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UWARV 'ri A Man's Value to Society By Newell Dwight Hillis Each i2mo, cloth, net, $i.2C HENRY WARD BEECHER A Study of His Life and Influence LECTURES AND ORATIONS BY HENRY WARD BEECHER Collected by Newell Dwight Hillis THE MESSAGE OF DAVID SWING TO HIS GENER- ATION Compiled, with Introductory Memorial Address by Newell Dwight Hillis ALL THE YEAR ROUND Sermons for Church and Civic Celebrations THE BATTLE OF PRINCIPLES A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict THE CONTAGION OF CHARACTER Studies in Culture and Success THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC Studies, National and Patriotic, upon the America of To- day and_To-niorrow GREAT BOOKS AS LIFE-TEACHERS Studies of Character, Real and Ideal THE INVESTMENT OF INFLUENCE A Study of Social Sympathy and Service A MAN'S VALUE TO SOCIETY Studies in Self-Culture and Character FAITH AND CHARACTER lamo, cloth, gilt top, net, 75 cents FORETOKENS OF IMMORTALITY i2mo, cloth, net, 50 cents DAVID THE POET AND KING 8vo, two colors, deckle edges, net, 75 cents HOW THE INNER LIGHT FAILED i8nio, cloth, net, 25 cents RIGHT LIVING AS A FINE ART A Study of Channing's Symphony lamo, boards, net, 25 cents THE MASTER OF THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING lamo, boards, net, 25 cents ACROSS THE CONTINENF OF THE YEARS i6ino, old English boards, net, 20 cents THE SCHOOL IN THE HOME Net, 50 c'ints. A Man's Value to Society Studies in Self-Culture and Character Newell Dwight HIllIs Author of "The Investment of Influence," "Foretokens of Immortality," etc. 'Sprtad wide thy mantle ivht'le the gods rain gold" — FROM THE PKBSIAN. Chicago New York Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh l'^^ x U f Ch. Copyright, 1896, by Fleming H. Revell Compiiny • : { *>CopyiigJit^' iS^^-j by .* Fleming HI Revell Cdrnpsmy 7? ' I i */( of /' V i J* lis* // 'y!;*'r Kew York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Prince* Street TO Mr rriFS 943974 CONTENTS Chap. Pagb I The Elements of Worth in the Individual 9 II Character : Its Materials and External Teachers 33 III Aspirations and Heals 55 IV The Physical Basis ol" Character . . ']'1 V The Mind and the Duty of Right Thinking 99 VI The Moral Uses of Memory ... 123 VII The Imagination as the Architect of Manhood 143 VIII The Enthusiasm of Friendship . . . 165 IX Conscience and Character .... 189 X Visions that Disturb Contentment . . 213 XI The Uses of Books and Reading . . 235 XII The Science of Living vv^ith Men . .259 XIII The Revelators of Character ... 281 XIV Making the Most of One's Self ... 301 The Elements of Worth in the Individual " There i^ nothing that makes men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. Wealth is of the heart, not of the hand." — John Milton. " Until we know why the rose is sweet or the dew drop pure, or the rainbow beautiful, we cannot know why the poet is the best benefactor of society. The soldier fights for his native land, but the poet touches that land with the charm that makes it worth fighting for and fires the warrior's heart with energy invincible. The statesman enlarges and or- ders liberty in the state, but the poet fosters the core of liberty in the heart of the citizen. The inventor multiplies the facilities of life, but the poet makes life bettor worth living."— 0607-6(6 Wm. Curtis. " Not all men are of equal value. Not many Platos: only one, to whom a thousand lesser minds look up and learn to think. Not many Dantes: one, and a thousand poets tune their harps to his and repeat his notes. Not many Raphaels: one, and no second. But a thousand lesser artists looking up to him are lifted to his level. Not many royal hearts — great maga- zines of kindness. Happy the town blessed with a few great minds and a few great hearts. One such citizen will civilize an entire community. " — H. The Elements of Worth in the Individual /^TJK scientific experts are investigating ^^^ the wastes of society. Their reports in- dicate that man is a great spendthrift. He seems not so much a linsbandman, making the most of the treasures of liis life-garden, as a robber looting a storehouse for booty. Travelers affirm that one part of the north- ern pineries has been wasted by man's careless fires and much of the rest by his restless axe. Coal experts insist that a large percentage of heat passes out of the chimney. The new chemistry claims that not a little of the pre- cious ore is cast upon the slag heap. In the fields the farmers overlook some ears of corn and pass by some handfnls of wheat. In the work-room the scissors leave selvage and remnant. In the mill the saw and plane refuse slabs and edges. In the kitchen a part of what the husband carries in, the wife's wasteful cooking casts out. But the second- ary wastes involve still heavier losses. Man's ' I A Man's Value to Society carelessness in the factory breaks delicate ma- chinery, his ignorance spoils raw materials, his idleness burns out boilers, his recklessness blows up engines; and no skill of manager in juggling figures in January can retrieve the wastes of June. Passing through the country the traveler finds the plow rusting in the furrow, mowers and reapers exposed to rain and snow; passing through the city he sees the docks lined with boats, the alleys full of broken vehicles, while the streets exhibit some broken-down men. A journey through life is like a journey along the trackway of a retreating army; here a val- uable ammunition wagon is abandoned because a careless smith left a flaw in the tire; there a brass cannon is deserted because a tug was im- properly stitched; yonder a brave soldier lies dying in the thicket where he fell because ex- cited men forgot the use of an ambulance. What with the wastes of intemperance and ignorance, of idleness and class