The Majesty of Calmness | Page 6

iron, as iron. It must first
convert the iron into another magnet before it can attract it. It is useless
for a parent to try to teach gentleness to her children when she herself is
cross and irritable. The child who is told to be truthful and who hears a
parent lie cleverly to escape some little social unpleasantness is not
going to cling very zealously to truth. The parent's words say "don't
lie," the influence of the parent's life says "do lie."
No man can ever isolate himself to evade this constant power of
influence, as no single corpuscle can rebel and escape from the general
course of the blood. No individual is so insignificant as to be without
influence. The changes in our varying moods are all recorded in the
delicate barometers of the lives of others. We should ever let our
influence filter through human love and sympathy. We should not be
merely an influence,--we should be an inspiration. By our very
presence we should be a tower of strength to the hungering human
souls around us.

IV
The Dignity of Self-Reliance

Self-confidence, without self-reliance, is as useless as a cooking
recipe,--without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the
individual; self-reliance realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in
the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves it out for himself.
The man who is self-reliant says ever: "No one can realize my
possibilities for me, but me; no one can make me good or evil but
myself." He works out his own salvation,--financially, socially,
mentally, physically, and morally. Life is an individual problem that
man must solve for himself. Nature accepts no vicarious sacrifice, no
vicarious service. Nature never recognizes a proxy vote. She has
nothing to do with middle-men,--she deals only with the individual.
Nature is constantly seeking to show man that he is his own best friend,
or his own worst enemy. Nature gives man the option on which he will
be to himself.
All the athletic exercises in the world are of no value to the individual
unless he compel those bars and dumb-bells to yield to him, in strength
and muscle, the power for which he, himself, pays in time and effort.
He can never develop his muscles by sending his valet to a gymnasium.
The medicine-chests of the world are powerless, in all the united efforts,
to help the individual until he reach out and take for himself what is
needed for his individual weakness.
All the religions of the world are but speculations in morals, mere
theories of salvation, until the individual realize that he must save
himself by relying on the law of truth, as he sees it, and living his life in
harmony with it, as fully as he can. But religion is not a Pullman car,
with soft-cushioned seats, where he has but to pay for his ticket,--and
some one else does all the rest. In religion, as in all other great things,
he is ever thrown back on his self-reliance. He should accept all helps,
but,--he must live his own life. He should not feel that he is a mere
passenger; he is the engineer, and the train is his life. We must rely on
ourselves, live our own lives, or we merely drift through
existence,--losing all that is best, all that is greatest, all that is divine.
All that others can do for us is to give us opportunity. We must ever be
prepared for the opportunity when it comes, and to go after it and find

it when it does not come, or that opportunity is to us,--nothing. Life is
but a succession of opportunities. They are for good or evil,-- as we
make them.
Many of the alchemists of old felt that they lacked but one element; if
they could obtain that one, they believed they could transmute the baser
metals into pure gold. It is so in character. There are individuals with
rare mental gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail utterly in
life because they lack the one element,--self- reliance. This would unite
all their energies, and focus them into strength and power.
The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesitating and doubting in all
he does. He fears to take a decisive step, because he dreads failure,
because he is waiting for some one to advise him or because he dare
not act in accordance with his own best judgment. In his cowardice and
his conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. He is "not
appreciated," "not recognized," he is "kept down." He feels that in
some subtle way "society is conspiring against him." He grows almost
vain as he thinks that no one has had such poverty, such sorrow, such
affliction, such failure as have come to him.
The