU BE MASTER? 87 table, the fly had grown to be as strong as a vulture. How long might he safely let it grow ? This is a question that young people often ask. Society fixes limits, sometimes at one place, sometimes at another — all artificial, all dangerous. How long may one risk the development of a physical basis of evil and yet escape ? It is like asking how far one may push into a pestilential swamp and be certain not to succumb to its poisons. Every inward step not only must be painfully retraced, but lessens the chances of his ever planting foot on solid ground or breathing pure air again. We do not deny the possibility of death- bed repentance, we dare not do so; yet it would certainly be an assumption to insist that he who goes into eternity after a worse than wasted life of sin can reap the reward of righteous living. We are here to build character for eternity. Will God do for us what He has placed us here to do under His guidance for ourselves ? Besides, what assurance have we that He 88 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. will always chide, or that His spirit will hover ever near ? It is dangerous to assume that even in this life one may not hear that terrific sentence, ''And he that is filthy let him be filthy still." WHEN DOES RESPONSIBILITY CEASE? When the Miinster bell counts off the hour, you can not get beyond the reach of the vibrations which it sends out. They may be much too faint to be caught by the ear, but some delicate reflecting apparatus will prove that they live long after the hammer has ceased its stroke. Near the rapids above St. Goar, on the Rhine, in a little salmon boat, one quiet morning, I snapped a cap. The sound waves circled out, striking the rocky face of the mystic Lorelei and back to me, then on to the imposing cliffs of the opposite bank and back, over and over again. So at St. Paul's, London, the Picton Library of Liverpool, and many other places, sound waves that in the open air would be quite too faint to be heard are returned with marked distinctness. A pebble thrown into WHEN DOES RESPONSIBILITY CEASE? 89 a calm lake starts a series of concentric waves which move outward to the shore, are reflected ; then out again, and back ; out and back; many, many times after they have ceased to be visible. It is a physical law, the foundation stone of physical science, and one of the most profound discoveries of this century, that energy is never destroyed. We may not speak with equal confidence of the results of one's personal influence over others, for there are numerous unde- termined factors in every life ; but there are many evidences of the continuing effects of both virtue and vice long after their ultimate causes have ceased to exist. One does not, one can not, undo the effects of former evil influences upon others. The circles of those influences widen indefinitely — perhaps to eternity. The risks that one runs are not alone from the evil effects in him- self, but he becomes responsible for their con- sequences to others. Are you sure that this responsibility ever ceases ? It is a fearful thing to begin to build a physical basis of evil. QO SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. A king once wanted a charioteer. Several anxious applicants presented themselves. "How close to the edge of yon precipice can you drive ?" demanded the king of the first. "Within the length of a foot, Sire, and at full gallop." "And I," exclaimed the second, "can drive within a hand's breadth." "I think, Sire, that I can lap the outer tires, half on the edge of the rock and half over the precipice," eagerly replied the third. "And you ?" inquired the king of one who had thus far said nothing. "Sire, if I were your charioteer," he answered calmly, " I should drive as far from the edge as the roadway would allow." "You are my charioteer," was the quick reply of the wise king. If Society instead of exposing her boys to a thousand temptations, would keep evil just as far as possible away from them, she would be doing her duty towards her sons. They have a right to demand that they be WHEN DOES RESPONSIBILITY CEASE t QI brought to their majority with sound nerve tracks, just as their sisters are. It is idle to argue that such a course would make them morally weak. But if, as society holds, breathing an immoral atmosphere tends to make boys morally strong, turn the girls out too ; they have an equal right to insist upon the best method for the ingraining of moral stamina. There are many sorrows in this life. Some are necessary, but most of them could have been prevented. To those clouds that must needs be God always sets a silver lining, but those of our own overhanging are not thus enframed. They are the results of sin. CHAPTER IV. AN INKLING OF THE WHOLE TRUTH. We have seen that all our intelligence from things external to us must come through the senses ; but sensations are not knowledge. Likewise, sensations are necessary to all our feelings of pleasure and pain ; but sen- sation is not emotion. So, too^. voluntary action is dependent upon sensation ; but sen- sation is not conduct. Much less is sensation character, which is, in a sense, a resultant of knowledge, emotion and conduct. To claim that sensations can of their own accord ever grow into Christian character is like saying that sand, potash and lime can unaided grow into the object glass of a tele- scope. The soul must select and apportion the sensations into definite combinations, but God alone can fuse them into crystal purity. There are persons who have put them- selves so thoroughly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that any sensation which Fig. 20. AN INKLING OF THE WHOLE TRUTH. OF THE JHIVEKDIT ^ AN INKLING OF THE WHOLE TRUTH. 