The Elements of Character

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

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There are many persons who seem to belong by turns to each of the three
great classes that have been described. These exercise their powers
involuntarily. They cannot be depended upon, for they are not balanced
Characters. If they happen to like what they are doing, or happen to
feel in the mood of doing it, they will do it well; otherwise, they
do not care how badly their work is performed, if it only can be got
through with. They have not waked to the consciousness that we have no
right to do anything badly, because whenever we do so we impair our own
faculties, and thereby diminish our powers of usefulness; while, if the
act concerns any one beside ourselves,--as almost all acts do,--we are
wronging our neighbor.

Many persons are so fortunate, women especially almost always so, as to
have enough employment placed before them by the circumstances of their
position, without any effort of choice on their part, to occupy their
time, and to train their faculties. Those who are not thus set to work
by circumstance should be governed in the selection of their employment
by their own inclination and talents. What we love to do we can learn
to do well, and our work will then be agreeable to us. Many persons
are governed in the choice of employment for themselves or for their
children by a stronger consideration for what is honorable in the eyes
of the world than by talent or taste. Thence it often results that
persons fail ever to fulfil the duties they have chosen in a way to
be satisfactory to any one beside themselves, perhaps not even to
themselves. If they have sufficient force of Character to do well in
spite of not doing what they like, they are still never so happy as
they would have been had inclination been consulted. Where the heart
is really in the employment, work is not a burden, but a natural and
pleasant exercise of the powers; and it becomes comparatively easy to
serve the Lord with all the strength.

Those who are not constrained to work, should remember that a life of
idleness cannot be a life of innocence; for the idle cannot serve the
Lord. A life that does not cultivate one's own capacities, and aid
either in supplying the wants or cultivating the capacities of some one
beside self, is no preparation for heaven; for the heavenly life is one
of perpetual advance, because of untiring use.

There is no station in life where there is not a constant demand for the
exercise of charity. We cannot be in company an hour with any person
without some such demand presenting itself to us. The daily intercourse
of life places it constantly in our power to make some person more or
less happy than he now is, and accordingly as we may choose between
these two modes of action we are fulfilling or setting aside the law of
charity.

No class of human beings bears a more heavy weight of responsibility
than that which is placed beyond the necessity of effort; and there is
none whose position has a stronger tendency to blind it to the calls of
duty. Although every gift bestowed upon us by providence, whether of
mind, body, or estate, is but another talent, for the employment of
which we must be one day called to account, yet these added talents too
often excite in us a feeling of superiority which induces us to demand
that others should minister to us, and causes us to forget that he who
would be greatest must be so by doing more and greater services than
others, and not by receiving them.

Persons whose position places them beyond the need of effort, would do
well to select some special study or employment to occupy and develop
their mental life, and save them from the inanity, ennui, and
selfishness that are sure to follow in the footsteps of idleness.
Poverty of mind is rendered all the more prominent and disgusting if
accompanied by external wealth; and to such a mind wealth is but a means
to folly, if to nothing worse.

Neither wealth nor poverty, neither strength nor weakness, neither
genius nor the want of it, neither ten talents nor one, can excuse any
human being from training his faculties in a way to develop them to the
utmost, and forming them into a symmetrical whole, the type of a true
humanity.

In the following essays it may seem to the reader that there is
contradiction in treating each power of the mind as though its perfect
training resulted in the upbuilding of a perfect Character; but the
union between these capacities is so intimate that one cannot be rightly
trained unless all the others are trained at the same time. We cannot
think wisely unless we imagine truly, and love rightly, as well as
warmly. We cannot love rightly unless we think justly, and imagine
purely; nor can we imagine purely unless we love that which is pure. We
cannot do all this unless we live out what we think, imagine, and love;
for the inner life always acts narrowly and superficially unless it be
widened and deepened by an efficient external life. What we do must
follow closely in the footsteps of what we know, if we would arrive at
breadth and depth of knowledge. So fast as we put in practice what we
know we shall be able to receive more knowledge. We are told by the Lord
that our knowledge of truth shall be enlarged in proportion as we are
obedient to the divine will. "If any man will do his will, he shall know
of the doctrine."

