Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

generations

for all time to come. It is in this momentous and solemn fact that

the great peril and responsibility of human existence lies.

 

Mr. Babbage has so powerfully expressed this idea in a noble

passage in one of his writings that we here venture to quote his

words: “Every atom,” he says, “impressed with good or ill, retains

at once the motions which philosophers and sages have imparted to

it, mixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all that is

worthless and base; the air itself is one vast library, on whose

pages are written FOR EVER all that man has ever said or whispered.

There, in their immutable but unerring characters, mixed with the

earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever

recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled; perpetuating, in

the united movements of each particle, the testimony of man’s

changeful will. But, if the air we breathe is the never-failing

historian of the sentiments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean,

are, in like manner, the eternal witnesses of the acts we have

done; the same principle of the equality of action and reaction

applies to them. No motion impressed by natural causes, or by

human agency, is ever obliterated… . If the Almighty stamped on

the brow of the first murderer the indelible and visible mark of

his guilt, He has also established laws by which every succeeding

criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his

crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes

its severed particles may migrate, will still retain adhering to

it, through every combination, some movement derived from that very

muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated.”

 

Thus, every act we do or word we utter, as well as every act we

witness or word we hear, carries with it an influence which extends

over, and gives a colour, not only to the whole of our future life,

but makes itself felt upon the whole frame of society. We may not,

and indeed cannot, possibly, trace the influence working itself

into action in its various ramifications amongst our children, our

friends, or associates; yet there it is assuredly, working on for

ever. And herein lies the great significance of setting forth a

good example,—a silent teaching which even the poorest and least

significant person can practise in his daily life. There is no one

so humble, but that he owes to others this simple but priceless

instruction. Even the meanest condition may thus be made useful;

for the light set in a low place shines as faithfully as that set

upon a hill. Everywhere, and under almost all circumstances,

however externally adverse—in moorland shielings, in cottage

hamlets, in the close alleys of great towns—the true man may grow.

He who tills a space of earth scarce bigger than is needed for his

grave, may work as faithfully, and to as good purpose, as the heir

to thousands. The commonest workshop may thus be a school of

industry, science, and good morals, on the one hand; or of

idleness, folly, and depravity, on the other. It all depends on

the individual men, and the use they make of the opportunities for

good which offer themselves.

 

A life well spent, a character uprightly sustained, is no slight

legacy to leave to one’s children, and to the world; for it is the

most eloquent lesson of virtue and the severest reproof of vice,

while it continues an enduring source of the best kind of riches.

Well for those who can say, as Pope did, in rejoinder to the

sarcasm of Lord Hervey, “I think it enough that my parents, such as

they were, never cost me a blush, and that their son, such as he

is, never cost them a tear.”

 

It is not enough to tell others what they are to do, but to exhibit

the actual example of doing. What Mrs. Chisholm described to Mrs.

Stowe as the secret of her success, applies to all life. “I

found,” she said, “that if we want anything DONE, we must go to

work and DO: it is of no use merely to talk—none whatever.” It

is poor eloquence that only shows how a person can talk. Had Mrs.

Chisholm rested satisfied with lecturing, her project, she was

persuaded, would never have got beyond the region of talk; but when

people saw what she was doing and had actually accomplished, they

fell in with her views and came forward to help her. Hence the

most beneficent worker is not he who says the most eloquent things,

or even who thinks the most loftily, but he who does the most

eloquent acts.

 

True-hearted persons, even in the humblest station in life, who are

energetic doers, may thus give an impulse to good works out of all

proportion, apparently, to their actual station in society. Thomas

Wright might have talked about the reclamation of criminals, and

John Pounds about the necessity for Ragged Schools, and yet done

nothing; instead of which they simply set to work without any other

idea in their minds than that of doing, not talking. And how the

example of even the poorest man may tell upon society, hear what

Dr. Guthrie, the apostle of the Ragged School movement, says of the

influence which the example of John Pounds, the humble Portsmouth

cobbler, exercised upon his own working career:-

 