95 suggests intentional wrong doing is instantly banished. This statement is not invalidated by the fact that some may pose as Christians whose lives will not bear scrutiny. One must not hastily conclude that God's influ- ence on the soul is an assumption, because some do wear the Christian garb without any more knowledge of its spirit than the beggar under my window at this moment possesses of the inspiration in the " Home, Sweet Home" which he is grinding out of his hand-organ. Remember rather those who have so grown into the character of the Divine — and there are many such — that their every word and deed, aye, even the radiance of their countenances, is unmistak- able evidence of the indwelling spirit. They are well upon God's holy mountain. Their souls can catch much of the sunlight of heaven and many a mellow cadence from the celestial harmonies. They are kept in perfect peace because their minds are stayed on Him. Farthest removed from these are some who seem to have buried utterly every q6 secret of character building. desire to be led of God. They are in the deepest shadow, at the very bottom of the grade. Scattered between these two extremes are all the rest of us, with more or less of unevenness of step and uncertainty of purpose. The problem is, how to get us all resolutely and uncompromisingly climbing heavenward. God could lift us instantly from the lowest to the highest area, and with those who claim that He does do so we rejoice; but as a matter of common experience, the most of us find ourselves possessed of certain physical limitations to which we are subject, and up- on which our progress is conditioned. If you want a proper razor, you have it made at Sheffield and hollow-ground in Germany. It does not answer to bring the grinder to Sheffield or to send the forger to Germany. No one has told just why or how, but some unexplained physical conditions are met by the combination. Alvan Clark ground the famous fifty -one -thousand -dollar object- AN INKLING OF THE WHOLE TRUTH 97 glass of the Lick Observatory telescope which has added another moon to the body- guard of Jupiter, but the casting of the block of glass had to be done in France. It is not for want of manipulative skill in American glass factories — no one explains the exact conditions, but there are conditions. Quite frequently such marked innate dif- ferences in conditions, ready-formed Trunk Lines, exist between two brothers that it would be manifestly unjust to require of both the same degree of excellence. A fixed standard might level them down, but not up. God does not require any of us in our struggle heavenward to keep exact step with any one else; nor is it practicable for us all to reach the same level. There are heights above the highest possible attainment, and every upward step reveals still grander heights beyond. But by far the greater part of our physical limitations are self-imposed; that is, are well worn nerve and nerve-centre tracks of our own making. These should give us the greatest concern. q8 secret of character building. I have seen two young men standing side by side on the sea-shore with equal oppor- tunities for sense perceptions. One of them possessed carefully developed Trunk Lines and connections, along which stimuli were ever discovering to him reserves of enno- bling emotions and consecrated ambitions. The other young man, though not vicious, had given himself over to a life of idle amusement. They both breathed in the exhilarating air of the inspiring situation. " See," said the first, " how plainly sky and beach and rolling wave speak to us of God's infinite power and his abundant mer- cies. Life is worth living only when we are in perfect accord with " — " Right over there," said the other, with- out hearing what his friend was saying, " in that second cove would be a tip-top place to job for eels." The stimuli were precisely the same. In one nervous mechanism they found tracks ready laid, switches set to a great number of concatenated nerve centres unveiling a whole picture gallery of elevating imagery. AN INKLING OF THE WHOLE TRUTH. 