Part 4 (1/2)
It is deeply impressive, the way in which one man, born not above myriads of his fellows, begins to rise until by and by he stands head and shoulders above his generation! What is the inner vitality which presses him upward? What is this hidden difference in men by which one remains in the by-eddies of life, and another sweeps out on the crest of the rising tide of history?
Much of it is in the man himself. To be kingly is inborn. There is the nature that refuses to be shut up to the petty, that will not content itself with one street or town, that steps out into life from childhood with the step of the conqueror, and walks among us; one who was born a king. To be a king, one must have the powers of organization, combination, discipline, direction, statesmans.h.i.+p. These qualities enlarge as one pa.s.ses from the particular to the general, from the personal to the range of natural forces, emergencies, and wide pursuits.
Dominion is an inherent right of the soul. In all our hearts, did we but listen and understand, there are adumbrations of kingly ancestors, and the latent stirrings of kingly powers.
Which of us would want to be born at all, if we should be told in advance, You shall never control anything? You shall never have the slightest chance of self-a.s.sertion, of impressing your own individuality upon the world? One might as well be born without hands or feet!
Kings.h.i.+p involves ascendancy and authority. Both are truly gained, not by chicanery, but by personal force. There is a natural gift of leaders.h.i.+p, which is strengthened by endurance, perseverance, and ceaseless hard work.
Kings.h.i.+p also involves a larger vision. One man looks at his shoe-strings; another man looks at the stars. The first step toward rule is to find a point of view from which one can look widely out over the race. This is the primary value of education: it is not that books are important, but that men are--the men who have swayed history--and books tell of such men. Not the library is inspirational, but the life-spirit of mankind, bound up in even dusty papyrus-rolls, or set on clay-tablets of four thousand years ago. He who would serve his times politically must first understand, so far as may be, all times.
Another basis of supremacy is conviction. Leaders.h.i.+p belongs to those who believe. The man who has a definite policy to propose, and a definite way of working for it, soon outstrips the man who is just looking about.
Kings.h.i.+p involves an iron will. An iron will does not imply necessarily ugliness of temper, obstinacy, or pig-headedness. It is simply a straight-forward, dauntless, and invincible way of doing things. What I say, you must do, is back of all successful leaders.h.i.+p, whether in the home or in the world-arena. The man who is master of the obedience of his child, or of his fellows, is master of their fate. We are all at the mercy of the strong-willed.
Growth is development in right a.s.sertion; it is the a.s.sumption of legitimate responsibility and command. To be lowly of heart does not mean to be inefficient; to be humble does not necessarily mean to be obscure. Luther and Lincoln were both of a childlike humility of heart.
What Christianity has not emphasized in the past, but what it must now begin to emphasize, is the reality of dominion--its value, and its relation to the kingdom of G.o.d. For centuries, religion has too often been thought of, too often spoken of, as if it were the last resource of the heart, A brilliant young professor of psychology not long ago referred to religion as something to flee to, by those who were disappointed in love! We have spoken so much of ”giving up,” that the Christian life has wrongly seemed to mean the giving-up of one's individuality, interests, powers. As well might we expert the deep sea to give up its rolling tides, or the air to give up its four winds, as to expect the heart of man to part with its human hopes!
This is not a right interpretation of life. When Nature plants an oak in the forest, she does not say, Be a lichen, an _Eozoon canadense_, a small ground-creeping thing! She says, Grow! Become a tall, strong, mountain tree! When we hold our baby in our arms, we do not say, My child, be good for nothing! Neither does G.o.d say, Be nothing, do nothing! Just exist as humbly and meekly as you can! He says, ”Quit you like men!”
Each of us is born for a sceptre and a crown. It gives a strange new thrill to life, to realize that we may be just as ambitious as we please, that we may long earnestly for high things, and work for them, if our inmost desire is not for self but for G.o.d. This new idea of ambition should be at the root of education and of religious teaching.
Piety is not a namby-pamby sentiment; it is a great intellectual force.
Desire is architectural: our dreams should be of prestige and power.
True ambition is the reaching-out of the soul toward preordained things. What else is the meaning of our love for excellence, our insatiable yearning for perfection? ”What is excellent,” says Emerson, ”is permanent.” To excel in any work is to combine in that work the most enduring qualities of human labor; to excel in any place is to s.h.i.+ne forth with the great qualities of the race. Hence, ambition has a rightful place.
The power of a king is the power of control. All about us are moving the great forces of the universe--physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual.
What we can do with them is a test of our power. Life is in many ways a majestic trial of one's power to command.
