The Elements of Character

M >> Mary G. Chandler >> The Elements of Character

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The offices of piety belong in great part to solitude, and the offices
of charity to society; but the principle of Companionship is involved in
both; for piety associates us with God as charity associates us with
man.

All Companionship involves the idea of both giving and receiving. In the
offices of piety, in proportion as we give a worship that is earnest and
heartfelt, is the warmth and clearness of the influx of heavenly love
and wisdom that we receive. In the offices of charity, our love is
warmed and our wisdom enlightened in proportion as we disinterestedly
seek the true happiness of those whose lives come within the sphere of
our influence, guided, not by blind instinct, but by an enlightened
Christianity. Thus the quality and quantity of what we receive from
Companionship depends on the quality and quantity of what we give.

There is no surer test of Character than the Companionship we habitually
seek; for we always prefer the society of those who administer to our
dominant love. Some seek the society of their superiors, others of their
equals, and others, again, of their inferiors; and the members of each
class are actuated in their choice by very various motives. Thus, among
the first class are found the ambitious, who seek their superiors
because they fancy themselves elevated by the reflection of the
attributes they admire; the proud, who fancy themselves degraded by
association with their inferiors; and the humble, who seek to be
advanced in goodness, in knowledge, or in refinement through intercourse
with those who excel. On the other hand are those who seek their
inferiors from the vanity that demands admiration as its daily food, or
the pride that feels itself oppressed in the presence of a superior, or
the philanthropy that loves to give of its stores to those less endowed
than itself. The middle class may be actuated in their choice by the
love of sympathy in their pursuits, or by a kind of indolence that is
disturbed by whatever differs much from itself. There is less purpose
and vitality in this class than in either of the others; but merely a
desire to float with the surrounding current, whithersoever it may tend.

The constituents of society are so varied in quality, that it would be
very difficult for any one to associate exclusively with a particular
class; and it may be doubted if we have a right to seek to do so. The
variety in social life is adapted to develop the various qualities of
the human soul far more perfectly than they could be if the different
classes of humanity were entirely separated in their walks. All should
be willing to give as well as to receive, and to this end all should be
willing to associate in a spirit of brotherly love with their superiors
or their inferiors without any feeling either of servility or of
elation. We may seek the society of our superiors in order to enrich
ourselves, and that of our inferiors in order to give freely even as we
have received; while with our equals we alternately give and receive,
for no two persons are so similarly endowed but that each may gain by
associating with the other. In truth, whichever way the balance may
incline, none ever give without receiving, and none can receive without
giving.

No Companionship is wise that does not involve the principle of growth.
If the influence of our associates does not make us go forward, it will
surely cause us to go backward. If we are not elevated by it, we shall
certainly be degraded. Two persons cannot associate and either party
remain just as he was before; and if we would find in society an element
of growth, we must seek for all that is elevating in whatever circles we
move; for it is not confined to any particular circle or class, but
waits everywhere for the true seeker.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, said the Lord,
teaching as never man taught; and it is in proportion as we walk meekly
with our fellow-men that our capacities become capable of receiving, to
their fullest extent, the influx of goodness and truth that should be
the end of social intercourse. Nothing obstructs our receptivity so much
as that egoism of thought and affection which keeps self perpetually
before the mind's eye, and to this egoism meekness is the direct
opposite. Meekness implies forgetfulness of self. There is nothing
servile about it, but it pursues its way in pure simplicity, forgetting
self in its steadfast devotion to what it seeks. Egoism pursues its aims
from love of self and of the world, and confides in its own strength for
success. Meekness pursues its aims from the love of excellence, and
confiding in the strength of the Lord. The first love is dim of sight,
and often satisfies itself with the shadow of what it seeks, while its
strength is too feeble to grasp the higher forms of excellence. The
second love is full of light, because its eye is single; it can be
satisfied only with substance, and its endeavors know no limit, because
its strength comes from Him who never fails nor wearies.

