Books: The Majesty of Calmness
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William George Jordan >> The Majesty of Calmness
Many of the alchemists of old felt that they lacked but one element; if
they could obtain that one, they believed they could transmute the
baser metals into pure gold. It is so in character. There are
individuals with rare mental gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment
who fail utterly in life because they lack the one element,--self-
reliance. This would unite all their energies, and focus them into
strength and power.
The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesitating and doubting in all
he does. He fears to take a decisive step, because he dreads failure,
because he is waiting for some one to advise him or because he dare not
act in accordance with his own best judgment. In his cowardice and his
conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. He is "not
appreciated," "not recognized," he is "kept down." He feels that in
some subtle way "society is conspiring against him." He grows almost
vain as he thinks that no one has had such poverty, such sorrow, such
affliction, such failure as have come to him.
The man who is self-reliant seeks ever to discover and conquer the
weakness within him that keeps him from the attainment of what he holds
dearest; he seeks within himself the power to battle against all
outside influences. He realizes that all the greatest men in history,
in every phase of human effort, have been those who have had to fight
against the odds of sickness, suffering, sorrow. To him, defeat is no
more than passing through a tunnel is to a traveller,--he knows he must
emerge again into the sunlight.
The nation that is strongest is the one that is most self-reliant, the
one that contains within its boundaries all that its people need. If,
with its ports all blockaded it has not within itself the necessities
of life and the elements of its continual progress then,--it is weak,
held by the enemy, and it is but a question of time till it must
surrender. Its independence is in proportion to its self-reliance, to
its power to sustain itself from within. What is true of nations is
true of individuals. The history of nations is but the biography of
individuals magnified, intensified, multiplied, and projected on the
screen of the past. History is the biography of a nation; biography is
the history of an individual. So it must be that the individual who is
most strong in any trial, sorrow or need is he who can live from his
inherent strength, who needs no scaffolding of commonplace sympathy to
uphold him. He must ever be self-reliant.
The wealth and prosperity of ancient Rome, relying on her slaves to do
the real work of the nation, proved the nation's downfall. The constant
dependence on the captives of war to do the thousand details of life
for them, killed self-reliance in the nation and in the individual.
Then, through weakened self-reliance and the increased opportunity for
idle, luxurious ease that came with it, Rome, a nation of fighters,
became,--a nation of men more effeminate than women. As we depend on
others to do those things we should do for ourselves, our self-reliance
weakens and our powers and our control of them becomes continuously
less.
Man to be great must be self-reliant. Though he may not be so in all
things, he must be self-reliant in the one in which he would be great.
This self-reliance is not the self-sufficiency of conceit. It is daring
to stand alone. Be an oak, not a vine. Be ready to give support, but do
not crave it; do not be dependent on it. To develop your true self-
reliance, you must see from the very beginning that life is a battle
you must fight for yourself,--you must be your own soldier. You cannot
buy a substitute, you cannot win a reprieve, you can never be placed on
the retired list. The retired list of life is,--death. The world is
busy with its own cares, sorrows and joys, and pays little heed to you.
There is but one great password to success,--self-reliance.
If you would learn to converse, put yourself into positions where you
_must_ speak. If you would conquer your morbidness, mingle with
the bright people around you, no matter how difficult it may be. If you
desire the power that some one else possesses, do not envy his
strength, and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his force were
yours. Emulate the process by which it became his, depend on your self-
reliance, pay the price for it, and equal power may be yours. The
individual must look upon himself as an investment, of untold
possibilities if rightly developed,--a mine whose resources can never
be known but by going down into it and bringing out what is hidden.
Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking constantly to surpass
himself. We try too much to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass
ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of progress, that gives a
harmonious unifying to our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at
one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, that employed 7,000 men
and made a rail famed throughout the world, was asked the secret of the
great success of the works. "We have no secret," he said, "but this,--
we always try to beat our last batch of rails." Competition is good,
but it has its danger side. There is a tendency to sacrifice real worth
to mere appearance, to have seeming rather than reality. But the true
competition is the competition of the individual with himself,--his
present seeking to excel his past. This means real growth from within.
