In the centuries to come, perhaps a thousand centuries from now, perhaps a little sooner, woman will get her chance on earth. Population will have reached its normal limit, and nature's wise law, dealing with a really civilized race, will automatically limit children to two in each family.
Schools and nurseries will be scientific and perfect. The care of children will be the duty of the State. Very poor women will be unknown, and unknown will be the woman burdened with the isolated care of children in an isolated household.
In those distant days woman will do her share of the world's intellectual and artistic work. Physical work of all kinds will have been practically annihilated by machinery. Our big, muscular bodies, developed hitherto with an eye to pursuing wild animals, carrying heavy burdens and fighting each other like dog-apes in the forest, will be refined and very different from their present brutality.
It will be an agreeable earth, a very agreeable and much improved human race. ——
Those millennial days, which are sure to come, will find us with our little earthly problems solved. We shall have outgrown our infancy, and, like a child that has learned to walk and balance itself, we shall understand the forces of nature and use them.
Our principal occupation will be harmonious life on this planet and persistent investigation of the marvels of the universe outside of our own little sphere.
As centuries have gone by on earth, power has dwelt with different classes of human beings. In the days of the Troglodytes, when one gentleman would crack another gentleman's thigh-bone to get at the marrow, the most important man of course was the one best able with physical force to murder his fellows. At various times the great explorer, the great military strategist, has been the most important of men. To-day the most important man is the organizer of industry. He is really the most important, not only in the size of his reward, but in the service which he renders. Nature gives the biggest reward to him who does the most important work.
A thousand centuries from now the most important human being will be the most efficient astronomer.
The man who shall bring us accurate news of other worlds will be welcomed as was Christopher Columbus or Drake or Raleigh in his day.
Women will be very important factors in astronomical research.
The work of the astronomer is especially the work of patience, of enthusiasm, of devotion.
Patience, enthusiasm and devotion are more highly developed in women than in men.
Already, in view of her extremely limited opportunities, woman has done admirably well in the field of astronomy. We note that it is a woman at Cambridge whose stellar photographs first located the new star in Perseus. In England, in Germany and in France women astronomers are doing work almost equal to that of the best men.
Everybody will remember the faithful labor of Herschel's sister, working all through the night and sleeping through the day, month after month and year after year, helping her great brother in his studies.
There is a kind of small-fry man who dislikes the idea of mental development among women. He is a mouselike kind of creature, so thoroughly conscious of his own smallness, so thoroughly in love with his own importance, that he dreads the intellectual woman, who makes him feel microscopic.
Despite the protests of such men, some of whom are editors, women are making progress. When they shall give to science, especially to astronomy, the passionate, devoted attention which they have given for ages to the care of children, they will rank among the highest on earth.
We'll waste no time in proving that women, from the cradle to the grave, at all hours and all ages, are sincerely interested in their personal appearance.
No man should object to this—the constitutional guarantee referring to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness covers the ground fully.
But it is not enough for men NOT TO OBJECT to woman's various innocent vanities.
Every man should be delighted that women are vain. Each man should do what he can to keep the vanity alive.
A woman cannot be pretty, according to her own notions, unlessHEALTHY.
If too fat, she is not pretty—and she is miserable until, through self-control, she gets thin.
If too thin, she is not pretty. At present she has a crazy sort of idea that to be "skinny" is to be attractive. That is a passing delusion. In the long run women realize that there is nothing beautiful about a female living skeleton, and they strive through normal living to become normal.
Above all, no woman can have a good complexion unless she have good health and live normally. This one absorbing question of complexion does more for woman's health; it gives us more strong mothers, and more sensible girls, than all the preachings, beseechings, prayers and expostulations of all the world's male advisers.
A woman's instinct is to eat buckwheat cakes, adding boiling hot coffee and iced water. She likes to eat candy between meals, and her idea of a fine luncheon is lobster salad and ice cream. But small spots appear. Those fine pink cheeks get too pink or too pale, and sensible eating is adopted as a life rule.
Even the hideous corset squeezing is counteracted by the power of complexion. Woman likes to look like a wasp, and if she could she would move her poor system all out of place for the sake of a waist hideously small.
But, providentially, a waist squeezed too mercilessly gives a bright pink tip to the end of the nose; and for the sake of the color of that nose-tip the poor waist gets a rest—the corset is let out.
It cannot be denied that among idle, nervous women to-day there is a tendency to take stimulants to excess, and even to smoke abominable cigarettes.
Alcohol, fortunately, ruins the complexion. And for the sake of their looks women often deny themselves and show a strength of resolution that would not be called forth by any moral appeal.
Cigarettes in short order make the face sallow, spoil the shape of the mouth, make the eyes heavy, fill the hair with permanently unpleasant nicotine suggestions, develop a mustache—and women are cured of cigarette smoking by a look in the glass, when they could not be cured by tearful appeals of the wisest philosophers.
——
Do not, therefore, O men, despise the vanity of women. Praise and cherish it rather. Be grateful that nature works in a wonderful way through the power of attraction, making woman do for good looks' sake that which is most important to her welfare.
If you want to cure your wife or some other female relative of lacing, don't moralize. Say to her six or seven times:
"Isn't the end of your nose a little red?"
Should she act in any way unwisely, staying up too late, living foolishly, trying the silly and unwomanly habit of cigarette smoking, don't criticise the habit.
Criticise her complexion, or the look of her eyes, or her general lack of youthfulness. She will soon be cured, if you can follow this advice astutely.
His pen is rust, his bones are dust (or soon will be), his soul is with the saints, we trust.
Ruskin is to be buried in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine home for a dead man, with Chatham and his great son Pitt in one tomb, and the other great skeletons of a great race mouldering side by side so neighborly.
The death of a wolf means a meal for the other wolves. The death of a great man means a meal—mental instead of physical—for those left behind. Wolves feed their STOMACHS—we feed our BRAINS—on the dead.
