A Fleece of Gold Part 3

The invention of every machine conceives its first principles in the structure of the human hand; and every working part of that machine bears a relation in its function to a corresponding part in the mechanism of the hand. In fact, physics teaches us that the hand is a combination of the six mechanical powers--the lever, the wedge, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the screw, and the inclined plane. But the mechanical effect is always depreciated. In manufacture hand-made goods excel those made by machine. In art the exquisite hand-painting surpa.s.ses the lithograph. No mechanical device, however efficacious, can produce symphonies or pictures or works of any kind with the high degree of excellence of which the hand is capable.

But aside from its mechanical functions, this wonderful organ is a revelation of the secrets of human nature. Graphology enables us to read the character of a person in the hand-writing which he produces. Ages and ages ago the Hindus read the hand itself as the physical expression of the inner man; they read character by the science of palmistry as we read it by that of physiognomy; and some profess to translate the delicate tracery today into language that speaks clearly of both past and future. The hand is the expression of dishonesty when it steals, of charity when it gives, of anger when it smites, of love when it caresses. And one has called it the key to that cabinet of character in which Nature conceals, not only the motive power of every-day life, but those latent talents and energies that, by the knowledge of self, we can bring to bear upon our lives.

So that this member of our physical organization holds an office of supreme dignity and importance in the issues of our lives. It is this marvel of mechanism, overruled and directed by the higher power of intellect, which elevates man to his high position. And, whether it be the hand of the galley slave, or the hand that sways the scepter over an empire, the supreme purpose is revealed-they are alike designed to be the instruments of usefulness and power.

Even the brain cannot ignore the relative importance of the hand. It cannot say to the hand: "I have no need of thee." The captain cannot man his ship without the aid of subordinates. Neither can the brain pilot us through the activities of life without the aid of hands. A brilliant mind is a priceless possession; but all the mental ac.u.men of the universe is not availing unless supplemented by those inferior officers--the hands.

The clothes which you wear once were on the back of a sheep grazing on some distant hillside. The chair in which you sit once swayed in the forest midst the soughing winds. The pen with which I am writing once was imbedded deep in some far-away mountain range. But that occult genius--the human brain, conceived the idea of creating that wool, and wood, and ore into a higher state of usefulness, and at this juncture was compelled to acknowledge the infinite necessity of a co-worker; hence, the brain employs the hand as an external agent to put into force the impressions which it--the brain--receives from the phenomena of nature.

Moreover, the law of your growth is contingent upon the exercise of these faculties. The brain is the judicial function and the hand the executive.

Together these two powers qualify you for the master-workman. If you allow them to exist in the pa.s.sive sense, you become an apathetic segment in the midst of a great world pulsing with life around you. You merely add one to the population, instead of counting for a potential and energizing influence. If you lift the weight of a clock the smallest fraction of an inch, the mechanism will cease to operate. And the relaxation of your will from the great obligation of life will cause your powers to atrophy and improperly to perform their work. With Browning, "Man was made to grow, not stop."

Activity and not atrophy is the law of life. Action is the expression of that vital force called energy, and energy moves the world. The keynote of the natural world is action: the earth revolves, the river moves in its course, the tempest rages, the mountain acts from volcanic phenomena, vegetation grows, etc. In every tiny seed lies concealed this mysterious force--only a spark of life which, encouraged by nature, springs into a waving harvest.

This very quality is synonymous with the reality of life. The human mind ostensibly has an aversion to lifelessness. We turn instinctively from the dead and withered branch to the blossoming flower; from the stagnant pool to the dashing cataract, and every healthy mind finds delight in such terms as vim, vigor, energy, and activity, which are the chief natural characteristics of the human hand. Demosthenes on being asked what is the first element in oratory, replied, "Action:" when asked to state the second element, he replied "Action," and when questioned as to the third, he made the same reply. Action, first, last, and all the time, is the great principle of life and progress. Without it the most perfect engine, gigantic in proportions and costly in equipment, is a dead thing, valueless as the formless ma.s.s of ore it once was. But that marvelous product of man's hand and brain, plus steam, becomes a veritable giant of power.

