Character — Ch 6c - Self-Control, cont.

There are, of course, times and occasions when the expression of indignation is not only justifiable but necessary.

We are bound to be indignant at falsehood, selfishness, and cruelty.

A man of true feeling fires up naturally at baseness or meanness of any sort, even in cases where he may be under no obligation to speak out.

"I would have nothing to do," said Perthes, "with the man who cannot be moved to indignation.

There are more good people than bad in the world, and the bad get the upper hand merely because they are bolder.

We cannot help being pleased with a man who uses his powers with decision; and we often take his side for no other reason than because he does so use them.

No doubt, I have often repented speaking; but not less often have I repented keeping silence."

[158] One who loves right cannot be indifferent to wrong, or wrongdoing.

If he feels warmly, he will speak warmly, out of the fulness of his heart.

As a noble lady [159] has written: "A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn-- To scorn to owe a duty overlong, To scorn to be for benefits forborne, To scorn to lie, to scorn to do a wrong, To scorn to bear an injury in mind, To scorn a freeborn heart slave-like to bind."

We have, however, to be on our guard against impatient scorn.

The best people are apt to have their impatient side; and often, the very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant.

[1510] "Of all mental gifts," says Miss Julia Wedgwood, "the rarest is intellectual patience;

and the last lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible to ourselves."

The best corrective of intolerance in disposition, is increase of wisdom and enlarged experience of life.

Cultivated good sense will usually save men from the entanglements in which moral impatience is apt to involve them; good sense consisting chiefly in that temper of mind which enables its possessor to deal with the practical affairs of life with justice, judgment, discretion, and charity.

Hence men of culture and experience are invariably, found the most forbearant and tolerant, as ignorant and narrowminded persons are found the most unforgiving and intolerant.

Men of large and generous natures, in proportion to their practical wisdom, are disposed to make allowance for the defects and disadvantages of others--allowance for the controlling power of circumstances in the formation of character, and the limited power of resistance of weak and fallible natures to temptation and error.

"I see no fault committed," said Goethe, "which I also might not have committed."

So a wise and good man exclaimed, when he saw a criminal drawn on his hurdle to Tyburn: "There goes Jonathan Bradford--but for the grace of God!"

Life will always be, to a great extent, what we ourselves make it.

The cheerful man makes a cheerful world, the gloomy man a gloomy one.

We usually find but our own temperament reflected in the dispositions of those about us.

If we are ourselves querulous, we will find them so; if we are unforgiving and uncharitable to them, they will be the same to us.

A person returning from an evening party not long ago, complained to a policeman on his beat that an ill-looking fellow was following him: it turned out to be only his own shadow!

And such usually is human life to each of us; it is, for the most part, but the reflection of ourselves.

If we would be at peace with others, and ensure their respect, we must have regard for their personality.

Every man has his peculiarities of manner and character, as he has peculiarities of form and feature; and we must have forbearance in dealing with them, as we expect them to have forbearance in dealing with us.

We may not be conscious of our own peculiarities, yet they exist nevertheless.

There is a village in South America where gotos or goitres are so common that to be without one is regarded as a deformity.

One day a party of Englishmen passed through the place, when quite a crowd collected to jeer them, shouting: "See, see these people--they have got NO GOTOS!"

Many persons give themselves a great deal of fidget concerning what other people think of them and their peculiarities.

Some are too much disposed to take the illnatured side, and, judging by themselves, infer the worst.

But it is very often the case that the uncharitableness of others, where it really exists, is but the reflection of our own want of charity and want of temper.

It still oftener happens, that the worry we subject ourselves to, has its source in our own imagination.

And even though those about us may think of us uncharitably, we shall not mend matters by exasperating ourselves against them.

We may thereby only expose ourselves unnecessarily to their illnature or caprice.

"The ill that comes out of our mouth," says Herbert, "ofttimes falls into our bosom."

The great and good philosopher Faraday communicated the following piece of admirable advice, full of practical wisdom, the result of a rich experience of life, in a letter to his friend Professor Tyndall:- "Let me, as an old man, who ought by this time to have profited by experience, say that when I was younger I found I often misrepresented the intentions of people, and that they did not mean what at the time I supposed they meant; and further, that, as a general rule, it was better to be a little dull of apprehension where phrases seemed to imply pique, and quick in perception when, on the contrary, they seemed to imply kindly feeling.

The real truth never fails ultimately to appear;

and opposing parties, if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly, than when overwhelmed.

All I mean to say is, that it is better to be blind to the results of partisanship, and quick to see goodwill.

One has more happiness in one's self in endeavouring to follow the things that make for peace.

You can hardly imagine how often I have been heated in private when opposed, as I have thought unjustly and superciliously, and yet I have striven, and succeeded, I hope, in keeping down replies of the like kind.