There is many a meal for the hungry brain in Ruskin's remains. We offer now a light breakfast to that galaxy of American talent called "editorial writers."
Editorial writing may be defined in general as "the art of saying in a commonplace and inoffensive way what everybody knew long ago." There are a great many competent editorial writers, and the bittern carrying on his trade by the side of some swamp is about as influential as ten ordinary editorial writers rolled into one.
Why is it that we are so worthless, O editorial writers? Why do we produce such feeble results? Why do we talk daily through our newspapers to ten millions of people and yet have not influence to elect a dog catcher?
Simply because we want to sound wise, when that is impossible. Simply because we are foolish enough to think that commonplaces passed through our commonplace minds acquire some new value. We start off with a wrong notion. We think that we are going to lead, that we are going to remedy, that we are going to DO THE PUBLIC THINKING FOR THE PUBLIC.
Sad nonsense. The best that the best editorial writer can achieve is to make the reader think for himself. At this point we ask our fellow editorial men—our superiors, of course—to adopt Ruskin's idea of a useful writer.
In a letter to Mrs. Carlyle, written when he was a young man, he outlined the purpose which he carried out, and which explains his usefulness to his fellow-men:
"I have a great hope of disturbing the public peace in various directions."
This was his way of saying that he hoped to stir up dissatisfaction, to provoke irritation, impatience and a determination to do better among the unfortunate. He did good, because he awoke thought in thousands of others, in millions of others.
Editorial writers, don't you know that stirring up dissatisfaction is the greatest work you can do?
Tell the poor man ten thousand times:
"There is no reason why you should be overworked. There is no reason why your children should be half-fed and half-educated. There is no reason why you should sweat to fatten others."
Tell them this often enough, stir up their determination sufficiently—they will find their own remedies.
If you want to drive out the handful of organized rogues that control politics and traffic in votes, don't talk smooth platitudes. Tell the people over and over again that the thieves ARE thieves, that they should be in jail, that honest government would mean happier citizens, that the INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN is responsible. Keep at it, and the country will be made better by those who alone can make it better—the people. ——
On the front platform a fat policeman said, after deep thought:
"Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good."
The driver, this writer and an Italian workman looked at the policeman in deep admiration. It was so evident that he had the making in him of an expensive editorial writer. He could say so solemnly and authoritatively what every living man knew by heart.
Suppose you stop spouting platitudes, editorial gentlemen, and try your hand at stirring up plain, everyday antagonism to existing false conditions. "Disturb the public peace," as Ruskin put it. You must know that you can't win the fights individually, so be like the Norse maidens that stirred up the real fighters to do their duty. Keep singing to the public that it is their duty to fight. They will fight and win, and thank you for the suggestion.
"Marconi has imagination without being a dreamer."
Thus Mr. Serviss gave an explanation of material achievement and material success on big lines.
WITHOUT imagination a man may prosper relatively. He may live comfortably and die contented.
But at best such a man will only follow in beaten paths. He will only do what others have done before him.
He will not receive any of the great rewards which humanity offers to those whose IMAGINATION opens for the benefit of all new fields of thought, of successful material effort. ——
In material achievement there are two elements—executive force (which may be sub-divided into an indefinite number of classifications) and the great creative power, IMAGINATION.
Imagination enabled Marconi to see the possibility of sending electric messages without wires.
Had he been a dreamer, had he allowed his imagination to wander on indefinitely into notions of talking to other planets, the power of his imagination might have been in vain.
His imagination enabled him to SEE the possibility, and the lack of the dreamer's quality enabled him to REALIZE it.
There were many men centuries ago who, in an abstract kind of way, knew that the earth was round. Their imaginations led them to the discovery of facts—and long before Galileo's recantation many men knew vaguely the truth of what he taught.
It took Galileo, a man of great imagination, not a dreamer, to demonstrate his truth to all the world.
It took Columbus, with imagination and courage, but none of the dreamer about him, to sail around the world to America and prove practically what is now known to every child.
Wherever you see great material success on a new line, you see imagination without dreaming. It took real power of imagination in Rockefeller to conceive and execute the construction of the Standard Oil monopoly.
It took the financial imagination of Morgan to conceive the idea of taking $500,000,000 worth of steel mills and welding them into the Steel Trust—no dreamer could have done this thing.
Many a dreamer had foreseen the steam engine, the steamboat and other great inventions, without result. At the right moment a man of imagination like Fulton came along and did the actual work that the dreamer could not do.
If you want to succeed in the world, cultivate your imagination. And if you want your children to succeed encourage them in the development of their imaginations.
But let your imaginings and the imaginings of your children stop this side of dreamland.
Your brain's activity is divided into the conscious and sub-conscious departments. The conscious side of your mentality puts you into communication with the world, enables you to meet and to cope with conditions and individuals.
If you are to succeed materially the conscious mind must control, direct and limit the activities of the sub-conscious mind with which the imagination does its work.
If your sub-conscious brain, in the departments of abstract thought, imagination and dreaming, be allowed to run away with the practical side, you may be a very great man in the far-distant future, but you may be sure that you will not succeed now. ——
The world never recognizes these dreamers. The successful man admits limitations. He accepts conditions as they are. He uses his imagination only as long as it can carry him to individual success and comfort.
But the very greatest spirits among men are the spirits of dreamers.
These are the men who refuse to acknowledge any limitations save the limitations of absolute truth and of absolute possibility.
When nine-tenths of human beings were slaves, these dreamers refused to recognize slavery, and they died for their belief. Every man who led a great moral reform ahead of his time was a dreamer. And these dreamers, whose lives are scattered through history, each a tragedy and each a milestone on the path of civilization, did for civilization what a frontiersman does for a new country.