The Divine attributes act simultaneously and equally always and
everywhere, while the triune manifestation is a merciful adaptation of
these attributes to the comprehension of fallen humanity. Were humanity
truly regenerate, the action of its capacities would be simultaneous
and homogeneous. Even in its present state these capacities are so
interlaced that one cannot act strongly without inducing some action in
the others; just as in the physical frame the brain, the heart, and the
lungs can no one of them act unless all act in some degree; while in
perfect health all act in the fulness of perfect harmony, no one organ
rendering itself prominent by being more full of vitality and activity
than another. Disease alone renders us conscious of the action of any
one vital organ, and our moral diseases having destroyed the harmonious
action of our moral powers, thereby rendering it impossible for us to
appreciate the Divinity in the full harmony of unity, we have been
mercifully permitted to attain to such knowledge as is possible to
us through manifestations of the Divine attributes in trinity. In
proportion as our faculties are trained to act in harmony we shall
become unconscious of their separate functions; and in the same
proportion we shall become capable of looking upon the Divinity in the

* * * * *

THOUGHT.

It is the grandeur of all truth which _can_ occupy a very high place in
human interests, that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of
minds: it exists eternally by way of germ or latent principle in the
lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed, but never to be
planted.--DE QUINCEY.

Many persons seem to suppose that the power of Thought, or at least the
power of thinking to any purpose, is a natural gift, possessed by few,
and unattainable by the many. This idea is a very pernicious error, for
one of the traits by which the human being is distinguished from the
brute is the possession of this power; and the progress that every human
being may make in learning to think well has no limit but the universal
one of finite capacity.

The distinction made between thoughtful and thoughtless persons is
commonly one of intellect alone; it should be quite as much one of
morality. Considered intellectually, a thoughtless person cannot be
successful in any but the very lowest walks of life. He brings nothing
but his hands to what he does. If these be strong, he may dig, perhaps,
as well as another man, but he can never make a good farmer; he may
use the axe or the hammer to good purpose, but he can never become a
master-workman. If he attempt anything more or higher than what his
hands can do under the guidance of another's brain, his effort is sure
to be followed by confusion and failure. Viewing a thoughtless person
in a moral light, he cannot be religious, he cannot be virtuous, and,
unless by accident, he cannot even be externally moral. He may, perhaps,
perceive that the grosser forms of wickedness are to be avoided, but he
can have no comprehension of the danger involved in the little vices of
everyday life; and cannot understand how every one of these vices, small
as it may seem, contains within itself the germ of some one of those
great and shocking sins forbidden in the commandments. He will,
therefore, without compunction, go on committing these small sins
until the habit of evil becomes so fixed, that, if he does not end by
committing great ones, it is more frequently from lack of temptation
than from any worthier reason.

The thoughtless person can never be depended upon for anything. We never
know where to find him, or what he will do in any particular position or
relation of life. All we can anticipate of him is, that he will probably
do something bad, or silly, or improper; accordingly as the act may
bear upon morality, sense, or manners.

Before going further, let it be understood that a thoughtless person
is not one without Thought. A human being without Thought is an
impossibility. Most, if not all, idiots think. It is the lack of
coherency, purpose, and effort in Thought that induces the habit of mind
commonly known as thoughtlessness. Without Thought, Imagination, and
Affection, one could not be a human being. Mankind differ from each
other, not in kind, but in degree. It is the low degree of activity in
either of these great divisions of the human mind that causes one to
seem thoughtless, unimaginative, or without affection. The end of all
training should be to develop each one of these faculties so that it
shall cooeperate with the others, and all as fully as possible. A just
balance of power is the first requisite, and constant increase of it
the second; just as in the physical frame we ask, first, for just
proportion, and, as the product of this, for strength.