wars, the losses of society are enormous. But man's prod- igality with his material treasures does but interpret his wastefulness of the greater riches of mind and heart. Life's chief destruc- tions are in the city of man's soul. Many persons seem to be trying to solve this prob- lem: ''Given a soul stored with great treas- 10 The Elements of Worth in the Individual ure, and three score and ten years for happi- ness and usefulness, how shall one kill the time and waste the treasure?" Man's pride over his casket stored with gems must be mod- ified by the reflection that daily his pearls are cast before swine, that should have been woven into coronets. Man's evident failure to make the most out of his material life suggests a study of the ele- ments in each citizen that make him of value to his age and community. What are the measurements of mankind, and why is it that daily some add new treasures to the storehouse of civilization, while others take from and waste the store already accumulated? These are ques- tions of vital import. Many and varied estimates of man's value have been made. Statisticians reckon the average man's value at $600 a year. Each worker in wood, iron or brass stands for an engine or industrial plant worth $10,000, pro- ducing at 6 per cent, an income of $600. The death of the average workman, therefore, is equivalent to the destruction of a $10,000 mill or engine. The economic loss through the non-productivity of 20,000 drunkards is equal to one Chicago fire involving two hundred mil- lions. Of course, some men produce less and others more than $600 a year; and some there are who have no industrial value — non-produ- A Man's Value to Society cers, according to Adam Smith; paupers, ac- cording to John Stuart Mill ; thieves, according to Paul, who says, "Let him that stole steal uo more, but rather work." In this group let us include the tramps, who hold that the world owes them a living ; these are they who fail to realize that society has given them support through infancy and childhood; has given them language, literature, liberty. Wise men know that the noblest and strongest have re- ceived from society a thousandfold more than they can ever repay, though they vex all the days and nights with ceaseless toil. In this number of non-sufficing persons are to be in- cluded the paupers — paupers plebeian, support- ed in the poorhouse by many citizens; paupers patrician, supported in palace by one citizen, generally father or ancestor; the two classes differing in that one is the foam at the top of the glass and the other the dregs at the bot- tom. To these two groups let us add the social parasites, represented by thieves, drunk- ards, and persons of the baser sort whose business it is to trade in human passion. We revolt from the red aphides upon the plant, the caterpillar upon the tree, the vermin upon bird or beast. How much more do we revolt from those human vermin whose business it is to propagate parasites upon the body politic! 12 The Elements of Worth in the Individual The condemnation of life is that a man con- sumes more than he produces, taking out of society's granary that which other hands have put in. The praise of life is that one is self- sufficing, taking less out than he put into the storehouse of civilization. A man's original capital comes through his ancestr3^ Nature invests the grandsire's ability, and compounds it for the grandson. Plato says : ' ' The child is a charioteer driving two steeds up the long life-hill; one steed is white, representing our best impulses; one steed is dark, standing for our worst passions." "Who gave these steeds their color ? Our fathers, Plato replies, and the child may not change one hair, white or black. Oliver Weixdell Holmes would have us think that a man's value is determined a hundred years be- fore his birth. The ancestral ground slopes upward toward the mountain-minded man. The great never appear suddenly. Seven genera- tions of clergymen make ready for Emerson, each a signboard pointing to the coming phi- losopher. The Mississippi has power to bear up fleets for war or peace because the storms of a thousand summers and the snows of a thousand winters have lent depth and power. The measure of greatness in a man is de- termined by the intellectual streams and 13 A Man*s Value to Society moral tides flowing down from the ancestral hills and emptying into the human soul. The Bach family included one hundred and twenty musicians. Paganini was born with muscles in his wrists like whipcords. What was unique in Socrates was first unique in Sophroniscus. John ran before Jesus, but Zacharias foretold John. No electricity along rope wires, and no vital living truths along rope nerves to spongy brain. There are millions in our world who have been rendered physical and moral paupers by the sins of their ancestors. Their forefathers doomed them to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. A century must pass before one of their children can crowd his way up and show strength enough to shape a tool, outline a code, create an industry, reform a wrong. Despotic governments have stunted men — made them thin-blooded and low-browed, all back- head and no forehead. Each child has been likened to a cask whose staves represent trees growing on hills distant and widely separated; some staves are sound and solid, standing for right-living ancestors; some are worm-eaten, standing for ancestors whose integrity was consumed by vices. At birth all the staves are brought together in the in- fant cask — empty, but to be filled by par- ents and teachers and friends. As the waste- 14 The Elements of Worth in the Individual barrel in the alley is filled with refuse and filth, so the orphan waifs in our streets are made receptacles of all vicious thoughts and deeds. These children are not