Self-reliance develops it, and it develops self-reliance. Let the
individual feel thus as to his own progress and possibilities, and he
can almost create his life as he will. Let him never fall down in
despair at dangers and sorrows at a distance; they may be harmless,
like Bunyan's stone lions, when he nears them.
The man who is self-reliant does not live in the shadow of some one
else's greatness; he thinks for himself, depends on himself, and acts
for himself. In throwing the individual thus back upon himself it is
not shutting his eyes to the stimulus and light and new life that come
with the warm pressure of the hand, the kindly word and the sincere
expressions of true friendship. But true friendship is rare; its great
value is in a crisis,--like a lifeboat. Many a boasted friend has
proved a leaking, worthless "lifeboat" when the storm of adversity
might make him useful. In these great crises of life, man is strong
only as he is strong from within, and the more he depends on himself
the stronger will he become, and the more able will he be to help
others in the hour of their need. His very life will be a constant help
and a strength to others, as he becomes to them a living lesson of the
dignity of self-reliance.
V
Failure as a Success
It ofttimes requires heroic courage to face fruitless effort, to take
up the broken strands of a life-work, to look bravely toward the
future, and proceed undaunted on our way. But what, to our eyes, may
seem hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success. It
may contain in its debris the foundation material of a mighty purpose,
or the revelation of new and higher possibilities.
Some years ago, it was proposed to send logs from Canada to New York,
by a new method. The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind great
logs together by cables and iron girders and to tow the cargo as a
raft. When the novel craft neared New York and success seemed assured,
a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the tempest, the iron bands
snapped like icicles and the angry waters scattered the logs far and
wide. The chief of the Hydrographic Department at Washington heard of
the failure of the experiment, and at once sent word to shipmasters the
world over, urging them to watch carefully for these logs which he
described; and to note the precise location of each in latitude and
longitude and the time the observation was made.
Hundreds of captains, sailing over the waters of the earth, noted the
logs, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean, in the South Seas--
for into all waters did these venturesome ones travel. Hundreds of
reports were made, covering a period of weeks and months. These
observations were then carefully collated, systematized and tabulated,
and discoveries were made as to the course of ocean currents that
otherwise would have been impossible. The loss of the Joggins raft was
not a real failure, for it led to one of the great discoveries in
modern marine geography and navigation.
In our superior knowledge we are disposed to speak in a patronizing
tone of the follies of the alchemists of old. But their failure to
transmute the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of
chemistry. They did not succeed in what they attempted, but they
brought into vogue the natural processes of sublimation, filtration,
distillation, and crystallization; they invented the alembic, the
retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other valuable instruments.
To them is due the discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and
phosphorus, the cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of the
properties of saltpetre and its use in gunpowder, and the discovery of
the distillation of essential oils. This was the success of failure, a
wondrous process of Nature for the highest growth,--a mighty lesson of
comfort, strength, and encouragement if man would only realize and
accept it.
Many of our failures sweep us to greater heights of success, than we
ever hoped for in our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfolding of
success from failure. In discovering America Columbus failed
absolutely. His ingenious reasoning and experiment led him to believe
that by sailing westward he would reach India. Every redman in America
carries in his name "Indian," the perpetuation of the memory of the
failure of Columbus. The Genoese navigator did not reach India; the
cargo of "souvenirs" he took back to Spain to show to Ferdinand and
Isabella as proofs of his success, really attested his failure. But the
discovery of America was a greater success than was any finding of a
"back-door" to India.