It is often said that no kind of sense is so rare as common sense; and
this is true, simply because common sense is attainable by all far more,
and is a natural gift far less, than most other traits of character.
Common sense is the application of Thought to common things, and it is
rare because most persons will not exercise Thought about common things.
If some important affair occurs, people try then to think, but to
very little purpose; because, not having exercised their powers on small
things, their powers lack the development necessary for great ones.
Hence, thoughtless people, when forced to act in an affair of
importance, blunder through it with no more chance of doing as they
should than one would have of hitting a small or distant mark at a
shooting-match, if previous practice had not given the power of hitting
objects that are large and near.

The thoughtless person perpetually acts and speaks as if it were of
no consequence what is said or done. If any one venture to suggest a
different mode of speech or action, the reply is pretty sure to be, "O,
it is of no consequence!" As if an immortal being, to whom a few short
years of probation had been given, the use or abuse of which must give
character to an eternity to come, could do or say what would have no
consequence! Let any one bring distinctly before himself the great truth
that we stand ever in the presence of the Almighty, stewards of his
bounty, children of his love, and could it be possible for him to
believe that it is of no consequence how that love is returned, and how
that bounty is used? Every word, every act of our lives, is either a use
or an abuse of his bounty, a showing forth either of our love for or our
indifference to him. Therefore, every word and act has a consequence,
ending not with the hour or day, but stretching forward into eternity.
Let this truth be admitted to the mind, and who could dare to be
thoughtless. Who would not wish to return the infinite love poured out
upon us, by consecrating all that we have and all that we are to the
service of the Infinite Father? When this consecration takes place, all
pure aspirations fill the heart, while the mind is ever thinking what is
the best way in which the will of the Lord may be done. Thoughtlessness
has no longer an abiding-place, for the mind now perceives that it must
be about its Father's business, and Thought becomes a delightful and
invigorating exercise, instead of the wearisome effort it seemed before.

If the mind hold to its integrity, without relapsing into its former
state of blind indifference to its high vocation, the cultivation of
the power of Thought will go on steadily and surely, and the mind will
become constantly more and more clarified from all folly and silliness.

When a person brings everything habitually to the standard of right and
wrong, he gradually learns to judge wisely of whatever subject he may
hold under consideration, provided he does not seek for that standard in
his own mind, but in the mind of the Lord, as he has given it to us in
the Word of eternal life. When this standard is sought only in the human
mind, nothing is fixed or permanent, and discord abounds in society much
as it would if the length and breadth of the fingers of each individual
were to be substituted for the standard inch and foot of the nation; but
if the Bible be honestly and humbly received as the standard by which to
judge of right and wrong, mankind would ever abide in brotherly love and
harmonious union. The element of discord is not in God's work, but in
the mind of man; and man becomes truly wise and capable of concord only
so far as, forgetting the devices of his own understanding, he becomes a
recipient of the truth that descends to him from on high.

It may be objected that the Bible has been the fruitful source of
contention and war; and some may suppose it cannot therefore be a
standard of union to the world; but it should be remembered that, when
it has become a cause of dissension, it has been by the perversion of
man, who has separated doctrine from life,--has put asunder that
which God joined. No contention has ever risen in the world regarding
religious life, but many and terrible ones regarding religious doctrine
separated from life; and it is perfectly apparent, that, had those who
were engaged in them, looked to religious life with the same earnestness
they did toward doctrine, all these dissensions must have ceased.
Christian life is, as it were, a building, of which faith is the
foundation. The foundation is subservient to the superstructure, and
should be strong and well laid; but has no value excepting as it is
the support of a worthy building. The Lord is very explicit in all his
teachings on the subject of life, and it is hardly possible that any one
could faithfully study his words, and then exalt abstract doctrine into
the place that belongs of right to Christian life.