Now this same law applies in relation to our bodies in general. Action is an essential as seen in the beating heart, the throbbing pulse, the coursing blood, and various other functions. In fact, the body is the engine that runs the machinery of our lives. Generating energy and storing it up, it gives impetus to all that we achieve. With all its mysteries, beauty, and strength, this human organism is worthless, a burden to society unless vitalized with that majestic force that makes man industrious.

In the words of a great man, "Nature fits all her children with something to do." The first man on earth was a gardener. Milton hears Adam conversing with Eve thus:

"Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, And the regard of Heaven on all his ways; While other animals inactive range, And of their doings G.o.d takes no account.

To-morrow ere fresh morning streaks the east With first approach of light, we must be ris'n And at our pleasant labor, to reform Yon flowery arbors, yonder alleys green."

Work is the great law of life. "No man," says Lowell, "is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work and tools to work withal, for those who will; and blessed are the h.o.r.n.y hands of toil."

True work, the judicious employment of our powers for the accomplishment of the n.o.blest object in life, is the only thing that will satisfy the waiting capacity of men and women. Neither gold nor scholarship nor any other acquisition can meet the requirement like the application of one's self to some kind of work. Work is a tonic which exuberates mentally, morally, and physically the man who wisely adjusts himself to it. And he who is able to work and refuses is out of harmony with nature.

The cardinal question of life is that of achievement. In every human being there is the desire to rise to something great. The most thoughtless boy on the street looks serious as the Presidential carriage rolls past. In the deep recesses of his nature there is kindled by the spectacle a momentary yearning for fame--he would like to be President some day. Likewise does every man, when he seriously views the pageantry of life's ideals and purposes, have aspiration, for such is the natural state of man.

The allurements of a pa.s.sive life are known to them only who have no knowledge of the charms of an active life. Leisure is found only in the dictionary of the slothful. Dionysius is asked if he is at leisure, and rebukes the question, saying, "G.o.d forbid that it should ever befall me."

The indulgence in the activities of life comprises not only ultimate accomplishment, but is productive of present enjoyment as well. And not infrequently does the pursuit of an object give more pleasure than the possession of it. Expectation often outshines experience. Therefore, all should cultivate a taste for work, which, through the alchemy of influence, trans.m.u.tes duty into privilege.

Moreover, it is fundamental in the law of success that one's pursuit must be congenial if he is to excel. On the contrary, however, la.s.situde can not be condoned if we find ourselves engaged in uncongenial employment. No kind of work, to the man who possesses dominion over his feelings and his faculties, is painful but proceeds with pleasure when once the habit of industry is acquired.

Our efforts should not be casual, but causal. He who does most and does it well, becomes most. Horatius received as much land as he could plow around in a day. And you and I get each day just as much as, by putting our hand to the plow of activity, we are able to encompa.s.s by faithful plodding.

Hard work is the price of all that is valuable. All the great strides in the world's achievements were made possible only by forced activity and prolonged effort. Spontaneity is a foreign element in the process of healthy and rugged development. The spider spins its web and the morning bespangles it with dew, creating a thing of beauty, but valueless. It would require the entire existence of several hundred silkworms to produce an equal amount of silk fabric. The mushroom grows up in a night, and dies in the glare of the morning sun; while the oak, struggling through the years, battling with the elements, lives a perpetual blessing to man.

It is the intense struggle with the problems of life that produces in men the st.u.r.dy qualities. The short cuts to fame are few and not abiding. Success is not reached by a thornless path, but is attained by the path of plain, hard work. All things come to him who waits. Such is the very essence of an idle doctrine! All things come to him who works.

Walter Scott working tirelessly in the attic while his companions below carouse the night away; Th.o.r.eau banishing himself into the lonely forest that he might prepare for larger usefulness; Dryden, "thinking on for a fortnight in a perfect frenzy;" Heyne, the German scholar, allowing himself "no more than two nights of weekly rest" for six months, that he might finish a course in Greek; Reynolds, the greatest portrait painter of England, applying his brush for thirty-six hours without stopping; Balzac, determined to be a king in literature, fighting his way with eternal diligence; William Pitt spurning difficulty and "trampling upon impossibility;" Elihu Burritt grappling with mathematics at the forge; or Isaac Newton turning his back upon a life of ease and setting off to college, where "the midnight wind swept over his papers the ashes of his long extinguished fire." These examples and thousands of others remind us that

"Heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight; But they while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night."