When David Livingstone had supplemented his theological education by a
medical course, he was ready to enter the missionary field. For over
three years he had studied tirelessly, with all energies concentrated
on one aim,--to spread the gospel in China. The hour came when he was
ready to start out with noble enthusiasm for his chosen work, to
consecrate himself and his life to his unselfish ambition. Then word
came from China that the "opium war" would make it folly to attempt to
enter the country. Disappointment and failure did not long daunt him;
he offered himself as missionary to Africa,--and he was accepted. His
glorious failure to reach China opened a whole continent to light and
truth. His study proved an ideal preparation for his labors as
physician, explorer, teacher and evangel in the wilds of Africa.
Business reverses and the failure of his partner threw upon the broad
shoulders and the still broader honor and honesty of Sir Walter Scott a
burden of responsibility that forced him to write. The failure spurred
him to almost super-human effort. The masterpieces of Scotch historic
fiction that have thrilled, entertained and uplifted millions of his
fellow-men are a glorious monument on the field of a seeming failure.
When Millet, the painter of the "Angelus" worked on his almost divine
canvas, in which the very air seems pulsing with the regenerating
essence of spiritual reverence, he was painting against time, he was
antidoting sorrow, he was racing against death. His brush strokes, put
on in the early morning hours before going to his menial duties as a
railway porter, in the dusk like that perpetuated on his canvas,--meant
strength, food and medicine for the dying wife he adored. The art
failure that cast him into the depths of poverty unified with
marvellous intensity all the finer elements of his nature. This rare
spiritual unity, this purging of all the dross of triviality as he
passed through the furnace of poverty, trial, and sorrow gave eloquence
to his brush and enabled him to paint as never before,--as no
prosperity would have made possible.
Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that
swings us to higher levels. It may not be financial success, it may not
be fame; it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or mental
inspiration that will change us for all the later years of our life.
Life is not really what comes to us, but what we get from it.
Whether man has had wealth or poverty, failure or success, counts for
little when it is past. There is but one question for him to answer, to
face boldly and honestly as an individual alone with his conscience and
his destiny:
"How will I let that poverty or wealth affect me? If that trial or
deprivation has left me better, truer, nobler, then,--poverty has been
riches, failure has been a success. If wealth has come to me and has
made me vain, arrogant, contemptuous, uncharitable, cynical, closing
from me all the tenderness of life, all the channels of higher
development, of possible good to my fellow-man, making me the mere
custodian of a money-bag, then,--wealth has lied to me, it has been
failure, not success; it has not been riches, it has been dark,
treacherous poverty that stole from me even Myself." All things become
for us then what we take from them.
Failure is one of God's educators. It is experience leading man to
higher things; it is the revelation of a way, a path hitherto unknown
to us. The best men in the world, those who have made the greatest real
successes look back with serene happiness on their failures. The
turning of the face of Time shows all things in a wondrously
illuminated and satisfying perspective.
Many a man is thankful to-day that some petty success for which he once
struggled, melted into thin air as his hand sought to clutch it.
Failure is often the rock-bottom foundation of real success. If man, in
a few instances of his life can say, "Those failures were the best
things in the world that could have happened to me," should he not face
new failures with undaunted courage and trust that the miraculous
ministry of Nature may transform these new stumbling-blocks into new
stepping-stones?
Our highest hopes, are often destroyed to prepare us for better things.
The failure of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly; the
passing of the bud is the becoming of the rose; the death or
destruction of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat. It
is at night, in the darkest hours, those preceding dawn, that plants
grow best, that they most increase in size. May this not be one of
Nature's gentle showings to man of the times when he grows best, of the
darkness of failure that is evolving into the sunlight of success. Let
us fear only the failure of not living the right as we see it, leaving
the results to the guardianship of the Infinite.
If we think of any supreme moment of our lives, any great success, any
one who is dear to us, and then consider how we reached that moment,
that success, that friend, we will be surprised and strengthened by the
revelation. As we trace each one, back, step by step, through the
genealogy of circumstances, we will see how logical has been the course
of our joy and success, from sorrow and failure, and that what gives us
most happiness to-day is inextricably connected with what once caused
us sorrow. Many of the rivers of our greatest prosperity and growth
have had their source and their trickling increase into volume among
the dark, gloomy recesses of our failure.