99 To the other all that higher beauty was lost. In some people the most magnificent stimuli can waken no higher intellectuality than a pun; while there are others, the least disturbance of whose nerve centres, no mat- ter how sacred the source, pushes out some coarse jest or profane utterance. These types of character are the results of voluntary thoughts and expressions so often repeated that they have become in a measure reflex ; that is, Trunk Lines have become so thoroughly organized that stimuli once started as sensation ends as a given sort of conduct, without any effort of will, often without consciousness. A shorthand report of the conversation of some persons would be a revelation to them. Put a block of wood into one machine and it comes out a bung, or a piece of wire into another and you get a buckle. If you put the wood into the buckle machine, the best that it can do is to attempt to make a wooden buckle ; or the wire into IOO SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. the bung machine, and it goes spinning around as if wire were just the thing for bungs. There is a philosophy which claims that man will have reached his highest estate when all his physical, intellectual and moral activities have become completely unconscious ; but it is a very narrow philosophy. It is highly important for us to see that while Christian character is dependent upon a physical basis in thorough sympathy, so to speak, with its high ideals and pure aspirations, yet that character is far from being a blind bundle of mechanically executed habits. It is keenly alive and constantly employed in co-ordinating its various activities so that it may the better know and do the right. It may act or decline to act until careful deliberation has made the path of duty plain. It may, indeed, and often does decide against a present advantage for the sake of an ultimate good. Christian character is the very opposite THE UPWARD WAY. IOI of thraldom ; it is a synonym of the highest liberty. "If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." THE UPWARD WAY. But how shall we make substantial prog- ress in the upward way? Several condi- tions are set; let us repeat them: I. A determination to go that way. The determination is clearly suggested from above. It is not possible for us to prompt ourselves to better lives. Whatever may be said of evolution in nature, there is no evolution in morals without God. History holds before us many fearful pages of warn- ing; and the study of the trend of some types of our present civilization is full of painful evidence along this line. But we are not forced to obey the promptings of the Spirit. As many too sadly know, it is possi- ble to shut the door against this voice until its pleadings can be no longer heard. The Spirit pleads, but the determination must be our own. II. A sincere regret for the past. In this 102 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. we must stand alone. No one else, no matter how deep his interest in us, can act for us. Not even a loving mother's tears will avail. III. Forgiveness for that past. This comes to us through Him who died that we might live. I have never heard any- one objecting to the religious life who might not be placed in one of these two classes : (i) Those who by dissipation and the utter disregard of God's claims upon them have become blase, and have perhaps placed them- selves outside the conditions of His influence; (2) those persons whose splendid abilities have been so absorbed in other activities that they have never taken time to give this most serious matter any careful considera- tion. Many who sneer at Christianity, and who, not altogether consistently, claim for themselves an intellectuality which is supe- rior to any such "superstitions," do so, I imagine, from want of practical knowledge rather than by reason of it. Had they brought to this question the same spirit of earnest inquiry which they require of them- THE UPWARD WAY. IO3 selves in their chosen specialties, their opin- ions would be worthy of greater consider- ation. IV. A thoroughly developed physical basis, obedient to and in perfect harmony with the aspiring soul within. In this development the individual, alone with God, must do the building; but society could be wonderfully helpful. If the former life has been evil the old Trunk Lines are there, and often, too often, are so thoroughly established that the un- wary soul is carried back into his self-im- posed bondage. "And these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptations fall away." In a very subtle reciprocal sense the physical basis of a wicked life is the greatest hindrance to a prompt compliance with the first and second of these conditions. The moment is most critical when the con- verted soul realizes the presence of the old nerve combinations. He begins to grow dis- couraged, to despair of ever being able to walk worthily. He doubts his conversion, 104 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. because he has just discovered a law, as St. Paul did when he said, "I find then the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present." The danger is that he will give up the struggle, or that under the social pressure of his public obligation he will drop into an assumed life. All depends upon his ability to keep so close to the Divine One, so thor- oughly under His guidance moment by moment, so completely out of reach of the old stimuli and so actively preoccupied in doing God's will, that the old Trunk Lines may be broken up into new combinations whose pleasure is the doing of good rather than evil. You complain that the conditions are hard ? Granted. But they are easier now than they will ever be for you again. Besides, whom have you to blame ? Who formed those Trunk Lines of vice ? Some persons who know nothing of