Self Help

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The power of money is on the whole over-estimated. The greatest
things which have been done for the world have not been
accomplished by rich men, nor by subscription lists, but by men
generally of small pecuniary means. Christianity was propagated
over half the world by men of the poorest class; and the greatest
thinkers, discoverers, inventors, and artists, have been men of
moderate wealth, many of them little raised above the condition of
manual labourers in point of worldly circumstances. And it will
always be so. Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to
action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a
blessing. The youth who inherits wealth is apt to have life made
too easy for him, and he soon grows sated with it, because he has
nothing left to desire. Having no special object to struggle for,
he finds time hang heavy on his hands; he remains morally and
spiritually asleep; and his position in society is often no higher
than that of a polypus over which the tide floats.

"His only labour is to kill the time,
And labour dire it is, and weary woe."

Yet the rich man, inspired by a right spirit, will spurn idleness
as unmanly; and if he bethink himself of the responsibilities which
attach to the possession of wealth and property he will feel even a
higher call to work than men of humbler lot. This, however, must
be admitted to be by no means the practice of life. The golden
mean of Agur's perfect prayer is, perhaps, the best lot of all, did
we but know it: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with
food convenient for me." The late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., left a
fine motto to be recorded upon his monument in the Peel Park at
Manchester,--the declaration in his case being strictly true: "My
richness consisted not in the greatness of my possessions, but in
the smallness of my wants." He rose from the humblest station,
that of a factory boy, to an eminent position of usefulness, by the
simple exercise of homely honesty, industry, punctuality, and self-
denial. Down to the close of his life, when not attending
Parliament, he did duty as minister in a small chapel in Manchester
to which he was attached; and in all things he made it appear, to
those who knew him in private life, that the glory he sought was
NOT "to be seen of men," or to excite their praise, but to earn the
consciousness of discharging the every-day duties of life, down to
the smallest and humblest of them, in an honest, upright, truthful,
and loving spirit.

"Respectability," in its best sense, is good. The respectable man
is one worthy of regard, literally worth turning to look at. But
the respectability that consists in merely keeping up appearances
is not worth looking at in any sense. Far better and more
respectable is the good poor man than the bad rich one--better the
humble silent man than the agreeable well-appointed rogue who keeps
his gig. A well balanced and well-stored mind, a life full of
useful purpose, whatever the position occupied in it may be, is of
far greater importance than average worldly respectability. The
highest object of life we take to be, to form a manly character,
and to work out the best development possible, of body and spirit--
of mind, conscience, heart, and soul. This is the end: all else
ought to be regarded but as the means. Accordingly, that is not
the most successful life in which a man gets the most pleasure, the
most money, the most power or place, honour or fame; but that in
which a man gets the most manhood, and performs the greatest amount
of useful work and of human duty. Money is power after its sort,
it is true; but intelligence, public spirit, and moral virtue, are
powers too, and far nobler ones. "Let others plead for pensions,"
wrote Lord Collingwood to a friend; "I can be rich without money,
by endeavouring to be superior to everything poor. I would have my
services to my country unstained by any interested motive; and old
Scott {27} and I can go on in our cabbage-garden without much
greater expense than formerly." On another occasion he said, "I
have motives for my conduct which I would not give in exchange for
a hundred pensions."

The making of a fortune may no doubt enable some people to "enter
society," as it is called; but to be esteemed there, they must
possess qualities of mind, manners, or heart, else they are merely
rich people, nothing more. There are men "in society" now, as rich
as Croesus, who have no consideration extended towards them, and
elicit no respect. For why? They are but as money-bags: their
only power is in their till. The men of mark in society--the
guides and rulers of opinion--the really successful and useful men-
-are not necessarily rich men; but men of sterling character, of
disciplined experience, and of moral excellence. Even the poor
man, like Thomas Wright, though he possess but little of this
world's goods, may, in the enjoyment of a cultivated nature, of
opportunities used and not abused, of a life spent to the best of
his means and ability, look down, without the slightest feeling of
envy, upon the person of mere worldly success, the man of money-
bags and acres.

CHAPTER XI--SELF-CULTURE--FACILITIES AND DIFFICULTIES

"Every person has two educations, one which he receives from
others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself."--
Gibbon.

"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten--who bends to the storm?
He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of
man never fails."--John Hunter.

"The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them: sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger,
And MAKE the impossibility they fear."--Rowe.