And I know I have never lost by it."

[1511] While the painter Barry was at Rome, he involved himself, as was his wont, in furious quarrels with the artists and dilettanti, about picture-painting and picture-dealing, upon which his friend and countryman, Edmund Burke--always the generous friend of struggling merit--wrote to him kindly and sensibly: "Believe me, dear Barry, that the arms with which the ill-dispositions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us, and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves; which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may possibly think them, but virtues of a great and noble kind, and such as dignify our nature as much as they contribute to our repose and fortune; for nothing can be so unworthy of a well-composed soul as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations--in snarling and scuffling with every one about us.

We must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, at least very much for our own."

[1512] No one knew the value of self-control better than the poet Burns, and no one could teach it more eloquently to others; but when it came to practice, Burns was as weak as the weakest.

He could not deny himself the pleasure of uttering a harsh and clever sarcasm at another's expense.

One of his biographers observes of him, that it was no extravagant arithmetic to say that for every ten jokes he made himself a hundred enemies.

But this was not all.

Poor Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but freely gave them rein: "Thus thoughtless follies laid him low And stained his name."

Nor had he the self-denial to resist giving publicity to compositions originally intended for the delight of the tap-room, but which continue secretly to sow pollution broadcast in the minds of youth.

Indeed, notwithstanding the many exquisite poems of this writer, it is not saying too much to aver that his immoral writings have done far more harm than his purer writings have done good; and that it would be better that all his writings should be destroyed and forgotten provided his indecent songs could be destroyed with them.

The remark applies alike to Beranger, who has been styled "The Burns of France."

Beranger was of the same bright incisive genius; he had the same love of pleasure, the same love of popularity; and while he flattered French vanity to the top of its bent, he also painted the vices most loved by his countrymen with the pen of a master.

Beranger's songs and Thiers' History probably did more than anything else to reestablish the Napoleonic dynasty in France.

But that was a small evil compared with the moral mischief which many of Beranger's songs are calculated to produce; for, circulating freely as they do in French households, they exhibit pictures of nastiness and vice, which are enough to pollute and destroy a nation.

One of Burns's finest poems, written, in his twenty-eighth year, is entitled 'A Bard's Epitaph.'

It is a description, by anticipation, of his own life.

Wordsworth has said of it: "Here is a sincere and solemn avowal; a public declaration from his own will; a confession at once devout, poetical and human; a history in the shape of a prophecy."

It concludes with these lines:-- "Reader, attend--whether thy soul Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole In low pursuit;

Know--prudent, cautious self-control, Is Wisdom's root."

One of the vices before which Burns fell--and it may be said to be a master-vice, because it is productive of so many other vices--was drinking.

Not that he was a drunkard, but because he yielded to the temptations of drink, with its degrading associations, and thereby lowered and depraved his whole nature.

[1513] But poor Burns did not stand alone; for, alas!

of all vices, the unrestrained appetite for drink was in his time, as it continues to be now, the most prevalent, popular, degrading, and destructive.

Were it possible to conceive the existence of a tyrant who should compel his people to give up to him one-third or more of their earnings, and require them at the same time to consume a commodity that should brutalise and degrade them, destroy the peace and comfort of their families, and sow in themselves the seeds of disease and premature death--what indignation meetings, what monster processions there would be!

'What eloquent speeches and apostrophes to the spirit of liberty!

--what appeals against a despotism so monstrous and so unnatural!

And yet such a tyrant really exists amongst us--the tyrant of unrestrained appetite, whom no force of arms, or voices, or votes can resist, while men are willing to be his slaves.

The power of this tyrant can only be overcome by moral means--by self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control.

There is no other way of withstanding the despotism of appetite in any of its forms.

No reform of institutions, no extended power of voting, no improved form of government, no amount of scholastic instruction, can possibly elevate the character of a people who voluntarily abandon themselves to sensual indulgence.

The pursuit of ignoble pleasure is the degradation of true happiness; it saps the morals, destroys the energies, and degrades the manliness and robustness of individuals as of nations.

The courage of self-control exhibits itself in many ways, but in none more clearly than in honest living.

Men without the virtue of self-denial are not only subject to their own selfish desires, but they are usually in bondage to others who are likeminded with themselves.

What others do, they do.

They must live according to the artificial standard of their class, spending like their neighbours, regardless of the consequences, at the same time that all are, perhaps, aspiring after a style of living higher than their means.

Each carries the others along with him, and they have not the moral courage to stop.

They cannot resist the temptation of living high, though it may be at the expense of others; and they gradually become reckless of debt, until it enthrals them.

In all this there is great moral cowardice, pusillanimity, and want of manly independence of character.