They had brains and hands too active, ambitions too aggressive, aspirations too lofty for a quiet existence, and they pressed their way onward and upward till they stood near the summit of a lofty ideal.

When Xerxes, that great Persian monarch, seated upon a throne of ivory and gold, viewed for the last time the magnificent array of his armies and his fleets, we read that he buried his face in his hands and wept, because he had reached the zenith of his glory; his ambition had been spent, his work had come to an end. And more desolate should be the man to-day who does not feel the pa.s.sion of an earnest life, who does not yearn for some n.o.ble activity. He who sits with folded arms in the craft of civilization to be borne idly along while others ply the oars, must soon part company with the brave, loyal sons of activity to launch his idle bark in the dead waters of life, where the currents never come and the winds of energy are never felt.

"At the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; On its sounding anvil shaped, Each burning deed and thought."

V

Ethics of Activity

"The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set, Till the occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked out.

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled."

--James Russell Lowell.

A Man's Relation to Society

This question of activity is a twofold problem. In the preceding chapter we viewed it from the standpoint of the individual--as if he were the sole occupant of the boat, rowing toward a purely selfish end; going, as it were, in quest of the prize of life for purely personal aggrandizement.

Whereas, strictly speaking, no man exists in a purely individualistic sense. He can not regard himself as separable from a social whole. Every individual is a vital element of an organized force working toward a mutual end. You are an integral factor, so to speak, of the social problem, but your value is determined by your relation to other quantifies in the complex system with which you are identified. As a segregated unit, you diminish in value.

A combination of diverse and multi-form contributions a.s.similated from a complex human life, your being looks to many sources for its development; from the lowest phase of experience to the highest. These influences you must acknowledge as emanating from a social system--influences which you are totally powerless, alone, to exert upon yourself. For instance, a man can not be his own educator in all that the term implies--he can not make his own books, print his own newspapers; if he could he would have to look outside of himself for the data necessary for his use. In other words, no man lives to himself alone. He can no more be separated from the social order of things and retain character value, than any one of a hundred square inches of canvas in an oil painting, separated from the rest, would const.i.tute a picture. A single note in a musical composition, however exquisite the piece may be, has comparatively little value taken by itself; only when it a.s.sumes relationship with other notes and becomes governed by the law of harmony, does it fulfill its mission and become a valuable factor.

Then, as units of a social whole, we have obligations other than those affecting "individual" problems. Society has a rightful claim upon every one of its members. "You are not your own, you are bought with a price,"

is true in a larger sense than a merely Scriptural one. For what one becomes is really, as already stated, but the effect of combined influences brought to bear upon one's life by the forces of human society.

Therefore, society expects us to reciprocate, and is just in its claim; just as parents are ent.i.tled to the high esteem and reciprocation of their offspring. It demands of each one of us all that we are capable of producing, exacting the highest order of service as well. The paying of taxes does not placate the demands which society makes upon you. It demands yourself--body, mind, and soul--not in a pa.s.sive sense, but in active relationship to your environment. And every man is morally bound to respect the claims thus made upon him.

The highest socialistic conception is not that which contemplates an equitable distribution of property and labor. But a.s.suming a more rational ground, it believes in equal rights to all; is based upon a right proportion of motives rather than upon the equalization of property considerations. It is both humanitarian and utilitarian. It seeks its own princ.i.p.ally, yet is generous in the ulterior aim. This is the ideal relation between the individual and the social order. The greatest duty confronting each one in the world, and the one which all should earnestly embrace, is the duty of making the most of one's self with the ulterior view of contributing the largest measure of usefulness to his fellow-men.

On the other hand, to employ an extreme example--and yet it is shown by statistics that there are one hundred thousand tramps and vagrants in this country--the man who folds his arms and defiantly proclaimes that the world owes him a living, mutinies against the sacred order of things--"fouls his own nest," as it were. To that man society replies: "If any man is not willing to work, neither let him eat." And this is the dominant note of the twentieth century as truly as it was in the first when spoken by the Roman philosopher. To harbor the doctrine that the world owes every man a living, not only discounts the character value of the individual, but has a reflex action on the entire social organism.