Three men buy adjoining tracts of land. One man mines coal upon his acres. He ama.s.ses wealth and influence because he is in control of the Carboniferous age and the human need of light and heat. The second man tills his ground and raises wheat and corn. He is in command of living nature--of the rotation of seasons, of wind, frost, rain; he uses them to provide food for those that hunger and must be fed. The third man lies under the trees. He digs no mine. He plants and reaps no corn and grain. He simply lies under the trees, gazes into the sky and dreams.
Men call him idle, but he is not so. One day he writes a book. It lives a thousand years. His control is over the spirit of man. He has entered into its hopes and sorrows, its aspirations and its dreams.
This story is a Parable of Kings. Such is the power of control that is granted to each new soul. Each child is bequeathed at birth a sceptre and a crown.
The first rule is parental. The primitive monarchy is in the home. A young baby cries. The trained nurse turns on the light, lifts the baby, hushes it, sings to it, rocks it, and stills its weeping by caresses and song. When next the baby is put down to sleep, more cries, more soothing and disturbance, and the setting of a tiny instinct which shall some day be will--the power of control.
The grandmother arrives on the scene. When baby cries, she plants the little one firmly in its crib, turns down the light, pats and soothes the tiny restless hands that fight the air, watches, waits. From the crib come whimpers, angry cries, yells, sobs, baby snarls and sniffles that die away in a sleepy infant growl. Silence, sleep, repose, and the building of life and nerve and muscle in the quiet and the darkness. The baby has been put in harmony with the laws of nature--the invigoration of fresh air, sleep, stillness--and the little one wakens and grows like a fresh, sweet rose. The mother, looking on, learns of the ways of G.o.d with men.
Firmness is the true gentleness. There is a form of authority which must be as implacable as the divine decree. Mercy is the requiring of obedience to law; it is not a cajoling training in law-defiance, which shall one day break the mother's heart and upset the social relations of the world.
The next rule is personal: the direction of one's own energy in the way of one's own will. The child moves his hands, his feet; he turns his rattle up and down, and shakes it about. He discovers that he can pull things toward him and push them away; that he can reach things that are higher than his head. He begins to creep. He touches things that are the other side of the world from him, that is, across the room. He plucks fibres from the rug or carpet; swallows straws, b.u.t.tons, and little strings. He pounds, and sets up vibrations of pleasant noise; he clashes ten-pins, he blows his whistle, squeezes his rubber horse and man, rattles the newspaper, flings about his bottle and his blocks. He feels himself a self-directing power, and at times a.s.serts this power against the will of those who would make him do what he does not want to do. The love of rule is in him, and he lays his little hands on power.
Education determines whether this power shall be for good or for evil.
We cannot take away power from any child--he shall move the affairs of nations--but we can direct this love of power, or crush it; strengthen it, or weaken it; turn it toward the highest help of man, or deflect it to tyranny, cruelty, and crime.
Child-training is guidance in the way of G.o.d's decrees. It is not the setting of one's own ideas upon a little child; it is not the gratification of one's own love of power; it is not the satisfaction of one's own self-conceit. It is a firm, humble striving to carry on the harmony of the universe: to bring up the child to love order, justice, mercy, and truth.
Education is the teaching of how to direct energy for the universal good. It lays hold of a child and, out of his destructive instincts--the instinct to bang, and pull, and tear to pieces--it develops creative power, the inventive genius that lies hid within him. It takes the pure love of noise, and trains it to pitches, harmonies, intervals, and makes a musician of the boy who used to whack his spoon. It takes the alphabet and the early pothooks, and the boy by and by combines them into literature. The apples and the peaches which he is taught to exchange justly are by and by trans.m.u.ted into trade and commerce. He brings cargoes from Cuba and Ceylon, trades with j.a.pan and Hawaii, and the Asiatic isles. The energy of block-building is developed into sculpture, architecture, and civil engineering. The stamping of his foot in anger is directed to determination, perseverance, the rule of the brave spirit, the unconquerable will. Nothing is more marvellous than this grave upbuilding.
The next rule is social: the direction of personal energy that shall leave a distinct impress on other lives. It is long before we realize that for each exertion we are responsible; that what we do is held against us in strict account, not only by fate, which builds our destiny for us out of our own deeds, but by every other person with whom we come in contact. Our fellows check off daily against us so much vitality, so much magnanimity, so much idleness, cruelty, spite, goodness, selfishness, meanness, or loving-kindness. Life holds a record of our every deed, and from no least responsibility can we make our escape. We are the prisoners of events which we ourselves have brought about.