Meekness is always ready to receive of the excellence it seeks, through
whatever medium it can be obtained; while egoism is perpetually hindered
in its advancement by its unwillingness to owe it to any source out of
self.

Similar results follow in giving as in receiving. Meekness gives in
simplicity from love to the neighbor, and feels as great pleasure in
imparting from its stores as in receiving additions to them, because the
pleasure it imparts is reflected back upon itself, making all its good
offices twice blessed. Egoism is twice cursed, as all that it receives
and all that it gives perpetually adds to its love of self; for it
values what it possesses because it is its own, and imparts to others
because it enjoys a feeling of superiority over the recipient of its
possessions. Meekness builds itself up; egoism puffs itself up. To
meekness Companionship is a perpetual source of healthful growth; while
to egoism it furnishes food only to supply the demands of a morbid
enlargement, destructive to all manly and womanly symmetry.

Society at large, according as we walk in it in a spirit of meekness or
a spirit of egoism, thus serves to develop and expand our powers, or to
narrow and degrade them more and more continually. To the casual
observer, the difference in the advancement of the two classes may not
in early life be apparent. The forth-putting pretension of egoism may
indeed cause it to seem the more rapidly advancing character of the two;
but the progress of years will widen the separation between their paths,
till it shall be seen as a great gulf, of which the opposite sides have
naught in common. Advancing age will show the egoist narrow-minded and
overbearing, peevish and fault-finding; while he who pursues his even
course, walking in Christian meekness with his fellow-men, will in old
age exhibit ever-enlarging charity and ever-expanding wisdom, and his
gray hairs will seem like a crown of glory.

It may seem almost needless to speak of the danger to Character that is
involved in seeking the Companionship of the worthless or the evil-
disposed. "Can one handle pitch and not be defiled?" Yet the usages of
society are so disordered, that the possession of wealth, family
distinction, or personal elegance, though accompanied by ignorance,
folly, or even dissoluteness, is sometimes a surer passport into what is
termed good society than the best culture of mind and heart, where
external advantages have been denied.

When we value mankind according to their external advantages, our moral
standard is as false as the drawing upon a Chinese plate. We have no
true moral perspective. Our ideas of right and wrong are confused and
imperfect, and in danger of becoming corrupt. We laugh at the stupidity
of the poor Chinaman in his attempts after beauty in art, while in
morals we are quite as stupid as he. Believing ourselves wise, we are
fools. It is very hard to escape being unduly influenced by the opinions
of society; but the more earnestly we seek true excellence for
ourselves, the more easily we learn to value true excellence in others,
and, to overlook the opinions of the world. The more independent we
become of opinion, the better will be the influence we exert upon
society, as well as that which we receive from it in return.

If the influence of our Companionship with those whom we meet in general
society and in the daily avocations of life be important, far more so is
that which comes to us through the friends whom we select from the world
at large as best adapted to minister to our happiness; and in proportion
as they are near and dear to us will their influence be strong and deep.

The choice of friends is influenced by an equal variety of motives, and
of a similar nature as those that lead to the selection of the social
circle. There is often no better foundation than selfishness for what
passes current in the world for ardent friendship. The selfish and
worldly love from selfish and worldly motives, and doubtless they
receive their reward; but if we would derive the advantages to Character
that result from a wise Companionship, we must select our friends
without undue regard to the opinions of the world, and impelled by a
desire for moral or intellectual advancement. Falsehood and fickleness
in friendship result from its being built upon merely selfish or
circumstantial foundations. When built upon mutual respect and
affection, it contains no element of decay or change; and they who trust
to any other foundation have no right to complain if their confidence is
abused and disappointed.

Persons sometimes suppose themselves the fast friends of others, when
their affection is merely the result of benefits received directly or
indirectly; and if these benefits are withheld, their supposed
friendship is dissipated at once, or perhaps changed to enmity. Such a
friendship is merely circumstantial, and has no just claim to the name.
Mere juxtaposition, the habit of seeing each other every day, is often
sufficient to produce what the parties concerned esteem friendship, and
to occasion the freest interchange of confidence. The slightest change
of circumstance, a few miles of separation, an inadvertent offence, a
trival difference of opinion, a clashing of interests, are, any one of
them, sufficient to bring such an intimacy to an end, and to cast
reproach upon the sacred name of friendship, when friendship had never
existed between the parties for a single moment.