“The interest I have been led to take in this cause is an example

of how, in Providence, a man’s destiny—his course of life, like

that of a river—may be determined and affected by very trivial

circumstances. It is rather curious—at least it is interesting to

me to remember—that it was by a picture I was first led to take an

interest in ragged schools—by a picture in an old, obscure,

decaying burgh that stands on the shores of the Frith of Forth, the

birthplace of Thomas Chalmers. I went to see this place many years

ago; and, going into an inn for refreshment, I found the room

covered with pictures of shepherdesses with their crooks, and

sailors in holiday attire, not particularly interesting. But above

the chimney-piece there was a large print, more respectable than

its neighbours, which represented a cobbler’s room. The cobbler

was there himself, spectacles on nose, an old shoe between his

knees—the massive forehead and firm mouth indicating great

determination of character, and, beneath his bushy eyebrows,

benevolence gleamed out on a number of poor ragged boys and girls

who stood at their lessons round the busy cobbler. My curiosity

was awakened; and in the inscription I read how this man, John

Pounds, a cobbler in Portsmouth, taking pity on the multitude of

poor ragged children left by ministers and magistrates, and ladies

and gentlemen, to go to ruin on the streets—how, like a good

shepherd, he gathered in these wretched outcasts—how he had

trained them to God and to the world—and how, while earning his

daily bread by the sweat of his brow, he had rescued from misery

and saved to society not less than five hundred of these children.

I felt ashamed of myself. I felt reproved for the little I had

done. My feelings were touched. I was astonished at this man’s

achievements; and I well remember, in the enthusiasm of the moment,

saying to my companion (and I have seen in my cooler and calmer

moments no reason for unsaying the saying)—‘That man is an honour

to humanity, and deserves the tallest monument ever raised within

the shores of Britain.’ I took up that man’s history, and I found

it animated by the spirit of Him who ‘had compassion on the

multitude.’ John Pounds was a clever man besides; and, like Paul,

if he could not win a poor boy any other way, he won him by art.

He would be seen chasing a ragged boy along the quays, and

compelling him to come to school, not by the power of a policeman,

but by the power of a hot potato. He knew the love an Irishman had

for a potato; and John Pounds might be seen running holding under

the boy’s nose a potato, like an Irishman, very hot, and with a

coat as ragged as himself. When the day comes when honour will be

done to whom honour is due, I can fancy the crowd of those whose

fame poets have sung, and to whose memory monuments have been

raised, dividing like the wave, and, passing the great, and the

noble, and the mighty of the land, this poor, obscure old man

stepping forward and receiving the especial notice of Him who said

‘Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it also

to Me.’”

 

The education of character is very much a question of models; we

mould ourselves so unconsciously after the characters, manners,

habits, and opinions of those who are about us. Good rules may do

much, but good models far more; for in the latter we have

instruction in action—wisdom at work. Good admonition and bad

example only build with one hand to pull down with the other.

Hence the vast importance of exercising great care in the selection

of companions, especially in youth. There is a magnetic affinity

in young persons which insensibly tends to assimilate them to each

other’s likeness. Mr. Edgeworth was so strongly convinced that

from sympathy they involuntarily imitated or caught the tone of the

company they frequented, that he held it to be of the most

essential importance that they should be taught to select the very

best models. “No company, or good company,” was his motto. Lord

Collingwood, writing to a young friend, said, “Hold it as a maxim

that you had better be alone than in mean company. Let your

companions be such as yourself, or superior; for the worth of a man

will always be ruled by that of his company.” It was a remark of

the famous Dr. Sydenham that everybody some time or other would be

the better or the worse for having but spoken to a good or a bad

man. As Sir Peter Lely made it a rule never to look at a bad

picture if he could help it, believing that whenever he did so his

pencil caught a taint from it, so, whoever chooses to gaze often

upon a debased specimen of humanity and to frequent his society,

cannot help gradually assimilating himself to that sort of model.

 

It is therefore advisable for young men to seek the fellowship of

the good, and always to aim at a higher standard than themselves.

Francis Horner, speaking of the advantages to himself of direct

personal intercourse with high-minded, intelligent men, said, “I

cannot hesitate to decide that I have derived more intellectual

improvement from them than from all the books I have turned over.”

Lord Shelburne (afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne), when a young man,

paid a visit to the venerable Malesherbes, and was so much

impressed by it, that he said,—“I have travelled much, but I have

never been so influenced by personal contact with any man; and if I

ever accomplish any good in the course of my life, I am certain

that the recollection of M. de Malesherbes will animate my soul.”

So Fowell Buxton was always ready to acknowledge the powerful

influence exercised upon the formation of his character in early

life by the example of the Gurney family: “It has given a colour

to my life,” he used to say. Speaking of his success at the Dublin

University, he confessed, “I can ascribe it to nothing but my

Earlham visits.” It was from the Gurneys he “caught the infection”

of self-improvement.

 

Contact with the good never fails to impart good, and we carry away

with us some of the blessing, as travellers’ garments retain the

odour of