Jesus Christ was a dreamer. He saw the truth and preached it, although it meant death, and He knew that it meant death. The brotherhood that He preached nineteen hundred years ago has not yet been realized, but it WILL be realized in His name, and His teachings and His death will be eternal factors in its realization.
Slowly through the centuries the men of imagination who do not dream are working and striving, each doing his little part to realize the prophecies of the Great Dreamer.
Each compared to Him is as a tiny tallow dip compared to the noonday sun, but each is necessary.
A movement is started in Italy to celebrate religiously the close of the nineteenth century.
The idea is to erect at different points on the Peninsula nineteen colossal statues of Christ. The statues, one for each century, are to be of cast-iron, gilded, heroic in size.
There can be no objection to the idea, since it gives expression to proper religious feeling. But should it fail of execution, that would be quite as well. ——
For one Man only in all the history of the world no statue is needed. To the glory of one Man we can add nothing save through obedience to the laws which He brought on earth. ——
Where a weak woman is kindly treated, where children are received with tenderness, where the hungry are fed and the old cared for, there is a monument to Christ—such a monument as He would ask to have built.
The wisdom of Confucius, the self-abnegation of Gautama, the lofty idealism of Zoroaster, may be fitly commemorated and perhaps magnified by human monuments or human praise.
But men can build nothing that shall add to the glory of that life which is the basis of good among all men.
MIschievous stories are told about the ability of great men to do without sleep.
The foolish young man reads that Napoleon slept only three or four hours at night—and he cuts down his hours of sleep. He might better open a vein and lose a pint of blood than lose the sleep, which is life itself.
Most of the stories told about great men doing without sleep are mere lies. Some of them are true. For instance, it is undoubtedly true that Napoleon—an inconceivably foolish, reckless man in matters affecting his physical welfare—did deprive himself of sleep in his early years. But he paid for it dearly. In his last battles his power of resistance was so slight that he actually went to sleep during the fighting. Chronic drowsiness weakened his brain, weakened his force of character. The foundation of his final ruin was laid in Russia, when lack of sleep, and unwise living generally, had taken away his mental elasticity and deprived him of the power to form and carry out resolutions. ——
It is mainly the young man who needs the lecture on sleep, for the experience of years soon proves to every human being the folly of cheating nature by adding a few hours of drowsy consciousness to the day.
You begin life with a certain amount of vitality, a certain initial vital VELOCITY, which carries you through life and makes possible certain accomplishments. When you deprive yourself of sleep you squander this original capital. Just as surely as the young spendthrift ruins himself financially when he throws away his money, just so surely you bring irreparable loss upon yourself when you go without sleep.
Look at the men who engage in the atrocious six-day walks and bicycle races. They eat enormously, absorbing in one day five times as much as the ordinary man can possibly swallow. But the end of their task finds them extremely emaciated. Lack of sleep has made it impossible for them to TRANSFORM THE FOOD INTO NEW TISSUE.
Any man or woman who has suffered from insomnia will confirm this statement, that lack of sleep decreases weight and diminishes vitality more quickly than anything else. ——
Remember this when you brag foolishly about going without sleep!
A man can go forty days without solid food. He can live seven days, or even longer, without food or water. He cannot live seven days without sleep. The Chinese, ingenious in torments, discovered no worse death than killing their victims by depriving them of sleep.
Of course, every young man can go without sleep for a whole night occasionally and go on with his work. He can do this because, from his father and mother, he has inherited a certain amount of vitality, which, if he knows no better, he can squander stupidly, just as he can squander, if he will, what money is left to him.
But no man can deprive himself of sleep, or sleep irregularly, without suffering permanently, without diminishing his chances of success in the world. ——
Many a woman among those called "fashionable" looks at the healthy child of a gardener, and wonders that her child is so different.
The reason is simple. The gardener's wife did not cheat her child by giving to balls and late hours the vitality needed by her babies.
The woman who loses sleep will make a failure of her children.
The man who loses sleep will make a failure of his life, or at least diminish greatly his chances of success.
Of all events here on earth, the greatest is the birth of a baby.
Great battles are fought, won and lost. Nations and religions rise and fall. Great cities flourish to-day, and to-morrow the sand lies heavy over them. And of all these events the eternal Niagara of new babies is the first and essential foundation.
He knows little of real life, its greatest happiness, deepest devotion, intensest suffering, who has never witnessed the arrival of a new human being in this life of progress and struggle.
There lies the new baby at last, its black face gradually turning pink, its first gasping breaths changing the color of its blood, its tiny fists opening and closing—reaching out for nourishment already, its face tying itself into the first philosophical, cosmos-interrogating knot. Its feet turn inward and its legs are crooked. Its head is so shapeless as to discourage any one but a mother; it has three years of gurgling, ten years of childhood, ten years of foolishness, ten years of vanity—and possibly a few years of real usefulness ahead of it.
Some one must be patient, hopeful, interested, proud, never discouraged, always devoted, through all these years.
That "some one," the mother, lies there weak and white on the bed.
Her forehead and all her body are wet with agony—but she thinks no longer of that.
She has heard her baby's first cry, and whether it be her first or her tenth, the feeling is the same. Her feeble, outstretched arms and her hollow, loving eyes are turned toward the helpless little creature.
Those arms and that love will never desert it as long as the mother shall live.
The mother's weak hand supports the heavy, dull baby head and guides it to its rest on her breast.
And that hand which supports the head of the new-born baby, the mother's hand, supports the civilization of the world.
The Rev. David James Burrell, in "A Quiver of Arrows," presents a very interesting parable on the benefit of trials.
Here is the parable:
Trials are profitable.
The rough diamond cried out under the blow of the lapidary:"I am content; let me alone."
But the artisan said, as he struck another blow:
"There is the making of a glorious thing in thee."
"But every blow pierces my heart."