Genuine friendship can exist only between persons of some elevation of
moral character, and its strength and devotion will be commensurate with
the degree of this moral elevation. Truthfulness, frankness,
disinterestedness, and faithfulness are qualities absolutely essential
to friendship, and these must be crowned by a sympathy that enters into
all the joys, the sorrows, and the interests of the friend, that
delights in all his upward progress, and, when he stumbles or falls, as
all at times must, stretches out the helping hand, not condescendingly
nor scornfully, but in the simplicity of true charity, that forgives
even as it would be forgiven, and is tender and patient even where it
condemns. In such a friendship there is no room for rivalry, weariness,
distrust, or anything subversive of confidence. With the selfish and the
worldly, such a connection cannot exist, because with them rivalries and
clashing interests must arise; for it is only among the seekers after
excellence that there is room for the gratification of the desires of
all. Neither can it exist between the false, for falsehood shuts the
door upon confidence; nor with the morally weak, the foolish, or the
idle, for they weary of each other even as they weary of themselves.

Of all earthly Companionship, there is none so deeply fraught with weal
or woe, with blessing or with cursing, as the Companionship of married
life. After this relationship is formed, although the threads still
remain the same, the whole warp and woof of the being are dyed with a
new color, woven according to a new pattern. Character is never the same
after marriage as before. There is a new impetus given by it to the
powers of thought and affection, inducing them to a different activity,
and deciding what tendencies are henceforth to take the lead in the
action of the mind; whether the soul is to spread its wings for a higher
flight than it has hitherto ventured, or to sit with closed pinions,
content to be of the earth, earthy. All are interested, even strangers,
In hearing of the establishment of a newly married pair in what relates
to the equipage of external life. Far more interesting would it be if we
could trace the mental establishing that is going on, as old traits of
character are confirmed or cast aside, and new ones developed or
implanted.

This union, so sacred that it even supersedes that which exists between
parent and child, should be entered upon only from the highest and
purest motives; and then, let worldly prosperity come or go as it may,
this twain whom God has joined, not by a mere formal ritual of the
Church, but by a true spiritual union that man cannot put asunder, are a
heaven unto themselves, and peace will ever dwell within their
habitation.

In proportion as a true marriage of the affections between the pure in
heart is productive of the highest happiness that can exist on earth, so
every remove from it diminishes the degree of this happiness until it
passes into the opposite, and becomes, in its most worldly and selfish
form, a fountain of misery, of a quality absolutely infernal.

Amid the disorder and imperfection reigning in the world, it is not to
be supposed that a large proportion of marriages should be truly
heavenly. In order to arrive at this, both parties must be of a higher
moral standing than is often reached at an age when marriage is usually
entered upon; but unless the character of each is inclined heavenward
there is no rational ground for anticipating happiness, except of the
lowest kind.

Many persons of a naturally amiable disposition enjoy what may seem a
high degree of happiness, through their sympathy with each other in
worldliness and ambition; but such happiness is not of a kind that can
endure the clouds and tempests of life. It is nourished only by the good
things of this world, and, if it cannot obtain them, is converted into
the greater wretchedness because the being who is dearest in life shares
this wretchedness. When, on the contrary, things heavenly are those most
highly prized and earnestly sought, each party helps to sustain the
other in all earthly privations and disappointments; for each is looking
beyond and above the trials of earth, and each is in possession of a
hope, nay, a fruition, that cannot be taken away, and which is dearer
than all that is lost. With them, to suffer together is to rob suffering
of half its weight, and almost all its bitterness. Whatever earthly
deprivation may befall them, the kingdom of heaven is ever within their
souls.