There is no honest and true work, carried along with constant and
sincere purpose that ever really fails. If it sometime seem to be
wasted effort, it will prove to us a new lesson of "how" to walk; the
secret of our failures will prove to us the inspiration of possible
successes. Man living with the highest aims, ever as best he can, in
continuous harmony with them, is a success, no matter what statistics
of failure a near-sighted and half-blind world of critics and
commentators may lay at his door.
High ideals, noble efforts will make seeming failures but trifles, they
need not dishearten us; they should prove sources of new strength. The
rocky way may prove safer than the slippery path of smoothness. Birds
cannot fly best with the wind but against it; ships do not progress in
calm, when the sails flap idly against the unstrained masts.
The alchemy of Nature, superior to that of the Paracelsians, constantly
transmutes the baser metals of failure into the later pure gold of
higher success, if the mind of the worker be kept true, constant and
untiring in the service, and he have that sublime courage that defies
fate to its worst while he does his best.
VI
Doing Our Best at All Times
Life is a wondrously complex problem for the individual, until, some
day, in a moment of illumination, he awakens to the great realization
that he can make it simple,--never quite simple, but always simpler.
There are a thousand mysteries of right and wrong that have baffled the
wise men of the ages. There are depths in the great fundamental
questions of the human race that no plummet of philosophy has ever
sounded. There are wild cries of honest hunger for truth that seek to
pierce the silence beyond the grave, but to them ever echo back,--only
a repetition of their unanswered cries.
To us all, comes, at times, the great note of questioning despair that
darkens our horizon and paralyzes our effort: "If there really be a
God, if eternal justice really rule the world," we say, "why should
life be as it is? Why do some men starve while others feast; why does
virtue often languish in the shadow while vice triumphs in the
sunshine; why does failure so often dog the footsteps of honest effort,
while the success that comes from trickery and dishonor is greeted with
the world's applause? How is it that the loving father of one family is
taken by death, while the worthless incumbrance of another is spared?
Why is there so much unnecessary pain, sorrowing and suffering in the
world--why, indeed, should there be any?"
Neither philosophy nor religion can give any final satisfactory answer
that is capable of logical demonstration, of absolute proof. There is
ever, even after the best explanations, a residuum of the unexplained.
We must then fall back in the eternal arms of faith, and be wise enough
to say, "I will not be disconcerted by these problems of life, I will
not permit them to plunge me into doubt, and to cloud my life with
vagueness and uncertainty. Man arrogates much to himself when he
demands from the Infinite the full solution of all His mysteries. I
will found my life on the impregnable rock of a simple fundamental
truth:--'This glorious creation with its millions of wondrous phenomena
pulsing ever in harmony with eternal law must have a Creator, that
Creator must be omniscient and omnipotent. But that Creator Himself
cannot, in justice, demand of any creature more than the best that that
individual can give.' I will do each day, in every moment, the best I
can by the light I have; I will ever seek more light, more perfect
illumination of truth, and ever live as best I can in harmony with the
truth as I see it. If failure come I will meet it bravely; if my
pathway then lie in the shadow of trial, sorrow and suffering, I shall
have the restful peace and the calm strength of one who has done his
best, who can look back upon the past with no pang of regret, and who
has heroic courage in facing the results, whatever they be, knowing
that he could not make them different."
Upon this life-plan, this foundation, man may erect any superstructure
of religion or philosophy that he conscientiously can erect; he should
add to his equipment for living every shred of strength and
inspiration, moral, mental or spiritual that is in his power to secure.
This simple working faith is opposed to no creed, is a substitute for
none; it is but a primary belief, a citadel, a refuge where the
individual can retire for strength when the battle of life grows hard.
A mere theory of life, that remains but a theory, is about as useful to
a man, as a gilt-edged menu is to a starving sailor on a raft in mid-
ocean. It is irritating but not stimulating. No rule for higher living
will help a man in the slightest, until he reach out and appropriate it
for himself, until he make it practical in his daily life, until that
seed of theory in his mind blossom into a thousand flowers of thought
and word and act.
