The Elements of Character | Page 3

as we habituate ourselves to courtesy and good-breeding because
we shall stand better with the world if we are polite than if we are rude,
we are cultivating a merely external habit, which we shall be likely to
throw off as often as we think it safe to go without it, as we should an
uncomfortably fitting dress; and our manners do not belong to our
Characters any more than our coats belong to our persons. This is the
transient side of manners. If, on the contrary, we are polite from an
inward conviction that politeness is one of the forms of love to the
neighbor, and because we believe that in being polite we are
performing a duty that our neighbor has a right to claim from us, and
because politeness is a trait that we love for its own inherent beauty,
our manners belong to the substance of our Character,--they are not its

garment, but its skin; and this is the permanent side of manners. Such
manners will be ours in death, and afterwards, no less than in life.
In the same way, every personal accomplishment and every mental
acquisition has its transient and its permanent side. So far as we
cultivate them to enrich and to ennoble our natures, to enlarge and to
elevate our understandings, to become wiser, better, and more useful to
our fellow-beings, we are cultivating our Characters,--the spiritual
essence of our being; but these very same acquisitions, when sought
from motives wholly selfish and worldly, are not only as transient as
the clothes we wear, but often as useless as the ornaments of a
fashionable costume. The Character will be poor and famished and cold,
however great the variety of such clothing or ornament we may put on.
When the mind has learned to appreciate the difference between
reputation and Character, between the Seeming and the being, it must
next decide, if it would build up a worthy Character, what it desires this
should be; for to build a Character requires a plan, no less than to build
a house. A deep and broad foundation of sound opinions, believed in
with the whole heart, can alone insure safety to the superstructure.
Where such a foundation is not laid, the Character will possess no
architectural unity,--will have no consistency. Its emotions will be
swayed by the impulses of the moment, instead of being governed by
principles of life. There is nothing reliable in such a Character, for it
perpetually contradicts itself. Its powers, instead of acting together, like
well-trained soldiers, will be ever jostling each other, like a disorderly
mob.
The zeal for special reforms in morality that so strongly characterizes
the present age, whatever may be its utility or its necessity, may not be
without an evil effect upon the training of Character as a whole. The
intense effort after reform in certain particular directions causes many
to forget or to overlook altogether the fact that one virtue is not enough
to make a moral being. It cannot be doubted that the present surpasses
all former ages in its eagerness to put down several of the most
prominent vices to which man is subject; but it may be well to pause
and calmly examine whether a larger promise is not sometimes uttered
by the zeal so actively at work in society, than will probably be made
good by its results.
Nothing can be worthy the name of Reform that is not based on the

Christian religion,--that does not acknowledge the laws of eternal truth
and justice,--that does not find its life in Christian charity, and its light
in Christian truth. The tendency of reform at the present day is too
often to separate itself from religion; for religion cannot work fast
enough to satisfy its haste; cannot, at the end of each year, count the
steps it has advanced in arithmetical numbers. The reformer asks not
always for general growth and advancement in Christian Character; but
demands special evidences, startling results, tangible proofs. These
things all have their value, and the persons who strive for them
doubtless have their reward; but if the kingdom of heaven and its
righteousness were first sought, the good things so fiercely advocated
and labored after by special reformers would be added unto them, as
naturally as flowers and fruits, and the wealth of harvest, are added to
the light and warmth of the advancing year.
Persons who devote themselves to one special branch of reform are apt
to lose the power of appreciating any virtue save that one which they
have selected as their own, and which they seem to love, not so much
because it is a virtue as because it is their virtue. They soon lose all
moral perspective, and resemble him who holds some one object