The Companionship of our fellow-beings is not confined to the living men
and women around us, but comes to us, through books, from all nations
and ages. Wise teachers stand ever ready to instruct us, gentle
moralists to console and strengthen us, poets to delight us. Scarce a
country village is so poor that there may not be found beneath its roofs
the printed words of more great men than ever lived at any one period of
the earth's history.

We are too apt to use books, as well as society, merely for our
amusement; to read the books that chance to fall into our hands, or to
associate with the persons we happen to meet with, and not stop to ask
ourselves if nothing better is within our reach. It may not be in our
power to associate with great living minds, but the mental wealth of the
past is within the reach of all. We boast much that we are a reading
people, but it may be well to inquire how intelligently we read. The
catalogues of books borrowed from our public libraries show, that, where
the readers of works of amusement are counted by hundreds, the readers
of instructive books are numbered by units. In conversation, it is not
uncommon to hear persons expressing indifference or dislike to whole
classes of books,--to hear Travels denounced as stupid, Biography as
tame, and History as heavy and dull. It does not seem to occur to the
mass of minds that any purpose beyond the amusement of the moment is to
be thought of in reading, or that any plan should be laid, or any
principles adopted, in the choice of books to be read.

It is undoubtedly a great good that nearly all our people are taught to
read, but it is a small fraction of the community that reads to much
good purpose. Children, so soon as they have acquired the use of the
alphabet, are inundated with little juvenile stories, some of them good,
but most of them silly, and many vulgar. As they grow older, successions
of similar works of fiction await them, until they arrive at
adolescence, when they are fully prepared for all the wealth of folly,
vulgarity, falsehood, and wickedness that is bound up within the yellow
covers of most of the cheap novels that infest every highway of the
nation.

As you are jostled through the streets of our populous cities, or take
your seat in a crowded railway-car, you are, perhaps, impressed with the
general air of rudeness that pervades the scene,--a rudeness of a kind
so new to the world, that, no old word sufficing to describe it, a new
name has been coined, and the swaggering, careless, sensual looking
beings, reeking with the fumes of tobacco, that make up the masses of
our moving population, are adequately described only by the word
_rowdy_. As yet, no title has been found for the female of this class,
--bold, dashing, loud-talking and loud-laughing, ignorant, vain, and so
coarse that she supposes fine clothes and assuming manners are all that
is necessary to elevate her to the rank of a lady. Perhaps you wonder
how so numerous a race of these beings has come to exist; but that boy
at your elbow, bending under the weight of his literary burden, is a
colporteur for converting the men and women of this "enlightened nation"
to rowdyism. Those books portray just such men and women as you see
before you, and that is why they are welcomed so warmly. A few cents
will buy from that boy enough folly and impurity to gorge a human mind
for a week, and possibly few among this throng often taste more
wholesome intellectual food.

It is probable that some of these persons are the children of
intelligent and well-bred parents; but their fathers were engrossed in
business, and their mothers in family cares, and thought they had no
time to form the moral and intellectual tastes of the immortal minds
committed to their charge. They fancied that if they sent their children
to good schools, and provided liberally for all their external wants,
they had done enough. Ignorant nursery maids, perhaps, taught them
morals and manners, while the father toiled to accumulate the means for
supplying their external wants, and the mother hemmed ruffles and
scolloped trimming to make people say, "How _sweetly_ those children are
dressed!" as the maid paraded them through the streets, teaching them
their first lessons in vulgar vanity.

A child may be educated at the best schools without acquiring any taste
for good literature. The way a parent treats a child in relation to its
books has far more influence in this respect than a teacher can possibly
possess. A mother, even if she is not an educated woman, can learn to
read understandingly, and can teach her child to read in the same way.
She can talk to it about its books, and awaken a desire in its mind to
understand what it reads. Children are always curious in regard to the
phenomena of nature, and whether this curiosity lives or dies depends
very much on the answers it receives to its first questions. If the
mother cannot answer them herself, she can help the child to find an
answer somewhere else, and she should beware how she deceives herself
with the idea that she has not time to attend to the moral and
intellectual wants of her child. She has no right to so immerse all her
own mind in the cares of life that she cannot, while attending to them,
talk rationally with her children. The mothers who best fulfil their
higher duties towards their children are quite as often found among
those who are compelled to almost constant industry of the hands, as
among those of abundant leisure. There is nothing in the handiwork of
the housekeeper or the seamstress that need absorb all the mental
attention; and hers must be an ill-regulated mind that cannot ply the
needle, or perform the more active duties of the household, and yet
listen to the child as it reads its little books, and converse with it
about the moral lessons or the intellectual instruction they contain.
The mother has it in her power to influence the mode in which the child
makes companions of its books more than any other person; and the
character of its Companionship with them through life will generally
depend in a great degree on the tastes and habits acquired in childhood.

