About People/Chapter 3

In Puritan homes each child was exhorted to do his "duty" until the word became so significant of outward observance that its heavenly relation was lost. Modern ethical homes have taken "right" as their banner motto, and though it is capable of rousing enthusiasm, the zeal it creates would be for ideas rather than persons. Both duty and right are impersonal terms; midway between them, in use and meaning, stands "character." Generally in speech the verb to have precedes this substantive, adding the idea of a personal possession to its abstract statement. As it is something to be got, and that getting is its ​secret charm, children do not wince under parental entreaties to strive for it, and their elders eagerly claim it, as proof that they have manliness and power.

Duty is done, character is made. Both indicate performance, one is long growth, the other may be single seed-sowing. Doing duty makes character, and individual character becomes the underlying structure of nationality. The possession or the want of it, makes the difference between one man and another, between the voter who cares for his country, and him who gets a dollar for his ballot; between the men and women who strive for professional or public renown for the sake of social ambition, and those who, whether "praised or blamed, guard well the trust they neither shunned nor sought."

When character is regarded as an epitome of duty alone it becomes a mass of heavy, moving power, bent on the accomplishment of its ends, and, by virtue of its weight, bearing ​down all obstacles with glacial rigidity, rather than an embodiment of grace and beauty as well as of power, conquering by its attractiveness as much as by its solidity, for grace is just as much a part of character as is truthful action. How imperfect are all definitions of character when it hovers about us as a dream of beauty, a blessed reality, an intangible, actual union of strength and loveliness, as an ideal of a friend, the realization of our Christ, the blending of all separate perfections in the fatherhood and majesty of God! Without irreverence or familiarity can we say that God is character; that in Him are united the artist of the exquisite foreground with its tiny patches of beauty and the creator of the distance that pushes its shadows into chaos. The child longs to resemble his ideal, the parent; the parent places his ideal in the exceptionally great man and woman, and they reach forward after divine excellence, which, because of its unapproach​able loneliness, stands pathetic and majestic before us.

Character is something beyond what we see in a man. It resists circumstances, is self-sufficient; it grows. It is an assemblage of qualities which distinguish one person from another; it is a particular constitution of the mind; the name by which we are known; the name, when a noble one, at which all gates swing wide; the name that shames and greatens.

The germ of character is constantly developing until it rises into immortality, to unfold there into full strength and beauty. The slight selfishness, that yet is justified in seeking heavenly rest as a panacea, is forgotten in the intensity with which, while living, we work for those on earth and pray for the loved ones above.

In a great character there will always be found two elements, the ideal and the impersonal: the ideal keeps it ever advancing; the ​impersonal keeps it ever deepening, as not self, but others' good, is its universe. Over both preside conscientiousness, keen, quick, observant. It is the sensitive plate on which impressions are received; the index that points to hours and deeds; the chemical reagent that crystallizes actions into forms of beauty and usefulness; the spur to activity; the mirror of foolishness; the solvent of perplexities.

Character itself is formed as a gradual accretion, which is utilized into thought and action. It begins at the earliest stages of existence, and, whether we look back upon our own formation or guide the growth of children, we find distinct layers overlapping each other. Each is marked with the tender lines of grace and the bolder ones of duty, the law of moral necessity ruling that each shall perform its full part in the making of the perfect character. Some few men stand as peaks whose grandeur is so stern that one hardly ​guesses at the sweetness which lies hidden in the nooks of sentiment below their rugged exterior.

No trait of character is more necessary or prominent than truthfulness. Without it we build ourselves only to fall to pieces; carelessness and ignorance may cause an untruth, wrong-doing a lie, that is, the direct intention to deceive. The first lie in the child, and the quickly uttered lie in after life, come generally from the natural or unregenerate impulse of self-defence. We lie to screen ourselves, and then one by one the chain of lies is forged that ends in weakness, sin, and ruin. The utter foolishness of a lie introduces its comic aspect we all object to being "found out," for it argues a want of skill. Like an anodyne its effect is palliative and temporary, not remedial. Cumulative or single falsehood always ends in destruction of itself. Then it is a universal wrong, and, when thus regarded, there seems something grand in not adopting, ​for the sake of the universe, a paltry, shortsighted means of defence. It is language that binds us all together; by it we understand and depend upon each other; to misuse it is to falsify our mutual relations. There can be no real helping, no friendship, no wide business, no true internationality, unless words are truthful.