Whoever studies the direct teachings of the Lord, recorded by the
Evangelists, and makes them the rules of his Thoughts, must necessarily
be wise. Everything connected with daily life, if his mind be really
permeated with these teachings, takes its proper place before him. He
sees what has a transient, and what a permanent value,--what is merely
temporal, and what eternal; and so learns to appreciate the relative
value of all things. Everything that occurs becomes a subject for his
thoughts to work upon, and while working in heavenly light his mind
grows in wisdom day by day. This action of Thought will not be confined
to events as they occur around him, but whatever is read, all the events
of the past, all art and science, are brought under the same analysis.
The thoughtless person reads merely for the amusement of the moment,
remembers little of what he reads, and that little to no purpose. A
fact is, to such a man, a mere fact standing by itself, and having no
relation to anything else. However much he may read, the thoughtless man
can never be instructed. He is of those who, seeing, perceive not, and
who, hearing, do not understand. The thoughtful person, on the contrary,
reads everything with a purpose. His mind works upon what he reads, and
he is instructed and made intelligent, even though he may see only
with the light of this world. His intelligence will, however, be very
different and very inferior in degree to that of the man who looks at
objects in the light of heaven. He will measure things by an uncertain,
varying standard, and will appreciate things only according to their
temporal value. He will, therefore, never become truly wise. With those
whose minds are nurtured by the words of the Lord, everything is judged
by the standard of eternal truth. Whatever is learned is digested by the
thoughts, and so the powers of the mind are strengthened and enlarged.
Thus the mind becomes constantly more and more wise. The merely
intellectual man has the desire to become wise, but his eye is not
single, and therefore his mind is obscured by many clouds,--the dark
exhalations of worldliness. When a man fixes his eye upon the Lord he is
filled with light, and sees with a clearness of vision such as can be
gained from no other source.

The cultivation of Thought lies at the root of all intellectuality,
while it elevates and enlarges the sphere of the Affections. Affection
is above Thought, but it is sustained and invigorated by its influence.
Thought being the foundation upon which Affection is built, the
strength, permanence and reliability of Affection must depend on the
solidity and justice of the underlying Thought.

The mind may be stored with the most varied and extensive knowledge, and
yet be neither improved nor adorned thereby. Robert Hall once remarked
of an acquaintance, that he had piled such an amount of learning upon
his brain, it could not move under the weight. It is little matter
whether the amount of learning be large or small; the brain is only
encumbered by it, unless it has taken it into its own texture, and made
it by Thought a part of itself. Some persons love facts as a miser loves
gold, merely because they are possessions; but without any desire to
make use of them. A fact or thought is just as valuable in itself as
a piece of money. Gold and silver are neither food, nor raiment, nor
shelter; but we value them because through their means we can obtain all
these. So facts and thoughts are neither rationality, nor wisdom, nor
virtue, and their value lies in their being mediums whereby we may
obtain them all.

Undigested learning is as useless and oppressive as undigested food; and
as in the dyspeptic patient the appetite for food often grows with the
inability to digest it, so in the unthinking patient an overweening
desire to know often accompanies the inability to know to any purpose.
Thought is to the brain what gastric juice is to the stomach,--a
solvent to reduce whatever is received to a condition in which all that
is wholesome and nutritive may be appropriated, and that alone. To learn
merely for the sake of learning, is like eating merely for the taste
of the food. The mind will wax fat and unwieldy, like the body of the
gormand. The stomach is to the frame what memory is to the mind; and it
is as unwise to cultivate the memory at the expense of the mind, as it
would be to enlarge the capacity of the stomach by eating more food than
the wants of the frame require, or food of a quality that it could not
appropriate. To learn in order to become wise makes the mind active and
powerful, like the body of one who is temperate and judicious in meat
and drink. Learning is healthfully digested by the mind when it reflects
upon what is learned, classifies and arranges facts and circumstances,
considers the relations of one to another, and places what is taken into
the mind at different times in relation to the same subjects under their
appropriate heads, so that the various stores are not heterogeneously
piled up, but laid away in order, and may be referred to with ease when
wanted. If a person's daily employments are such as demand a constant
exercise of the thoughts, all the leisure should not be devoted to
reading, but a part reserved for reflecting upon and arranging in the
mind what is read. The manner of reading is much more important than
the quantity. To hurry through many books, retaining only a confused
knowledge of their contents, is but a poor exercise of the brain; it is
far better to read with care a few well-selected volumes.