Just as one wheel out of play in the mechanism of a watch throws the entire works out of order, or one team in a procession halting the whole train behind it, the individual failing to do his part affects the equilibrium of the whole. Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo and died in exile, a prisoner at St. Helena, because one of his marshals, failing to comply with orders, arrived too late with re-enforcements. Remember that you have an important part to perform, that, as in mathematics, you are a quant.i.ty so connected with another quant.i.ty that if any alteration be made in the former there will be a consequent alteration in the latter.

In the busy hive of twentieth-century civilization scant s.p.a.ce has been provided for drones. The drone is a minus quant.i.ty in the problem of life; instead of adding to the common weal, he is ever subtracting from it. Like an owl he sits in the gloom of indolence hooting at the caravan of events.

The eye of the world is quick to observe the man who is resting on his oars. A more graphic picture of the man who is ever magnifying the world's duty to him, and minimizing his duty to the world, could not be painted than that one which James Russell Lowell has penned:

"The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set."

The world has but one duty to this man, namely, to dispel the cloud from his vision and arouse him to worthy action.

To contend that the world owes every man a living would be as preposterous as to a.s.sert that the government owes every citizen under the flag a pension. The world owes no man anything except that for which he pays a just equivalent. Every man is indebted to the world; he owes it all his best possessions--his talent, time, and effort. And the individual who attempts to throw off this yoke of duty is violating one of nature's great laws. Even the lower forms of life afford example of this supreme law.

Solomon startles the sluggard with his sharp admonition to betake himself to the ant. And Sir John Lubbock points men to the insect world to learn real diligence and thrift.

Individual stagnation means public pollution. The man who arms himself with a "rake," ever reaching out after something without giving an equivalent, instead of championing the "hoe," determined to exercise his faculties in the interests of humanity, becomes hostile to the n.o.blest sentiment and the highest aims of society; as in the case of the tramps mentioned above who are a national menace, Idleness breeds vice. Industry enhances the virtues. When a man ceases to work he retrogrades; he becomes a stranger to lofty ideals and wholesome activities. The man with an ambition ever finds himself in the ascendency; while he who deplores the exercise of his powers, avoiding work as he would a powder magazine or a pest, is in the descendency toward a state of groveling and low ideals.

And the difference between these two men marks the difference between success and failure.

We are ever obligated to a great duty, namely, to reach the maximum of our possibilities. Our greatest prerogative in the economy of life is the wise husbanding of resources, and the skillful marshaling of our forces on the field of common duty. The great duty of leading a useful life confronts us always. We can by no stratagem, whatsoever, escape its presence. We ever hear its voice calling after us, and can no more flee from it than we can flee from the voice of conscience. Like Poe's raven, it sets up a never ceasing appeal at the door of our lives. Prudence forbids that we turn our back on this duty of self-devotion. For as Michael Angelo saw in the block of marble the hidden angel, a wise man sees in duty an infinite opportunity.

Galileo was so absorbed in his pursuit that he forgot personal comfort and even personal safety, and lost his eyesight in quest of the mountains in the moon, the rings around Saturn and the "star-heaps" in the sky. And when that distinguished man of science, Professor Aga.s.siz, was invited to lecture at a great price, his reply was, "I have no time to make money."

Likewise did the great Spurgeon, when offered almost fabulous prices to cross the Atlantic and lecture, refuse because of a zealous devotion to the purpose of his life. And every one should learn that the thorough and faithful performance of duty is the first essential of a worthy life.

Every human soul was made with some design, invested with the possibility of a useful life, a n.o.ble destiny. Whether it be the mercenary Greek vending his wares on the street corner, or the roaming Italian with his harp strapped over his shoulder, or the dissolute man behind prison bars paying the penalty of misspent days--all are invested with latent power and talent to fill a loftier place in the world. But, unfortunately, while most men have the desire, not all have the determination to rise above the ordinary and the common state in which they find themselves. This is a deplorable condition, seriously detracting from the sum of human greatness.

Every man has been called for dominion. Each, in the divine plan, is to be a ruler in the universe, not a "mollusk with aimless revery;" he is to be a man with vitality, not "dead matter known only as avoirdupois." By this measure a man is not worth so much as a sheep which furnishes two substantial commodities--food and clothing. Minus the attributes which qualify him for a high rank, man is a being with a buried talent, only a unit in the great world around him. Plus these attributes, no system of mathematics can compute his worth.