The twin of truthfulness, its counterpart, is honesty. Both older people and children start indignantly on being told to be honest, as if stealing were confined to commodities alone. Yet there is much actual theft in society. We steal each other's ideas, patterns for dresses, embroideries, furniture, and display them as if inventions of our own brain. What is done by our French maid we call ours, her wages giving us a lien on her handiwork. There is also what sisters call freemasonry, and what sisterless people term purloining, which consists in free use of each other's ribbons and jewels. Members ​of a household, as well as strangers, should observe the law of meum and tuum. Umbrellas are borrowed and lost, books are returned dog-eared. We steal another's time by asking him to do what we can do ourselves; we promise to stay ten minutes, and we stay thirty. We steal other's health and patience by inflicting upon our friends the history of our own troubles, using them as a safety-valve for ourselves. As visitors we do not regard the honor of our hostess' family, but, when away from it, tell some amusing weakness belonging to it. We steal into each other's confidence for purposes of curiosity, and, worse than all, we steal affection, often to reject it when it has lost its primal value. An affection, once deliberately won, is a burden or a privilege forever. Too often the stronger nature appropriates the weaker one, alienating its friends, and then, satiated, preys on another. It is said that women especially are prone to this fault, because so ​many feminine friendships are also partnerships. But it is equally found among the relations of married people and of men with men. We also steal each other's reputation by withholding praise when it is due, by delicate or careless insinuations; by alluding to the disagreeable, in an acquaintance, without mentioning the extenuating circumstances. We often lessen another's impulse to greater striving by non-utterance of our admiration and love for him, our cool manners acting as non-conductors of energy. Want of appreciation of others becomes injustice. We do not try to understand before judging; people's motives are often better than their awkward results, actions. We are more liable to become depressed from lack of approval than self-conceited from knowledge of it.

Perfect truthfulness proceeds from noble simplicity, which seeks a worthy end rather than tawdry effect. Having given itself, it evokes as free surrender in another. Its ​honest praise is never the hollowness of idle compliment; it is glad tribute gladly paid. It passes along the by-ways of life, and divines those hearts which are not strong enough to rest alone in self-respect, but need outward approval as recognition of effort.

Simplicity is often the result of early striving and of petty victories. Human nature soon passes out of the childlike, happy stage of unconsciousness. As conscience awakens, as self-reflection is observed through the co-existence of others, consciousness develops; it is the New England hereditary gift; it becomes a tormenting, prismatic light caught from every angle of life. Only as purpose deepens are the many colors concentrated into the white ray of simplicity. Sin, frivolity, selfishness, pass into rectitude, seriousness, disinterestedness; one becomes earnest to be or do something; one cares to make others happy; one's own shortcomings, misery, or happiness are all lost in intention; and ​thus one grows again into unconsciousness, where it is best for peace's sake to remain; conscious of his purpose, unconscious of the way of obtaining it.

But peace and purpose demand self-control, which is the rock on which the whole character rests.

Unless self-controlled one can neither govern nor follow others long, for all take part in helping mankind, as assistants or leaders. Self-control is mastery of one's self. It is self-restraint; the ability to hold back from doing the wrong or silly things, goaded by the whip of conscience.

Self-control teaches that temperance applies to much more than meat or drink; that it is neither the demand for too much of any one thing nor the constant search for novelty. We throw away what is old by the law of fashion, rather than by the law of use. We call for new books, new bric-à-brac, new pleasures; we hunt for old-fashioned furniture ​in mockery of the new; we are not creators, but takers, each wanting something more than he has, no one ever reaching the height of his social ambition. We ask that life shall fill each hour with new pleasures, never remembering that temperance always leaves on hand material for a good time later. We justify our restlessness by calling it the spirit of the times; we go farther, and make temperament or inheritance an excuse for inactivity.