so much born as damned into life. But how different is the childhood of some others. On the Easter day, in foreign cathedrals, a beauteous vase is placed beside the altar, and as the multitudes crowd forward and the solemn procession moves up the aisles, men and women cast into the vase their gifts of gold and silver and pearls and lace and rich textures. The well- born child seems to be such a vase, unspeak- ably beautiful, filled with knowledges and in- tegrities more precious than gold and pearls. *'Let him who would be great select the right parents," was the keen dictum of President Dwight. By the influence of the racial element, the laborer in northern Europe, viewed as a pro- ducing machine, doubles the industrial output of his southern brother. The child of the tropics is out of the race. For centuries he has dozed under the banana tree, awakening only to shake the tree and bring down ripe fruit for his hun- ger, eating to sleep again. His muscles are flab- by, his blood is thin, his brain unequal to the strain of two ideas in one day. When Sir John 15 A Man's Value to Society Lubbock had fed the chief in the South Sea Islands he began to ask him questions, but within ten minutes the savage was sound asleep. When awakened the old chief said: ''Ideas make me so sleepy." Similarly, the warm Venetian blood has given few great men to civilization ; but the hills of Scotland and New England produce scholars, statesmen, poets, financiers, v/ith the alacrity with which Texas produces cotton or Missouri corn. History traces certain influential nations back to a single progenitor of unique strength of body and character. Thus Abraham, Theseus, and Cadmus seem like springs feeding great and increasing rivers. One wise and original thinker founds a tribe, shapes the destiny of a nation, and multiplies himself in the lives of future millions. In accordance with this law, tenacity reappears in every Scotchman; wit sparkles in every Irishman; vivacity is in every Frenchman's blood; the Saxon is a colonizer and originates institu- tions. During the construction of the Suez Canal it was discovered that workmen with veins filled with Teutonic blood had a commer- cial value two and a half times greater than the Egyptians. Similarly, during the Indian war, the Highland troops endured double the strain of the native forces. Napoleon i6 The Elements of Worth in the Individual shortened the stature of the French people two inches by choosing all the taller of his 30,000,000 subjects and killing them in war. AVaxing indignant, Horace Mann thinks ' ' the forehead of the Irish peasantry was lowered an inch when the government made it an offense punishable with fine, imprisonment, and a traitor's death to be the teacher of chil- dren." A wicked government can make agony, epidemic, brutalize a race, and reaching forward, fetter generations yet unborn. <' Blood tells," says science. But blood is the radical element put out at compound in- terest and handed forward to generations yet unborn. The second measure of a man's value to society is found in his original endowment of physical strength. The child's birth-stock of vital force is his capital to be traded upon. Other things being equal his productive value is to be estimated mathematically upon the basis of physique. Born weak and nerveless, he must go to society's ambulance wagon, and so impede the onward march. Born vigorous and rugged, he can help to clear the forest road- way or lead the advancing columns. Funda- mentally man is a muscular machine for pro- ducing the ideas that shape conduct and char- acter. All fine thinking stands with one 17 A Man's Value to Society foot on fine brain fiber. Given large physical organs, lungs with capacity sufficient to oxy- genate the life-currents as they pass upward; brge arteries through which the blood may have full course, run, and be glorified ; a brain healthy and balanced with a compact nervous system, and you have the basis for computing what will be a man's value to society. Men differ, of course, in ways many — they differ in the number and range of their affections, in the scope of conscience, in taste and imag- ination, and in moral energy. But the original point of variance is physical. Some have a small body and a powerful mind, like a Corliss engine in a tiny boat, whose fraiJ structure will soon be racked to pieces. Others are born with large bodies and very lit- tle mind, as if a toy engine were set to run a mudscow. This means that the poor engineer must pole up stream all his life. Others, by ig- norance of parent, or accident through nurse, or through their own blunder or sin, destroy their bodily capital. Soon they are like boats cast high and dry upon the beach, doomed to sun- cracking and decay. Then, in addition to these absolute weaknesses, come the dispro- portions of the body, the distemperature of various organs. It is not necessary for spoil- ing a timepiece to break its every bearing; one 18 The Elements of Worth in the Individual loose screw stops all the wheels. Thus a very slight error as to the management of the bodily mechanism is sufficient to prevent fine creative work as author, speaker, or in- ventor. Few men, perhaps, ever learn how to so manage their brain and stomach as to be capable of high-pressure brain action for days at a time — until the cumulative mental forces break through all obstacles and conquer suc- cess. A great leader represents a kind of essence of common sense, but rugged common sense is sanity of nerve and brain. He who rules and leads must have mind and will, but he must have chest and stomach also. Beecher says the gun carriage must be in proportion to the gun it carries. When health goes the gun is spiked. Ideas are arrows, and the body is the bow that sends them home. The mind aims ; the body fires. Good