The True Citizen, How To Become One | Page 2

XX.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS XXI. ENTHUSIASM XXII. COURAGE
XXIII. SELF-HELP XXIV. HUMILITY XXV. FAITHFULNESS
III. THE MAN.
XXVI. THE SECOND TRANSITION PERIOD XXVII. ORDER
XXVIII. REVERENCE XXIX. SENTIMENT XXX. DUTY XXXI.
TEMPERANCE XXXII. PATRIOTISM XXXIII. INDEPENDENCE
XXXIV. THE IDEAL MAN
IV. THE CITIZEN.
XXXV. WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD CITIZENSHIP? XXXVI.
THE CITIZEN AND THE HOME XXXVII. THE CITIZEN AND
THE COMMUNITY XXXVIII. THE CITIZEN AND THE NATION
XXXIX. THE IDEAL CITIZEN

I.
EDUCATION OF THE NATURAL FACULTIES.
MEMORY GEMS.
Every man stamps his value on himself.--Schiller
No capital earns such interest as personal culture.--President Eliot
The end and aim of all education is the development of character.
--Francis W. Parker
One of the best effects of thorough intellectual training is a knowledge
of our own capacities.--Alexander Bain
Education is a growth toward intellectual and moral perfection.
--Nicholas Murray Butler
Education begins in the home, is continued through the public school
and college, and finds inviting and ever-widening opportunities and
possibilities throughout the entire course of life. The mere acquisition
of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be
of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided
education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again,
intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual
demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men
of scholarly ability and of rare academic attainments.
The true education embraces the symmetrical development of mind,
body and heart. An old and wise writer has said, "Cultivate the physical
exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage; the moral only, and
you have an enthusiast or a maniac; the intellectual only, and you have
a diseased oddity,--it may be a monster. It is only by wisely training all
of them together that the complete man may be found."
To cultivate anything--be it a plant, an animal, or a mind--is to make it

grow. Nothing admits of culture but that which has a principle of life
capable of being expanded. He, therefore, who does what he can to
unfold all his powers and capacities, especially his nobler ones, so as to
become a well-proportioned, vigorous, excellent, happy being,
practices self-culture, and secures a true education.
It is a commonplace remark that "a man's faculties are strengthened by
use, and weakened by disuse." To change the form of statement, they
grow when they are fed and nourished, and decay when they are not fed
and nourished. Moreover, every faculty demands appropriate food.
What nourishes one will not always nourish another. Accordingly, one
part of man's nature may grow while another withers; and one part may
be fed and strengthened at the expense of another.
In Hawthorne's beautiful allegory, the "Great Stone Face," you
remember how the man Ernest, by daily and admiring contemplation of
the face, its dignity, its serenity, its benevolence, came, all
unconsciously to himself, to possess the same qualities, and to be
transformed by them, until at last he stood revealed to his neighbors as
the long promised one, who should be like the Great Stone Face. So in
every human life, the unrealized self is the unseen but all-powerful
force that brings into subjection the will, guides the conduct, and
determines the character.
"The early life of Washington is singularly transparent as to the
creation and influence of the ideal. We see how one quality after
another was added, until the character became complete. Manly
strength, athletic power and skill, appear first; then, courtesy and
refined manners; then, careful and exact business habits; then, military
qualities; then, devotion to public service."
Steadily, but rapidly, the transforming work went on, until the man was
complete; the ideal was realized. Henceforth, the character, the man,
appears under all the forms of occupation and office. Legislator,
commander, president; the man is in them all, though he is none of
them.
Half the blunders of humanity come from not knowing one's self. If we

overrate our abilities, we attempt more than we can accomplish; if we
underrate our abilities we fail to accomplish much that we attempt. In
both cases the life loses just so much from its sum of power.
He who might wield the golden scepter of the pen, never gets beyond
the plow; or perhaps he who ought to be a shoemaker attempts the
artistic career of an Apelles. When a life-work presents itself we ought
to be able from our self-knowledge to say, "I am, or am not, fitted to be
useful in that sphere."
Sydney Smith represents the various parts in life by holes of different
shapes upon a table--some circular, some triangular, some square, some
oblong--and the persons acting these parts, by bits of wood of similar
shapes, and he says, "we generally find that the triangular person has
gotten into the square hole,