these struggles treat them with indifference ; even deny that anything of the sort is necessary in taking on the Christian character. But I THE UPWARD WAY. 105 protest that they are not competent jurors. Because the thermometer over the glowing hearth in your elegant parlor indicates a summer atmosphere, it is vain for you to rush out into the snow and ice of a winter night to convince the half-naked wanderer on your door-step that his discomfort is only a mistaken notion of his. Much of our preaching is of the parlor thermometer sort. It applies to us as we might be, perhaps ought to be, but not as we are. In our eagerness for numbers do we not ignore the law ? The first three conditions are faithfully and earnestly presented from almost every pulpit, and are recognized everywhere by the Christian Church ; but the fourth, although absolutely necessary, is rarely taken into consideration. This book is the expressed conviction of the writer that we shall never build the highest types of Christian character until society feels a deeper concern for the establishment in youth of none but sound nerve tracks in moral areas. fP OF TH, fijHIVER'ITTii 106 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. But how is society to proceed ? Precisely as she does in THE BUILDING OF SOUND NERVE TRACKS in any other area where there is a mutual interdependence of mind and body. How do you secure a physical basis for exquisite musical interpretation ? Certainly not by placing the score of a Chopin Ballade upon the rack and attempt- . ing to render it. You may possess a soul full of music and be thoroughly able to appreciate and enjoy Chopin when properly interpreted, but you have as yet no individu- ally formed nerve connections between the light and shade on that printed page and the keyboard of your instrument. What must be done ? Seat yourself at your piano (Figure 20). Hold your open hand over the keyboard. vA wave of stimulation from some luminant is reflected from the printed page to the retina of your eye, and is forwarded to your brain. With difficulty interpreting the cipher, you send a message down to your third finger to strike C of the keyboard. But BUILD SOUND NERVE TRACKS. 107 there is no definitely worn track along the outcarrying nerve to the appropriate muscle, or perhaps the difficulty is in the want of a properly built nerve centre for that particular activity. The stimulus becomes diffused. The muscles of the fourth finger get a part of it; those of the second, even the first may come in for a share. The result is that your fingers spread like the spokes of a wheel. .Three of them disobey orders. But a thoughtful repetition of the command over and over again, will in time wear direct paths, or build proper nerve centres, so that after years of the most exacting labor you glance at the page, the stimulus flashes its round and your finger obeys while your thought is otherwise employed. I have found by careful experiment with a distin- guished organist that he can with his hands and his feet execute an average of one hundred and seventeen orders in a second of time, and be meanwhile busily employed in intelligent conversation. But I insist upon it that I am not neces- 108 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. sarily reducing the musician to a mere machine. Having established sound nerve centres, and tracks in the desired area, the Ego is left at liberty to busy itself in inter- pretation. The Paderewskis, the Pachmans, the Rubinsteins (if one may be pardoned for putting such names in the plural), are not musical machines. By being able to pass the technique over to their nerve centres their souls are all the more free to breathe out the glorious inner. sense of the Master Spirit who speaks through them. Suppose the instrument before you is a type-writer and the stimuli reach the ear from dictation. You may rattle off a page almost as rapidly as it can be pronounced, without being able when it is finished to reproduce a single thought that it contained. You may not even know the order of the letters on your keyboard ; *but you are by no means reduced to the level of your machine. Having established a physical basis in this *I have found several very expert type-writers who could not re- produce the keyboard from memory. BUILD SOUND NERVE TRACKS. IO9 area, you not only write more accurately, but you are free to engage in other activities. You may think out a better speech than the one you are writing from dictation, or decide upon the quality and cut of your next change of garments, or any other equally serious concern of your own. If you are expert at hunting on the wing, you will remember that at the proper instant your gun goes into position, sight is taken and the trigger pulled without any thought at all. These details have been by long practice handed over to your nerve centres, leaving you free to decide which bird you will take, how much of a start you will let him have, and such like. But an unex- pected noise might call out your shot before you were conscious of what you were doing. You may remember the pains that the writing of your first letter of friendship cost you. Perhaps you spoiled half a dozen sheets of paper before you made