"The best part of every man's education," said Sir Walter Scott,
"is that which he gives to himself." The late Sir Benjamin Brodie
delighted to remember this saying, and he used to congratulate
himself on the fact that professionally he was self-taught. But
this is necessarily the case with all men who have acquired
distinction in letters, science, or art. The education received at
school or college is but a beginning, and is valuable mainly
inasmuch as it trains the mind and habituates it to continuous
application and study. That which is put into us by others is
always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own diligent
and persevering effort. Knowledge conquered by labour becomes a
possession--a property entirely our own. A greater vividness and
permanency of impression is secured; and facts thus acquired become
registered in the mind in a way that mere imparted information can
never effect. This kind of self-culture also calls forth power and
cultivates strength. The solution of one problem helps the mastery
of another; and thus knowledge is carried into faculty. Our own
active effort is the essential thing; and no facilities, no books,
no teachers, no amount of lessons learnt by rote will enable us to
dispense with it.

The best teachers have been the readiest to recognize the
importance of self-culture, and of stimulating the student to
acquire knowledge by the active exercise of his own faculties.
They have relied more upon TRAINING than upon telling, and sought
to make their pupils themselves active parties to the work in which
they were engaged; thus making teaching something far higher than
the mere passive reception of the scraps and details of knowledge.
This was the spirit in which the great Dr. Arnold worked; he strove
to teach his pupils to rely upon themselves, and develop their
powers by their own active efforts, himself merely guiding,
directing, stimulating, and encouraging them. "I would far
rather," he said, "send a boy to Van Diemen's Land, where he must
work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury,
without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages."
"If there be one thing on earth," he observed on another occasion,
"which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an
inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, truly,
and zealously cultivated." Speaking of a pupil of this character,
he said, "I would stand to that man hat in hand." Once at Laleham,
when teaching a rather dull boy, Arnold spoke somewhat sharply to
him, on which the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you
speak angrily, sir? INDEED, I am doing the best I can." Years
afterwards, Arnold used to tell the story to his children, and
added, "I never felt so much in my life--that look and that speech
I have never forgotten."

From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station
who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be
obvious that labour is by no means incompatible with the highest
intellectual culture. Work in moderation is healthy, as well as
agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates the body, as
study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in
which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure
for every man's work. Even the leisure classes are in a measure
compelled to work, sometimes as a relief from ennui, but in most
cases to gratify an instinct which they cannot resist. Some go
foxhunting in the English counties, others grouse-shooting on the
Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb
mountains in Switzerland. Hence the boating, running, cricketing,
and athletic sports of the public schools, in which our young men
at the same time so healthfully cultivate their strength both of
mind and body. It is said that the Duke of Wellington, when once
looking on at the boys engaged in their sports in the play-ground
at Eton, where he had spent many of his own younger days, made the
remark, "It was there that the battle of Waterloo was won!"

Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college to be most diligent in
the cultivation of knowledge, but he also enjoined him to pursue
manly sports as the best means of keeping up the full working power
of his mind, as well as of enjoying the pleasures of intellect.
"Every kind of knowledge," said he, "every acquaintance with nature
and art, will amuse and strengthen your mind, and I am perfectly
pleased that cricket should do the same by your arms and legs; I
love to see you excel in exercises of the body, and I think myself
that the better half, and much the most agreeable part, of the
pleasures of the mind is best enjoyed while one is upon one's
legs." But a still more important use of active employment is that
referred to by the great divine, Jeremy Taylor. "Avoid idleness,"
he says, "and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and
useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses
where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy,
healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but
of all employments bodily labour is the most useful, and of the
greatest benefit for driving away the devil."

Practical success in life depends more upon physical health than is
generally imagined. Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, writing home to a
friend in England, said, "I believe, if I get on well in India, it
will be owing, physically speaking, to a sound digestion." The
capacity for continuous working in any calling must necessarily
depend in a great measure upon this; and hence the necessity for
attending to health, even as a means of intellectual labour. It is
perhaps to the neglect of physical exercise that we find amongst
students so frequent a tendency towards discontent, unhappiness,
inaction, and reverie,--displaying itself in contempt for real life
and disgust at the beaten tracks of men,--a tendency which in
England has been called Byronism, and in Germany Wertherism. Dr.
Channing noted the same growth in America, which led him to make
the remark, that "too many of our young men grow up in a school of
despair." The only remedy for this green-sickness in youth is
physical exercise--action, work, and bodily occupation.

The use of early labour in self-imposed mechanical employments may
be illustrated by the boyhood of Sir Isaac Newton. Though a
comparatively dull scholar, he was very assiduous in the use of his
saw, hammer, and hatchet--"knocking and hammering in his lodging
room"--making models of windmills, carriages, and machines of all
sorts; and as he grew older, he took delight in making little
tables and cupboards for his friends. Smeaton, Watt, and
Stephenson, were equally handy with tools when mere boys; and but
for such kind of self-culture in their youth, it is doubtful
whether they would have accomplished so much in their manhood.
Such was also the early training of the great inventors and
mechanics described in the preceding pages, whose contrivance and
intelligence were practically trained by the constant use of their
hands in early life. Even where men belonging to the manual labour
class have risen above it, and become more purely intellectual
labourers, they have found the advantages of their early training
in their later pursuits. Elihu Burritt says he found hard labour
NECESSARY to enable him to study with effect; and more than once he
gave up school-teaching and study, and, taking to his leather-apron
again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for his health
of body and mind's sake.