There is a strong tendency towards superficial culture at the present
day, which is the natural result of the immense amount of books and
periodicals constantly pouring from the press, and tempting readers to
dip a little into almost everything, and to study nothing. Much is said
of the pernicious consequences arising from lectures and periodicals, as
though a short account of anything must of necessity be a superficial
one; but this is far from the truth. A quarto volume on one theme may
be entirely superficial, while a lecture or review-article on the same
theme may contain the whole gist of the matter. Prolixity is oftener
superficial than brevity. Books are superficial if they relate only
to the outside of a subject,--if they describe only its husk; and the
reverse, if they give its kernel. Many an able review-article contains
the kernel of a whole volume, and if the pleased reader of the
review goes to the book itself, expecting to enjoy that in a degree
proportionate to its size, he will often find he has got nothing but a
dry husk for his pains.

Those who have little time for books, but who wish really to know many
things, can accomplish a great deal by being careful to hunt for meats
rather than for shells and husks; for though the outsides of things make
a great show, and can be displayed by the pedant to great advantage
before those who are superficial as himself, they contain no healthful
nutriment for the mind. Take, for instance, the study of botany. Let
a person master the whole vocabulary of the science, and know the
arrangement of its classifications so well that he can turn at once to
the description of any plant he may find. Let him do this until, like
King Solomon, he knows every plant by name, from the "hyssop on the wall
to the cedar of Lebanon"; but if at the same time he knows nothing
more about them than the name, his knowledge of botany is entirely
superficial, though he may have spent a vast deal of time and labor
in its acquisition. Let another person have studied the physiology of
plants till he has learned all that has yet been discovered of their
curious and beautiful structure,--till he appreciates as far as mortals
may the Divine wisdom, that even in the formation of a blade of grass
transcends not only all that man with all his pride of science and
mechanical skill can perform, but goes far--we cannot even guess how
far--beyond all that human intellect can comprehend; and still more if
the mind of this student be lifted upward in adoration as he learns, he
is the true botanist, though he may have studied far less, if we count
by time, than his superficial brother.

So it is with all the sciences. The kernel is what nourishes the
mind,--the knowledge of what God has created, and not the mere power of
repeating the classifications and vocabularies that man has invented to
describe these creations: not that these also have not an eminent use;
but still it is one that should always be esteemed secondary in all our
studies.

So, too, it is with history. One may have all the important dates,
names, and facts of the world's history at the tongue's end, and yet be
none the wiser; for such knowledge is but the surface of history. To
know history well, is to have so arranged its facts in the mind that it
may be contemplated as a continuous exhibition of God's providence. It
is to study the succession of events, not as separate units, but as
links of one vast chain, on every one of which is inscribed a phrase
discoursing of the progress of the human race, and showing the growth of
man in the complex, from infancy to adolescence. Further than that, we
can hardly venture to believe the race has yet advanced. Thus studied,
history is the noblest of all sciences, since it treats of the highest
of God's creations; but studied as a mere congeries of facts, all
sciences are alike worthless; and from the mousings of the mere
antiquarian to the dredgings of the student of the shelly coverings of
the Mollusca, all end in naught.

When a person's employment is one that does not require a constant
exercise of the thoughts, there is the greater need of a constant supply
of nutritious food for the mind, that it may be growing all the time by
reflection, and thus be saved from falling into a morbid state, such
as too often results from long confinement to an occupation demanding
little exertion of its powers. The farmer at his plough, the mechanic at
his bench, the seamstress at her needle, and a host of others, too
often suffer the thoughts to wander into realms of morbid egotism and
discontent, when, if they would turn them upon moral or intellectual
themes, they might be growing wiser and better every day.

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