the heading to suit. Now, after thinking a sentence through and commencing to commit it to paper, you find your thought proceeding to IIO SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. the next, but presently returning to the work in hand, behold it is already duly executed. It is not necessary to multiply illustrations. They are matters of common experience. Let us proceed to their application in the case of right living. Character is a sort of body-guard to the spirit, always on duty in part or in full as occasion requires. But the service is for life. The forces can not be mustered out and re-enlisted at pleasure ; neither may veterans be displaced by raw recruits with any guarantee of valorous behavior under fire. As every private in the Queen's Guard is the embodiment of years of faithful drill and discipline, so every fixed rule of action in a worthy character has back of it a long catalogue of tributary regulations — self- ordered and self -obeyed. The commonplace, the unimportant, every- thing, must be done as though life hinged upon it, until sound trunk lines are formed out from which to build suburban tracks into every field of lofty thought and endeavor. An English artist who became celebrated BUILD SOUND NERVE TRACKS. I I I for steadiness of hand drew his earliest, crudest sketches with pen and ink because he knew that he could not alter a single stroke and was thus obliged to think out every line before executing it ; so he who desires to acquire steadfastness of character must remember that behind his finished ideal there must needs be years of con- scientious heroic effort. Too many young people expect to build gorgeous ceilings with never a thought of the deeply-buried foundation stones upon which ceiling and walls must rest. It is difficult to say just where the voluntary formation of nerve tracks begins. Certainly not with first experiences. Any- one with a clear memory of his early childhood will recall his peculiar emotions at every new experience. His first pair of red-topped boots, trousers, toy engine, his first horseback ride alone, his first appear- ance before an audience, each of these would set him off into a kind of half-dazed, walking-on-air state in which his will had no authority whatever. His first night away 112 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. from home might fill him with unexplainable and absurd apprehensions ; his first absence from the object of his childish affection might cause him, in spite of himself, to hurry back, fully convinced that some terrible calamity had befallen her. The writer well remembers when less than three years old standing near his mother's open grave. The Church service had seemed like the usual routine of Sabbath services which could not now be recalled except for its association with what followed, but the service at the grave put him into that far - away mood always incident to new experiences. As he dreamily watched the lowering of the coffin which contained the body of his best friend, some bystander caught his arm and said almost harshly, " Stand back, you'll fall in," but the caution did not alarm him and he did not move. If he had been told to leap in with the descending clods, he would have obeyed promptly, taking it for granted that he would be thus doing his appropriate part in the strange programme. BUILD SOUND NERVE TRACKS. I 1 3 Under the daze of new experiences a child is not responsible for his conduct, and the reproofs which he too often receives are as unavailing as they are ill-timed and un- kind. He can not fortify himself against the unforeseen. But having been brought into an exper- ience of whatever sort, his memory of its effects gives him a hold upon it, and here is where responsibility and character building begin. Every step now is critical. If he might only know the trend of each experience, and thus enlightened proceed to will the useful ones over and over until Trunk Lines are established, or knowing the ill, consent at once and forever to dismiss them — this would be an ideal way to build character. Here is where Society makes her fatal mistake with her sons. There are many ex- periences which never have aided and never can aid in the formation of sound nerve tracks. They are a dead weight at best. Professor Agassiz, while studying the 114 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. glaciers of the Alps, had his companions lower him into a fissure of unknown depth, where he spent an hour or more examining the stratification of the ice, and other phe- nomena. Having stayed as long as he thought advisable, he signalled to be drawn up again. But when his companions heaved upon the rope they were dismayed to find that their united strength was not equal to the task. Before lowering the Professor they had duly estimated his weight and their own strength, but they had omitted to take into account the weight of the rope, of which several hundred feet had been paid out, and all too late they discovered that they could not draw up both the scientist and the rope. Most of us to our dismay have made the same discovery of unexpected dead weight after hurtful trunk lines and their associate nerve tracks have been formed. Professor