"Ay; but after a little it shall work for thee a far more exceeding weight of glory."
"I cannot understand," as blow fell upon blow, "why I should suffer in this way."
"Wait; what thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter."
And out of all this came the famous Koh-i-noor to sparkle in the monarch's crown. ——
There is a lesson in the story of the diamond for every man, and there is an ESPECIALLY good lesson for the young man who is succeeding too fast.
That diamond became the extraordinarily beautiful stone that we read about, and that many of us would foolishly like to own, because of the trials through which it passed.
We do not mean to suggest that men, to succeed, should NECESSARILY undergo repeated poundings and hammerings, although, as a matter of fact, the really great men of the world have undergone such grinding and polishing and hard knocks as no diamond was ever submitted to. But we do say distinctly that almost every man needs in the course of his life a FIRST-CLASS FAILURE.
No man is more unfortunate than he who succeeds too quickly and too easily. His success makes him exaggerate his own importance and ability. It makes him underestimate the strength of those who compete with him, and the difficulty of winning in the long run.
The world is full of all kinds of disappointed beings—artists, writers, business men—workers of all sorts, who lead disappointed lives.
Of these men, a great many started out hopefully and promisingly.
But fate failed to do for them the work of the polishing lapidary that we all need.
They succeeded too soon, they made money too easily, they rose too suddenly.
Failure at the right time would have made them think, work and do better. But failure came too late, and when the energy to fight and overcome was no longer there.
If every young man who thinks well of himself will realize that he mistakes good fortune for great ability, and that the failure that has been put off will come sooner or later, unless he thinks of it and struggles to improve himself in spite of success, many disappointments will be saved in the future.
Discount your failure. Don't wait for it to discount you.
There are many young men on earth who fail because they lack ambition and determination to advance. There are many more whose trouble is hasty ambition. They fail to realize their present chances in their hurried reaching out for something better. You may see in any club, pool-room or other resort for wasting time crowds of young men smoking and deploring their lack of success.
"I've been working three years at the same job and the same salary," one will say, "and I don't see what chance I have for getting ahead."
The young man who talks in this way does not realize that success depends on developing the qualities which are in him. He can develop them if he will, no matter what his place in the world. Once he is ready to do good work, once he is developed, the work will find him out. ——
When Napoleon Bonaparte was resting from his labors at St. Helena he used to tell this story:
"One day on parade a young lieutenant stepped out of the ranks much excited to appeal to me personally. He said to me that he had been a lieutenant for five years and had not been able to advance in rank. I said to him, 'Calm yourself. I was seven years a lieutenant, and yet you see that a man may push himself forward, for all that.' " ——
Napoleon, when he preached this lesson to the young, dissatisfied officer, was the self-made Emperor of the French and of a great many other nations. He had come to Paris a thin, hollow-cheeked, under-sized boy from the conquered and despised island of Corsica. He stuck in the humble grade of lieutenant for seven years. When the time came he blossomed out.
When he was lieutenant he was developing himself. He studied and mastered the art of war. He wrote the history of Corsica, and no one would publish it. He wrote a drama which was never acted. He wrote a prize essay for the Academy of Lyons, and did not win the prize. On the contrary, his effort was condemned as incoherent and poor in style. These were a few failures; enough to make your ordinary young man throw up his hands and say: "I've done all I can do; now let the world look out for me."
Just as he became hopeful about the future when he knew that he had real military genius, he was dismissed from the army, and his career seemed to be ended. He made the thin soup upon which he and his brother lived. He could afford to change his shirt only once a week. He said:
"I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted the door on my poverty."
He kept at it, and all the time, successful or otherwise, he was developing himself. He developed into an emperor. Young men will please notice that fact, and the fact that Napoleon worked and tried under adversity and monotony instead of grumbling. ——
The newspaper reporter who does not get ahead very fast, the author whose manuscripts are treated as were Napoleon's first efforts, may study with considerable profit a young American writer named Richard Harding Davis. That young man had been a reporter in Philadelphia for seven years when he went to work on a New York evening newspaper at a small salary. He had written and was writing some of his best stories, but could not get ahead, apparently. Nevertheless, he kept on trying, and developed himself. When other young men were busy talking about themselves or deploring their lot Davis was writing and grinding away out of working hours at the effort to get out and realize what was in him. He succeeded. ——
A few cases have been mentioned for young men to think over. They are selected at random. No young man need worry about himself so long as he can honestly say that he is doing his best.
Being in the same place at the same salary for seven years can do you no harm, if you are developing during that time what is in you. But you may well worry if you are drifting aimlessly, pitying yourself, making no effort. If your mind stays in the same spot for years, that is dangerous. But don't worry about anything else.
Nothing is more common than to hear men—especially great and moral men—deplore the results of civilization, of mechanical, industrial and scientific progress. We quote a typical lament by a noble and sincere man, the Reverend Charles Wagner, author of an admirable book called "The Simple Life." The author says:
"If it had been prophesied to the ancients that one day humanity would have all of the machinery now in use to sustain and protect natural existence, they would have concluded therefrom, first, an increase of independence, and in the second place, a great decrease in the competition for worldly possessions, They would have thought that the simplification of life would have been the result of such perfected means of action, that there would follow the realization of a higher standard of morality. Nothing of this sort has come to pass—not happiness, nor social peace, nor energy for good has increased."
Naturally, from a superficial point of view, it is discouraging to see poverty, ostentation of wealth, injustice and the love of money increasing, instead of declining, with the great developments in human power.
Suppose it had been said two hundred years ago that some day one single man, with a loom, would be able to make cloth enough to clothe scores in one day; that a few children working in a stocking factory would be able to produce more stockings than a million women could knit.
It would, of course, have been prophesied that when these great inventions came everybody would be well clothed, every woman and child would have warm stockings—and so on.