This is cowardly, fatal to effort, sets a miserable example, and results in transmission of less moral strength to the next generation, which should inherit even more richly from us their past than we have from ours. The present is always trustee to the future.

Self-control often seems unnecessary, and brings disappointment in plans which we had hoped would succeed, if it had not proved foolish to urge them. It also teaches patience with one's self and others, bravery, superiority to circumstances, contentment, power to work, ​and ability to bear the joy or sorrow of life, and thus freedom. Men and women alike need it, for the more that one sees of life the less perceptible are differences of sex, and the more prominence do varying types of character assume. Every one should have it, he who commands, and she who endures; the narrow life and the broad one, the prisoner and the traveller, the clerk and the merchant, the belle of society and the unknown worker in her attic. Yet, certainly, the semi-public life (may it never be the publicity of political life,) on which women are entering more and more; fairs and clubs, sanitary and charitable work of all kinds, are teaching self-control. Women, now, dare not snap at each other, as they might like, if they want to gain their end; they are learning to compromise honestly, to allow others their way, and in social judgments to separate opinion from practice. It will soon be a proverb: Never think you know a woman till you serve on a committee with her.

​Self-control also gives ability for promptness and the observance of order; the first, though formed as a habit, can soon become a principle, and so ennoble the wearisomeness of details. It is the clock-work guiding life, while unpunctuality is a robbery of one's own, and a sure robbery of others' time. The principle clinches the purpose by carrying it into action at once. It sees that if a thing is right to do now it is wrong to do it by and by. It wastes not its powers for work, and never loses energy or freshness of feeling; it accepts no excuse of carelessness or absent-mindedness, for excuse in itself implies that the reason offered as excuse was not necessity. It leads to the great law of Order, which allows no minor derelictions in personal lives.

We are governed by this principle while yet governing its details. Many persons become slaves to a fixed recurrence of action, considering that recurrence alone as order; but self-sacrifice often demands the neglect of little ​things which orderly habit seems to make imperative, since some higher good to others requires instant performance. Such neglect, however, is but the fulfilment of order, which seeks that the greatest duty be first done. Its chief value in life is this adjustment of the relative importance of actions. We are very apt to esteem minor necessities as major ones, and so miss the grandeur of opportunity. Those who have carried on the world's work have performed it by selecting what first or most important, and not simply by doing that which turned up first. So much of life is lost because order is supposed to mean a place for everything and everything in its place, — a repetition of a mere routine of hours and occupation, rather than the observance of this relative proportion of duties.

That perceived, then concentration turns perception into action, and is the sign of power. All great acts have been fulfilled by its command, either slowly, as execution de​manded time, or quickly, by what is termed impulse, which is, in truth, instant self-possession, acute presence of mind. How slovenly is most performance, while the great forces of the universe, daily little experiences, mental struggles, weak ambitions, special interests, or general work, join in the clanging call to concentrate, to gather up scattered human efforts, and aid in thought and do in deed! The loose thinking which seems inherent in so many persons is due to want of concentration. All cannot apply their minds to all subjects; some, indeed, can grasp none that require abstraction. Their incapacity soon betrays itself, as is seen by the helpless wandering of the eye, the confused smile, the feeble joke, the harmless incoherence of their words. Most people so fail, though yet admiring power in others. How beautiful and inspiring it is to watch a face as it really thinks; to see the ugly lines fade away; the eyes deepen; the forehead broaden and shine; the mouth grow firm, even ​the whole posture showing the making of a thought!

Continued, persistent application bends time and material to its purpose. Through it the money-market might replace the term speculation by foresight or judgment, and inventions might correspond to human needs rather than to human ingenuity. Five minutes' absorption of the child's mind in the effort to learn his letters teaches more than their names. Busy people have the most time; as they give all their strength to whatever they are doing, so it is soon done and well done. Scatter-brained work and play is lengthy and fatiguing. Patience, Perseverance, and Thoroughness, the three elements of concentration, enter into the composition of a genius.