Agassiz's assistants left him suspended in the heart of the glacier until additional help could be obtained and he be relieved from his uncomfortable if not perilous plight; but trunk lines of evil once formed are a dead BUILD SOUND NERVE TRACKS. I I 5 weight for life. There is no way to undo the past, sin is irrevocable, and society knows it, but she is not honest with us. Lest some hasty critic might glance at this last statement and sound a note of alarm without taking time to examine further, I will repeat what has been so often said in this little book, that I believe in conversion; but conversion is a spiritual and not a physi- cal change. Parents themselves often increase the difficulties in the early formation of sound nerve tracks. "Did you not promise your son to stop at the hotel for him on your way to the park?" I asked of an acquaintance whom I had casually met in traveling. "O, yes," was the unconcerned reply, "but that makes no difference. He's only a little fellow, and will soon forget it." But that father must not hold himself blameless if his son in after years, though speaking the truth, is not believed. A parent who abuses her child for deceiv- ing her and the same day openly boasts of I 1 6 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. her own shrewdness in defrauding the gro- cer's boy out of a sixpence may not appre- ciate that she is making it exceedingly diffi- cult for her son to become an honest man, but she scarcely deserves to be called by that sacred name "Mother." Indeed it is difficult to understand the Providence which permits the precious little ones to come into some homes. Example is much more stimulating to a child than precept. It is useless to teach him the letter of the law without bringing him under the influence of its practically embodied spirit. A father's bad example may undo a mother's prayer. As much as possible be yourself the companion of your child — that is if you are fit to be a companion of childhood — and hand in hand pursue the upward way. The yearning of every parent's heart should be, "How shall I go up to my Father and the lad be not with me?" But while thus endeavoring to build sound nerve tracks, we should be equally solicitous to PREVENT UNSOUND NERVE TRACKS. I I 7 PREVENT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF UNSOUND NERVE TRACKS. Youth should be surrounded with health- ful incentives to right action, but more, it should be from the earliest moment protected against pernicious influences. Granting that beautiful Christian character is sometimes developed in spite of a vicious environment, it is a disgrace to our civilization that the necessity occurs. Know with whom and how your boys spend their leisure. Ten minutes a day on some play -grounds will destroy the immediate effects of a consecrated home. But do not abolish the play -ground ; make it rather a proper place for your boys. That is what play -grounds are for. Kant's opinion, which is so often quoted as an argument for allowing young people the utmost license in matters of right and wrong, is only conditionally true. He says: "Trees when allowed to grow in the open air prosper better and bear more generous fruit than those which are forced as to shape in hot-houses by artificial processes." I 1 8 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. That depends upon how conducive to growth and fruitage the open air is. Did Kant ever compare the magnificent chestnut or elm of some famous avenue of Old England or the Continent with the dwarfed, stunted, ostrich-bodied specimens of the same species on a far Western prairie of the United States, struggling against terrific cold, drought, and an "open air" which blows at an average rate of thirty miles an hour? And as to fruit, did Kant know that Black Hamburg grapes, grown to indifferent size under the sunny skies of France at a few francs the cart load, can not be grown at all in the open air east of the Rocky Mountains in America, but that under glass they become so large and luscious that sometimes in New York City or Chicago they bring five dollars a bunch? When the "open air" is charged with sewer gas we do not hesitate to shut our doors against it, and why should we be so lib- eral upon the question of moral contagion ? It is curious that we discriminate at every step in the development of muscle and mind, PREVENT UNSOUND NERVE TRACKS. I I Q but in morals we become suddenly " broad- minded." "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The sooner we realize that the "wild oats" sentiment is a delusion and a snare, the better it will be for us all. The "open air" doctrine has not produced the most gratifying results in Kant's own country. I copy from an excellent college journal just sent to my table, a student's account of some of the practical workings, of this doctrine. The article is headed, "German Student Life As It Is," and the writer is evidently honest and faithful to the the facts, except that they are given only in broadest outline. In the course of the article the writer says: "Every now and again the old cravings return, and he joins a so-called 'Bier Bummel.' This bier journey is always per- formed in some non-university town, for reasons which