Self Help

S >> Samuel Smiles >> Self Help

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The proverb says that "an empty bag cannot stand upright;" neither
can a man who is in debt. It is also difficult for a man who is in
debt to be truthful; hence it is said that lying rides on debt's
back. The debtor has to frame excuses to his creditor for
postponing payment of the money he owes him; and probably also to
contrive falsehoods. It is easy enough for a man who will exercise
a healthy resolution, to avoid incurring the first obligation; but
the facility with which that has been incurred often becomes a
temptation to a second; and very soon the unfortunate borrower
becomes so entangled that no late exertion of industry can set him
free. The first step in debt is like the first step in falsehood;
almost involving the necessity of proceeding in the same course,
debt following debt, as lie follows lie. Haydon, the painter,
dated his decline from the day on which he first borrowed money.
He realized the truth of the proverb, "Who goes a-borrowing, goes
a-sorrowing." The significant entry in his diary is: "Here began
debt and obligation, out of which I have never been and never shall
be extricated as long as I live." His Autobiography shows but too
painfully how embarrassment in money matters produces poignant
distress of mind, utter incapacity for work, and constantly
recurring humiliations. The written advice which he gave to a
youth when entering the navy was as follows: "Never purchase any
enjoyment if it cannot be procured without borrowing of others.
Never borrow money: it is degrading. I do not say never lend, but
never lend if by lending you render yourself unable to pay what you
owe; but under any circumstances never borrow." Fichte, the poor
student, refused to accept even presents from his still poorer
parents.

Dr. Johnson held that early debt is ruin. His words on the subject
are weighty, and worthy of being held in remembrance. "Do not,"
said he, "accustom yourself to consider debt only as an
inconvenience; you will find it a calamity. Poverty takes away so
many means of doing good, and produces so much inability to resist
evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all virtuous means to
be avoided. . . . Let it be your first care, then, not to be in any
man's debt. Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have spend less.
Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys
liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others
extremely difficult. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but
of beneficence. No man can help others that wants help himself; we
must have enough before we have to spare."

It is the bounden duty of every man to look his affairs in the
face, and to keep an account of his incomings and outgoings in
money matters. The exercise of a little simple arithmetic in this
way will be found of great value. Prudence requires that we shall
pitch our scale of living a degree below our means, rather than up
to them; but this can only be done by carrying out faithfully a
plan of living by which both ends may be made to meet. John Locke
strongly advised this course: "Nothing," said he, "is likelier to
keep a man within compass than having constantly before his eyes
the state of his affairs in a regular course of account." The Duke
of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys
received and expended by him. "I make a point," said he to Mr.
Gleig, "of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the
same; formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them,
but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great
surprise, duns of a year or two's standing. The fellow had
speculated with my money, and left my bills unpaid." Talking of
debt his remark was, "It makes a slave of a man. I have often
known what it was to be in want of money, but I never got into
debt." Washington was as particular as Wellington was, in matters
of business detail; and it is a remarkable fact, that he did not
disdain to scrutinize the smallest outgoings of his household--
determined as he was to live honestly within his means--even while
holding the high office of President of the American Union.

Admiral Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, has told the story of his early
struggles, and, amongst other things, of his determination to keep
out of debt. "My father had a very large family," said he, "with
limited means. He gave me twenty pounds at starting, and that was
all he ever gave me. After I had been a considerable time at the
station [at sea], I drew for twenty more, but the bill came back
protested. I was mortified at this rebuke, and made a promise,
which I have ever kept, that I would never draw another bill
without a certainty of its being paid. I immediately changed my
mode of living, quitted my mess, lived alone, and took up the
ship's allowance, which I found quite sufficient; washed and mended
my own clothes; made a pair of trousers out of the ticking of my
bed; and having by these means saved as much money as would redeem
my honour, I took up my bill, and from that time to this I have
taken care to keep within my means." Jervis for six years endured
pinching privation, but preserved his integrity, studied his
profession with success, and gradually and steadily rose by merit
and bravery to the highest rank.

Mr. Hume hit the mark when he once stated in the House of Commons--
though his words were followed by "laughter"--that the tone of
living in England is altogether too high. Middle-class people are
too apt to live up to their incomes, if not beyond them: affecting
a degree of "style" which is most unhealthy in its effects upon
society at large. There is an ambition to bring up boys as
gentlemen, or rather "genteel" men; though the result frequently
is, only to make them gents. They acquire a taste for dress,
style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid
foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is,
that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon
the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked
up at sea, with only a monkey on board.