If a man honestly seeks to live his best at all times, that
determination is visible in every moment of his living, no trifle in
his life can be too insignificant to reflect his principle of living.
The sun illuminates and beautifies a fallen leaf by the roadside as
impartially as a towering mountain peak in the Alps. Every drop of
water in the ocean is an epitome of the chemistry of the whole ocean;
every drop is subject to precisely the same laws as dominate the united
infinity of billions of drops that make that miracle of Nature, men
call the Sea. No matter how humble the calling of the individual, how
uninteresting and dull the round of his duties, he should do his best.
He should dignify what he is doing by the mind he puts into it, he
should vitalize what little he has of power or energy or ability or
opportunity, in order to prepare himself to be equal to higher
privileges when they come. This will never lead man to that weak
content that is satisfied with whatever falls to his lot. It will
rather fill his mind with that divine discontent that cheerfully
accepts the best,--merely as a temporary substitute for something
better.
The man who is seeking ever to do his best is the man who is keen,
active, wide-awake, and aggressive. He is ever watchful of himself in
trifles; his standard is not "What will the world say?" but "Is it
worthy of me?"
Edwin Booth, one of the greatest actors on the American stage, would
never permit himself to assume an ungraceful attitude, even in his
hours of privacy. In this simple thing, he ever lived his best. On the
stage every move was one of unconscious grace. Those of his company who
were conscious of their motions were the awkward ones, who were seeking
in public to undo or to conceal the carelessness of the gestures and
motions of their private life. The man who is slipshod and thoughtless
in his daily speech, whose vocabulary is a collection of anaemic
commonplaces, whose repetitions of phrases and extravagance of
interjections act but as feeble disguises to his lack of ideas, will
never be brilliant on an occasion when he longs to outshine the stars.
Living at one's best is constant preparation for instant use. It can
never make one over-precise, self-conscious, affected, or priggish.
Education, in its highest sense, is _conscious_ training of mind
or body to act _unconsciously_. It is conscious formation of
mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.
One of the many ways in which the individual unwisely eclipses himself,
is in his worship of the fetich of luck. He feels that all others are
lucky, and that whatever he attempts, fails. He does not realize the
untiring energy, the unremitting concentration, the heroic courage, the
sublime patience that is the secret of some men's success. Their "luck"
was that they had prepared themselves to be equal to their opportunity
when it came and were awake to recognize it and receive it. His own
opportunity came and departed unnoted, it would not waken him from his
dreams of some untold wealth that would fall into his lap. So he grows
discouraged and envies those whom he should emulate, and he bandages
his arm and chloroforms his energies, and performs his duties in a
perfunctory way, or he passes through life, just ever "sampling" lines
of activity.
The honest, faithful struggler should always realize that failure is
but an episode in a true man's life,--never the whole story. It is
never easy to meet, and no philosophy can make it so, but the steadfast
courage to master conditions, instead of complaining of them, will help
him on his way; it will ever enable him to get the best out of what he
has. He never knows the long series of vanquished failures that give
solidity to some one else's success; he does not realize the price that
some rich man, the innocent football of political malcontents and
demagogues, has heroicly paid for wealth and position.
The man who has a pessimist's doubt of all things; who demands a
certified guarantee of his future; who ever fears his work will not be
recognized or appreciated; or that after all, it is really not worth
while, will never live his best. He is dulling his capacity for real
progress by his hypnotic course of excuses for inactivity, instead of a
strong tonic of reasons for action.
One of the most weakening elements in the individual make-up is the
surrender to the oncoming of years. Man's self-confidence dims and dies
in the fear of age. "This new thought," he says of some suggestion
tending to higher development, "is good; it is what we need. I am glad
to have it for my children; I would have been happy to have had some
such help when I was at school, but it is too late for me. I am a man
advanced in years."