will be obvious. The journey which I will describe was made in the world- famed Nuremburg, so well known by innum- erable pictures and engravings. The band consisted of seven, who did their best to enliven the city. First went in front one 120 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. with an umbrella to which a huge cucumber was tied; the second (all in single file) munched a bunch of carrots ; a third ate cherries from a big bag, and so on, all sing- ing popular German student melodies. Nor, as might be expected, were the healing waters of Munich, of Pilsener, of Gratz, or of Erlanger left untasted. "After a rather boisterous luncheon, the crowd repaired to an open-air concert, where the umbrella with attendant cucumber, much to the astonishment of the foreign visitors, was erected on the table supported by sticks resting on beer-mugs. Here a new society was formed ( which still flourishes with un- wonted vigor ), and laws, beer laws, coat- of - arms, cirkel, etc., were made in parody of the real 'Comment,' amid much fun and laughter. At eight p. m. a 'Bier-reise' was inaugurated. This consists of visiting in succession every house of refreshment en route, and partaking of one glass only there- in. Every member moreover was bound to take away in turn a 'Masskrug' (a stone beer mug holding about i Y± pints ), so that at the end of the journey each one was pro- vided with a 'dress improver' attached to the band found at the back of foreign unmentionables, At three a. m. the whole party, slightly riotous, repaired to the station, and at dawn, about four a. m., they departed for their alma mater, singing quar- tets, part songs and choruses. PREVENT UNSOUND NERVE TRACKS. 121 " Looking back at this curious performance I find that much of the sparkle has gone ; but I never shall forget the laughable spec- tacle we presented, walking in broad day- light to our destination, with our beer-mug improvers, which we had forgotten to remove, the streets being crowded with students, professors going to lecture, market women, peasants and burghers." I have seen the beginning and the end of such a Bier Bummel ; only that out of the score of participants about half of them will never be able to remember the " laughable spectacle" of their walk home in broad day- light. They were too drunk to walk. Eighty per cent, of the students, and among them some possessing great innate ability, sacri- ficed to this irrational notion of liberty is a fearful price to pay. I sincerely hope and pray that there may come a speedy reaction against such false conceptions of how to train the young for future usefulness and ultimate happiness. Youth was not given us to be spent in cultivating nerve tracks for idiotic displays of buffoonery and dissi- pation. A lively boy reads low-class literature or 122 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. sees indecent pictures. He may have found them in the columns of some " enterprising" newspaper on his father's table, or on the bill-boards of a "highly respectable" opera house, or as advertisements of the abomin- able cigarette. Or he hears an unseemly story from a playmate, or perhaps from an older person who ought to be ashamed that he has no better business. These external suggestions may be re- peated, or, what amounts to precisely the same thing, he may reproduce them in imagination. Every rehearsal sends the stimuli a little more easily along definite lines from the brain into motor nerves tend- ing towards action. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Good influences gradu- ally lose their hold upon him as his mind becomes more and more absorbed in the vile imagery which he is day by day dyeing a little more deeply in his own life's blood. Presently those secretly formed Trunk Lines grow strong enough to assert themselves. True, they are not entities, any more than hunger and toothache are entities, but they PREVENT UNSOUND NERVE TRACKS. 1 23 become so thoroughly organized and so sen- sitive to the accustomed stimuli that they demand expression, and the lad is irresist- ibly led into criminality. CONCLUSION. The most casual observer must have noticed how ready children are to respond to good influences. When they have grown to young manhood without yielding obedi- ence to the Divine will, the tendency is towards indifference upon moral questions. At middle life they "would be glad to be- lieve as you do but can not really under- stand things that way." In old age Christian character has become to them only a tradi- tion, to be classed along with the other traditions of the dead past, and they step out into eternity denying that there is an eternity. Our constant effort should be to save the youth from the formation of a physical basis of vice ; so that they shall from early child- hood push steadily up toward the mountain top. Every youth should realize that the prob- lem increases in difficulty and grows less likely of solution as the soul becomes more CONCLUSION. T25 and more bound by a network of evil appe- tites and passions which are hurrying it towards the blackest shadows at the bottom of the grade. Youth is the time to economize nervous energy ; to build by individual exertion strong Trunk Lines