But we find, as society's powers increase, as machinery improves, and the means of producing and distributing wealth develop, that the struggle for existence and the display of avarice are accentuated.
The pessimistic man, observing these conditions, is filled with despair for the future of humanity. He predicts worse and worse times ahead, while he longs for the peaceable old days before the steam engine had appeared among us. ——
Now, in order to map out a parable, we must ask you to do a good deal of supposing.
Suppose, in place of the human race, one single human baby. Suppose that its mother had never seen another baby, and had no idea of the laws governing a baby's development.
And suppose, as the helpless baby lay on its back in the cradle, waving its arms, kicking its legs, gasping and blinking, that the following prophecy had been made to the mother:
"Some day that baby of yours will be five feet high. Some day it will be able to walk and run, and throw stones, and carry weights, and fight, and do all kinds of things."
Of course, the mother, hearing this, would have been very much rejoiced, saying to herself:
"My baby now is feeble and helpless, and I must watch it all the time to see that it does not roll out of the cradle, or that the cat does not bite it. When my baby gets to be five feet high and able to fight and run and jump, of course it will be free from danger, it will live happily, and I shall be free from anxiety."
Now, suppose that fourteen years have passed. The mother has seen the baby grow to be five feet high and fourteen years old, and the prophecy is fulfilled.
Is the mother happy? She is weeping bitterly. The baby has certainly improved in its powers most wonderfully. It can run and jump and fight. As a result of its abilities, it comes back one day with a black eye, the next day with a broken nose, the next day with a sore toe. It is always in trouble. It has even developed vicious traits of its own. It tells lies, it steals, it is even disrespectful to its mother.
You supposed, don't forget, that this mother never saw another baby, and knew nothing about the development of human beings along certain lines. Would she not be horrified at her child's condition? Would she not think it getting worse and worse, and that it must end horribly and tragically? Would she not sigh for the old days of the cradle, and wish that her baby might go back to its babyhood and live comfortably once more, on its back, with its hands and feet in the air and a vacant look in its eyes?
——
The human race has gone ahead, as that supposititious baby goes ahead in fourteen years. We have obtained many new forces, many new accomplishments. We have learned to use steam and electricity, as the child learns to use its legs and its hands. But, like the child of fourteen, we have not developed morally or mentally in proportion to our physical development.
But just as surely as the child passes on from childhood, with its follies, its quarrels, and its accidents, to mature, self-respecting manhood, just so surely will the human race go through its babyhood, through its boyhood, and on into years of wisdom, justice, self-control and real accomplishment. ——
At present we are in a childish condition as a race, just about able to walk and run around a little. We do not see our future clearly, and many of us look back regretfully to the simple days of industrial babyhood.
But those days can never be brought back, even if we wanted to bring them back. The thing for us to do is to remember that great progress and a great future are ahead of us, and do all we can to prepare for the future and hurry it along. We should refrain especially from feelings of pessimism. We should study and work to control ourselves as well as we can, and look ahead into the future.
Remember this very true saying and apply it in your attitude toward the world:
"It is not enough to believe in God; one must believe in man, in humanity and its future."
All our fussing and fuming about little matters must end in time.
It is a comfort to feel sure that the time will come when questions of wages, starvation, justice, supply and demand, finance, and all the miserable worries of to-day, from Presidential elections to the digging of sewers, will be things of the past.
Had we been intended for such things exclusively, we might as well have been put in a hole in the ground or in some cool corner of Hades to fight out our troubles. We should not have needed for our home a beautiful globe, swinging through endless space, bathed in sunlight or blessed with the companionship of other suns and planets whirling with us on mysterious errands.
Man's work of to-day—the fighting, the sweating, the starving, the cheating and lying, the miserable births and the dull, stupid, monotonous living—will end soon. Real HUMAN life will dawn and end the period of savage life.
Control of nature's forces will supply every man with what he needs to keep his body alive, his soul and his brain free from care.
Then men will cease their animal lives, cease eating to live and living to eat. They will live to think. The brain, which differentiates them from the animals, will give the real interest to their lives. Mental work—art, science and things worth while—will occupy them. ——
Does it not seem probable that when the day of organized life comes our chief interest will be the study of the universe—the other worlds outside of our own?
The great man will be he whose genius shall cross interstellar space as Columbus crossed the ocean. The great newspaper editor will be the first to get a signed statement from Mars.
The discoverer of that day will get from some older planet information millions of years ahead of our own.
As the dull mind of the field-plodder now looks toward the great cities—toward the vast movement outside his own little life—so shall men look away from this little, limited, but by that time well regulated, planet, to the mysteries and the grandeurs of the worlds outside.
Life will be complete in those coming days. Men will look back with pity to the time when they quarreled about little metal money tokens, locked each other up in jail, or choked each other to death legally.
Let us hope and believe that we may come back then to share the pleasure of the world's mature days, since we are sentenced to exist here to-day in the greasy, clammy period of struggle and half-bakedness. ——
While the infant sits drawing milk, with never a dream of solid food, the teeth are growing beneath its gums. And while we crawl around here now, with no conception of our future state, some of the forces at work among us are preparing for the days when real life shall begin. Among these forces you may count the constructors of the great cosmic eye—the huge telescope that is now building in Paris. Compared with all other exhibits at the Paris Fair, that great instrument will be as a giant among babies, a Corliss engine among children's toys.
It is the precursor of the great instruments which in the future will take man on his travels through space. Imperfect as it is, it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight. ——
Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown glass lenses more than four feet in diameter, weighing a ton, and suspended at the end of a tube one hundred feet long! It will reach out thousands of billions of miles into space, giving us, perhaps, new secrets of the universe. Yet it is but a child's toy compared to the instruments which must follow it.
And you who read this, if your mind is fresh and your imagination not jaded, may be the man who shall add to the power of this instrument as Galileo added to that given to the world by Lippershey, the humble Dutchman.