The training of young men in the use of tools would, at the same
time that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use
of their hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work,
exercise their faculties upon things tangible and actual, give them
some practical acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them the
ability of being useful, and implant in them the habit of
persevering physical effort. This is an advantage which the
working classes, strictly so called, certainly possess over the
leisure classes,--that they are in early life under the necessity
of applying themselves laboriously to some mechanical pursuit or
other,--thus acquiring manual dexterity and the use of their
physical powers. The chief disadvantage attached to the calling of
the laborious classes is, not that they are employed in physical
work, but that they are too exclusively so employed, often to the
neglect of their moral and intellectual faculties. While the
youths of the leisure classes, having been taught to associate
labour with servility, have shunned it, and been allowed to grow up
practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining themselves
within the circle of their laborious callings, have been allowed to
grow up in a large proportion of cases absolutely illiterate. It
seems possible, however, to avoid both these evils by combining
physical training or physical work with intellectual culture: and
there are various signs abroad which seem to mark the gradual
adoption of this healthier system of education.

The success of even professional men depends in no slight degree on
their physical health; and a public writer has gone so far as to
say that "the greatness of our great men is quite as much a bodily
affair as a mental one." {28} A healthy breathing apparatus is as
indispensable to the successful lawyer or politician as a well-
cultured intellect. The thorough aeration of the blood by free
exposure to a large breathing surface in the lungs, is necessary to
maintain that full vital power on which the vigorous working of the
brain in so large a measure depends. The lawyer has to climb the
heights of his profession through close and heated courts, and the
political leader has to bear the fatigue and excitement of long and
anxious debates in a crowded House. Hence the lawyer in full
practice and the parliamentary leader in full work are called upon
to display powers of physical endurance and activity even more
extraordinary than those of the intellect,--such powers as have
been exhibited in so remarkable a degree by Brougham, Lyndhurst,
and Campbell; by Peel, Graham, and Palmerston--all full-chested
men.

Though Sir Walter Scott, when at Edinburgh College, went by the
name of "The Greek Blockhead," he was, notwithstanding his
lameness, a remarkably healthy youth: he could spear a salmon with
the best fisher on the Tweed, and ride a wild horse with any hunter
in Yarrow. When devoting himself in after life to literary
pursuits, Sir Walter never lost his taste for field sports; but
while writing 'Waverley' in the morning, he would in the afternoon
course hares. Professor Wilson was a very athlete, as great at
throwing the hammer as in his flights of eloquence and poetry; and
Burns, when a youth, was remarkable chiefly for his leaping,
putting, and wrestling. Some of our greatest divines were
distinguished in their youth for their physical energies. Isaac
Barrow, when at the Charterhouse School, was notorious for his
pugilistic encounters, in which he got many a bloody nose; Andrew
Fuller, when working as a farmer's lad at Soham, was chiefly famous
for his skill in boxing; and Adam Clarke, when a boy, was only
remarkable for the strength displayed by him in "rolling large
stones about,"--the secret, possibly, of some of the power which he
subsequently displayed in rolling forth large thoughts in his
manhood.

While it is necessary, then, in the first place to secure this
solid foundation of physical health, it must also be observed that
the cultivation of the habit of mental application is quite
indispensable for the education of the student. The maxim that
"Labour conquers all things" holds especially true in the case of
the conquest of knowledge. The road into learning is alike free to
all who will give the labour and the study requisite to gather it;
nor are there any difficulties so great that the student of
resolute purpose may not surmount and overcome them. It was one of
the characteristic expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his
creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything if
they chose to be at the trouble. In study, as in business, energy
is the great thing. There must be the "fervet opus": we must not
only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made
hot. It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self-
culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to
avail themselves of opportunities, and use up the fragments of
spare time which the idle permit to run to waste. Thus Ferguson
learnt astronomy from the heavens, while wrapt in a sheep-skin on
the highland hills. Thus Stone learnt mathematics while working as
a journeyman gardener; thus Drew studied the highest philosophy in
the intervals of cobbling shoes; and thus Miller taught himself
geology while working as a day labourer in a quarry.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, was so earnest a
believer in the force of industry that he held that all men might
achieve excellence if they would but exercise the power of
assiduous and patient working. He held that drudgery lay on the
road to genius, and that there was no limit to the proficiency of
an artist except the limit of his own painstaking. He would not
believe in what is called inspiration, but only in study and
labour. "Excellence," he said, "is never granted to man but as the
reward of labour." "If you have great talents, industry will
improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will
supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed
labour; nothing is to be obtained without it." Sir Fowell Buxton
was an equal believer in the power of study; and he entertained the
modest idea that he could do as well as other men if he devoted to
the pursuit double the time and labour that they did. He placed
his great confidence in ordinary means and extraordinary
application.