There is a dreadful ambition abroad for being "genteel." We keep
up appearances, too often at the expense of honesty; and, though we
may not be rich, yet we must seem to be so. We must be
"respectable," though only in the meanest sense--in mere vulgar
outward show. We have not the courage to go patiently onward in
the condition of life in which it has pleased God to call us; but
must needs live in some fashionable state to which we ridiculously
please to call ourselves, and all to gratify the vanity of that
unsubstantial genteel world of which we form a part. There is a
constant struggle and pressure for front seats in the social
amphitheatre; in the midst of which all noble self-denying resolve
is trodden down, and many fine natures are inevitably crushed to
death. What waste, what misery, what bankruptcy, come from all
this ambition to dazzle others with the glare of apparent worldly
success, we need not describe. The mischievous results show
themselves in a thousand ways--in the rank frauds committed by men
who dare to be dishonest, but do not dare to seem poor; and in the
desperate dashes at fortune, in which the pity is not so much for
those who fail, as for the hundreds of innocent families who are so
often involved in their ruin.

The late Sir Charles Napier, in taking leave of his command in
India, did a bold and honest thing in publishing his strong
protest, embodied in his last General Order to the officers of the
Indian army, against the "fast" life led by so many young officers
in that service, involving them in ignominious obligations. Sir
Charles strongly urged, in that famous document--what had almost
been lost sight of that "honesty is inseparable from the character
of a thorough-bred gentleman;" and that "to drink unpaid-for
champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to
be a cheat, and not a gentleman." Men who lived beyond their means
and were summoned, often by their own servants, before Courts of
Requests for debts contracted in extravagant living, might be
officers by virtue of their commissions, but they were not
gentlemen. The habit of being constantly in debt, the Commander-
in-chief held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings of a
gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to
fight: that any bull-dog could do. But did he hold his word
inviolate?--did he pay his debts? These were among the points of
honour which, he insisted, illuminated the true gentleman's and
soldier's career. As Bayard was of old, so would Sir Charles
Napier have all British officers to be. He knew them to be
"without fear," but he would also have them "without reproach."
There are, however, many gallant young fellows, both in India and
at home, capable of mounting a breach on an emergency amidst
belching fire, and of performing the most desperate deeds of
valour, who nevertheless cannot or will not exercise the moral
courage necessary to enable them to resist a petty temptation
presented to their senses. They cannot utter their valiant "No,"
or "I can't afford it," to the invitations of pleasure and self-
enjoyment; and they are found ready to brave death rather than the
ridicule of their companions.

The young man, as he passes through life, advances through a long
line of tempters ranged on either side of him; and the inevitable
effect of yielding, is degradation in a greater or a less degree.
Contact with them tends insensibly to draw away from him some
portion of the divine electric element with which his nature is
charged; and his only mode of resisting them is to utter and to act
out his "no" manfully and resolutely. He must decide at once, not
waiting to deliberate and balance reasons; for the youth, like "the
woman who deliberates, is lost." Many deliberate, without
deciding; but "not to resolve, IS to resolve." A perfect knowledge
of man is in the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation." But
temptation will come to try the young man's strength; and once
yielded to, the power to resist grows weaker and weaker. Yield
once, and a portion of virtue has gone. Resist manfully, and the
first decision will give strength for life; repeated, it will
become a habit. It is in the outworks of the habits formed in
early life that the real strength of the defence must lie; for it
has been wisely ordained, that the machinery of moral existence
should be carried on principally through the medium of the habits,
so as to save the wear and tear of the great principles within. It
is good habits, which insinuate themselves into the thousand
inconsiderable acts of life, that really constitute by far the
greater part of man's moral conduct.

Hugh Miller has told how, by an act of youthful decision, he saved
himself from one of the strong temptations so peculiar to a life of
toil. When employed as a mason, it was usual for his fellow-
workmen to have an occasional treat of drink, and one day two
glasses of whisky fell to his share, which he swallowed. When he
reached home, he found, on opening his favourite book--'Bacon's
Essays'--that the letters danced before his eyes, and that he could
no longer master the sense. "The condition," he says, "into which
I had brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk,
by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than
that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and though the
state could have been no very favourable one for forming a
resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never again
sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
usage; and, with God's help, I was enabled to hold by the
determination." It is such decisions as this that often form the
turning-points in a man's life, and furnish the foundation of his
future character. And this rock, on which Hugh Miller might have
been wrecked, if he had not at the right moment put forth his moral
strength to strike away from it, is one that youth and manhood
alike need to be constantly on their guard against. It is about
one of the worst and most deadly, as well as extravagant,
temptations which lie in the way of youth. Sir Walter Scott used
to say that "of all vices drinking is the most incompatible with
greatness." Not only so, but it is incompatible with economy,
decency, health, and honest living. When a youth cannot restrain,
he must abstain. Dr. Johnson's case is the case of many. He said,
referring to his own habits, "Sir, I can abstain; but I can't be
moderate."