We invite the young American of ambition to study this latest proof of man's growing skill, and see whether he can imagine anything to add to it. ——
"I have not seen it" say you. If you are the right man, you do not need to SEE it. Galileo only HEARD of Lippershey's discovery. He thought hard on the problems of refraction for one night, and as a result produced a telescope capable of magnifying threefold. He finally produced a telescope of thirty-two-fold power.
This French telescope magnifies six thousand times, but it is only a baby telescope, full of faults. It is rendered imperfect by the wavy motion of the air, which affects our sight just as the motion of the waves affects the sight of a fish. It lacks any adequate arrangement for light supply. The great trouble of the astronomer is the getting of more light in his telescopes. You may be the man to tell him how to do it without adding to the diameter of his object glass.
Anyhow, think about the big telescope. If it does not make you an astronomer or a great inventor, it may stir up your brain to the pitch of inventing a really good chicken coop. That is still lacking, and in great demand.
Of all animals upon earth man came last.
All of earth's animal creations are bound up in man.
As to the first statement there is no difference of opinion.
The Bible and Darwin agree that man was created last of all the animals.
Very superficial observation will convince you that man contains in his mental make-up all of the "inferior" animals, or at least a great many of them.
You, Mr. Jones, or Smith, who read this are in your single self a sort of synthesis of the entire animal creation.
If you could be divided into your component animal parts there would be a menagerie in your house, and you, Smith or Jones, would be missing. That thing we call a "soul" would be floating around, impalpable, looking for its house to live in. ——
Of course, you can see the animal make-up in your neighbor more readily than in yourself.
How do men describe each other? Do they not speak as follows, and mean exactly what they say
"He is as sly as a fox."
"He eats like a pig."
"He has dog-like faithfulness."
"He is as brave as a lion."
"He is as treacherous as a snake."
"He was as hungry as a wolf," etc. ——
Our good and our bad qualities alike are mapped out in our humble animal relations.
The horse stands for ambition, which strives and suffers in silence. The dog represents friendship, which suffers and sacrifices much, but whines loudly when injured.
We have no doubt that of the twelve passions which enter into Fourier's complex analysis of man each has its prototype in some one animal. ——
To rebel at the animal combination which makes up a man would be folly.
The Maker of us all, from ants to anti-imperialists, naturally gathered together the various parts in lower animal form before finishing the work in man.
A harmoniously balanced mixture of all the animals is calculated undoubtedly to produce the perfect man. ——
Therefore, study your animal make-up. Analyze honestly and intelligently the so-called "lower" creatures from whom you derive your mental characteristics. If you have not yet done so, study at once some good work on embryology, and learn with amazement and awe of your marvelous transformations before birth.
Then do your best to control the menagerie that is at work in your mind.
Stultify Mr. Pig, if he is too prominent. Circumvent Mr. Fox, if he tries to rule you and make of you a mere cunning machine. Do not let your Old Dog Tray qualities of friendship lead to your being made a fool.
In short, study carefully the animal qualities that make up your temperament and prove in your own person the falseness of Napoleon's irritating statement that a man's temperament can never be changed by himself. ——
It may interest you to note that when man becomes insane, the fact is at once made apparent that his mind, dethroned, had acted as the ruler of a savage menagerie. Many crazy men imagine themselves animals of one sort or another. Nearly all of them display the grossest animal qualities, once their mind is deranged. Women of the greatest refinement sink into dreadful animalism when insane. Heine tells of a constable who, in his boyhood, ruled his native city. One fine day "this constable suddenly went crazy, * * * and thereupon he began to roar like a lion or squall like a cat."
Heine remarks with calculated naivete: "We little boys were greatly delighted at the old fellow, and trooped, yelling, after him until he was carried off to a madhouse."
There is, by the way, much of the natural animal in "little boys." It takes years to make a fairly reasonable creature of a young human. For that reason many ignorant parents are foolishly distressed at juvenile displays of animalism, which are perfectly natural. ——
The same Heine, whose writings you ought not to neglect, describes beautifully a human menagerie. We'll quote that, and then let you off for the day. Heine was living in Paris in the forties, and used to visit a curious revolutionary freak named Ludwig Borne. Of this man's house Heine wrote:
"I found in his salon such a menagerie of people as can hardly be found in the Jardin des Plantes (the Paris zoological garden). In the background several polar bears were crouching, who smoked and hardly ever spoke, except to growl out now and then a real fatherland 'Donnerwetter' in a deep bass voice. Near them was squatting a Polish wolf in a red cap, who occasionally yelped out a silly, wild remark in a hoarse tone. There, too, I found a French monkey, one of the most hideous creatures I ever saw; he kept up a series of grimaces, each of which seemed more lovely than the last," etc.
If Heine's polar bears, wolf and monkey had studied themselves, as we advise you to study yourself, they might have escaped the sarcasm of the sharpest tongue ever born in or out of Germany.
You are standing with this writer on the edge of a stagnant pool in Northern Europe, fifty thousand years ago.
The trees are strange, the life is strange. There are certain familiar things visible. For instance, on one side of the pool there is an angry mammoth, with long hair and long tusks.
He is a huge, savage beast, monster of power with tiny, vicious eyes, and a curled trunk of unlimited force.
You recognize his resemblance to the modern elephant, and you feel at home.
In the middle of the pool, standing up to his waist in water, there is another queer creature. He has long, red hair, and through his lips you can see that in his rage he is grinding a large set of teeth with the canine incisors abnormally developed.
He is a shaggy, savage-looking brute, with a bloody and an apprehensive eye. You will recognize him as a human being.
As he stands in the pool there is a familiar slap of his right hand on the back of his left shoulder—he has killed a mosquito.
That is the picture. We leave the mammoth, primitive man and the mosquito to settle their troubles.