health may be better than genius or wealth or honor. It was when the gymnasium had made each Athenian youth an Apollo in health and strength that the feet of the Greek race ran most nimbly along the paths of art and literature and philosophy. Another test of a man's value is an intel- lectual one. The largest wastes of any nation are through ignorance. Failure is want of knowledge; success is knowing how. Wealth 19 A Man's Value to Society is not in things of iron, wood and stone. Wealth is in the brain that organizes the metal. Pig iron is worth $20 a ton ; made into horse shoes, $90; into knife blades, $200; into watch springs, $1,000. That is, raw iron $20, brain power, $980. Millet bought a yard of canvas for 1 franc, paid 2 more francs for a hair brush and some colors; upon this canvas he spread his genius, giving us ''The An- gelus." The original investment in raw ma- terial was 60 cents; his intelligence gave that raw material a value of $105,000. One of the pictures at the World's Fair represented a savage standing on the bank of a stream, anxious but ignorant as to how he could cross the flood. Knowledge toward the metal at his feet gave the savage an axe; knowledge to- ward the tree gave him a canoe; knowledge toward the union of canoes gave him a boat; knowledge toward the wind added sails ; knowl- edge toward fire and water gave him the ocean steamer. Now, if from the captain stand- ing on the prow of that floating palace, the City of New York, we could take away man's knowledge as we remove peel after peel from an onion, we would have from the iron steamer, first, a sailboat, then a canoe, then axe and tree, and at last a savage, naked and helpless to cross a little stream. In the final analysis 20 The Elements of Worth in the Individual it is ignorance that wastes; it is knowledge that saves ; it is wisdom that gives precedence . If sleep is the brother of death, ignorance is full brother to both sleep and death. An un- taught faculty is at once quiescent and dead. An io-norant man has been defined as one "whom God has packed up and men have not unfolded. The best forces in such a one are perpetually paralyzed. Eyes he has, but he cannot see the length of his hand; ears he has, and all the finest sounds in creation escape him; a tongue he has, and it is forever blun- dering." A mechanic who has a chest of forty tools and can use only the hammer, saw, and gimlet, has little chance with his fellows and soon falls far behind. An educated mind is one fully awakened to all the sights and scenes and forces in the world through which he moves. This does not mean that a $2,000 man can be made out of a two-cent boy by sending him to college. Education is mind-husbandry; it changes the size but not the sort. But if no amount of drill will make a Shetland pony show a two-minute gait, neither will the thorough- bred show this speed save through long and assiduous and patient education. The pri- mary fountains of our Nation's wealth are not in fields and forests and mines, but in the free schools, churches, and printing presses. Ig- 21 A Man's Value to Society norance breeds misery, vice, and crime. Me- phistopheles was a cultured devil, but he is the exception. History knows no illiterate seer or sage or saint. No Dante or Shakespeare ever had to make "his X mark." When John Cabot Lodge made his study of the distribution of ability in the United States, he found that in ninety years five of the great Western States had produced but twenty- seven men who were mentioned in the Ameri- can and English encyclopedias, while little Massachusetts had 2,686 authors, orators, phi- losophers, and builders of States. But analy- sis shows that the variance is one of education and ideas. Boston differs from Quebec as dif- fer their methods of instruction. The New England settlers were Oxford and Cambridge men that represented the best blood, brain, and accumulated culture of old England. Landing in the forest they clustered their cabins around the building that was at once church, school, library, and town hall. Eising early and sitting up late they plied their youth with ideas of liberty and intelligence. They came together on Sunday morning at nine o'clock to listen to a prayer one hour long, a sermon of three hours, and after a cold lunch heard a second brief sermon of two hours and a half — those who did not die became great. 22 The Elements of Worth in the Individual What Sunday began the week continued. We may smile at their methods but we must ad' mire the men they produced. Mark the intel- lectual history of Northampton. During its history this town has sent out 114 lawyers, 112 ministers, 95 physicians, 100 educators, 7 college presidents, 30 professors, 24 editors, 6 historians, 14 authors, among whom are George Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Professor Whitney, the late J. Gr. Holland; 38 officers of State, 28 officers of the United States, includ- ing members of the Senate, and one President. * How comes it that this little colony has raised up this great company of authors, statesmen, re- formers ? No mere chance is working here. The relation between sunshine and harvest is not more essential than the relation between these folk and their renowned descendants. Fruit after his kind is the divine explanation of Northampton's influence upon the nation. "Education makes men great" is the divine dictum. George William Curtis has said: *'The Revolutionary leaders were all trained men, as the world's leaders always have been from the day when Themistocles led the edu- cated Athenians at Salamis, to that when Von Moltke marshaled the educated Germans against France. The sure foundations of states are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and *Northainpton Antiquities. Clark. A Man's Value to Society every sneer at