"I have known several men in my life," says Dr. Ross, "who may be
recognized in days to come as men of genius, and they were all
plodders, hard-working, INTENT men. Genius is known by its works;
genius without works is a blind faith, a dumb oracle. But
meritorious works are the result of time and labour, and cannot be
accomplished by intention or by a wish. . . . Every great work is
the result of vast preparatory training. Facility comes by labour.
Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at
first. The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose
lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their
unexpectedness, and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has
learned his secret by patient repetition, and after many bitter
disappointments." {29}

Thoroughness and accuracy are two principal points to be aimed at
in study. Francis Horner, in laying down rules for the cultivation
of his mind, placed great stress upon the habit of continuous
application to one subject for the sake of mastering it thoroughly;
he confined himself, with this object, to only a few books, and
resisted with the greatest firmness "every approach to a habit of
desultory reading." The value of knowledge to any man consists not
in its quantity, but mainly in the good uses to which he can apply
it. Hence a little knowledge, of an exact and perfect character,
is always found more valuable for practical purposes than any
extent of superficial learning.

One of Ignatius Loyola's maxims was, "He who does well one work at
a time, does more than all." By spreading our efforts over too
large a surface we inevitably weaken our force, hinder our
progress, and acquire a habit of fitfulness and ineffective
working. Lord St. Leonards once communicated to Sir Fowell Buxton
the mode in which he had conducted his studies, and thus explained
the secret of his success. "I resolved," said he, "when beginning
to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the
first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a
week; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh
as the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from
recollection."

It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, or the
amount of reading, that makes a wise man; but the appositeness of
the study to the purpose for which it is pursued; the concentration
of the mind for the time being on the subject under consideration;
and the habitual discipline by which the whole system of mental
application is regulated. Abernethy was even of opinion that there
was a point of saturation in his own mind, and that if he took into
it something more than it could hold, it only had the effect of
pushing something else out. Speaking of the study of medicine, he
said, "If a man has a clear idea of what he desires to do, he will
seldom fail in selecting the proper means of accomplishing it."

The most profitable study is that which is conducted with a
definite aim and object. By thoroughly mastering any given branch
of knowledge we render it more available for use at any moment.
Hence it is not enough merely to have books, or to know where to
read for information as we want it. Practical wisdom, for the
purposes of life, must be carried about with us, and be ready for
use at call. It is not sufficient that we have a fund laid up at
home, but not a farthing in the pocket: we must carry about with
us a store of the current coin of knowledge ready for exchange on
all occasions, else we are comparatively helpless when the
opportunity for using it occurs.

Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self-culture as in
business. The growth of these qualities may be encouraged by
accustoming young people to rely upon their own resources, leaving
them to enjoy as much freedom of action in early life as is
practicable. Too much guidance and restraint hinder the formation
of habits of self-help. They are like bladders tied under the arms
of one who has not taught himself to swim. Want of confidence is
perhaps a greater obstacle to improvement than is generally
imagined. It has been said that half the failures in life arise
from pulling in one's horse while he is leaping. Dr. Johnson was
accustomed to attribute his success to confidence in his own
powers. True modesty is quite compatible with a due estimate of
one's own merits, and does not demand the abnegation of all merit.
Though there are those who deceive themselves by putting a false
figure before their ciphers, the want of confidence, the want of
faith in one's self, and consequently the want of promptitude in
action, is a defect of character which is found to stand very much
in the way of individual progress; and the reason why so little is
done, is generally because so little is attempted.

There is usually no want of desire on the part of most persons to
arrive at the results of self-culture, but there is a great
aversion to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work. Dr.
Johnson held that "impatience of study was the mental disease of
the present generation;" and the remark is still applicable. We
may not believe that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem
to believe very firmly in a "popular" one. In education, we invent
labour-saving processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French
and Latin "in twelve lessons," or "without a master." We resemble
the lady of fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition
that he did not plague her with verbs and participles. We get our
smattering of science in the same way; we learn chemistry by
listening to a short course of lectures enlivened by experiments,
and when we have inhaled laughing gas, seen green water turned to
red, and phosphorus burnt in oxygen, we have got our smattering, of
which the most that can be said is, that though it may be better
than nothing, it is yet good for nothing. Thus we often imagine we
are being educated while we are only being amused.

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