We call your attention to this. If you really witnessed that scene you would have undoubtedly said to the red-eyed savage in the pool:
"My friend, you can kill that mosquito easily, and possibly in time you will kill all the mosquitoes. But that MAMMOTH is a problem that you will not solve for a long time, if ever."
Had you known that the red-eyed human animal in the middle of the pool was sent there by Providence to regulate the globe, cultivate it, destroy the noxious forms of animal life, etc., you would certainly have believed that that person would have got rid of the mosquitoes long before getting rid of the mammoth.
As a matter of fact, the mammoth has gone, the woolly rhinoceros of Northern Europe has gone, the sabre-toothed tiger prowls no more. Even wolves have disappeared, and the mosquito is still flourishing in his millions and billions.
We have only just learned that it is he who gives us malaria, that it is he who spreads yellow fever and undoubtedly many other diseases.
The human race, which in its earliest, incapable childhood easily managed to dispose of the mammoth and his huge fellow-monsters, still stands helpless before the little mosquito, deadliest of VISIBLE animals on earth.
Is it not interesting to realize that the hardest work of the human race, as of the individual, is the most minute work; that the intellect, which easily copes with the heaviest and the biggest problems, is baffled by the tiniest?
Ultimately, and perhaps soon, we shall send the mosquito, the house-fly and the other buzzing pirates to join in the grave's silence their big brothers—the mastodon and the rest.
Then our fight will begin against invisible animal life, against the actual microbes of disease which the mosquito has been carrying around and injecting into us. It is a long fight, but, of course, we shall win it. ——
And is it not interesting, also, to reflect that in the moral, as in the physical, battles of life man requires the longest time to deal with his smallest enemies?
Morally we are still primitive savages. We are still combating murder, arson, theft—like the cave-dweller fighting the physical mammoth, we are fighting the mammoths of moral deformity.
Eventually they will disappear. Murder will be unknown, and theft, rendered unnecessary by decent social organization, will have disappeared also.
At that time we shall be fighting the smaller and more dangerous, more elusive and more persistent moral troubles—HYPOCRISY, CONCEIT, UNCHARITABLENESS. These are the mosquitoes and flies of the world of immorality that will pursue us when the big fellows—murder and theft—shall have been killed off.
We wish to tell you of the monkey and the snake fight, described by a witness in the Lahore Tribune. ——
Before men arrived on earth, when all the animals were racing for supremacy, the monkey seemed to have the smallest chance. No one would have guessed that the descendants of this feeble, defenseless little brute would eventually rule the earth, killing off tigers, lions and the other huge monsters at pleasure.
We have before called your attention in this column to the fact that the monkey, or some animal like him, had the honor of contributing our proud human services as the world's rulers BECAUSE HE COULD USE HIS BRAIN.
That fight between the monkey and the cobra illustrates this quite clearly.
The monkey was a little monkey, with scarcely enough muscle to strangle a hen.
His little black finger-nails could hurt nobody. His teeth were fit only to nibble fruit or to chatter in rage at his fellow monkeys.
This monkey had the misfortune to annoy a huge cobra.
Mr. Cobra is the most dangerous, the most formidably armed, of all living animals. He is a solid mass of muscle, gifted with lightning speed. The slightest touch of his fangs means death.
The brain of the cobra is about as big as a mustard seed. The brain of the monkey—even a small one—is several hundred times as big as the brain of the largest snake. We refer to the cerebrum, the front brain, which does the thinking.
The monkey annoyed the snake, and the snake chased him. Mr. Monkey, shrieking and chattering, rushed over the ground until he came to a rock. He stood still in front of the rock.
The snake dashed its head at him to annihilate him; the monkey jumped to one side and let the snake beat its head against the rock.
Over and over, this operation was repeated, the monkey with lightning speed avoiding the dart of the snake, and the snake, with never-ending stupidity, dashing its head against the rock.
Eventually the powerful, dangerous snake was stretched out at full length, bleeding and tired out.
The monkey was not bleeding and not tired. He was extremely cheerful. He seized the snake by the neck, just back of the head, and placidly proceeded to rub its head off on the stone.
When he had rubbed the head to a pulp. incidentally destroying its primitive brain, he left the dead snake lying there, and gratefully accepted the Indian corn and sugar-cane donated by the admiring humans-his relatives-who had witnessed his performance. ——
The monkey used his brain—the snake did not.
The monkey did not say, but he might as well have said:
"You need not wonder that my half-sister, Eve, crushed the serpent's head. We monkeys and humans have soft hands and no poison sacs, but WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE OUR BRAINS WORK, and that means that we rule creation."
Here is a quotation from a very wise person called Aristotle.
This Greek philosopher was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and incidentally he has been the teacher of millions of men since he began to talk philosophy, more than twenty centuries ago.
"First of all, we must observe that in all these matters of human action the too little and the too much are alike ruinous, as we can see (to illustrate the spiritual by the natural) in the case of strength and health. Too much and too little exercise alike impair the strength, and too much meat and drink and too little both alike destroy the health, but the fitting amount produces and preserves them…. So, too, the man who takes his fill of every pleasure and abstains from none becomes a profligate; while he who shuns all becomes stolid and insusceptible."
The next time you fall into a philosophical mood, and begin reviewing the causes of your troubles, see if you can't find some useful suggestion in the common-sense statement of Aristotle we give today.
How about the "too much" of one thing and "too little" of another?
Are you quite sure that you don't do too much talking and too little thinking?
Are you sure that you don't do too much drinking and playing and idling, and too little reading?
Are you sure that you don't do too much of things you like that do you no good, and too little of things that you ought to like, and that would help you to succeed? ——
We believe that every one of our readers has some friend or brother or son who can be really helped by the reading of this quotation from the old Greek wise man.