education, at book learning, \\hich is the recorded wisdom of the experi- ence of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degenera- tion and ruin." Consider, also, how the misfits of life affect man's value. The successful man grasps the handle of his being. He moves in the line of least resistance. That one accomplishes most whose heart sings while his hand w^orks. Like animals men have varied uses. The lark sings, the ox bears burdens, the horse is for strength and speed. But men who are wise to- ward beasts are often foolish toward themselves. Multitudes drag themselves toward the factory or field who would have moved toward the forum with " feet as hind's feet." Other mul- titudes fret and chafe in the office whose de- sires are in the streets and fields. Whoever scourges himself to a task he hates serves a hard master, and the slave will get but scant pay. If a farmer should hitch horses to a tel- escope and try to plow with it he would ruin the instrument in the summer and starve his family in the winter. Not the wishes of pa- rent, nor the vanity of wife, nor the pride of place, but God and nature choose occupa- tion. Each child is unique, as new as was the first arriva\ upon this planet. 24 The Elements of Worth in the Individual The school is to help the boy unpack what in- tellectual tools he has; education does not change, but puts temper into these tools. No man can alter his temperament, though trying to he can break his heart. How pathetic the wrecks of men who have chosen the wrong oc- cupation! The driver bathes the raw shoulder of a horse whose collar does not fit, but when men make their misfits and the heart is sore society does not soothe, but with whips it scoursces the man to his fruitless task. This large class may be counted unproductive. John Stuart Mill placed the industrial mismatings among the heavier losses of society. To this element of wisdom in relating one s self to duties must be added skill in maintain- insT smooth relations with one's fellows. Men may produce much by industry and ability, and yet destroy more by the malign elements they carry. The proud domineering employer tears down with one hand what he builds up with the other. One foolish man can cost a city untold treasure. How many factories have failed because the owner has no skill in managing men and mollifying difficulties. His- tory shows that stupid thrones and wars go together, while skillful kings bring long inter- vals of peace. Contrasting the methods of two prominent men, an editor once said: •• The 25 A Man's Value to Society first man in making one million cost society ten millions; but the other so produced his one million as to add ten more to society's wealth." A most disastrous strike in England's history had its origin in ignorance of this principle. The miners of a certain coal field had suffered a severe cut in wages. They had determined to acoept it, though it took their children out of school, and took away their meat dinner. When the hour appointed for the conference came, prudence would have dictated that every cause of irritation be guarded against. But the employer foolishly drove his liveried car- riage into the center of the vast crowd of workmen, and for an hour flaunted his wealth before the sore-hearted miners. When th( men saw the footman, the prancing horses, the gold-plated harness, and thought of their starving wives, they reversed their acceptance of the cut in wages. They plunged into a long strike, taking this for their motto: "Furs for his footmen and gold plate for his horses, and also three meals a day for our wives and children." Now, the ensuing strike and riots, long protracted, cost England £5,000,000. But that bitter strike was all needless. These are the men who take off the chariot wheels for God's advancing hosts. When one comes to the front who has skill in allaying friction, all 26 The Elements of Worth in the Individual society begins a new forward march. Skill in personal carriage has much to do with a man's value. Integrity enhances human worth. Iniquities devastate a city like fire and pestilence. Social wealth and happiness are through right living. Goodness is a commodity. Conscience in a cashier has a cash value. If arts and indus- tries are flowers and fruits, moralities are the roots that nourish them. Disobedience is slavery. Obedince is liberty. Disobedience to law of fire or water or acid is death. Obe- dience to law of color gives the artist his skill ; obedience to the law of eloquence gives the orator his force; obedience to the law of iron gives the inventor his tool; disobedience to the law of morals gives waste and want and wretchedness. That individual or nation is hastening toward poverty that does not love the right and hate the wrong. So certain is the penalty of wrongdoing that sin seems infinitely stupid. Every transgression is like an iron plate thrown into the air; gravity will pull it back upon the wrongdoer's head to wound him. It has been said for a man to betray his trust for money, is for him to stand on the same intellectual level with a monkey that scalds its throat with boil- ing water because it is thirsty. A drunkard is 27 A Man's Value to Society one who exchanges ambrosia and nectar for garbage. A profligate is one who declines an invitation to banquet with the gods that he may dine out of an ash barrel. What blight is to the vine, sin is to a man. When the first thief appeared in Plymouth colony a man was withdrawn from the fields to make locks for the houses ; when two thieves came a second toiler was withdrawn from the factory to serve as nio^ht watchman. Soon others were taken from productive industry to build a jail and to interpret and execute the law. Every sin costs the state much hard cash. Consider what wastes hatred hath wrought. Once Italy