of reserve power for future emergencies. In building for the future we but provide for the present, for the present is made out of the future. The future of yesterday is the present of to-day. In great crises we do not act upon the resolution of the moment, but upon the reserves of our past life stored in our nervous mechanism. Christian character is the only safe equipment for such exigen- cies, and the ripest Christian character obtains only when its foundations are laid in youth. Then the nervous system is plastic presently it becomes "set." Youth comes but once to any of us. The seasons, with their flowers and singing birds, their fruits and gathered grain, return again and again, but youth returns never. The blunders of one seed-time, mav be remedied 126 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. at the next but youth once lived can not be lived over again. The laughing brook after it has left the mill may be caught upon the bosom of a cloud and carried back to its mountain home to turn that creaking wheel again, but when youth flies away it returns not. It is a little thing to hear your clock tick — tick — tick; it is an easy thing to under- stand why every half minute it calls out its click — click — click; a feeble thing is its delicate mechanism, a baby's finger could stop its monotonous one — two — three; a silly thing for you to think that you are any the better or the worse because of its soulless clack — clack — clack; a tremen- dous, an appalling thing to know that the instants of time which it hands out now — now — now, are gone from you forever; and not only may you never recover them, but you may have an eternity of regret for their loss: for of all the curses that hang like a dark pall over a young man's shoulders, the blackest of them all is the curse of neglected opportunities. CONCLUSION. 127 In your association with youth be careful even in trifles, and never forget that your life much more than your profession may change the trend of other lives. Sometimes in your despondent moments you may cry out, "What does it matter? My influence is of no consequence. There is nothing for me to do that can not be a great deal better done by others." Not so. Not so. The light of a match may be insignificant when compared with the blazing lenses of a light-house, but I once learned a lesson which has caused me from that day to thank God for the light of a match. While traveling with my family in Florida we were spending a little time at Warring- ton, across the bay from Fort Pickens. One evening I concluded to visit the Pensacola light-house, and, as the balmy spring air was loaded with the fragrance of the fresh orange blossoms and the grateful evening breeze from the Gulf was just springing up to relieve us from the heat of the day, I proposed that my wife and son, a lad nine 128 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. years of age, and a young gentleman who was traveling with us, should accompany me. They readily consented. We procured a young darkey as guide, and started at about eight o'clock for the light-house which was some distance around the beach. The walk was delightful, and, after accomplishing the object of the visit, we descended from the tower to return. It was quite dark. Presently, coming squarely up against the incoming waves, we dis- covered that we had lost our way, and that our guide was so dazed from his climb into the light-house tower that he had lost all notion of his whereabouts. We held a con- sultation and decided with the aid of the beams from the light-house to take a general course somewhat across the island towards Warrington. Our friend and my boy led, my wife and I followed, and the darkey, trembling with fright, brought up the rear. It was difficult to pick our way because the beams from the flash panels of the light were so high above us and were focused so many miles beyond where we CONCLUSION. 129 were that they were of little service to us. Presently we climbed quite a hill, and some yards ahead of me I saw our friend holding a lighted match in one hand and with the other halting my boy. Coming up to where they had stopped, we found ourselves on the edge of what we supposed was a ditch, and into which they came near stepping. There was a well beaten path around it which soon brought us to the Warrington road, and in an hour or two more we were safely back to our lodgings. The next day we retraced our steps, and found that what we the night before had called a ditch was in reality the moat around old Fort Barrancas, and but for a match my son and his companion would have fallen some forty feet to its rocky bottom. The splendid two-thousand-candle-power beams from that First Order Light had been all the time flashing above them, but it was the comparatively insignificant light of the match which saved them from a terrible fall, and perhaps from death. 130 SECRET OF CHARACTER BUILDING. The value of a Christian life cannot be measured by comparison : man's plain duty is to neglect not the gift that is in him, leaving the result with God. 'V OF THE ^. UNIVERSIT oar THE END. RETURN TO the circulation desk ot any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW JAN 3 2000 12,000(11/95)