But to wrestle vigorously and successfully with any vicious habit,
we must not merely be satisfied with contending on the low ground
of worldly prudence, though that is of use, but take stand upon a
higher moral elevation. Mechanical aids, such as pledges, may be
of service to some, but the great thing is to set up a high
standard of thinking and acting, and endeavour to strengthen and
purify the principles as well as to reform the habits. For this
purpose a youth must study himself, watch his steps, and compare
his thoughts and acts with his rule. The more knowledge of himself
he gains, the more humble will he be, and perhaps the less
confident in his own strength. But the discipline will be always
found most valuable which is acquired by resisting small present
gratifications to secure a prospective greater and higher one. It
is the noblest work in self-education--for

"Real glory
Springs from the silent conquest of ourselves,
And without that the conqueror is nought
But the first slave."

Many popular books have been written for the purpose of
communicating to the public the grand secret of making money. But
there is no secret whatever about it, as the proverbs of every
nation abundantly testify. "Take care of the pennies and the
pounds will take care of themselves." "Diligence is the mother of
good luck." "No pains no gains." "No sweat no sweet." "Work and
thou shalt have." "The world is his who has patience and
industry." "Better go to bed supperless than rise in debt." Such
are specimens of the proverbial philosophy, embodying the hoarded
experience of many generations, as to the best means of thriving in
the world. They were current in people's mouths long before books
were invented; and like other popular proverbs they were the first
codes of popular morals. Moreover they have stood the test of
time, and the experience of every day still bears witness to their
accuracy, force, and soundness. The proverbs of Solomon are full
of wisdom as to the force of industry, and the use and abuse of
money:- "He that is slothful in work is brother to him that is a
great waster." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways,
and be wise." Poverty, says the preacher, shall come upon the
idler, "as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man;" but of
the industrious and upright, "the hand of the diligent maketh
rich." "The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and
drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." "Seest thou a man
diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." But above
all, "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better
than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be
compared to it."

Simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of
ordinary working faculty comparatively independent in his means.
Even a working man may be so, provided he will carefully husband
his resources, and watch the little outlets of useless expenditure.
A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousands of
families depends upon the proper spending and saving of pennies.
If a man allows the little pennies, the results of his hard work,
to slip out of his fingers--some to the beershop, some this way and
some that--he will find that his life is little raised above one of
mere animal drudgery. On the other hand, if he take care of the
pennies--putting some weekly into a benefit society or an insurance
fund, others into a savings' bank, and confiding the rest to his
wife to be carefully laid out, with a view to the comfortable
maintenance and education of his family--he will soon find that
this attention to small matters will abundantly repay him, in
increasing means, growing comfort at home, and a mind comparatively
free from fears as to the future. And if a working man have high
ambition and possess richness in spirit,--a kind of wealth which
far transcends all mere worldly possessions--he may not only help
himself, but be a profitable helper of others in his path through
life. That this is no impossible thing even for a common labourer
in a workshop, may be illustrated by the remarkable career of
Thomas Wright of Manchester, who not only attempted but succeeded
in the reclamation of many criminals while working for weekly wages
in a foundry.

Accident first directed Thomas Wright's attention to the difficulty
encountered by liberated convicts in returning to habits of honest
industry. His mind was shortly possessed by the subject; and to
remedy the evil became the purpose of his life. Though he worked
from six in the morning till six at night, still there were leisure
minutes that he could call his own--more especially his Sundays--
and these he employed in the service of convicted criminals; a
class then far more neglected than they are now. But a few minutes
a day, well employed, can effect a great deal; and it will scarcely
be credited, that in ten years this working man, by steadfastly
holding to his purpose, succeeded in rescuing not fewer than three
hundred felons from continuance in a life of villany! He came to
be regarded as the moral physician of the Manchester Old Bailey;
and where the Chaplain and all others failed, Thomas Wright often
succeeded. Children he thus restored reformed to their parents;
sons and daughters otherwise lost, to their homes; and many a
returned convict did he contrive to settle down to honest and
industrious pursuits. The task was by no means easy. It required
money, time, energy, prudence, and above all, character, and the
confidence which character invariably inspires. The most
remarkable circumstance was that Wright relieved many of these poor
outcasts out of the comparatively small wages earned by him at
foundry work. He did all this on an income which did not average,
during his working career, 100l. per annum; and yet, while he was
able to bestow substantial aid on criminals, to whom he owed no
more than the service of kindness which every human being owes to
another, he also maintained his family in comfort, and was, by
frugality and carefulness, enabled to lay by a store of savings
against his approaching old age. Every week he apportioned his
income with deliberate care; so much for the indispensable
necessaries of food and clothing, so much for the landlord, so much
for the schoolmaster, so much for the poor and needy; and the lines
of distribution were resolutely observed. By such means did this
humble workman pursue his great work, with the results we have so
briefly described. Indeed, his career affords one of the most
remarkable and striking illustrations of the force of purpose in a
man, of the might of small means carefully and sedulously applied,
and, above all, of the power which an energetic and upright
character invariably exercises upon the lives and conduct of
others.