and Greece and Central Europe made one vast storehouse filled with precious art treasures. But men turned the cathedrals into arsenals of war. If the clerks in some porcelain or cut- glass store should attend to their duties in the morning, and each afternoon have a pitched battle, during which they should throw the vases and cups and medallions at each other, and each night pick up a piece of vase, here an armless Venus and there a headless Apollo, to put away for future generations to study, we should have that which answers precisely to what has gone on for centuries through ha- treds and class wars. An outlook upon society is much like a visit to Ijisbon after an earth- 28 The Elements of Worth in the Individual quake has filled the streets with debris and shaken down homes, palaces, and temples. History is full of the ruins of cities and em- pires. Not time, but disobedience, hath wrought their destruction. New civilizations will be reared by coming generations ; upright- ness will lay the foundations and integrity will complete the structure. The temple is right- eousness in which God dwelleth. "Have life more abundantly." Man is not fated to a scant allowance nor a fixed amount, but he is allured forward by an unmeasured possibility. Personality may be enlarged and enriched. It has been said that Cromwell was the best thing England ever produced. And the mission of Jesus Christ is to carry each up from littleness to full-orbed largeness. It has always been true that when some genius, e. g., Watt, invents a model the people have repro- duced it times innumerable. So what man asks for is not the increase of birth talent, but a pattern after which this raw material can be fashioned. Carbon makes charcoal, and carbon makes diamond, too, but the " sea of light" is carbon crystallized to a pattern. Builders lay bricks by plan; the musician follows his score; the value of a York minster is not in the num- ber of cords of stone, but in the plan that organized them; and the value of a man is in 29 A Man's Value to Society the reply to this question: Have the raw materials of nature been wrought up into unity and harmony by the Exemplar of human life? Daily he is here to stir the mind with holy ambitions ; to wing the heart with noble aspirations; to inspire with an all-conquering courage; to vitalize the whole manhood. By making the individual rich within he creates value without. For all things are first thoughts. Tools, fabrics, ships, houses, books are first ideas, afterward crystallized into outer form. A great picture is a beautiful conception rushing into visible expression up- on the canvas. Wake up taste in a man and he beautifies his home. Wake up conscience and he drives iniquities out of his heart. Wake up his ideas of freedom and he fashions new laws. Jesus Christ is here to inflame man's soul within that he may transform and enrich his life without. No picture ever painted, no statue ever carved, no cathedral ever builded is half so beautiful as the Christ-formed man. What is man's value to society? Let him who knoweth what is in us reply : ' ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? " 30 Character: Its Materials And External Teachers ** Character is more than intellect. A ^eat soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. Goodness outshines genius, as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow." — Emerson. " What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others." — Confucius. " After all, the kind of world one carries about in one's self is the important thing, and the world out- side takes all its grace, color and value from that." — James Bussell Lowell. " Sow an act and you reap a habit ; sow a habit and you reap a character ; sow a character and you reap a destiny." — Anon. "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."— PsaZm 90. II Character: Its Materials and External Teachers "TRYING, Horace Greeley exclaimed: ''Fame ^■^ is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer to-day will curse to-morrow, only one thing endures — character! " These weighty words bid all remember that life's one task is the making of manhood. Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. The forces that increase happiness are many, including money, friends, position ; but one thing alone is indispensable to success — personal worth and manhood. He who stands forth clothed with real weight of goodness can neither be feeble in life, nor forgotten in death. Society admires its scholar, but society reveres and loves its hero whose intellect is clothed with goodness. For character is not of the intel- lect, but of the disposition. Its qualities strike through and color the mind and heart even as summer strikes the matured fruit through with juicy ripeness. 33 A Man's Value to Society Of that noble Greek who governed his city by unwritten laws, the people said: <'Phocion's character is more than the constitution." The weight of goodness in Lamartine was such that during the bloody days in Paris his doors were unlocked. Character in him was a defense be- yond the force of rock walls or armed regi- ments. Emerson says there was a certain power in Lincoln, Washington and Burke not to be explained by their printed words. Burke the man was inexpressibly finer than anything he said. As a spring is more than the cup it fills, as a poet or architect is more than the songs he sings or the temple he rears, so the man is more than the book or business he fashions. Earth holds many wondrous scenes called temples, battle-fields, cathedrals, but earth holds no scene comparable for majesty and beauty to a man clothed indeed with intellect, but adorned also with integri- ties and virtues. Beholding such a one, well did Milton exclaim: ''A good man is the ripe fruit our earth holds up to God." Character has been defined as the joint prod- uct of nature and nurture. Nature gives the raw material, character is the carved statue. The raw material includes the racial endowment, temperament, degree of vital force, mentality, aptitude for tool or industry, for art or science. 