Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
Читать онлайн книгу.Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume) - Orison Swett Marden
attend this man home." Is any argument needed to show the superiority of Pericles?
The gladiators who were trained to tight in the Coliseum were compelled to practice the most graceful postures of falling and the finest attitudes to assume in dying, in case they were vanquished. They were obliged to eat food which would make the blood thick in order that they should not die quickly when wounded, thus giving the spectators prolonged gratification by the spectacle of their agonies. Each had to take this oath: "We swear that we will suffer ourselves to be bound, scourged, burned, or killed by the sword, or whatever Eumolpus ordains, and thus, like freeborn gladiators, we religiously devote both our souls and our bodies to our master." They were trained to exercise sublime self-control even when dying a cruel death.
The American Minister at St. Petersburg was summoned one morning to save a young, dissolute, reckless American youth, Poe, from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. By the Minister's aid young Poe returned to the United States. Not long after this the author of the best story and poem competed for in the "Baltimore Visitor" was sent for, and behold, the youth who had taken both prizes was that same dissolute, reckless, penniless, orphan youth, who had been arrested in St. Petersburg,—pale, ragged, with no stockings, and with his threadbare but well brushed coat buttoned to the chin to conceal the lack of a shirt. Young Poe took fresh courage and resolution, and for a while showed that he was superior to the appetite which was striving to drag him down. But, alas, that fatal bottle! his mind was stored with riches, yet he died in moral poverty. This was a soldier's epitaph:—
"Here lies a soldier whom all must applaud,
Who fought many battles at home and abroad!
But the hottest engagement he ever was in,
Was the conquest of self, in the battle of sin."
In 1860, when a committee visited Abraham Lincoln at his home in Springfield, Ill., to notify him of his nomination as President, he ordered a pitcher of water and glasses, "that they might drink each other's health in the best beverage God ever gave to man." "Let us," he continued, "make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets in church, and instances will be as rare in one case as the other."
Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but gave them the rein:—
"Thus thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name."
"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile."
Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom.
"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."
Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give in to the cold," he said. For a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military Institute. His doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. He adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. Such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. It is equal to genius itself.
It is a good plan to form the habit of ranking our various qualities, marking our strongest point one hundred and all the others in proportion, in order to make the lowest mark more apparent, and enabling us to try to raise or strengthen it. A man's industry, for example, may be his strongest point, one hundred, his physical courage may be fifty; his moral courage, seventy-five; his temper, twenty-five; with but ten for self-control,—which, if he has strong appetites and passions, will be likely to be the rock on which he will split. He should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest qualities to one of the strongest. It would take but two or three minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise of each faculty for the day. If you have worked hard and faithfully, mark industry one hundred. If you have lost your temper, and, in consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself, indicate it by a low mark. This will be an incentive to try to raise it the next day. If you have been irritable, indicate it by a corresponding mark, and redeem yourself on the morrow. If you have been cowardly where you should have been brave, hesitating where you should have shown decision, false where you should have been true, foolish where you should have been wise, tardy where you should have been prompt; if you have prevaricated where you should have told the exact truth; if you have taken the advantage where you should have been fair, have been unjust where you should have been just, impatient where you should have been patient, cross where you should have been cheerful, so indicate by your marks. You will find this a great aid to character building.
It is a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness of Nature and her terrors vanish.
The command by the ancient oracle at Delphos is of eternal significance. Add to it its natural complement—Help thyself—and the path to success is open to those who obey.
Guard your weak point. Moral contagion borrows fully half its strength from the weakness of its victims. Have you a hot, passionate temper? If so, a moment's outbreak, like a rat-hole in a dam, may flood all the work of years. One angry word sometimes raises a storm that time itself cannot allay. A single angry word has lost many a friend.
A Quaker was asked by a merchant whom he had conquered by his patience how he had been able to bear the other's abuse, and replied: "Friend, I will tell thee. I was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. I observed that men in a passion always speak loud, and I thought if I could control my voice I should repress my passion. I have therefore made it a rule never to let my voice rise above a certain key, and by a careful observance of this rule, I have, by the blessing of God, entirely mastered my natural tongue." Mr. Christmas of the Bank of England explains that the secret of his self-control under very trying circumstances was due to a rule learned from the great Pitt, never to lose his temper during banking hours from nine to three.
When Socrates found in himself any disposition to anger, he would check it by speaking low, in opposition to the motions of his displeasure. If you are conscious of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, lest you increase it. Many a person has dropped dead in a rage. Fits of anger bring fits of disease. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." "Keep cool," says Webster, "anger is not argument." "Be calm in arguing," says George Herbert, "for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy."
To be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong yourself. "Anger," says Pythagoras, "begins with folly and ends with repentance." You must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.
De Leon, a distinguished Spanish poet, after lying years in dungeons of the Inquisition, dreary, and alone, without light, for translating part of the Scriptures into his native tongue, was released and restored to his professorship. A great crowd thronged to hear his first lecture, out of curiosity to learn what he might say about his imprisonment. But the great man merely resumed the lecture which had been so cruelly broken off five years before, just where he left it, with the words "Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in their minds!
Did you ever see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a little pale, bite his quivering