There is no discredit, but honour, in every right walk of industry,
whether it be in tilling the ground, making tools, weaving fabrics,
or selling the products behind a counter. A youth may handle a
yard-stick, or measure a piece of ribbon; and there will be no
discredit in doing so, unless he allows his mind to have no higher
range than the stick and ribbon; to be as short as the one, and as
narrow as the other. "Let not those blush who HAVE," said Fuller,
"but those who HAVE NOT a lawful calling." And Bishop Hall said,
"Sweet is the destiny of all trades, whether of the brow or of the
mind." Men who have raised themselves from a humble calling, need
not be ashamed, but rather ought to be proud of the difficulties
they have surmounted. An American President, when asked what was
his coat-of-arms, remembering that he had been a hewer of wood in
his youth, replied, "A pair of shirt sleeves." A French doctor
once taunted Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, who had been a tallow-
chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which
Flechier replied, "If you had been born in the same condition that
I was, you would still have been but a maker of candles."

Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite
independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who
devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail
to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you
earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold
will gradually rise. Osterwald, the Parisian banker, began life a
poor man. He was accustomed every evening to drink a pint of beer
for supper at a tavern which he visited, during which he collected
and pocketed all the corks that he could lay his hands on. In
eight years he had collected as many corks as sold for eight louis
d'ors. With that sum he laid the foundations of his fortune--
gained mostly by stock-jobbing; leaving at his death some three
millions of francs. John Foster has cited a striking illustration
of what this kind of determination will do in money-making. A
young man who ran through his patrimony, spending it in profligacy,
was at length reduced to utter want and despair. He rushed out of
his house intending to put an end to his life, and stopped on
arriving at an eminence overlooking what were once his estates. He
sat down, ruminated for a time, and rose with the determination
that he would recover them. He returned to the streets, saw a load
of coals which had been shot out of a cart on to the pavement
before a house, offered to carry them in, and was employed. He
thus earned a few pence, requested some meat and drink as a
gratuity, which was given him, and the pennies were laid by.
Pursuing this menial labour, he earned and saved more pennies;
accumulated sufficient to enable him to purchase some cattle, the
value of which he understood, and these he sold to advantage. He
proceeded by degrees to undertake larger transactions, until at
length he became rich. The result was, that he more than recovered
his possessions, and died an inveterate miser. When he was buried,
mere earth went to earth. With a nobler spirit, the same
determination might have enabled such a man to be a benefactor to
others as well as to himself. But the life and its end in this
case were alike sordid.

To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in
old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard
for mere wealth's sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled
and the miserly. It is against the growth of this habit of
inordinate saving that the wise man needs most carefully to guard
himself: else, what in youth was simple economy, may in old age
grow into avarice, and what was a duty in the one case, may become
a vice in the other. It is the LOVE of money--not money itself--
which is "the root of evil,"--a love which narrows and contracts
the soul, and closes it against generous life and action. Hence,
Sir Walter Scott makes one of his characters declare that "the
penny siller slew more souls than the naked sword slew bodies." It
is one of the defects of business too exclusively followed, that it
insensibly tends to a mechanism of character. The business man
gets into a rut, and often does not look beyond it. If he lives
for himself only, he becomes apt to regard other human beings only
in so far as they minister to his ends. Take a leaf from such
men's ledger and you have their life.

Worldly success, measured by the accumulation of money, is no doubt
a very dazzling thing; and all men are naturally more or less the
admirers of worldly success. But though men of persevering, sharp,
dexterous, and unscrupulous habits, ever on the watch to push
opportunities, may and do "get on" in the world, yet it is quite
possible that they may not possess the slightest elevation of
character, nor a particle of real goodness. He who recognizes no
higher logic than that of the shilling, may become a very rich man,
and yet remain all the while an exceedingly poor creature. For
riches are no proof whatever of moral worth; and their glitter
often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their
possessor, as the light of the glowworm reveals the grub.

The manner in which many allow themselves to be sacrificed to their
love of wealth reminds one of the cupidity of the monkey--that
caricature of our species. In Algiers, the Kabyle peasant attaches
a gourd, well fixed, to a tree, and places within it some rice.
The gourd has an opening merely sufficient to admit the monkey's
paw. The creature comes to the tree by night, inserts his paw, and
grasps his booty. He tries to draw it back, but it is clenched,
and he has not the wisdom to unclench it. So there he stands till
morning, when he is caught, looking as foolish as may be, though
with the prize in his grasp. The moral of this little story is
capable of a very extensive application in life.

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