34 Character These birth-gifts are quantities, fixed and unal- terable. No heart-rendings can change the two- talent nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle flies over the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shake- speare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the tree, but no degree of culture can cause an oak bough to bring forth figs instead of acorns. Rebellion against temperament and circum- stance is sure to end in the breaking of the heart. Happiness and success begin with the sincere acceptance of the birth-gift and career God hath chosen. Since no man can do his best work save as he uses his strongest faculties, the first duty of each is to search out the line of least resistance. He who has a genius for moral themes but has harnessed himself to the plow or the forge, is in danger of wrecking both happiness and character. All such misfits are fatal. No farmer harnesses a fawn to the plow, or puts an ox into the speeding-wagon. Life's problem is to make a right inventory of the gifts one carries. As no carpenter knows what tools are in the box until he lifts the lid and un- wraps one shining instrument after another, 35. A Man's Value to Society so the instruments in the soul must be un- folded by education. Ours is a world where t\ie inventor accompanies the machine with 3 chart, illustrating the use of each wheel and escapement. But no babe lying in the cradle ever brought v/ith it a hand-book setting forth its mental equipment and pointing out its aptitude for this occupation, or that art or in- dustry. The gardener plants a root with per- fect certainty that a rose will come up, but no man is a prophet wise enough to tell whether this babe will unfold into quality ol thinker or doer or dreamer. To each Nature whispers: ''Unsight, unseen, hold fast what you have." For the soul is shadowless and mysterious. No hand can carve its outline, no brush portray its lineaments. Even the mother embosoming its infancy and carrying its weaknesses, studying it by day and night through years, sees not, she cannot see, knows not, she cannot know, into what splendor of maturity the child will unfold. Man beholds his fellows as one beholds a volume written in a foreign language; the outer binding is seen, the inner contents are unread. Within general lines phrenology and physiognomy are helpful, but it is easier to determine what kind of a man lives in the house by looking at the knob on his front doo** 36 Character than to determine the brain and heart within by studying the bumps upon face and forehead. Nature's dictum is, " Grasp the handle of your own being." Each must fashion his own charac- ter. Nature gives trees, but not tools ; forests, but not furniture. Thus nature furnishes man ■with the birth materials and environment; man must work up these materials into those qualities called industry, integrity, honor, truth and love, ever patterning after that ideal man, Jesus Christ. The influences shaping nature*s raw material into character are many and various. Of old, the seer likened the soul unto clay. The mud falls upon the board before the potter, a rude mass, without form or comeliness. But an hour afterwards the clay stands forth adorned with all the beauty of a lovely vase. Thus the soul begins, a mere mass of mind, but hands many and powerful soon shape it into the out- lines of some noble man or woman. These sculptors of character include home, friend- ship, occupation, travel, success, love, grief and death. Life's first teacher is the external world, with its laws. Man begins at zero. The child thrusts his finger into the fire and is burned; thenceforth he learns to restrain himself in the presence of fire, and makes the flames smite 37 A Man's Value to Society the vapor for driving train or ship. The child errs in handling the sharp tool, and cuts him- self; thenceforth he lifts up the axe upon the tree. The child mistakes the weight of stone, or the height of stair, and, falling, hard knocks teach him the nature and use of gravity. Daily the thorns that pierce his feet drive him back into the smooth pathway of nature's laws. The sharp pains that follow each excess teach him the pleasures of sound and right living. Nor is there one infraction of law that is not followed by pain. As sharp guards are placed at the side of the bridge over the chasm to hold men back from the abysSj so nature's laws are planted on either side of the way of life to prick and scourge erring feet back into the divine way. At length through much smiting of the body nature forces the youth into a knowledge of the world in which he lives Man learns to carry himself safely within forests, over rivers, through fires, midst winds and storms. Soon every force in nature stands forth his willing servant; becoming like unto the steeds of the plains, that once were wild but now are trained, and lend all their strength and force to man's loins and limbs. Having mastered the realm of physical law, the youth is thrust into the realm of laws do- mestic and social. He runs up against his 38 Character mates and friends, often overstepping his own rights and infringing the rights of others. Then some stronger arm falls on his, and drives him back into his own territory. Occa- sional chastisement through the parent and teacher, friend or enemy, reveal to him the nature of selfishness, and compel the recognition of others. Thus, through long ap- prenticeship, the youth finds out the laws that fence him round, that press upon him at every pore, by day and by night, in workshop or in store, at home or abroad. Slowly these laws mature manhood. When ideas are thrust into raw iron, the iron becomes a loom or an engine. Thus when God's laws are incarnated in a babe, the child is changed into the likeness of a citizen, a sage or seer. Nature, with her laws, is not only the earliest, but also the most powerful, of life's instructors. Temptation is another teacher. Pro- tection gives innocence, but practice gives virtue. For ship timber we pass by the shel- tered hothouse, seeking the oak on the storm- swept hills. In that beautiful story of the lost paradise, God pulls down the hedge built around Adam and Eve. The government through a fence outside was succeeded by self- government inside. The hermit and the clois- tered saint end their career with innocence. 