Many parents who guard their children with jealous care from the
contamination of rude and vicious society among other children, allow
them to associate with ideal companions of a very degraded kind. The
parent should check the propensity, not only to read bad books, but also
to read idle or foolish books, by exciting the action of the mind
towards something better. Merely to deny improper books is not enough.
Something must be given in place of them, or the craving will continue,
and the child will be very apt to gratify its appetite in secret.

Children are easily led to observe nature, animate or inanimate, with
interest, and there are many simple books illustrating the departments
of natural science which mothers could make interesting to their
children at the same time that they instructed themselves. Juvenile
works on history abound, and through them the child may be led, as
intelligence expands, to seek more extended and thorough treatises; and
the sympathy of the mother should be ready to help him on his way. It is
mere self-deception in those mothers who deny their mental capacity, or
their command of time, to aid their children in their mental progress.
It is a _moral_ want of their own, far more than everything else, that
causes them to shrink from this most important responsibility.

Those who have passed the period of childhood, who have taken upon
themselves the responsibility of all that concerns their own minds, and
who have any desire after upward progress, should remember that the
books they love best are those which reflect their own characteristics.
Every one looks up to his favorite books, and the tone of his mind is
influenced by them in consequence. In our Companionship with our fellow-
beings we may be governed to a great extent by our desire to stand well
with the world, and therefore seek the society of those whom the world
most admires rather than those we most enjoy. In the choice of our books
there is much less influence of this kind exerted upon us. In the
retirement of our homes we may daily consort with the low or the wicked,
as they are delineated in books, and our standing with the world be in
no way affected, while the poison we imbibe will work all the more
surely that it works secretly. They whose ideas of right and wrong are
dependent on the judgment of the world may need even this poor guide,
and suffer from the want of it; for in doing what the world does not
know, and therefore cannot condemn, they may encounter evil and danger
from which even the love of the world would protect them, if the same
things were to be exposed to the public eye. We have no more moral right
to read bad books than to associate with bad men, and it would be well
for us in selecting our books to be governed by much the same principles
as in the selection of our associates; to feel that they are, in fact,
companions and friends whose opinions cannot fail to exert a powerful
influence upon us, and that we cannot associate with them
indiscriminately without great danger to our characters.

The Book of books, the Word of God, should occupy the first place in our
estimation; and the test question in regard to the value of all other
books is, whether they draw us towards, or away from, the Bible. So far
as they are written with a genuine love for goodness and truth, books in
every department of science and literature have a tendency, more or less
strong, to increase our reverence and love for the Source of all
goodness and truth; and no book can be subversive of our faith in the
Scriptures that has not its foundation laid in falsehood.

Nature may tell us of a Creator, but the Bible alone reveals a Father.
Nature describes him as far from us, removed beyond all sympathy, before
whose power we tremble, and whose mercy we might strive to propitiate by
sacrifices or entreaties; but from the Bible we learn that he is near at
hand, watching every pulsation of the heart, listening to every
aspiration that we breathe; that we walk with him so long as we obey his
commandments, and that though we may turn from him, he never turns from
us; that when we approach him in prayer, it should not be with fear,
but with love; and loving him with the knowledge that he first loved us,
we find that prayer, in its true form, is a Companionship, and that the
Father rejoices over his child in proportion as the child rejoices in
approaching the throne of mercy.

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