You can state to any young man or woman to whom you send this advice that the man who gave it formed the character and judgment of Alexander, the world's most successful young man.
A young man lost his money in stocks the other day and killed himself. Other young men lose heart when things go against them and drift through life helpless, useless derelicts. Let us give such men a bit of advice:
Don't let failure discourage you. Almost all the brilliantly successful characters of history have known early trials and reverses. The great philosopher, Epictetus, was a slave. Alfred the Great wandered through the swamps as a fugitive and got cuffed on the ears for letting the cakes burn. Columbus went from court to court like a beggar to try to raise money for the discovery of the New World and when he finally won the favor of the Spanish Queen he was so poor that he could not go to court until Isabella had advanced him money enough to buy decent clothes.
When Frederick the Great was fighting all Europe he fell into such desperate straits that he carried a bottle of poison about with him as the last way of escape from his enemies. If he had taken that dose the whole history of our time would have been different. Instead of shaking a "mailed fist" at the world, young William of Hohenzollern might have been a mediatized princelet on the lookout for an American heiress; there might never have been a Leipzig or a Waterloo, as there certainly would not have been a Sedan, and the heirs of Napoleon might now have been ruling over an empire covering all Central Europe, from the Tiber to the Baltic.
Nobody ever had greater cause for discouragement than George Washington had when he led the straggling remnants of his army across the Delaware in December, 1776. But in the very darkest hour, when absolute ruin seemed inevitable and a British gallows appeared the probable ending of his career, he struck a blow that cleared the way to the highest place in the world's history.
Andrew Jackson was born in a cabin, suffered every sort of adversity, lost his mother and two brothers from the sufferings of war, was cut with a sword for refusing to clean a British officer's boots, and grew up almost without education.
Abraham Lincoln, poor, ignorant, sprung from the lowliest stock, deprived of all advantages for culture or for money making, distressed by domestic troubles, might have had some excuse for discouragement. But he kept on, with what results the world sees.
If ever there was a man who seemed doomed to failure it was U. S. Grant in the spring of 1861. He had cut loose from the profession for which he had been trained, and, after drifting from one occupation to another and failing in all, he was now, at thirty-nine years old, a clerk in a country store and unable to make ends meet at that. Three years later he was Lieutenant-General of the armies of the United States, and five years after that he was President.
Solon said it was never safe to call any man happy until he was dead. Unhappiness is equally uncertain. If you are poor now you may be rich to-morrow. If you are unknown now you may be famous to-morrow. If you are even in the penitentiary now you may be running a street-car system to-morrow.
So don't be discouraged if your fortunes are in temporary eclipse. The savage is in despair when the sun goes into the moon's shadow, for he thinks that some monster has swallowed it, and that there will never be any daylight again. But to the astronomer an eclipse is merely an interesting opportunity to make scientific observations. Be as sure of the coming of daylight as the astronomer is, and your moments of darkness will trouble you no more than his trouble him.
Emerson says:
"Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."
Another individual, at least as solemn if not as wise as Emerson, says:
"Discontent is the foundation of all human effort."
Both are right, for there are two kinds of discontent.
Almost everybody is afflicted with one kind of discontent or the other.
It would be well for you, Mr. Reader, to decide what kind of discontent afflicts you. If you have the wrong kind, hurry and get the other as fast as possible.
This is the kind of discontent which Emerson refers to when he says that "discontent is the want of self-reliance."
The WHINING discontent ruins many lives; it is used as the excuse for much foolish conduct, much neglect of duty.
It is the discontent which reflects the feeble soul, the self-indulgent, worthless being.
A young man who gets drunk or dissipates otherwise, who offers as an excuse, "Well, I was feeling kind of DISCONTENTED and had to do something," is afflicted with the wrong kind of discontent in its most virulent form.
The office boy with small wages who is caught smoking cigarettes, or evading his duties, or undermining his moral character by gambling, will also say, "I was discontented and had to do something."
If you have THAT discontent, try to get rid of it and get the other kind.
Alexander the Great lived and died discontented, but Emerson would scarcely have attributed that gentleman's discontent to lack of self-reliance.
Alexander was discontented, first, because he could not conquer the whole world, and, second, because there were no others that he could conquer. He was a vast genius, almost humorous in his ambitious discontent sometimes—especially when he looked at the stars and said, as alleged, that he was ashamed to look at all those other worlds when he had barely conquered this one little world that he lived on.
If you have in you Alexander's brand of discontent you may well be grateful.
You are still more to be envied if you have the discontent which has impelled thousands of great men to devote their lives ceaselessly to the discovery of truth, working for others. ——
When Taglioni, the great ballet dancer, was a little girl, with skinny legs and a skinnier future, being extremely homely and with no prospects of success, she was discontented.
Other skinny-legged little ballet dancers of her class were discontented also.
But Taglioni's discontent impelled her to spend every spare moment whirling on her big toe, practicing her entrechat, or laboring over the art of smiling, naturally, with aching toes, aching back, aching thighs, and solar plexus almost exhausted from the unnatural strain.
The other skinny-legged discontented ones exercised their discontent on their patient mothers, instead of exercising it on their own big toes. THEY never were heard of, whereas Taglioni pranced on HER big toe before every court in Europe, and her smile, which ultimately became natural, attracted the opera glasses of all the great men.
There are thousands of young musicians, young business men, young singers, young electricians—thousands and hundreds of thousands of human beings engaged in all kinds of effort in all directions.
ALL OF THEM ARE DISCONTENTED. Those that have the right kind of discontent will go at least as far as their natural capacity can take them, and those that have the wrong kind will collapse, achieve nothing and devote wasted lives to wasting pity on themselves. ——
Try to acquire the discontent of Alexander, Carlyle, Pagallini, Taglioni, or even that of the honest bootblack who "shines them up" so hard that the perspiration comes through his check jumper in cold weather.