39 A Man's Value to Society But Christ, struggling unto blood against sin, ends His career with character. God educates man by giving him complete charge over him- self and setting him on ' 'the barebacked horse of his own will," leaving him to break it by his own strength. Travelers to Alaska tell us that the wild berries attain a sweetnees there of which our temperate clime knows noth- ing. Scientists say that the glowworm keeps its enemies at bay by the brightness of its own light. Man, by his love of truth and right, be- comes his own castle and fortress. Cities no longer depend upon night-watchmen to guard against marauders and burglars. Once men trusted to safes and iron bars upon the win- dows. Now bankers ask electric lights to guard their treasure vaults. For centuries Spain's paternal laws have compelled each Spaniard to ask his church what to think and believe. This method has robbed that people of enduring and self- reliant manhood, and made them a race of weaklings. For over-protection is a peril. Strength comes by wrestling, knowledge by observing, wisdom by thinking, and character by enduring and struggling. Exposure is often good fortune. Every Luther and Crom- well has been tempted and tempered against the day of danger and battle. As the vic- 40 Character torious Old Guard were honored in proportion to the number and severity of the wars through which they had passed, so the temptations that seek man's destruction, when conquered, cover him with glory. Ruskin notes that the art epochs have also been epochs of war, up- heaval, and tyranny. He accounts for this by saying that when tyranny was hardest, crime blackest, sin ugliest, then, in the recoil and conflict, beauty and heroism attained their highest development. Studying the rise of the Dutch republic, Motley notes how the shocks and fiery baptisms of war changed those peasants into patriots. This explains society's enthusiasm for its hero, all scarred and gray. We admire the child's innocence, but it lacks ripeness and ma- turity; it is only a handful of germs. But every heart kindles and glows when the true hero stands forth in the person of some Paul or Savonarola, some Luther or Lincoln, having passed through fire, through flood, through all the thunder of life's battle, ever ripening, sweetening and enlarging, his fineness and gentleness being the result of great strength and great wisdom, accumulated through long life, until he stands, at the end of his career, as the sun stands on a summer afternoon just before it goes down. All statues and pictures 41 A Man's Value to Society become tawdry in comparison with such a rich, ripe, glowing, and glorious heart, clothed with Christlike character. Life's teachers also includes newness and zest. First; man lives his life in fresh per- sonal experiences. Then, by observation, he repeats his life in the career of his children. A third time he journeys around the circle, re- experiencing life in that of his grandchildren. Then, because the newness has passed away and events no longer stimulate his mind, death withdraws man from the scene and enters him in a new school. Vast is the educational value therefore attaching to the newness of life. God is so rich that no day or scene need repeat a former one. The proverb, ' 'We never look upon the same river," tells us that all things are ever changing, and clothes each day with fresh fascination. ''Whilst I read the poets," said Emerson, "I think that noth- ing new can be said about morning and eve- ning; but when I see the day break I am not reminded of the Homeric and Chaucerian pic- tures. I am cheered by the moist, warm, glit- tering, budding, melodious hour that breaks down the narrow walls of my soul, and ex- tends its life and pulsations to the very hori- zon." Thus, each new day is a new continent to be 42 Character Bxplored. Each youth is a new creature, full of delightful and mysterious possibilities. Each brain comes clothed with Its own secret, having its own orbit, attaining its own unique experience. Ours is a world in which each individual, each country, each age, each day, has a history peculiarly its own. This new- ness is a perpetual stimulant to curiosity and study. Gladstone's recipe for never growing old is, << Search out some topic in nature or life in which you have never hitherto been in- terested, and experience its fascinations. " For some, once a picture or book has been seen, the pleasure ceases. Delight dies with famil- iarity. Such persons look back to the days of childhood as to the days of wonder and happi- ness. But the man of real vision ever beholds each rock, each herb and flower with the big eyes of children, and with a mind of perpetual won- der. For him the seed is a fountain gushing with new delights. Every youth should repeat the experience of John Ruskin.* Such was the enthusiasm that this author felt for God's world, that when he approached some distant mountain or saw the crags hanging over the waters, or the clouds marching through the sky, *