Greater than any other result of character is its blessed privilege of usefulness, the chief function of our being, the proud prerogative that man shares with nature, the test and measure of our worth in doing and being. In doing, it ​consists largely in working for other people in their way, not ours. Too often we like to make them happy by the method that gives us the least trouble, and, if they will not rejoice, we turn upon them and call them ungrateful. When other success wanes that of usefulness still remains; attention to others' wants, and sympathy for them, create ability to aid, and practice brings tact and grace. Each year, day, and hour is the maker of opportunity to him who takes the horizon as his boundary line of helpful work.

For those to whom limitation has forbidden activity there is the usefulness of being, the passive side of character. The being ready not to do is the hardest lesson of life; not to do in household striving, in mother's cares and longings, in noble, personal ambitions, in sharing the great throes of the world which ultimate in victories of social progress, in shaping anew the warped intellectual life, which degenerates into affectation of literary values; and ​in keeping at bay, by watchful, tender care, death, which seeks our beloved.

The helpless soldier sang:—

Let reverent, joyful thanks be ever given for usefulness in doing and in being. We may lie down tired with our efforts, we may wake more tired, but as we think, "What now?" there flashes across the mind some fresh act of self-sacrifice or of ability to help in some hidden or visible manner, and there comes instant strength to reap fruition. The purpose sends the blood to the weary limbs and the cheer of the heart quiets the aching head. Never too poor, too ugly, too dull, too sick, too friendless, to be useful to some one. Now, one can live, no matter what may be the pain in living; and ​heaven is use, too. That glory goes not with life.

Then "Trust in all things high" dwells within us, and, as we trust others, we make ourselves worthy of trust; guarding another's confidence as our birthright, never deceiving or betraying it, for such betrayal makes sore hearts and lonely lives. We are neither jealous nor suspicious, and believe another right until we know the contrary. Much of our early trust passes away from us like an outgrown garment. Knowledge proves insufficient, creeds shrink before experience, friendships wither, ideals pass not into realities; but trust in the universe deepens us years add wisdom. It is that trust which enables us, whatever heaven may be, to bear the bitter fact that we no longer have father or mother, hushand or child,—that we are helpless, often homeless. Hardest of all is it, at times, to trust God's righteousness, which rans so adverse to our ideas of right. Why, if we did not ​trust far more than we think we do, we could not endure the misery of others. Immortality finds strong ground for belief in our trust that our longings cannot be deceived. And if we trust, unconsciously to ourselves, that feeling has shown itself in the light of our eye and the elasticity of our steps. "God's in his heaven; all's right with the world," sings Pippa. We sing it, too, though her God and our God may have little alike except the trust we give to each.

With trust comes that element of character which, starting in childhood, has not its full value until the intellectual nature of the man or woman has weighed the problems of life and the secrets of knowledge. Reverence, without which no poet is a seer, no scientist a lover of truth; reverence, reaching from the commonest fact to the grandest discovery; from the humblest impulse to the noblest deed. Our reverence

It is reverence that gives the finest touch to chivalry and the deepest meaning to truth; it is an attitude of mind which permits us to see, enjoy, and honor. It grows with our growth, though too often self-imposed limitations check it. Our irreverence is due to want of sympathy and observation more than to ill-will. A knowledge of the hard times in other people's lives, of their brave little attempts for goodness or success, and of all that careful human eyes and microscope and telescope have found of law, and love, and beauty fill us with reverence. Finally, as life widens, the faculty of worship and appreciation is developed, until every half-known law or half-comprehended goodness is the "vision of some marvel come to light."

He who from his mountain-top of reverence ​places trust in the unrolled plan of life assigned him, seeking use in grand or humble guise as his goal, girding himself with a mighty will to bring forth the evolution of order, keeps life sweet and brave by his daily truth. He stands as, — character, the word losing its abstract signification in the grace and dignity with which he has invested it, for the realization of the ideal is the aim of all true individuality.